"Absorbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few confused words, a few troubled glances betrayed me. Edmee was by no means blind, but she was impenetrable; her dark and searching eyes, fixed on me as on her father, with the solicitude of an absorbing affection, would at times suddenly grow cold, just as the violence of my passion was ready to break out. Her countenance would then express nothing but patient curiosity and an unswerving resolve to read to the bottom of my soul without letting me see even the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... thought, as she had years before, that she was quite torn in two. Did she love Andrew Henry with an absorbing love, such as Polly had for her brother? Another face and another voice haunted her. She dreamed of Allin Wharton. This night they were sailing up the lovely Schuylkill and pausing under the overhanging trees to hear the birds who were saying, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... on his behalf, corrected his proofs, acted as a severe and candid though sympathetic critic, and above all cheered and encouraged him, and prevented him from committing suicide in his dark days of distress. On the other hand, the friendship of a man like Balzac must have been of absorbing interest to a woman of great delicacy of feeling, and evidently considerable literary powers, whose surroundings were uncongenial; and his warm and enduring affection helped her to tide over many of the troubles of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... sensation disturbed him, for the Mayor of Falaise very seldom had occasion to feel ashamed, either of his thoughts or of his actions. How could he have allowed his attention to stray from the subject which should just now be absorbing his whole mind? ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Fehler ist,"(*) he would say; or, as he handed her a draft for her signature, he would observe, "Ich hab' Dir hier ein Draft gemacht, lese es mal! Ich dachte es ware recht so."(**) Thus the diligent, scrupulous, absorbing hours passed by. Fewer and fewer grew the moments of recreation and of exercise. The demands of society were narrowed down to the smallest limits, and even then but grudgingly attended to. It was no longer a mere pleasure, it was a positive necessity, to go to bed ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... the whole business that was not odious was that in six hours Jeffreys had twenty-five shillings in his pocket; and to him twenty-five shillings meant a clear week and more in which to devote himself to the now all-absorbing ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... effective weapons," Blake observed; his casual tone was a sedative to McGuire's tense nerves. "We can use a broadside only of lighter weight; the kick of the big 'sights' has to be taken straight back. But we're working, back home, on recoil-absorbing guns: we'll make fighting ships of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... features denoted ineffable rage—and then that expression yielded to one of the profoundest melancholy, as if he were saying within himself, "There is salvation for repentant man, but none for me!" A cloud now seemed to sweep before Wagner's eyes; denser and more dense it grew—first absorbing in its increasing obscurity the form of the demon, and then enveloping the radiant being who still continued to smile sweetly and benignly upon the sleeping mortal until the glorious countenance and the shining garments ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... that you would dwell more in the sun, and converse more with cheerful thoughts and lightsome images, and expand into a story the spirit of the Town Pump. But while waiting for this, let me be thankful for the weird and sad strain which breathes from "The Scarlet Letter," which I read with most absorbing ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... appeals to the sailor-man. It provides him with ample leisure for conversation, sleep, or convivial song. When the possibilities of these absorbing pursuits are exhausted, remains a heightened ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... amused and interested, leaned over the balcony to see where it came from. What she saw doubtless touched the mother-heart in her. She caught the eye of the tattered urchin clinging to the pillar, and radiantly smiled on him. Then, probably thinking that the King was absorbing the attention of the great assemblage, she indulged in a little diversion. Leaning far forward, she kissed the tip of her lace handkerchief and swept it caressingly across the boy's brown cheek, smiling down at him as unconsciously as if she and the enraptured youngster were alone together ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... was perhaps the one step in the world whose music could have withdrawn his attention from that absorbing occupation. He rose to his feet, turning sharply round; and as she wished him good-evening he went swiftly to the gate and swung ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... We must—unless we are insensate—take our share of worry along with our share of mishaps. All the kindly counsellors who, in scientific journals, entreat us to keep on tap "a vivid hope, a cheerful resolve, an absorbing interest," by way of nerve-tonic, forget that these remedies do not grow under glass. They are hardy plants, springing naturally in eager and animated natures. Artificial remedies might be efficacious in an artificial ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... The one absorbing question after the inauguration of Taylor was that which both the great parties had side-stepped during the campaign, namely, what should be done with slavery in the Territories. The Southern Whigs sought day ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... The light was of a bright golden hue, and did not illuminate objects in its neighbourhood. For a minute a cross developed at its top, and rays seemed to dart from it." Dr. Speer, who had been watching the strange phenomenon with absorbing interest, asked permission to examine it more closely. Leave being given, he went to the light, put his face close to it, and passed his hand through it. He detected no odour, and the light did not disappear. No warmth ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... object of its predilection inevitably becomes the only object of all her thoughts. This is the artist that furnishes the imagination with those images which remain substantially the same under forms constantly varying, but absorbing the soul to such a degree that a person is often tempted to look upon their action ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... Ignace Prochnow was a fine clever fellow; good-looking too, in a way; and masterful, beyond a doubt. Had she been kind enough to him to cancel her cruelty at their first meeting? She was afraid not. Should she have been kinder but for the abundance of company and the absorbing nature of the work? Probably so. Should she be kinder next time? That would depend on him;—yes, if he became a little less professional and a little more personal. Would he become so? She hoped he might. And if he didn't? ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... St. Louis and the surrounding country a body of earnest people, charged with a mighty work—the disbursement of the largest sum of money ever collected on the globe for an exposition of any kind—larger than Chicago, Buffalo, and Charleston combined—and the one overwhelming, all-absorbing thought uppermost in the mind is to make this exposition a success, commensurate with the mighty means placed at the disposal of the company, the Commission, and the board. The weather will be hot and difficulties ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... and spirits. The only example of perfect manhood the world ever saw impresses us more than anything else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his evolution of the sublimest truths under the strain of the most absorbing and intense excitement, that could come only from the one perfectly trained and developed body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the One Perfect Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from city ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... millions made by a career of crime the original Astors buy land; they get more land by fraud; the Law throws its shield about the property so obtained. They cheat the city out of enormous sums in taxation; the Law does not molest them. On the contrary it allows them to build palaces and to keep on absorbing up more forms of property. In 1875 William Astor builds a railroad in Florida; and as a gift of appreciation, so it is told, the Florida Legislature presents him with 80,000 acres of land. It is wholly probable, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... form of the pupil in the horse is ovoid, with its longest diameter from side to side, and its upper border is fringed by several minute, black bodies (corpora nigra) projecting forward and serving to some extent the purpose of eyebrows in arresting and absorbing the excess of rays of light which fall upon the eye from above. These pigmentary projections in front of the upper border of the pupil are often mistaken for the products of disease or injury in place of the normal and beneficent ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... been centred upon the scenes and persons immediately about me. It was my first experience within the stockaded walls of an armed government post. The scene was new to my young senses, and, in spite of the excitement that still heated my blood, I looked upon it with such absorbing interest as to be forgetful for the moment even of the fair girl who rode in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... which can never be recovered. Yet experience shows that in cases of this kind a keen love of sport can often do much. With his gun and with his hunter he finds an interest, an excitement, an employment which may not be particularly noble, but which is at least sufficiently absorbing, and is not injurious either to his morals, his health, or his fortune. It is no small gain if, in the competition of pleasures, country pleasures take the place of those town pleasures which, in such cases as I have described, usually ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... words Warwick rose suddenly and went to talk with Mark, whose sketch was done. Sylvia sat a moment as if quite forgetful where she was, so absorbing was some thought or emotion. Presently she seemed to glow and kindle with an inward fire; over face and forehead rushed an impetuous color, her eyes shone, and her lips trembled with the fluttering of her breath. Then a panic appeared to seize her, for, stealing ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of absorbing interest, but we can only touch it in outline and record-how the groups of converts joined the pastor in repairing, painting, electric lighting of the building, until it ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... knowledge was impossible in scientific study, there was no theatre or opera—in short, there were none of the things which form the usual means of relaxation and amusement to-day; and so, as a matter of course, yielding to a most human instinct, the tender passion became an all-absorbing topic, and served without exception as the inspiration for poetic endeavor. Love they could know and feel, and of it could they sing with understanding, because they felt it to be real and personal, and subjectively true ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... before the long mirror; she saw a fresh Lavinia that was yet the old; and she was absorbing her first great lesson in the magic of clothes. Verlat, a celebrated dressmaker, was typical of the Viennese spirit—the gown Lavinia wore resembled, in all its implications, an orchid. There was a whisper here of satin, a pale note of green, a promise of chiffon. Her crisp ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... happens in wet weather that the engines cannot be moved from the field where they have been ploughing. The soil becomes so soft from absorbing so much water that it will not bear up the heavy weight. Logs and poles are laid down to form a temporary way, but the great wheels sink too deeply, and the engines have to be left covered with tarpaulins. They have been known ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... on this view, pain, so violent and absorbing as to exclude all other forms of consciousness, is not knowledge; but becomes a part of knowledge the moment we think of it in relation to another pain, or to some other mental phenomenon. Surely this ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the castle, I found that they were really persons unknown ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... upon the hearts of an inoffensive, patient and aspiring people tends to their moral undoing, not only by the evil passions engendered, but also, as has been pointed out, by the withdrawing of so much of the attention of the race from internal development to the absorbing, exacting and, in some respects, narrowing task of battling against ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... were finished. Philip, exhausted by standing all the time, by the bad air, and by the attention he had given, strolled over with his fellow-clerks to the Medical School to have tea. He found the work of absorbing interest. There was humanity there in the rough, the materials the artist worked on; and Philip felt a curious thrill when it occurred to him that he was in the position of the artist and the patients ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the drawing-room just before luncheon, she found Alice Mutimer engaged with a novel. Reading novels had become an absorbing occupation with Alice. She took them to bed with her so as to read late, and lay late in the morning for the same reason. She must have been one of Mr. Mudie's most diligent subscribers. She had no taste ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... will or not, the question of slavery is the question, the all-absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us—and by that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere—all of us wish this question settled, wish it out of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... over the painful, touching scene oft-told, and felt sooner or later in every home. Like snow disappearing under the sunshine, the life of Madeleine was fast melting away. At length, as if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory. In the farewell of the emigrant, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... been welcomed by Mrs. Hunter, and now, as she sat in the little sun-lighted kitchen, there was neither past nor future to her. The present scene, with its simple, homely details, was all absorbing. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... their obscure days she had been Arthur's best friend, as well as his wife. And it was the old comradeship which was failing her; encroached upon, filched from her, by other women; and especially by this exacting, absorbing woman, whose craze for Arthur Meadows's society was rapidly becoming an amusement and a scandal even to those well acquainted with her previous records of ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... military operations were very trifling, the wager of battle being by common consent fought out on the sands of Ostend, and the necessities for attack and defence absorbing, the resources of each combatant. France, England, and Spain were holding a perpetual diplomatic tournament to which our eyes must presently turn, and the Sublime Realm of the Ottoman and the holy Roman Empire were in the customary equilibrium ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deal of that landing remained confused in Joe's mind. While it was going on he was much too busy to be absorbing impressions. When he landed, he was as completely exhausted as anybody wants to be. It was only during the next day that he even tried ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... resourcefulness of the company to defend itself as best it could when most seriously menaced by Indians. The apparent apathy regarding this valuable branch of the postal service can of course be partially excused from the fact that the Civil War was in 1861 absorbing all the energies which the Government could summon to its command. And the war, furthermore, was playing havoc with our national finances and piling up a tremendous national debt, which made the extension of pecuniary relief to quasi-private operations of this kind, no matter how useful they ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... impressions of religion. It precipitates the atmosphere of religion into definiteness. In the chemical laboratory of a university there is usually a decided atmosphere of chemistry, but no one expects to become a chemical engineer by absorbing that atmosphere, nor even to attain a simple working knowledge by merely general impressions. Definiteness aids in gathering up our knowledge, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... to that hour and place like the illuminated capital in the old missal; a ray of colour which unlocked the dark mystery of the text. When one can see the loveliness of a wild flower, and feel the absorbing charm of its sentiment, one is not far ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... quite at ease. The last scene had disturbed him. The sobs and shiverings of little Eden had fallen very reproachfully into his heart. Walter felt that he might have done far more for him than he had done. He had, indeed, even throughout his own absorbing troubles, extended to the child a general protection, but not a special care. It never occurred to him to excuse himself with the thought that he was "not his brother's keeper." The truth was that he had found Eden ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... our house burns down, or our money is made way with, and the world goes on rejoicing, leaving us on one side and counting us out from all its business. In California every one, to some degree, was suffering, and one's private miseries were merged in the vast general sum of privation and in the all-absorbing practical problem of general recuperation. The cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the steadfastness of tone, was universal. Not a single whine or plaintive word did I hear from the hundred losers whom I spoke to. Instead of that there was a temper of helpfulness ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... is absorbing. Naturally so, for the average woman is incapable of poetical passion, and only too glad to find something that occupies her thoughts from morning to night, a relief from the weariness of her unfruitful mind. It was not to be expected that Cecily, because she had given ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... this very absorbing and she and Chrystie had questions to ask. Fong's entrance for the tray prevented Lorry from joining in. As the Chinaman leaned down to take it, she whispered to him to open a window, the room was hot. Her eye, touching Mr. Mayer, had noticed that he had drawn ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... dramas; if the poets were allied in aim—that is, if they selected well and from national topics—there would be a national stage, and we should become a nation. It was this that knit the Greeks so strongly together, and this gave to them the all-absorbing interest in the republic and the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... abounding in contrasts and rich in mystery, or the personal history of a judge trained in the Old Bailey to vulgarize and ensanguine the King's Bench—he luxuriates with a vigour and variety of language and illustration which renders his "History" an attractive and absorbing story-book. And so spontaneously redundant are these errors— so inwoven in the very texture of Mr. Macaulay's mind—that he seems never able to escape from them. Even after the reader is led to believe that all that can be said either of praise ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... training has been imperfectly attended to, and to the building up of a religious character where no correct early foundation has been laid, when the time and energies of a people upon whom labor is bestowed are devoted chiefly to absorbing secular pursuits. The competent and faithful teacher, on the contrary, enters upon the discharge of his duties under circumstances widely different, and with infinitely better prospects of success. Jesus said, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... with darts of fire, And wakes in vain the sweet desire. Hark, the loud Koil swells his throat, And mocks me with his joyful note. I hear the happy wild-cock call Beside the shady waterfall. His cry of joy afflicts my breast By love's absorbing might possessed. My darling from our cottage heard One morn in spring this shrill-toned bird, And called me in her joy to hear The happy cry that charmed her ear. See, birds of every varied voice Around us in the woods rejoice, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... concerned himself with everything in heaven and earth, had been absorbing every word that was spoken with his protruding ears, but when the conversation turned upon death he yawned. He himself had never been seriously ill, and since Mother Bengta died, death had never encroached ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... one can make oneself at home in such a little hole, and find people that are quite absorbing; I mean the natives, as well as the others. The whole place is asleep by eight or nine, unless there has been a good catch of fish, when the little houses on the edge of the cove are full of weary men still ripping away at the cod, that are brought in huge piles dwindling very fast after they ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... her mind," however, went undelivered when once the boys did arise, for in the absorbing story which they had to tell of the night's occurrences, her sense of injury evaporated speedily. The recital occupied considerable time. At its conclusion, Bob, who had been looking so frequently at Della's guest, Marjorie Faulkner, ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... effort among us last night, prove conclusively that the virgin soil of California teems with yet undiscovered fires of genius. The drama of Winona, the Child of the Prairies, is a pure, refined, and thoroughly absorbing entertainment, and has been pronounced by the entire press of the country equal to if not superior to the fascinating Lady of Lyons. It introduces all the favorites of the company in new and original characters, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... would not have liked them to be unhappy, but a few natural tears would have been a pleasing tribute. Not a tear was shed. Even the little Eva skipped joyously on the doorstep as the phaeton drove away. The idea of the picnic was all-absorbing. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... none of the sunshine and laughter of "Don Giovanni," but only a painfully pathetic record of Mozart's misery, his despair, and his terror. It is indeed a stupendous piece of art, and much of it surpassingly beautiful; but the absorbing interest of it will always be that it is a "human document," an autobiographical fragment, the most ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... too one mixes intimately with the life of the river bank, which is still so absorbing and, at certain hours, when the horizon is unsullied by the smoke of pit-coal, recalls you to the days of artless toil and healthy beauty. In the boats that meet us, half-naked men, revelling in their movement, in the sun and air, sing, as they ply their oars, those songs ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... for the good time I had there sure beat the good time I had on shipboard "to a frazzle"; but I soon found out that the business part of the trip was going to be a good deal more interesting and absorbing than I had imagined it would be. My interpreter, Hans Roorda, a fellow several years younger than I am, can speak five languages, all equally well, and I kept him busy talking French to me. We were in the country almost three ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local charity, and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out of the air. A girl who was wanted as a witness in a celebrated law case had disappeared, and how the radio girls went to the rescue is told in an absorbing manner. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... the mere growth of events, sometimes formally and of set purpose. Old institutions get new names; new institutions are set up alongside of them. But the old ones are never swept away; they sometimes die out; they are never abolished. This comes largely of the absorbing and assimilating power of the island world. But it comes no less of personal character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of the personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstances ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... watched Kennedy. Here, I felt instinctively, were the "new" woman and the "new" man, if there are such things. I wondered just how they would hit it off together. For the moment, at least, Clare Kendall was an absorbing study, as she greeted us with ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... absorbing but confusing book our survey must turn finally to N.H. Wessely, who in 1782 for the first time maintained the importance of the study of geography in Jewish school education. The works of the past, with their consoling legends and hopes, continued to hold a place in the heart ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... royal cricket-matches of old, the great games of football, when the obtaining of victory was a point of honor, and crowds assembled on the Delta to witness the all-absorbing contest?—Harvardiana, Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Catherine's last commands. His intercourse with Lilburne would necessarily bring him easily into contact with Lilburne's family. And in this thought he did not reject the invitations pressed on him. He felt, too, a dark and absorbing interest in examining a man who was in himself the incarnation of the World—the World of Art—the World as the Preacher paints it—the hollow, sensual, sharp-witted, self-wrapped WORLD—the World that is all for this life, and thinks of no Future ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Delightful and absorbing as he undoubtedly found it to linger amidst the glories of Venice, the ambassador was not forgetful that the important purpose of his mission lay elsewhere. Delivering his message to the Senate, he crossed ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the country. The tone of debate showed that there was little difference of opinion in the House concerning Utah affairs,—the unanimity, however, being due in great part to ignorance and indifference. The issue of Slavery in Kansas was absorbing. Mr. Warren's resolution was referred to the Committee on Territories, and slumbered upon their table through the whole session. The only other movement in Congress, which deserves mention in this connection, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... without attracting any comment, and at Florence, under similar circumstances, would certainly have been omitted. We shall say nothing of the piety of the masses, and of their firm belief in the indulgences of an Alexander VI. But the State itself, after absorbing the Church to a degree unknown elsewhere, had in truth a certain ecclesiastical element in its composition, and the Doge, the symbol of the State, appeared in twelve great processions ('andate') in a half-clerical character. They were almost all festivals in memory of political ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... judicious reader. Believing as I do that the romance of reality—the details of common, everyday life—the secret history of things hidden from the public gaze, but of the existence of which there can be no manner of doubt—are endowed with a more powerful and absorbing interest than any extravagant flight of imagination can be, it shall be my aim in the following pages to adhere as closely as possible to truth and reality; and to depict scenes and adventures which have actually occurred, and which have come to my knowledge ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend till after the removal of the last barrier to their intimacy—then only had he let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen's idea, taking a hint from him, to liberate this animal only on the ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... trial, peculiar to ourselves alone; and the deeper and truer our Christianity the more of these shall we have. But notwithstanding all that, what will the felt presence of the Bridegroom do for these griefs that will come? Well, it will limit them, for one thing; it will prevent them from absorbing the whole of our nature. There will always be a Goshen in which there is 'light in the dwelling,' however murky may be the darkness that wraps the land. There will always be a little bit of soil above the surface, however weltering and wide may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... prefer rough edges and heroic sizes! European men know how to make themselves charming to their wives, because with them to be charming is an aim in itself. They have versatility, ease, and grace of intellect, where the American men are bound up in their one or two absorbing ideas, outside of which they take no interest. The Europeans are brilliant conversationalists, they make an effort to be agreeable and to take an interest in whatever occupies the person they are talking to—even though that person is a member ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... for me was all-absorbing and no hand but hers should administer to my wants. For hours at a time she stroked the poor tired head, until her gentle caresses soothed me to brief ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... twenty-two p.m. By the time six-thirty boomed from the College clock-tower, Pringle was absorbing a thrilling work of fiction, and Dido, her death, and everything connected with her, had faded from his mind like ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... was a matter of supreme and absorbing interest. There was a popular religion; and there arose early, in connection with it, an esoteric or secret doctrine relative to the gods and to the legends respecting them,—a lore that pertained especially to the priesthood. Moreover, while the religious ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... an uproar. The mad king had escaped. Little knots of excited men stood upon the street corners listening to each latest rumor concerning this most absorbing occurrence. Before the palace a great crowd surged to and fro, awaiting they knew ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the same train empty. When I realised that he had been at this work for months and expected to be at it for years I understood why he looked depressed. Train commanding must be a horrible business, only one degree better than draft conducting. To a man engaged in it a really absorbing kind of patience must be ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... for Cicely, and even that had never been, as Richard saw, such purifying, restraining, self-sacrificing affection as was Humfrey's. It was half romance, half a sort of offshoot from his one great and absorbing passion of devotion to the Queen of Scots, which was still as strong as ever. He entrusted Richard with his humblest commendations to her, and strove to rest in the belief that as many a conspirator ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... decrease of the import trade. In lieu of the comforts which it now brings us we might have our. gigantic banking institutions and splendid, but in many instances profitless, railroads and canals absorbing to a great extent in interest upon the capital borrowed to construct them the surplus fruits of national industry for years to come, and securing to posterity no adequate return for the comforts ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... great turbine, to be full-fed by the crude but tight penstock which clung to the wall of the gorge, angling up to the brink of that stupendous cataract. Bedded down upon solid rock there was a high-tension alternator capable of absorbing the entire output of the mighty turbine. This turbo-alternator was connected to a set of converters from which the energy would flow along three great copper cables—the receptors of the lifeboats being altogether too small to carry the load—to the now completely exhausted ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... "Forward." Simultaneously, from the right to the left the movement began. At first, slowly, then faster. It was a glorious sight to see that magnificent line sweeping onward in the charge. Far, far away to the right it was visible. There were no reserves, no plans for retreat, only one grand, absorbing thought—to drive them back and retake the camps. Heavens, what a din! All along the confederate line, the cannon volleyed and thundered. The union artillery replied. The roll of musketry became incessant. The cavalry crossed the ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... to ourselves the evening before she went away, and I read her a little love tale I had written especially for that occasion. It gave us some chance to discuss the absorbing and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... by March to the King, and the latter soon got rid of one whose daring character and ambitious purpose showed that he must be dangerous as an opposition chief. Henry's enemies were thus left without a head, in consequence of their leader's having lost his head; and the French war rapidly absorbing men's attention, all doubts as to Henry's title were lost sight of in the blaze of glory that came from the field of Agincourt. The spirit of opposition, however, revived as soon as the anti-Lancastrians obtained a leader, and public discontent had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... particularly, on the day when he had encountered Eponine? He now found it almost difficult to explain his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette, love absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal, and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling him ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... is now more powerful in absorbing work than in the form Fig. 3. As to the practical construction of the brake, the author thinks that simple wires for the flexible bands, lying in V grooves in the pulleys, of no great acuteness, would give the greatest resistance with the least variation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... lowest type, the origin of which is to be explained hereafter, now began to appear. Some sea-plants, zooephytes, infusory animalcules, and a few of the molluscous tribe, all low down in the order of being, but important from their immense numbers and joint action, commenced their work of absorbing the carbonic acid with which the air was overcharged, and building up vast piers and mounds of stone from their own remains. Meanwhile, the internal fires of the earth occasionally broke through the rocky crust that imprisoned ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... domestic animals (Fig. 14). It is divided into two portions, small and large. The small intestine is a little over seventy feet in length and about one and one-half inches in diameter. The mucous membrane lining presents a large absorbing surface and is well supplied with absorbing vessels that take up the sugars, proteids and fats, which are finally distributed to the body cells by the blood capillaries. In addition to these absorbing vessels the mucous membrane contains intestinal glands that ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... reputation in the Forum; he had spoken in the Senate; he had warmly advocated the appointment of Pompey to his high commands; and he was regarded as a prominent democratic leader. But he had not aspired to the tribunate; he had not thrown himself into politics with any absorbing passion. His exertions had been intermittent, and he was chiefly known as a brilliant member of fashionable society, a peculiar favorite with women, and remarkable for his abstinence from the coarse debauchery which disgraced his patrician contemporaries. He was now playing for a higher ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Subsequently, on January 1, 1801, a bill was passed by the House of Representatives appropriating $200,000 for this purpose, but, in the political excitements of that day, the Senate failed to concur. In the absorbing public questions that ensued, resulting in the War of 1812, the subject was dropped in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... other men can hardly dream of the one vast pleasure which comes to these searchers when ever so little a new truth or a fresh analogy reaches them as the result of their work. The pursuit itself is all absorbing, all exacting, and when at last the purpose is attained, and out of darkness flashes the light of some novel law, the knowledge of some new connecting link, some simple explanation of a range of facts or phenomena, or even the discovery of a fresh analogy or homology, or of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing all his sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse and pity. Still, for complete relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... on. She had many things to think about—things very different from any that concerned Mary Marston. She was married; found life in London somewhat absorbing; and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Wordsworth. Every one who has ever heard him preach or lecture remembers the rare quality of Professor Phelps's voice. As a pulpit orator he was one of the few, and to hear him read in his own study was an absorbing experience. To this day I cannot put myself outside of certain pages of the laureate or the essayist. I do not read; I listen. The great ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... we begin. We ladies are so unaccustomed to sitting with idle hands, even when listening to so absorbing a theme as the virtues of this truly excellent Christian wife and mother, that I thought it would be a kindness to ourselves to provide some simple work which should occupy our fingers and at the same time be in itself a worthy object ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... the particular Bill by no means brought the Reid controversy to an end. In fact, the General Election in Newfoundland, of which the result was announced in November 1900, was fought entirely upon this absorbing question. The issue arose in the following way. The contract contained a clause providing that Mr Reid should not assign his rights over the railway without the consent of the Government. Mr Reid applied to the Government of Sir James ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... a curious pair, Austin—so quaint about it; so slow and old-fashioned. . . . And the child is the most innocent being—in some ways. . . . Which is all right unless she becomes one of those pokey, earnest, knowledge-absorbing young things with the very germ of vitality dried up and withered in her before she awakens. . . . I don't know—I really don't. For a girl must have something of the human about her to attract a man, and be attracted. . . . Not that she need know anything about ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Judge Willis's profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in tremulous and restless activity, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... was when he went to his room that night, leaving Helen May dazed and exhausted after another evening spent in absorbing queer bits of information from the garrulous Johnny Calvert. She would be able to manage all right, now, Peter told her relievedly when Johnny left. She knew as much about the place as she could possibly know without ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D——- Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... devoted of lovers should feel! Had it not been my cherished theory that no man should surrender his freedom of heart without obtaining in return the utmost, unlimited, and unselfish devotion? Yet, here I was giving up my whole soul to a blind passion, rendered more and more absorbing, doubtless, by the opposition I experienced, and for response I found myself willing to be content with even the cinders of a former and only half-dead affection; trusting, as so many men have vainly trusted, that by earnest care and assiduity, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... London season, passing her days in her society and her evenings in her dressing-room at the theater, whenever Mrs. Siddons acted. Miss F—— and myself could not dedicate ourselves with any such absolute exclusiveness to each other. Neither of our mothers would have consented to any such absorbing arrangement, for which a certain independence of family ties would have been indispensable; but within the limits which our circumstances allowed we were as devoted to each other as my aunt Siddons and Mrs. F—— ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... largest channel was near the right bank, but, except a large shallow pool, it was dry. As we advanced the country showed effects of long-continued drought, and though the creek contained some large shallow pools, the channel was dry between, the dry soil absorbing the whole of the water which was running in the channel above; at 11.50 camped at what appeared to be the termination of the pools of water, as the channel was again lost in a perfectly level flat. Great numbers of ducks, cockatoos, cranes, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... stomach becomes highly reddened and injected, just as if inflammation had already been produced by the presence of the stimulant. Thus far you probably follow me:—but this is not all—the vessels thus excited have an absorbing power; they suck up (as it were) and carry directly into the stream of the circulation a portion (at all events) of the alcohol which thus irritates them. The result is, that alcohol is thus mixed with the blood and brought into immediate ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... perennial, suitable for moist interstices of rock-work. It should be planted in a slanting position, so that the roots, while absorbing plenty of moisture, will not rot through being continually in stagnant water. Peat soil suits it best. It may be increased by division in spring. If grown from seed it takes two years before flowers are produced. During the height of summer it is in ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... as a constant and is called the "conductivity" of the substance. Following this practice, the amount of heat absorbed by any surface from a hot gas is usually expressed as a product of the difference in temperature between the gas and the absorbing surface into a factor which is commonly designated the "transfer rate". There has been considerable looseness in the writings of even the best authors as to the way in which the gas temperature difference is to be measured. If the ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... hundred men will be assembled in no time; but, as we knew very well that no crowd of people could by possibility remain in a street for five minutes without getting up a little amusement among themselves, unless they had some absorbing object in view, the natural inquiry next in order was, 'What are all these people waiting here for?'—'Her Majesty's carriage,' replied the cobbler. This was still more extraordinary. We could not imagine what earthly business ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the absorbing consideration of the question which had once been too poignant to consider calmly, and the answer to which she was never to know, permitted the paper to slide off her knee to the floor: Why had Wesley ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... crags behind them, and the ravines, in which the shrunken becks trickle musically down through the debris of innumerable Decembers. The country is blithe, but soberly blithe. Nature shows herself delightful to man, but there is nothing absorbing or intoxicating about her. Man is still well able to defend himself against her, to live his own independent life of labour and of will, and to develop the tenacity of hidden feeling, that slowly growing intensity of purpose, which is so often wiled ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assurance, nor the speedy convalescence of our child could restore her, even to the portion of peace she before enjoyed. Her fear had been too deep, too absorbing, too entire, to be changed to security. She felt as if during her past calm she had dreamed, but was now ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Cherish that all-absorbing love for your husband, which now so fills your breast; regard nothing as beneath your watchful attention which adds to his happiness; consult his wishes, his tastes, in all your actions, your habits, your dress. Above all, never deceive him. Be able ever to meet him with an unflinching ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... have compared them, but with different standards of comparison, for each in Jerry's mind was sui generis. The glamour of Marcia, her perfumes, her artistry, the lure of her voice and eyes, her absorbing abstractions and sudden enthusiasms—how could Una's quaint transitions compare with such as these? And yet I am sure that he judged Una Habberton not unfavorably in Marcia's reflected glamour, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... old refectory of the Convent of the Jacobins took little heed of these things; the matter was too absorbing, the issue too vital. A hundred years before, the hunted Covenanters of the Western Lowlands, with Claverhouse's dragoons a few miles off, exulted in the endless exhortations and expositions of their hill preachers: ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... sense, I suppose—though I don't understand it. I can imagine an interest most intense, an engagement—a happiness altogether absorbing in such a labour of love, but—I was not looking at the matter from your point ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... on to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child, and two living. My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was somewhat similar. Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk, and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her. I longed to see her quiver. I fought against the feeling, stifled it, trod it down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, my dreams; it gnawed me like a vulture. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... various projects for disposing of the funds had been presented by individuals, in memorials, concerning which the report states that they generally contemplated the establishment of a school, college, or university, proposing expenditures absorbing the whole in the erection of buildings, and leaving little or nothing for the improvement of future ages. "In most of these projects," says Mr. Adams, "there might be perceived purposes of personal accommodation and emolument ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... occupied every heart. I was standing near the window; the effect of my fall had stunned me for a time, but I was gradually recovering, and watched with a thrilling heart the scene before me. Great and absorbing as was my interest in what was passing without, it was nothing compared with what I felt as I looked at him upon whom our destiny was then hanging. I had ample time to scan his features and canvass their every lineament. Never before ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... piercing eye of the strange woman became riveted on her with a glare, which, whilst it startled Mrs. Sullivan, seemed full of an agony that almost abstracted her from external life. It was not, however, so wholly absorbing as to prevent it from expressing a marked interest, whether for good or evil, in the woman ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... of the resources of the country. Rhodes was master, and probably his power would have even increased had he lived long enough to see the completion of the Cape to Cairo Railway, which was his last hobby and the absorbing interest of the closing years of ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... The absorbing subject of national interest at that time was the threatened war with England, which Clay did his best to bring about, and Webster to prevent. It was Webster's Fourth-of-July Oration at Portsmouth, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... annexation of their country so soon as it proved to be tolerable. And the Sung empire could only endure and gain strength if it had control of the regions along the Yangtze and around Canton, with their great economic resources. The process of absorbing the small states in the south continued until 980. Before it was ended, the Sung tried to extend their influence in the south beyond the Chinese border, and secured a sort of protectorate over parts of Annam (973). This sphere of influence was politically insignificant and not directly of any ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... scene of one of Nature's greatest wonders, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, was absorbing the thought of Tad Butler and his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... she said, "yet ideal; a passion so potent, so fresh, so innocent, so absorbing, so expulsive of other loves, so enduring, yet of One never beheld;—mysterious! It is our own notion of the First and only Fair, yet embodied in a substance, yet dissolving again into a sort of imagination.... ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... topics the first is, of course, by far the most absorbing, and almost everyone has remarked how the love of sport, for which Britons are famous, is growing more passionate than ever. It is not only cricket and football, of course; only the other day there was a shilling sweepstake on the St. Leger in our office ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... power over the imagination. The hollow ground with the supposed underground vaults were to me like a covered abyss, full of mysteries, and in the church—whose silence I often sought, since it lies, with its strangely thought-absorbing interior, close to the parsonage, and, as a rule, stood open on account of the college organ practice—daylight sometimes cast shadows in the aisles and niches as if beings from another age were ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... event, however, during this year at Leicester was his meeting with H.W. Bates, through whom he was introduced to the absorbing study of beetles and butterflies, the link which culminated in their mutual exploration of the Amazon. It is curious that Wallace retained no distinct recollection of how or when he met Bates for the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the philosophy of the hour—but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France—" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know—the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself—these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... warmth of greeting which she felt in her own heart, she found at least a kindly interest in her return and a friendly curiosity as to her past. To her, her return to her birthplace was naturally an event of absorbing interest. To the other inhabitants of the village it was no more than an episode, but nobody being distinctly cold or careless, Rachel was not allowed to see the difference between their stand-point ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... interesting pen that did so much to interest, instruct, and entertain their younger years. 'The Blue and the Gray' is a title that is sufficiently indicative of the nature and spirit of the latest series, while the name of OLIVER OPTIC is sufficient warrant of the absorbing style of narrative. This series is as bright and entertaining as any work that Mr. ADAMS has yet put forth, and will be as eagerly perused as any that has borne his name. It would not be fair to the prospective reader to ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... the senses and attributes, runs towards external objects, like a river issuing from a mountain summit and flowing towards other regions. When the Understanding, withdrawn into the mind, succeeds in absorbing itself into contemplation that is free from attributes, it attains to a knowledge of Brahma like the touch of gold on a touchstone. The mind is the apprehender of the objects of the senses. It must first be extinguished ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Jerry wanted the photographer to snap off all sorts of what they called "mighty absorbing subjects," but Will wisely ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... duchess, was going to Florence. At nightfall a carriage, containing the duchess, with two ladies and a gentleman of her suite, drove out of Massa and waited under the shadow of the city wall. While a footman was absorbing the attention of the coachman by giving him some minute, unnecessary orders, Madame (as they called the duchess) slipped out of the carriage door with one of her ladies, while two others, who were standing ready ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... political demand, underlying all others, giving meaning to all others, is this: The special interests must get out of politics. The old-style leaders, seeking to switch public attention away from this one absorbing and overwhelming issue are pitifully ridiculous and out of date. To try to divert the march of an aroused public conscience from this righteous inevitable conflict by means of obsolete political catchwords is like trying to dam the Mississippi ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... her by drawing the letters almost forcibly out of her hand. She suffered me to do so, and watched me while I read them. I was conscious of this at first; but the interest was so absorbing, that I soon forgot her presence, and everything, but the letters themselves. I read Henry's ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... something which lay still across their path, like a great serpent. Cochrane looked at it startledly. Then he saw that the round, glistening seeming snake was fastened to the ground by rootlets. It was a plant which grew like a creeper, absorbing nourishment from a vast root-area. Somewhere, no doubt, it would rear upward and spread out leaves to absorb the sun's light. It used, in a way, the principle of those lateral wells which in dry climates gather water too scarce to collect in merely ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the conventional East, drives her motor car into an absorbing adventure which is the first of a series of dramatic events that tread upon each other's heels and grow more intense and thrilling from ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... dressed in a 'tout ensemble,' and was greeted with deafening applause wherever she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the unpretending simplicity of her costume and caused her to be regarded with absorbing interest by every one. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... type; multi-color jackets. A carefully selected list of titles of the World's Best Authors; embracing absorbing love stories, baffling detective and mystery stories, and the most fascinating romantic stories of the West. Many of them have been dramatized and filmed—you will enjoy reading every title ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... now with absorbing intensity. "At this moment we are not only trying to solve the Land question, but the question of Social Revolution-not only here in Russia, but all over the world. The Land question cannot be solved independently of the other problems of the Social Revolution.... ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... period life was as yet viewed objectively as the fulfilment of capacities, and knowledge was regarded as perfection of function, the exercise of the highest of human prerogatives. But as moral and religious interests became more absorbing, the individual lived more and more in his own self-consciousness. Even before the Christian era the Greek philosophers themselves were preoccupied with the task of winning a state of inner serenity. Thus the Stoics and Epicureans came to look upon knowledge as a means to the attainment of an inner ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... is of an absorbing quality! Silence, gentlemen! Silence for our new comrade! 'Pasquin' stands for the beginning of a jest—so we may hope he will be amusing,—'Leroy' stands for the king, and so we may expect him ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... life, serenely sweet, With, now and then, a deeper note. From some high peak, nigh yet remote, He voiced the world's absorbing beat. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... varied, began to be heard in the rigging of the silent brigantine; and the two elements exhibited unequivocal evidence, in their menacing and fitful colors of the near approach of the gust. The young sailor, with an absorbing interest, turned his eyes on his ship. The yards were on the caps, the bellying canvas was fluttering far to leeward, and twenty or thirty human forms on each spar, showed that the nimble-fingered top-men were gathering in and knotting the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... used "I" almost insistently, as a text for converse, the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests were largely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only the subject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commanding instant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by all for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... months of my sojourn in Kentucky there had been one all-absorbing theme—the closing of the Mississippi to American boats by the Spanish, and their refusal to grant us a right of deposit on the Isle of New Orleans. Feeling had run so high that there were muttered threats against the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... of sulphuretted hydrogen. This marble is coarser grained than Carrara (Marmor lunense). It was frequently employed by the Grecian sculptors, and I often picked up fragments of it at the Villa Adriani, near Rome.) Its property of absorbing oxygen gas is known to all the miners of Thuringia. It is the same as the action of the carburetted clay of the gypseous grottoes, and of the great chambers (sinkwerke) dug in mines of fossil salt which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... themselves above the concerns of the nursery. We may, indeed, read of a Cato once in three thousand years, who was in the habit of quitting all other business in order to be present when the nurse washed and rubbed his child. But our passion for gain, in the present age, is so much more absorbing and soul-destroying than the passion for military glory, that we cannot expect many Catos. Oh no. All, or nearly all, must devolve on the mother. The father has no time to attend to his children! What belongs to ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... choice implied in refusals? In fact, marriage really concerns them more than it does men; they have to bear the chief of its burdens. A wide and free choice for them would, then, seem to be only fair. Undeniably a great many men are inattentive, unobserving, immersed in some absorbing pursuit, undecided, and at times bashful, and liable to fall into union with women who happen to be near them, rather than with those who are conscious that they would make them the better wives. Men, unaided by the finer feminine instincts ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a purpose, and to both the American girls and those of foreign extraction it shows the value of such safe and sane agencies as the Girl Scouts, while the book is absorbing in its plot, quite irrespective of ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... for the assembling of Congress, the halls, the galleries, and corridors of the House of Representatives were thronged with such crowds as had never before been seen at the opening of a session. The absorbing interest felt throughout the entire country in the great questions to be decided by Congress had drawn great numbers to the Capitol from every quarter of the Union. Eligible positions, usually held ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... remainder of the day Desmond Ellerey filled a corner of the library with tobacco smoke, and his head with a thousand details concerning Wallaria. When he went to dress for dinner he felt that he had been reading an absorbing romance, and blessed the good fortune which had brought about the meeting on ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... drove into the town where the Saxon had established his headquarters, I saw with feelings of peculiar disgust immense gangs of cut-throat looking fellows—"the navies of the nations," as Alfred Tennyson calls them—busy at their embankments, absorbing capital at an alarming ratio, and utterly indifferent to the state of the unfortunate shareholders then writhing under the pressure of calls. Philanthropy is a very easy thing when our own circumstances are prosperous, but a turn of the wheel of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... about Aunt Isabelle. But she lost her lover, and she couldn't love again. And if she had had an absorbing occupation, she would have been saved so much ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... and she then had the assurance that this effort would not be difficult of accomplishment. There were a thousand new issues for Bettina's interest and feelings in her constantly changing surroundings, and these were sufficiently absorbing to do away with lately disturbing considerations. The world had still its powerful charm for Bettina, and she was now seeing the world ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... and felt the pavement under her feet. She had dedicated herself to a high purpose, but for the moment it was impossible to get on with the noble work. The mere business of life had to be proceeded with, and though the situation was absorbing it receded now and then until, looking at her Aunt Rose, she was reminded of it ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... An absorbing tale of adventures among the volcanoes of Alaska in a territory but recently explored. A story that will make Don dearer to his ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... wood and animal charcoal in absorbing effluvia, and the greater number of gases and vapours, has long been known. Charcoal powder has also, during many centuries, been advantageously employed as a filter for putrid water, the object in view being to deprive the water of numerous organic impurities diffused through it, which exert injurious ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous |
