"Preoccupation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... How should they? Her thoughts were roaming in a world of her own, and her eyes were occupied in gazing upon her woman's pictures as she saw them in her mind. The wonders of that scene of natural splendor laid out before her had no power to penetrate the armor of her preoccupation. All her mind and heart were stirred and torn by emotions such as only a woman can understand, only a woman can feel. The ancient battle of titanic forces, which had brought into existence that world of stupendous might upon which her unseeing eyes gazed, was as nothing, it ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... economic development and an unprecedented reorganization of the army. There was also a reference to the new law for a return to three years' service which France was introducing to improve the efficiency of her peace establishment. But it was obvious that Russia was the main preoccupation. Germany had forced the pace both in the aggrandizement of her military strength and in the methods of her diplomatic intercourse. Suddenly she found herself on the brink of an abyss. She had gone too far; she had provoked into the competition of armaments ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... is my work?" Brenton interrupted banally, for, in his secret heart, he was painfully aware that it was not the church alone which kept him so preoccupied that his preoccupation had come to be an occupation on its ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was to be remoulded in the form of antique sculpture. But it was also at this time, and owing to his stern apprenticeship to the study of form, that he acquired the mastery of drawing which served him so well when in the presence of nature; and with no other preoccupation than to reproduce his model, he painted the people of his time and produced his greatest works. For by a strange yet not unprecedented contradiction, David's fame to-day rests, not upon the great classical pictures which were the admiration of his time and by which he thought to be remembered, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... operatives, he must be somewhat of a disciplinarian. Is not that so, Clarisse?" and the old man turned to his wife, who, seemingly occupied with her dinner, paid no attention to him. A certain preoccupation was very evident. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Restoration the time had come when our nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the time had likewise come when our nation felt the imperious need of freeing itself from the absorbing preoccupation which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was impossible that this freedom should be brought about without some negative excess, without some neglect and impairment of the religious life of the soul; and the spiritual history of the eighteenth century ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... labors had the character of experiments, which, nevertheless, were so guided by experience that they were rarely futile or unremunerative. On themes that accorded with his tastes and pursuits he would often talk earnestly and well, but his silence and preoccupation at other times proved that it is not best to be dominated by one idea, even though ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... assiduity and patience for which she was distinguished. The constant loss of sleep, and the incessant and weary vigils which she was forced to maintain, seemed to have but little effect upon her elastic and energetic nature. Zillah, in spite of her preoccupation, could not help seeing that Hilda was doing nearly all the work, and remonstrated with her accordingly. But to her earnest remonstrances Hilda turned a ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... dinner. He ate and drank sparingly; and I noticed that he looked at any dish that was offered him with a quick scrutinising glance. He tasted his first glass of wine with the same air of suspense, and then appeared to be relieved from a preoccupation. But he joined little in the talk, and exercised rather a sobering effect upon us. Once or twice he spoke out. Mention was made of Gissing's Papers of Henry Ryecroft, and Father Payne asked him if he ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heart were bestowed on few; for in early life they had never been cultivated, but they were singularly warm, pure, and constant; characterized not by the ardour of passion, but by the constant preoccupation of real affection. He had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attached, early in life; and with his father, a man of coarse feelings and boisterous manners, he had few sentiments in common. Always feeble in constitution, he was unequal to the sports of the field, and to the drinking which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... have now whole congregations whose preachers, far from magnifying our consciousness of sin, seem devoted rather to making little of it. They ignore, or even deny, eternal punishment, and insist on the dignity rather than on the depravity of man. They look at the continual preoccupation of the old-fashioned Christian with the salvation of his soul as something sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a sanguine and "muscular" attitude. which to our forefathers would have seemed purely ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... as I could, but I saw on approaching that though all was at a standstill till I came up, neither the King of Navarre nor M. de Turenne was thinking principally of me. Every face, from Henry's to that of his least important courtier, wore an air of grave preoccupation; which I had no difficulty in ascribing to the doubt present in every mind, and outweighing every interest, whether the King of France was dead, or dying, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... some palaces which once on a time had housed much fierceness and beauty, treachery and perverse seductiveness. Knowing Antonio's intimate acquaintance with those splendid days, I strove to rouse him by congenial allusions. His preoccupation continued; the historic syllables that issued from my lips were wasted in the clamor of the street. Yet when I pronounced the name of one of those bygone belles, Fiammetta Adimari, he repeated slowly, like a man who has ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... grouped on the shelves of the dresser. A courteous gentleman, well-groomed and debonair, with waxed moustaches, greeted us. It was the procureur du roi. With him was another civilian—the juge d'instruction. They politely requested us to take a seat and to excuse a judicial preoccupation. The juge d'instruction was interrogating an inhabitant of Poperinghe. The procureur explained to me that the prevenu (the accused), who was not present but was within the precincts, was charged with calomnie[27] under Section 444 of the Code Penal. "But," I exclaimed ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... The preoccupation with form had developed in him as complement of his nature. The nature of Erik Dorn was a shallows. Life did not live in him. He saw it as something eternally outside. To himself he seemed at times a perfect translation of his ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Despite his preoccupation with his errand, which was to find if there were other signs of the continued activity of the strange forces that had lowered the tower through the Fourth Dimension into the dim and unrecorded years of aboriginal America, ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... following day; there was a promenade, a banquet, a comedy to be acted, and a comedy, too, in which, to his great amazement, Porthos recognized "M. Coquelin de Voliere" as one of the actors, in the piece called "Les Facheux." Full of preoccupation, however, from the scene of the previous evening, and hardly recovered from the effects of the poison which Colbert had then administered to him, the king, during the whole of the day, so brilliant in its ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... instinctively from the wind like one of the brutes, while the past comes back in a waking dream so akin to reality, that even in his preoccupation he seems to live the last year of his life over again. Once more he is at the old place in Cheshire, whither he has gone like any other young dandy, an agreeable addition to a country shooting-party because of his chestnut locks, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... distant ages that lie before us what will be the result of this constant preoccupation with desire? Will it kill us or save us? Will this trait and our insatiable curiosity interact on each other? That might further eugenics. That might give us a better chance to breed finely than all ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... distinguish the war of 1665 from that of 1652. As in the latter epoch, the admiral still thinks the weather-gage an advantage for his fleet; but it is no longer, from the tactical point of view, the principal, we might almost say the sole, preoccupation. Now he wishes above all to keep his fleet in good order and compact as long as possible, so as to keep the power of combining, during the action, the movements of the different squadrons. Look at Ruyter, at the end of the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... noblest, function in that instinctive way. They become the unconscious expression of a civilization. A nation passes out of its adolescent preoccupation with plans and with materials. It learns to do its work, precisely as Goethe bade the artist do his task, without talking about it. We, too, shall outgrow in time our questioning, our self-analysis, our futile comparison of ourselves with other nations, our self-conscious study of our ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the pompous nullity of the second and third Consuls; the tawdry magnificence of the costumes; the studied avoidance of any word that implied even a modicum of learning or a distant acquaintance with politics; the nervous preoccupation about Napoleon's moods and whims; the graceful manners of Josephine that rarely failed to charm away his humours, except when she herself had been outrageously slighted for some passing favourite; above all, the leaden dullness of conversation, which drew from Chaptal the confession ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... playful little endearments which his cynical mood—he was, like many of us, not at his best in the morning—led him to anticipate. He watched in vain. The young people were decorum itself; more than that, they showed signs of preoccupation; they spoke only occasionally, and then with ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... was learning a hard lesson. Harlan's changeless preoccupation hurt her cruelly, but, woman-like, she considered it a manifestation of genius and endeavoured to be proud accordingly. It had not occurred to her that there could ever be anything in Harlan's thought into which she was not privileged to go. She ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... science, almost unknown, no one dreamed of it, and no one learned or taught it; the syllabus ignored it, because it led to nothing. For Fabre only, notwithstanding, it was his fixed idea, his constant preoccupation, and "while the dictation class was busy around him, he would examine, in the secrecy of his desk, the sting of a wasp or the fruit of the oleander," and intoxicate himself with poetry. (1/9.) His pedagogic studies suffered thereby, and the first part ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... suitable and devoted young men and women, of marriageable age, with dozens of interests and sympathies in common, and one extraordinarily vital bond, continued to walk side by side in a state of inhuman preoccupation, their gaze fixed inward instead of upon one another; and no Divine Power, happening upon the curious circumstance, believed the matter one for His intervention nor stooped to take the respective puppets by the back of their ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... at Cray I felt that I must never meet you again, either waking or dreaming. The discovery that you were Gogo, after all, combined with the preoccupation which as a mere stranger you had already caused me for so long, created such a disturbance in my spirit that—that—there, you must try and imagine it ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... racehorse runs." That was Zola's way that evening; he threw himself headlong into his narrative and he talked with head and feet and arms and shoulders. His speech was almost incredibly brilliant and painted, but I have very often thought since then that in the constant preoccupation of his mind with this one theme and the constant repetition of the strongest points he had to make, he had acquired, as it were, the faculty of threading all his conversational pearls upon a single string, and that he was, in fact, presenting himself to his latest audience ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... and blazing with gas. While in the street between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant presence among them of that "leisured class" which, alike at the bottom and the top of things, has time to be gay, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... step was the most difficult but with a deliberate effort of will he accomplished it to his satisfaction. His secret thoughts he buried beneath a continuous mental preoccupation with the vain and the trivial. It was important to the success of his plan that his companions should ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... accordingly sent among them to link them up with their brethren at home, and fan the embers of patriotism which long residence in the Tsardom had not quenched. Little by little, the political fruits of these apostolic labours began to show themselves: the colonists, whose main preoccupation had been to occupy the most fertile soil in the district, began to take over the approaches to Russia's strategic plans, and to display an absorbing interest in Russian politics. Several Zemstvos fell into ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... this preoccupation with him throughout the afternoon. It was still in the hinterland of his thoughts when he returned to his ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... to Peregrinus is strongly reminiscent of the statement by Robertus Anglicus, already mentioned as an indication of preoccupation with diurnally rotating wheels, at a date (1271) remarkably close to that of the Epistle (1269)—so much so that it could well be thought that the friend to which Peter was writing was either Robert himself or somebody associated with him, ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... the weeks that followed, if the mask were indeed only the steady preoccupation that his visage wore, she seemed to learn nothing more about him when his features lost their dark absorption and he caught her eye and smiled. No, the smile revealed nothing except another mask under the more serious cast of concentration—only ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... of bitter experience in the past, has honeycombed the land with freemasonry and scientific charity and liberalism. So far as I can see, their dirt does not detract from their astuteness—perhaps it aids it, by removing one source of mental preoccupation, cleanliness. The old distinction between Livornese and Tunisian Jews is ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... you needn't mind about that," said Elbridge. "I guess it wouldn't make much difference to me, if the whole world was burnt up. Be a kind of a relief." He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, and her pity for ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... a full heart I set off in the dusk of evening to ride back to Shrewsbury. I rode slowly, my mind being filled with forebodings, and I was only roused from my preoccupation by the sudden appearance of a horseman at the turning of a byroad leading from Bridgenorth. He was riding rapidly, and we both reined up at the same moment to avoid a collision. And at that moment my heart leapt with furious exultation as, in the fading ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... and now, as then, Margrave was the radiant centre of a joyous group. Not the young boy-god Iacchus, amidst his nymphs, could, in Grecian frieze or picture, have seemed more the type of the sportive, hilarious vitality of sensuous nature. He must have passed unobserved by me, in my preoccupation of thought, from the museum and across the room in which I sat; and now there was as little trace in that animated countenance of the terror it had exhibited at Sir Philip's approach, as of the change it had undergone in my trance ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... discharged their debt. It is trite to refer to the numerous schemes of philanthropy in which American women have played so prominent a part, to allude to the fact that they have as a body used their leisure to cultivate those arts and graces of life which the preoccupation of man has led him too often to neglect. This chapter may well close with the words of Professor Bryce: "No country seems to owe more to its women than America does, nor to owe to them so much ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of which he died, first settled upon him; but he seems to have been always somewhat sickly of body, and with just that at times depressing, at times exciting, malady which tells most upon the whole organisation. That preoccupation with death, which in early life led him to write his Biathanatos, with its elaborate apology for suicide, and at the end of his life to prepare so spectacularly for the act of dying, was but one symptom of a morbid state of body and brain ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, activity, which he ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... indication of moral as well as material progress. To a large number of people here, on the other hand, the bolting of food—ten-minute dinners, for instance—and general unconsciousness of "what is on the table," is a sign of preoccupation with serious things. It may be; but the German love of food is not necessarily a sign of grossness, and that "overfed" appearance, of which the Union spoke, is not necessarily a sign of inefficiency, any more than leanness or cadaverousness ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... of five went ashore, and Kate's principal preoccupation seemed to be to keep as close to Virginia as possible. She had the air of expecting some choice excitement, which she might miss if the girl were lost sight of for a moment. But nothing in the manner of Virginia or her brother or cousin suggested that they had come to this strange spot ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... child's preoccupation for a moment, in a tone of half exasperated amusement). Well, but you're the quiet one, surely! (Mary looks up at him with a shy smile, her eyes still full of dreams.) Glory be to God, I'd not know a soul was alive in the ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... stairs, he hit upon a gentleman of somewhat portly build and dressed with conspicuous plainness. He was smoking a cigar and reading the Fortnightly Review; his face was singularly free from all sign of preoccupation or fatigue; and there was something in his air which seemed to invite confidence and to expect submission. The more the young clergyman scrutinised his features, the more he was convinced that he had fallen on one capable of giving ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a violent moral preoccupation, had acquired an especially high degree of intensity at the epoch when this story takes place. More than once a choir-boy had fled in terror at finding him alone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his look. More than once, in the choir, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... growing discomfort. He ate his dinner and answered the brisk questions of his wife with increasing preoccupation. Like Miss Ware, he was picturing Jim solitary and suffering in his lonely cell. With the utmost sincerity and ingenuousness he condemned ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... obvious perception came upon me with such force, and brought me such emotion, that I dare say for a little while I sat vacantly staring at her, with an air of preoccupation. Anyhow, all at once she laughed, and cried out, 'Well, when you get back...?' and, 'Perhaps,' she questioned, 'perhaps you think it polite to go off wool-gathering like that?' Whereupon I recovered myself with ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... would have ended, if that tableau hadn't gone smash, with a sudden offstage clatter and thump and cry which reminded me there were more people in the world than Chaddie McKail and her philandering old husband. For during that interregnum of parental preoccupation Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down the lower half of the front-stairs in an empty drawer commandeered from my bedroom dresser. Their descent, apparently, had been about as precipitate as that of their equally adventurous ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... heard many terrible tales of people who had perished through quite ordinary complaints, like measles, being mysteriously "driven inside." It was a symptom of her low condition that she should worry about her health, which till then had never given her a minute's preoccupation. She consulted "The Family Doctor," and realized the number of diseases she might be suffering from besides suppressed rheumatics—cancer, consumption, kidney disease, diabetes, appendicitis, asthma, arthritis, she seemed to have them all, and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... all things were left to moulder away in dust and filth, and the worship of God was, if not inwardly profaned, at least outwardly dishonoured. Nor did this arise from real poverty, but from indifference, sloth, preoccupation of mind about vain earthly concerns, and often also from egotism and spiritual death; for I saw neglect of this kind in churches the pastors and congregations of which were rich, or at east tolerably well off. I saw many ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... his conscience by pushing his search for climate on behalf of his friend's neurasthenic wife. He decided that Ospedaletti, with a milder air and more sheltered seat in its valley of palms, would be better for her than San Remo. He wrote his friend to that effect, and then there was no preoccupation to hinder him in his devotion to the case of Miss Gerald. He put the case first in the order of interest rather purposely, and even with a sense of effort, though he could not deny to himself that a like case related to a different personality might have been less absorbing. But he tried ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... so long and seriously that his wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... time, even with the preoccupation of misery, grew very dreary. She had never had any resources in herself except her music, and even if here she had had any opportunity of drawing upon that, what is music but a mockery to a breaking heart? Was music ever born of torture, of misery? It is only when the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... chap. I. Quand j'ai eloigne de son esprit la preoccupation que fait naitre l'idee de magnetisme ... je lui dis "Regardez-moi bien et ne songez qu'a dormir. Vous allez sentir une lourdeur dans les paupieres, une fatigue dans vos yeux: ils clignotent, ils vont se mouiller; la vue devient confuse: ils se ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of all, a story, and a great story, but it is certainly also a story that must appear at times potently, and even bitterly, anti-Catholic. Yet it would be a pity and an error to read it with the preoccupation that it was an anti-Catholic tract, for really it is not that. If the persons were changed in name and place, and modified in passion to fit a cooler air, it might equally seem an anti-Presbyterian or anti-Baptist tract; for what it shows in the light of their own ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... nothing so agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life; which was after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its great preoccupation over its business of getting to the sea. A difficult business, too; for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. The geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no map represent the infinite ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anything dark or distressing or ill-omened. But still, but still—we have seen Milly when she believed herself unseen, and it is certain that there is more in her mind than now appears, and though she seems so full of the new excitement of making friends with Kate Croy there must be some preoccupation beneath; and then, in a flash, these are the troubles that engage her in solitude, that have ached in her mind, and yet there has never been a single direct allusion to them. Skirting round and round them, giving one brief sight of her in eloquent circumstances, then displaying the all but untroubled ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... and how fruitful, their days of work had been lately! He had been, of course, annoyed sometimes by her preoccupation with the war news of the morning. Actually, this Caporetto business, the Italian disaster, had played the mischief with her for a day or two—and the news from Russia. Any bad news, indeed, seemed ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as she came under his guardianship, the education of the small Joanna became the constant preoccupation of her kindly grandfather, for he was filled with enthusiasm for the manifold advantages of learning, and spared no pains to surround the little duchess with the best preceptors in art and in literature that Italy afforded. All contemporary writers agree that the young girl gave ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... surely it was no harm to overhear the affianced of a 'bus-driver talking tender nothings to him all the way from Knightsbridge to Kensington, bending over from the seat she had taken next him. The witness was going up to a dentist in that region, and professed that in his preoccupation with the lovers he forgot the furies of a raging tooth, and decided not to ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... went southward on the street car—for her careful New Englandism forbade her taking a taxicab in sunny weather—she found herself reflecting with a smile that Boston in her recollection was an astonishing distance away. She also detected with surprise a very slight irritation at the intense preoccupation of the thronging thousands in their own concerns and their utter carelessness of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... on a hundred occasions and in countless ways; but more by her actions, her present wretchedness, than by speech. It was perfectly clear to Linda that nothing else mattered. She was even beginning, in a vague way, to think of it in connection with herself; but still most of her preoccupation was in her mother. She decided gravely that a great deal, yet, could be done. For ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... first, free education for the poor, and secondly, some fairer adjustment of the relations to each other of capital and labor. As to the first, authority has already sanctioned her opinion; the second question, if unsettled, has become a first preoccupation with statesmen and philosophers of all denominations in ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Through all her preoccupation and the quick, dexterous movement of her hands she could feel her pity tightening her throat: pity that hurt like love, that was delicious and exquisite like love. Nothing mattered, nothing existed in her mind but the three wounded ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... deputy-sheriff escorting an unsteady prisoner down the street followed by a boisterous crowd. In a way she was dimly conscious that there was something familiar in the prisoner's appearance, but the impression was not strong enough to rouse her from her preoccupation, and she turned to walk the floor without being cognizant of the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Masefield and the younger men. Although several of them owe much to him, most of the younger poets speak in accents of their own. W. W. Gibson had already reinforced the "return to actuality" by turning from his first preoccupation with shining knights, faultless queens, ladies in distress and all the paraphernalia of hackneyed mediaeval romances, to write about ferrymen, berry-pickers, stone-cutters, farmers, printers, circus-men, carpenters—dramatizing (though sometimes theatricalizing) ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... trip. He appeared to be extremely fatigued. Jane reflected that one hundred and twenty miles, with probably a great deal of climbing on foot, all in three days, was enough to tire any rider. Moreover, it presently developed that Lassiter had returned in a mood of singular sadness and preoccupation. She put it down to a moodiness over the loss of her white herd and the now precarious condition of ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... You said you'd been a partner. You have. Some day I'm going to tell you how grateful I am." In his preoccupation, he forgot to tie up the blankets; and, one hand on "Red's" shoulder, he let the cord fall ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... troubled state of the country and the intense preoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering this volume to its publishers. But, on further reflection, it has seemed to me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in the chaos of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... large as to require personal attention; also that he had new enterprises in view. The young man's interest and ambition were naturally kindled. As Mara had taken the Bodines and their affairs as an antidote for her trouble, he sought relief in the preoccupation which the Ainsleys might bring to his mind. Accordingly he met father and daughter at the station and escorted them to the hotel with some ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... originated our Thanksgiving festival, were after all a sombre people, seldom free from a realizing sense of the imminence of sin. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a genuine product of Puritanism, inherited a full share of his forefathers' constitutional melancholy and preoccupation with the darker aspects of life—as this story ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... had never so much as heard of him, though he had heard wonders of his parrot, which he requested might be sent for. I was immediately ushered into the cabinet, as the superior went out, and I never saw my dear master more. Perhaps he could "bear no rival near the throne;" perhaps, in his preoccupation, he forgot to reclaim me. Be that as it may, he sailed that night, in a Portuguese merchantman, for Lisbon; and I became the property of the representative of his British Majesty. After the first few days of favouritism, I sensibly lost ground with his excellency; for he was too deeply occupied, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... Miss Dibbs in close attendance. The imprudent child could not forbear to glance at me; but I, seeing the dragon's watchful eye upon me, remained absolutely irresponsive. Nay, to throw Miss Dibbs off the scent, I fixed my eyes on my neighbor with assumed preoccupation. Flushing painfully, Mary hurried out, and I heard Miss Dibbs sniff again. I chuckled over her obvious disapproval of my neighbor and myself. The excellent woman evidently thought us no better than we ought to be! But I felt that I should go mad if I could ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... and he sat up feeling in the pockets of his coat. The paper was gone; Knapp saying he had taken it was not a dream. For a space he sat, coming to clearer recollection, his partner's voice calling, vaguely heard, its request unheeded in his preoccupation. He gave a mutter of relief, and dropping back settled himself into comfort. The paper was as safe there as in his own pocket and he'd have it again inside of a week. With the first light in his eyes, he lapsed ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... preternatural activity of the imagination in certain directions, of which no very obvious explanation is discoverable. Thus, we sometimes find our minds dwelling on some absent friend, without being able to give any reason for this mental preoccupation. And in this way arise strong temporary leanings to illusory perception. It may be said, indeed, that all unwonted activity of the imagination, however it arises, has as its immediate result a temporary mode of expectation, definite or indefinite, which easily ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... before the picture herself when they went in to look at it, but she did not turn round on hearing them. She had Tod in her arms yet, but she seemed to have forgotten his very existence in her preoccupation. And it was scarcely to be wondered at. The picture was only a head,—Mollie's own fresh, drowsy-eyed face standing out in contrast under some folds of dark drapery thrown over the brown hair like a monk's cowl, two or three autumn-tinted oak leaves clinging to a straying tress,—but it was effective ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Ghirlandajo as the representative of painting in that period. I have also expressed the opinion that his style is singularly cold and prosaic, and have hinted that this prosaic and cold quality was caused by a defect of emotional enthusiasm, by preoccupation with finite aims. Herein Ghirlandajo did but reflect the temper of his age—that temper which Cosimo de' Medici, the greatest patron of both art and scholarship in Florence before 1470, represented in his life and in his public policy. It concerns us, therefore, to take into account ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... touched upon almost every known subject, he was at the height of his fame when, in 1235, his appointment as Bishop of Lincoln gave the fullest opportunities for the employment of his great gifts in the public service. He was convinced that the preoccupation of the clergy in worldly employment and the constant aggressions of the civil upon the ecclesiastical courts lay at the root of the evils of the time. His conviction brought him into conflict with the king rather than ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... hard at work all the next day; and such was the natural quickness of the young man's mind, that he seemed to learn something every hour, in spite of the preoccupation which, as the reader may imagine, his affection for our ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... an unhappy heart with placid brow and gracious demeanor; but such a conception matched strangely her glowing youth and spirit. What had she to do with Care? What concern had Black Care, whose gaunt shape in sable shrouds had lurked at his shoulder all the evening, despite his rigid preoccupation, with a being as charmingly flushed with budding ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... something must be deducted; we are in wonder-land, and among supernatural or magical conditions. But the forging of the shield and the wonderful house of Alcinous are no merely incongruous episodes in Homer, but the consummation of what is always characteristic of him, a constant preoccupation, namely, with every form of lovely craftsmanship, resting on all things, as he says, like the shining of the sun. We seem to pass, in reading him, through the treasures of some royal collection; in him the presentation of almost every aspect ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... The first time it came into my hands I took such special notice of it as might be expected. Upon one corner of the lid I detected a peculiar device scratched slightly upon it, most probably with the sharp point of a steel pen, in such a moment of preoccupation of mind as causes most of us to draw odd lines and caricatured faces upon any piece of paper which may lie under our hand. It was the old revolutionary device of a heart with a dagger piercing it; and I wondered whether it could be the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... for at that moment Stafford rode round the bend of the drive. His face was grave and almost stern in its preoccupation, but he caught sight of them, and raised his hat, then turned his horse and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... a final encouragement, because he had sensed her preoccupation and had misread it for worry over the picture. "You go ahead and shoot, and don't bother about me. Make it real. Shoot as close as you like. If you pink me a little I won't care,—if you'll promise to be my nurse. I ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... former preoccupation with the Council's possible intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could he escape into this vast, crowded ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... his jaws and went swaggering off toward the house with it, questing kudos. In the garden he met Finn, who with careless good humor strolled toward him, offering a game. Jan tried his best to growl and to turn up his nose at the same time, indicating serious preoccupation with matters more weighty than play. But finding that his hold upon the mouse was gravely endangered by this process, he gave up the attempt, and swaggered on toward the front entrance, followed quizzingly by the wolfhound. Finding nobody in the porch, Jan fell over the step, dropped his mouse, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... effects of lines and colors and tones upon the human organism are set forth with mathematical precision. He need not trouble himself overmuch at the outset with definitions of Beauty. The chief thing is to become aware of the long and intimate preoccupation of men with beautiful objects and to remember that any inquiry into the nature and laws of poetry will surely lead him into a deeper curiosity as to the nature and manifestations of aesthetic feeling ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... goods; his fair hair was rough but not curly; he had a moustache so trifling that one could not be sure whether it was a moustache or whether he had been too busy to think of shaving. Janet received all these facts into her brain, and then carelessly let them all slip out again, in her preoccupation with his eyes. She said they were sad eyes. The mouth, too, was somewhat sad (she thought), but there was a drawing down of the corners of it that seemed to make gentle fun of its sadness. Janet, perhaps out of her good-nature, liked his restless, awkward ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Charles went back to Lancaster Gate, as I could not fail to remark, with a strange air of complete and painful preoccupation. Never before in his life had I seen ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the storm, when trees hang lifeless in a stifling atmosphere, and animals raise their heads in frightened expectancy, awaiting with nameless terror the first gust which shall herald the tornado. Since her father's return from France, she noted that the air of preoccupation apparent before his departure, was now intensified. While in his kindness toward her the girl could detect no change, still, there had come between them a species of estrangement. Seldom was there an opportunity for ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... manner of a man preoccupied, a plump, pink left hand. With his right hand he held up and flaunted, for exhibition, a drooping bunch of poppies, poignantly red and green: the subject, very likely, of his preoccupation, for, "Are n't they beauties?" he demanded, and his manner had changed to one of fervour, nothing less. "They 're the spoils of a raid on Farmer Blogrim's chalk-pit. If eyes were made for seeing, see and admire—admire ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... strong and determined man, was due to give the signal which his regiment, the 82nd, already drawn up in battle formation on the square, was impatiently awaiting; but Pinoteau, with Foucart, had been busy all morning arranging for the despatch of proclamations, and in their preoccupation he had forgotten to shave. Mid-day arrived. Colonel Pinoteau realising that he was unshaven, hurried to put this right; but while he was engaged in this operation, General Virion, escorted by a large number of gendarmes, burst into the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. The bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, and ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... daimio had taken advantage of the preoccupation of his captors during the last moments of Theriere to gnaw in two the grass rope which bound him to the mucker, and with hands still fast bound behind him had slunk into the jungle path ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... strange, dramatic way.) She couldn't let Eagle alone; and she showed her feelings so plainly—as a very rich girl sometimes thinks she may do with a comparatively poor man—that even Eagle himself, despite his lack of self-conceit and his preoccupation with thoughts of Di, couldn't help understanding. He kept out of Milly's way as often as he could, but she attributed this retirement to the calls of duty; and at last began to behave so foolishly that for her own sake he gently ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader's convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses; and it will be observed with pity that every individual item would have graced and commended the cover ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... they meant to secure custom; they were forced to choose for themselves between the patronage of the Liberals on the one hand or the Royalists on the other. And Love, moreover, had come to David's heart, and with his scientific preoccupation and finer nature he had not room for the dogged greed of which our successful man of business is made; it choked the keen money-getting instinct which would have led him to study the differences between the Paris ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... medical attendant with a sour surprise. There was a latent anxiety in the doctor's eye, a latent preoccupation in the doctor's manner, which he was at a loss to account for. For a moment the two faces confronted each other silently, in marked national contrast—the Scotchman's, long and lean, hard and regular; ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... months. Raymond said that his lasted for six days. That was the period also in a case of which I had some personal evidence. Mr. Myers, on the other hand, said that he had a very prolonged period of unconsciousness. I could imagine that the length is regulated by the amount of trouble or mental preoccupation of this life, the longer rest giving the better means of wiping this out. Probably the little child would need no such interval at all. This, of course, is pure speculation, but there is a considerable consensus of opinion as to the existence of a period ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a movement so leisurely and careless that his purpose was accomplished before the other in his preoccupation was aware of it, the adventurer leaned forward and swept up the prints from the counterpane in front ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... ready when he got back to the hotel. He swallowed a cup of coffee so hastily that it burned him, and June, when she passed his window on her way to school, saw him busy over his desk. She started to shout to him, but he looked so haggard and grim that she was afraid, and went on, vaguely hurt by a preoccupation that seemed quite to have excluded her. For two hours then, Hale haggled and bargained, and at ten o'clock he went to the telegraph office. The operator who was speculating in a small way himself smiled when ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... plump face widened in a smile for Cletus. "This is an honor, Your Highness. I trust you will pardon my preoccupation with affairs of state. They're in a mess—as are all capitals when the old order departs. I supposed you'd be announced." Andrei Broncov glared at the pseudo Volonsky and whispered in a dialect, "The Council is waiting ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... saw the small, mocking eye of the lawyer begin to roam over the shelves, and beheld his jaw drop as it sometimes did when he sought to veil his purpose in an air of mild preoccupation, he knew what the next request would be, as well as if the low sounds which left Mr. Black's lips at intervals had been words instead of inarticulate grunts. He was, therefore, prepared ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... and for the first time submitted patiently to the assiduities of the experienced waiting-woman. Mrs. Betts did not fail to make her own reflections thereupon, and to interpret favorably Miss Fairfax's evidently happy preoccupation. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Pougeot, in spite of his preoccupation, began to realize that there was something peculiar about this night promenade, for as they reached a crossroad, M. Paul ordered the chauffeur to turn into it and go ahead as fast as he pleased. ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... there beyond? It is the eternal question asked by the finite of the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour. And if this old question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence the journeying sun was seen to go down and quench ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... however, be said that this may all be true, but that in all this we have after all only an example of the preoccupation of the Middle Ages with conduct and religion. I must, therefore, ask you to consider the character and development of the intellectual movement of the Middle Ages. And here, fortunately, we can find the best of guidance in Dr. Rashdall's great work on The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... and preoccupation kept Dermot from dwelling much on Noreen. Nevertheless, he thought often of the girl and hoped that she would be happy when she married the man she was said to have chosen. He felt no jealousy of Charlesworth; on the contrary, he admired him as a good sportsman and a manly fellow, as well as he ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... confusion of impressions, his intense preoccupation with present dangers and future contingencies, the thought of Natalie floated now and then vaguely but comfortingly. He had seen her for a moment, before leaving—barely long enough to explain the nature of his mission—but her ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... one o'clock; all lunched together in private, talking only of Capri. Later they walked to the villa of Tiberius. Elgar kept up an appearance of light-hearted enjoyment; Cecily was less able to disguise her preoccupation. Mrs. Lessingham seemed to have accepted the inevitable. Her first annoyance having passed, she was submitting to that personal charm in Elgar which all women sooner or later confessed; her behaviour to him was indulgent, and marked only with a very gentle reserve when ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... ugliness: "a black cat, larger than a dog, his huge eyes emitting flame, his tongue long, large, and bloody, his tail twisted and raised in the air, and his whole body disgusting to the last degree." He is the one thing that is hated, and the only preoccupation. People fear him, yet ridicule him. One is not even honest with him. In reality, notwithstanding the ferocious appearance of his furnaces, he is the eternal dupe. All the treaties he makes are forced from him by violence or cunning. Feeble women throw him down: ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said that he ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... cordial and descended again to the shop. It was empty, as usual, and Evelina sat at her pinking-machine in the back room. Ann Eliza was still agitated by her efforts to restore the dress-maker, but in spite of her preoccupation she was struck, as soon as she entered, by the loud tick of the clock, which still stood on the shelf where she had ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... this material aspect of our epoch and how it is likely to be regarded in the future, when the paradise of ideal living is regained, a modern writer says: "Will not the intense preoccupation of material production, the hurry and strain of our cities, the draining of life into one channel, at the expense of breadth, richness, and beauty, appear as mad as the Crusades, and perhaps of a lower type of ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... was suspicious. Soft cheeks became rosy at his approach—partly, perhaps, because soft and dainty toes in satin slippers were trodden upon with maternal emphasis at that moment. Soft eyes looked love into eyes that, alas! only returned preoccupation. There was always room on an engagement card for Paul's name. There was always space in the smallest drawing-room for Paul's person, vast though the latter was. There was—fond mothers conveyed it to him subtly after supper and ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... or two, and then the practice stopped, for the police watched the doors throughout the whole night. This preoccupation of the police was taken advantage of to raid again old Hairyfithill's potato field, and also to pay a visit to the bing for coal, and a very profitable time was thus spent by the strikers, even though the blacklegs were at their work in ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... hospitality he meant to have it out with him. He would speak plainly and explain the English point of view. Doro would no doubt attack him on the ground of his interview with Maria Fortunata. He did not care. Somehow his present preoccupation with Hermione's fate, increased by the visit of Gaspare, rendered his irritation against the Marchesino less keen than it had been. But he thought he would probably visit the island to-night—after another visit which he intended to pay. He could not ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... people had thought Nelson would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of his perpetual ejaculation—"Caught you at it, eh?"—seemed to hint at a constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that, as the saying was, he had "swallowed his dose" like all the others. No strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to rebuild his ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... gods, if prophecy must fulfill itself, should not be a contemptible or pitiful one, that was Wotan's preoccupation,—to save, if nothing more, the dignity of the Eternals; with this in view, to keep Alberich from recovering the Ring, by which he might work such really disgusting havoc. The Ring was in the possession of Fafner, who had turned ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... saw that it was their small luggage carrier. In their preoccupation the girls had both of them forgotten about their ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... and they have been traced back by Verworn to the Miocene of the Auvergne, and by Rutot even to the upper Oligocene. Although these eoliths are even nowadays the subject of many different views, the preoccupation with them has kept the problem of the age of the human race ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... of an entirely concealed and respectable nature, but a certain increased preoccupation in his manner set Lady Marayne thinking. He had as a matter of fact been taken ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... with the same brilliant result as herself, and Georgie was in the even superior position of having known the result without having to do any addition at all, and Colonel Boucher enjoyed the first fruits of it all. When they parted, having thoroughly discussed it, the chief preoccupation in the minds of all was the number of Riseholmites that each of them would be the first to pass on the news to, Mrs Weston could tell Elizabeth that night, and Colonel Boucher his bull-dogs, but the first blood was really drawn by Georgie, who seeing ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... children disporting amongst the gorse, but whose thoughts and eyes are evidently fixed on Jem Tanner, as she meets his backward glance with a blushing smile, and half springs forward to meet him; whilst Olive has broken off the conversation as soon as she perceived the preoccupation of her companion, and began humming, perhaps unconsciously, two or three lines of Burns, whose "Whistle and I'll come to thee, my love," and "Gi'e me a glance of thy bonny black ee," were never better exemplified than in the couple before her. Really it is curious to watch them, and to see how gradually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once. He said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation. With the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had never been sounded. He was far from the time when he had found it hard ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... hungry, though she is half starved. I served in the African campaign when I was a young military surgeon. I have seen healthy men faint for want of food when they had plenty at hand because they could not realise that they were hungry in their intense preoccupation. Great emotions close the entrance to the stomach, often for a considerable time. It is well known, and it is easier than you think to form the habit of living on next to nothing. It is the first step ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... His preoccupation on this particular day was with a home-state issue—the location of a government plant. After he obtained the floor, he counted the house and noted that only a bare quorum was present. Gradually, the members of the Senate ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... add, sir, before you go," said Douglas, asserting himself desperately against Conolly's absolutely sincere disregard of him and preoccupation with Marian, "that Mrs. Conolly has been placed in her present position entirely through her own conduct. I repudiate the insinuation that I have deserted her in a foreign city; and I challenge inquiry ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... employment of a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... in the evening that the carriages containing the grand duke and his family passed through the Porta San Gallo, from which proceeds the road to Bologna, and thence to Vienna. The main preoccupation of the people at that moment was to assure themselves by the evidence of their own senses that the duke and dukelings were really gone. An immense crowd of people assembled round the gate and lined the road immediately outside it. Along the living line thus formed the cortege of carriages ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... creatures under such circumstances are liable to have, the interested community could not quite make out; but that something more than ordinary was going on, and that the prettiest of all the "Provident ladies" had a certain preoccupation in her blue eyes, was a fact perfectly apparent to that intelligent society. And, indeed, one of the kinder matrons in Prickett's Lane had even ventured so far as to wish Miss Lucy "a 'appy weddin' when the time ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... watching the Tenor, and it was curious how much older he looked while so engaged. The Tenor must have noticed the change in him, which was quite remarkable, giving him an entirely different character, but for his own preoccupation. As it was, however, he ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... glided into her hut, just before the setting of the sun, he had chased the traces of passion from his brow, and met her with a calm and satisfied mien. So perfect was the dissimulation that even one less guileless than the woman would have been deceived. In the present case, the preoccupation of her mind in Holden's favor ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... from the window with a sigh, and stepped back to the table for the tinder-box, that for the eleventh time he might relight his pipe. He sat down, blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling, and considered. His nature triumphed now over his recent preoccupation; the matter of the moment, which concerned him not at all, engrossed him beyond any other matter of his life. He was intrigued to know in what relation one to the other stood the three so oddly assorted travellers he had seen arrive. He bethought him that, after all, the odd ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... but, standing up, he stared at him intently. Garay shrank away and disappeared in the further ranges of the camp. Robert somehow was not afraid. The man would not make such a trial again at so great a risk, and his mind turned back to its preoccupation, the great battle that ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... before, for she was the daughter of the ranch superintendent, and occasionally assisted her mother in this culinary supervision—which did not, however, bring her into any familiar association with the men. Even the younger ones, perhaps from over-consciousness of their inferior position or the preoccupation of their labor, never indulged in any gallantry toward her, and he himself, in his revulsion of feeling against the whole sex, had scarcely noticed that she was good-looking. But this naive exhibition of preference could not be overlooked, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the vision of lovely dark eyes and rippling brown hair with just a hint of red in it, danced before him. Chiniquy, taking advantage of his master's preoccupation, wandered aimlessly against a barbed wire, taking very good care not to get too close to it himself. Jim came to himself just in time to save his leg from a prod from ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... a torpid face lighted now by a speciously amiable expression. The carpets had dulled his steps and the preoccupation of the two sisters had kept them from noticing the noise of his carriage-wheels on entering the court-yard. The countess, in whom the habits of social life and the freedom in which her husband had left her had developed both ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... he turned up?" cried the vicar's young wife, forgetting for a moment a certain preoccupation caused by the arrival of the tea-tray, and by a rapid resignation to the thickness of the bread and butter and the distressing absence of such hot things as would have been in readiness if Mrs. Venables had been expected for a single moment. It showed the youth of Morna Woodgate that she ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... solace. Goethe, you may be sure, enjoyed the hero-worshipful gaze focussed on him from all the tables of the Caffe' Greco. But not for adulation had he come to Rome. Rome was what he had come for; and the fussers of the coteries must not pester him in his golden preoccupation with the antique world. Tischbein was very useful in warding off the profane throng—fanning away the flies. Let us hope he was actuated solely by zeal in Goethe's interest, not by the desire to swagger ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... she inquired. 'Can you say that the greeting you gave me did not spring inadvertently from the real preoccupation of your mind?' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... having a charming wife," laughed Lawrence, in his preoccupation blind and deaf to danger signals. He rose to open the door for Laura. "By the by, if you go to the vicarage this afternoon, I'll stroll up with you, if I may. I suppose I owe the young lady that ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... if it were not so much fighting us off as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms, it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous country insistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in his preoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know the human counterparts of both barberry and bramble,—excellent people in their place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a careful weighing of consequences. Judging them ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... adorably regretful, and her lack of mastery of her was so captivating, that John was desperately sorry that he had taken advantage of her preoccupation. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... these dances of the Sakai girls, he would have added another beautiful page to his estasi umane ("Human Ecstasies") because at these little festivals, whether they are held in the hut or outside, one never sees pouting faces, frowning brows or any other indication of preoccupation or passion. Everybody is merry and their delight can be read upon their countenances (notwithstanding the frightful way they are besmeared with paint), and shines in their eyes; happy are the women ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... tea was being served, there sounded a voice welcome to no one present, that of Lee Hannaford. He came forward with his wonted air of preoccupation; a well-built man, in the prime of life, carefully dressed, his lips close-set, his eyes seemingly vacant, but in reality very attentive; a pinched ironical smile meant for cordiality. After greetings, he stood before Miss Derwent's chair conversing with her; a cup of tea in his steady hand, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... In her preoccupation she forgot the rules laid down for the guidance of jeunes filles bien elevees, and unthinkingly perched herself full on the kitchen table on the corner of which Doggie sat in a one-legged way. Doggie gasped again. All her assumed ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... installed, by the amount of money at the builder's disposal, by his inventiveness, and, often, by his personal whims. As a result time is required for the organist to learn his instrument thoroughly. After this he is as free as the fish in the sea, and his only preoccupation is the music. Then, to play freely with the colors on his vast palette, there is but one way—he ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe, or have his body anointed, he used to trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the oil on his body, being in a state of entire preoccupation, and, in the truest sense, divinely possessed with his love and delight in science. His discoveries were numerous and admirable; and he is said to have requested his friends and relations that when he was dead, they would place over his tomb a cylinder containing a sphere, inscribing ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the general preoccupation to exchange a few last words with Helene in a corner. He obtained a half-promise from her that when he wrote she would answer; but he was careful not to say that he had spoken to his mother. He felt that Helene would be startled ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them, perhaps by reason of their very detachment and preoccupation, are intrigued into the holy estate, and that not a few of them enter it deliberately, convinced that it is the safest form of liaison possible under Christianity. And on the other hand one must not forget the biological fact that it is ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... published his first poem in 1886. Since that date, despite his preoccupation with the management of the Abbey Theatre, he has produced a long list of works in verse and prose, decidedly unequal in merit, but shining with the light of ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... to hear her. There were other figures, unknown to our young man, here and there, in the semicircle; but several places were still empty (one of which was of course reserved for Olive), and it occurred to Ransom, even in his preoccupation, that one of them ought to remain so—ought to be left to symbolise the presence, in the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... much interested in tracing out the route they were to follow to notice that after the car had spun along smoothly for several miles its speed lessened, and it was not until it came to a complete standstill that he aroused himself from his preoccupation sufficiently to see that his father was bending forward over ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... land, uncle Phaeton?" queried Bruno, taking note of that preoccupation, which might easily prove dangerous ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr. |
