"Unobservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as was his wont, and speaking cheerily to the boy, learned that his name was "Jackie." A stick of candy from Tom's pocket was greedily accepted by Jackie. Tom was feeling blue that day thinking of his father from whom had come no word, of his mother and sister, and his old home. He wandered on unobservant of the fact that it was growing dark, and that a storm was fast approaching. He was suddenly called to a sense of his surroundings by hearing a cry behind him, and turning back saw that little Jackie ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... gentlemen ran out from the Colne in Blair's schooner, and Freeman had orders to take the Schelling, Ameland, Nordeney, and all the other banks in order. I need not go over the ground again in detail, but I may say that Sir James was never unobservant; he made the most minute notes and sought to provide against every difficulty. The bad weather still held, and there were accidents enough and illness enough, in all conscience. Cassall proposed to hang somebody for permitting the cabins of the smacks to ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... traceable in a still greater measure to the augmented purity, brilliance, and variety in colour of modern Ten-week Stocks, as well as to the enhanced reliability of seed in producing double flowers. We need say nothing of its perfume, for this is a quality which the most unobservant can scarcely fail ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... "Ailie!" in a loud, agonising cry, and swam forward again with redoubled energy, continuing the cry from time to time, and raising himself occasionally to look round him. The excitement of his mind, and the intensity with which it was bent on the one great object, rendered him at first almost unobservant of the flight of time. But suddenly the thought burst upon him that fully ten minutes or a quarter of an hour had elapsed since Ailie fell overboard, and that no one who could not swim could exist for half that time in deep water. He shrieked with agony at the thought, and, fancying that ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... ready to meet any demand which the future might make on him—battle for him, too, perhaps, and at this moment he welcomed the thought of it! Thus, a little exalted in spirit, Dominic walked on rapidly across the Green between the iron railings, conscious of colour, of light, and of sound; but unobservant of the details of his immediate surroundings, until a drifting female figure barred his path, undulating uncertainly before him. He moved to the right to let it pass. It moved to the right also. He moved to the left, it did ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... night when she forgot her prayer, and Cummins did not notice it. He failed to notice it the next night, and the next. Plunged deep in his own gloom, he was unobservant of many other things, so that, in place of laughter and joy and merry rompings, only gloomy and oppressive shadows of things that had come and gone filled the life of the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... surprising, admirable, and usually sound thoughts were the result of long hours of reflection. They belonged to her nature and a quality of judgment which, even in her most extravagant romances, is never for a moment swayed from that sane impartiality described by the unobservant as common sense. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run into trouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch I don't aim to pick posies too unobservant." ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... deep, the Mississippi, he conceived the ambition and the ideal of learning to know and to master that mysterious water. His dream, in time, was realized; he not only became a pilot, but—which is infinitely more significant—he changed from a callow, indolent, unobservant lad, with undeveloped faculties, to a man, a master of the river, with a knowledge which, in its accuracy and minuteness, was, for its purpose, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... not been very indifferent or unobservant, she would have noticed the striking difference between the manner and appearance of Lizzie Stevens and the class who generally came to see McCloskey. She did not, however, appear to observe it, nor did she manifest any curiosity ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Lhari slipped unobserved out of Raynor's house and hiked unnoticed to the edges of a small city nearby, where he mingled with the crowd and hired a skycab from an unobservant human driver to take him to the spaceport city. The skycab driver was startled, but not, Bart judged, unusually so, to pick up a ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... just as the old biological orthodoxy did. In the days before Darwin, those who occupied themselves with the phenomena of life, passed by with unobservant eyes the multitudinous facts which point to an evolutionary origin for plants and animals; and they turned deaf ears to those who insisted on the significance of these facts. Now that they have come to believe in this ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... musical education that refines, strengthens, broadens the character and the views, that ripens every God-given instinct and force. It arouses noble thoughts and lofty ideals; it quickens the perceptions, opening up a world of beauty that is closed to the unobservant; it bears its fortunate possessor into a charmed atmosphere, where inspiring, elevating influences prevail. Its aim is nothing short of the absolutely symmetrical development of the spiritual, intellectual and physical being, in view of making the well-rounded ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... woman," a mouth indifferent when at rest, but capable of a beautiful laugh. She was rather tall, and of a pretty enough figure; hands good; feet invisible. Hugh came to these conclusions rapidly enough, now that his attention was directed to her; for, though naturally unobservant, his perception was very acute as soon as his attention ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... they necessarily were, by long intervals of apparent coldness, during which either the fear of exciting the observation of others, and thus drawing danger upon her lover, or that of sinking in his esteem by seeming too willing to be won, made her behave with indifference, and as if unobservant ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... stillness as of sleep; But in the east the grey and motionless woods, Watching the great sun's fiery slow decline, Grew deep with gold. To westward all was silver. An hour had passed above me; I had reached The loftiest level of the snow-piled fields, Clear eyed, but unobservant, noting not, That all the plain beneath me and the hills Took on a change of color splendid, gradual, Leaving no spot the same; nor that the sun Now like a fiery torrent overflamed The great line of the west. Ere yet I turned ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... and the sea-coast, it is impossible to make more than a rough estimate of the extent of the disturbed area. Even when the boundary lies on land, it traverses some districts which are thinly populated and others where the inhabitants are unobservant, and unlikely to notice the slow oscillations which were alone perceptible at great distances. The shock was, however, felt at Boston (800 miles from the epicentre), La Crosse on the upper Mississippi (950 miles to the north-west), ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... and Mr. Home were now engaged in conversation. Dr. John had not been unobservant of the fairy's dance; he had watched it, and he had liked it. To say nothing of the softness and beauty of the movements, eminently grateful to his grace-loving eye, that ease in his mother's house charmed him, for it set him at ease: again ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... both have often expressed a doubt as to whether Charles or myself is the more absent-minded and unobservant. I wish to set the matter at rest once ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... in this respect, all the members of the Relief Corps have made the most of their opportunity. Some are unobservant, or perhaps simply inarticulate; others, when going beyond the bald statistics of their job, tend to drop into sentiment and cinema scenes; and none but H. Macy Greer has the gift of making the thing told seem as true as if one ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... are!" he said. "Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... them to obey the will of their masters. So God in commanding us to do what is worthy and prohibiting what is unworthy saw fit in his wisdom to specify the accompanying rewards and punishments that he who observes may find pleasure and joy in his obedience, and the unobservant may be affected ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... as she fingered the greasy pages, while Elsie flinched inwardly. And unobservant as the girl naturally was, she could not help noticing that Mrs. Middleton retained ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Julia Morris, a particularly unobservant girl, "I thought you were going to bring that dear baby sister with you, Hester. Oh, I do hope there is nothing ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... in the seven months since her husband's death. She had aged considerably. Her spirit, her courage, were undiminished, but the years had at last levied the toll which a happy wifehood had denied them. Nor was Murray unobservant of these things. His partner in the fortunes of Fort Mowbray was ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... consciously or not,—since we have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded, unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on his way home from the court-house, he ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... not to be supposed that Raoul Yvard and his followers were unobservant of what was passing. It is true that the latter wilfully protracted his departure, under the pretence that it was safer to have his enemy in sight during the day, knowing how easy it would be to elude ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... obtain a half-ready, half-timid acceptance of the offer of his hand. All this time, the parents of these very youthful lovers were as profoundly ignorant of what was going on, as their children were unobservant of the height to which professional competition had carried hostilities between their respective parents. Doctors Woolston and Yardley no longer met even in consultations; or, if they did meet in the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... my father and I were to sleep that night at Marais's stead, returning home on the following morning. But my father, who had been a silent but not unobservant witness of all this scene, coming to the conclusion that after what had happened we should scarcely be welcome there, and that the company of Pereira was to be avoided just now, went up to Marais and bade him farewell, saying that we would ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... was the disorder in her countenance when she reached Choisy that even unobservant Ombreval whom continuous years of self-complacency had rendered singularly obtuse—could not help but notice it, and—fearing, no doubt, that this agitation might in some way concern himself—he even went the length of questioning ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... at all this beauty with an unobservant eye, being too much occupied with his thoughts to take notice of anything; and it was only when two magpies near him broke into a joyous duet, in which each strove to emulate the other's mellow notes, that he awoke from his brown study, and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... not the work of Maoris; that was done, probably, by natives at some of the islands, or by sailors. I hardly think that those who read the narrative will agree with Bishop Williams's opinion that it is "a mere romance." It is more like the story of an ignorant, unobservant, careless sailor, who entertained no idea that any importance would be attached to his statements. Many mistakes were probably made in the work of dictating the narrative to a fellow-sailor. If Rutherford had been bent upon ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... piece of bread, and would ask no greater joy than to kiss her feet. And laugh at Varvilliers too, who, although he sits where he has a good view of us, never turns his eyes toward the lady by my side, but is most courteously unobservant of her alone among all the throng. Did she look at him? Yes, for he will not look toward her. Why, we are all here, all except Hammerfeldt, who looks down from heaven, and Coralie who is coming presently to sing us the wedding-song. Even Victoria's Baron is ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... unobservant eye intent upon her tea and cakes, saw every one who came and went. Many officers were in the restaurant, but one only attracted her special notice. He was a young handsome man in the field-service kit of the French Army, and upon his sleeves and cap were the wings ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... me to my gridiron, and I straddled my craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I never once had thought until now. Then I tightened the belt about my hollow body, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour I had been wholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was over now, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Of course I saw none. Had we indeed been off our course before the fire broke out? Had we burned to cinders aside and apart from the regular track of ships? Then, though ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... was not skilful enough to win the Major's lasting favour. He was always slow to interfere in domestic matters, but he was not unobservant. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... noticed the touch of colour that was so quick to mount to the ivory cheek, the novel brightness and tenderness in the deep grey eyes, the new note, the low, sweet tone of happiness in the clear voice. Her father only remained unobservant of the subtle change, but he was like a mole burrowing amongst his book and gloating secretly over the box which he concealed at the approach of footsteps, the opening of a door, and the sound of a voice in a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any member of the owl family ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Mrs. Graham's sense of propriety. There was an old lady who had once been Clara's governess—a gentle, mild-tongued, unobservant person, who was greatly in want of a home. Mrs. Alison was easily induced to promise the support of her presence to Lettice during the days or weeks which Lettice hoped to spend at Bute Lodge. She was a woman of unimpeachable decorum and respectability, and her presence in the house would, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... spirit had penetrated into the hidden recesses of the Chinese Empire. One may be little given to philosophizing, and possess but scanty skill in putting into words the conclusions which form themselves in one's mind, but it is impossible to cross China entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Mammalia and Birds, the fauna of Ceylon has, up to the present, failed to receive that systematic attention to which its richness and variety most amply entitle it. The Singhalese themselves, habitually indolent, and singularly unobservant of nature and her operations, are at the same time restrained from the study of natural history by the tenet of their religion which forbids the taking of life under any circumstances. From the nature of their avocations, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and her father was changed. Eyebright was no longer careless or unobservant, as before her mother's death, and she noticed how fast papa's hair was turning gray, and how deep and careworn the lines about his mouth and eyes had become. He did not seem to gain in cheerfulness as time went on, but, ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... as they entered; saw Notely enter with his easy, unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an air, to ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the night time—she alone being awake—a young woman, with black, or very dark hair, which hung loose, and with a black cloak on, standing near the middle of the floor, opposite the hearthstone, and fronting the foot of her bed. She appeared quite unobservant of the children and nurse sleeping in the room. She was very pale, and looked, the child said, both "sorry and frightened," and with something very peculiar and terrible about her eyes, which made the child conclude that she ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... complexion of his, delicate as a woman in his last days); these sufficiently told me that he had not the ghost of an idea of the perturbation that had been seething in me. It took him the rest of the week to cease regretting that he had been so unobservant, and never again during the remaining eight-and-twenty years that we fished together at different times and in divers places did he once depart from his resolve "never to do so no more." During our long and happy acquaintance that was the only cloud flitting over the sunshine of our friendship, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... silent witness of scenes like these, who laid them up deeply in her heart. Mrs. Williams was not unobservant of the gradual but steady falling off in Eric's character, and the first thing she noticed was the blunting of his home affections. When they first came to Roslyn, the boy used constantly to join his father and mother in their walks; but now he went seldom or ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... an hour in his office, dispatching his accumulated two-days' mail, all unobservant of the cat-like tread of Einstein, the office boy, moving in and out. He lingered in a gloomy reverie, after checking up his correspondence, and a half hour's sharp dictations, absorbed in the cautious letter of Hugh Worthington, ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... not unobservant of this by-play that was passing around him. He easily read in the expressive looks of Tiburcio the secret of his heart, and involuntarily contrasted the manly beauty of the young man with the ordinary face and figure of the Senator. As if from this he apprehended some obstacles to his secret ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... and, as a rule, unobservant; they go on in the old way until the horse flinches in action or stands "pointing" in dumb appeal to his owner, telling with mute but touching eloquence of his tight-ironed, feverish foot, the dead frog, and the insidious disease, soon to destroy ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... subject to the unobservant man's acute flashes of vision, and Mrs. Westmore's beauty was like a blinding light abruptly turned on eyes subdued to obscurity. As he spoke, his glance passed from her face to her hair, and remained caught in its meshes. He had never ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... have contributed to this result. Moreover, it seems very clear that teachers of all grades should have some acquaintance with the nature of the minds that they are laboring to develop, and that they should not be left to pick up their information for themselves—a task sufficiently difficult to an unobservant person. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... those coincidences which would be thought appropriate for romance, but which are more common, in fact, than the unobservant are disposed to confess, these two most brilliant events in the painter's life—his first successful work of art and the triumph of his scientific discovery—were brought together, as it were, in a manner singularly fitted to impress the imagination. Six copies of his ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... in general so very unobservant—so little inclined to interfere with, if he could not promote, the amusements of his dependants—moreover, so unaccustomed to scold—that Biddy and the others round her soon saw ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... one of the windows, thereby displaying to the unobservant air an instep large but exquisitely arched, Marcia Amherst comes slowly up to where the lazy fowl are dreaming. Almost unconsciously (because her face is full of troubled thought), or perhaps a little vengefully, she flicks the one nearest to her with the handkerchief she ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... use in one hour's keen observation than by reading all the books in the world, and when that sense is keenly developed it is quite extraordinary with what facility one can do things which the average unobservant man thinks utterly impossible. It most certainly teaches one to simplify everything and always to select the best and easiest way in all one undertakes, which, after all, is the way leading ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... all that restrained her from doing so was her knowledge that Maitland would be more pained by her sacrifice than gladdened or relieved. He was so sure of clearing himself.... It was inconceivable to her that there could be men so stupid and crassly unobservant as to be able to confuse the identity of the two men for a single instant. What though they did resemble each other in form and feature? The likeness went no deeper: below the surface, and rising through it with every word and look and gesture, lay a world-wide ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... years which has overwhelmed all the records of human grandeur around them, and buried all traces of Susa and Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls,—all ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... kitchen door and a large cook of sound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in and passed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted this adventurous way of entering. She was rather unobservant about some things, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in by the kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some of the Addington ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... opposed to racial purity, their original separation could only have gone on through such an entire lack of communication as prevented either trade or warfare between the bulk of the differentiating bodies. These original racial types are now inextricably mingled. Unobservant, over-scholarly people talk or write in the profoundest manner about a Teutonic race and a Keltic race, and institute all sorts of curious contrasts between these phantoms, but these are not races at all, if physical characteristics ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... folks—are too selfish to interest themselves long about the affairs of their neighbours. The Baroness had her trumps to think of, her dinners, her twinges of rheumatism: and her suspicions regarding Maria and Harry, lately so lively, now dozed, and kept a careless, unobservant watch. She may have thought that the danger was over, or she may have ceased to care whether it existed or not, or that artful Maria, by her conduct, may have quite cajoled, soothed, and misguided the old Dragon, to whose charge she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... archduchesses, too, were at cards, and the hum of conversation subsided almost to a whisper, that the imperial party might not be disturbed. Gradually the empress became absorbed in her cards, so that she was unobservant of the entrance of one of the emperor's lords in waiting who whispered something in Joseph's ear, whereupon the latter ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with these gyrating thoughts that she was not conscious that Dick had stopped the car on the green roadside until he had taken her hand and had begun to speak. The happy, garrulous, unobservant Dick had not noticed anything out of the way with her more than a pallor which she had explained away as being due to nothing more than a bit of temporary dizziness. And so for the second time Dick now poured out his love to her and asked her ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg, which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. "Yes—let us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some queer towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense, so silent, so unobservant—who sees nothing and knows nothing and never laughs, but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the piece de resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service, the typical Frenchman; all shrugs ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... range of new knowledge started by Darwin's work may prove to be the extension of the idea of conduct so as to include the control of mental processes of which at present most men are either unconscious or unobservant. The limits of our conscious conduct are fixed by the limits of our self-knowledge. Before men knew anger as something separable from the self that knew it, and before they had made that knowledge current by the invention of a name, the control of anger was not a question ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... dead. Unite sympathy to observation, and the dead Spring to life." It is thus to the shy, in their moments of tremor, that we should endeavor to be calmly unsympathetic; not cruel, but indifferent, unobservant. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... and scarcely knew whether she won or lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all laugh, had missed no portion of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... with Linforth. He talked with no greater wit than his companions, he made no greater display of ability, he never outshone, and yet not a few men were conscious of a force underlying his quietude of manner. Those men were the old and the experienced; the unobservant overlooked ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... now accepted this involuntary sentiment as the only way of accounting for something not unfamiliar in his voice and bearing. A man of average stature, with a vast black beard, and guileless blue eyes, set off by a powerful Armagh accent. Evidently unobservant, uncritical, and utterly destitute of devil in any form, it seemed that the Spirit of the Bog had followed him into the bush, preserving his noxious innocence and all-round ineptitude in their pristine integrity. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... buff leather, better suited to the great flat snow-shoes by her side, with which she has made her way hither across the deep snow. She speaks but little, yet her keen and watchful glances show that she is by no means unobservant of what is going on around her. See! one of the market women has stopped just in front of her, but it is only to have a good look at the glossy wrapper, white as snow, which glistens quite ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... had so well executed the work assigned him in the boarding party's plans, proved himself neither inefficient nor unobservant. He approached me now, with a salute, which ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... we all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment—and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally—than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... you, old chap. Glad you're back," drawled the unobservant Tony. "I say, Myra, dear, aren't you going to offer me a cup of tea? I suppose I may smoke as Lady ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... its tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went to bed, and here was his cigarette-end on the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... The unobservant visitor wondered how Hugo made it pay. The observant visitor did not fail to note that there were more than a hundred cash-desks in the place, and that all the cashiers had the air of being overworked. Once ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... about to make a sharp retort, but realizing that her good neighbor was half beside herself with anxiety and nervousness, she said nothing. A fact which the unobservant Eddie ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter. He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... unobservant, Since I with man's grief dare to sympathise thus; Why scoff?—fellow-creature I am, fellow-servant Of God, can man fathom God's ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... and a sign too that a man is not self-conscious and self-absorbed. It ought not to be a settled pre-occupation. Nothing is more wearisome than the habitual jester, because that signifies that a man is careless and unobservant of the moods of others. But it is a thing which should be generously and freely mingled with life; and the more sides that a man can see to any situation, the more rich and full his nature is ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sandy hair, and generally wears a mustache, and a little beard on his chin. His eyes are keen, bluish gray in color, and when at rest, have a sleepy look, but he sees every one and every thing around him, although apparently unobservant. He is an admirable horseman, and a good shot. As a leader of a battalion of cavalry, he has no superior in the Rebel ranks. His command of his men is supreme. While they admire his generosity and manliness, sharing with them all the ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... say, 'Bite or don't bite—it's all the same to me.' He was often mistaken for a ghost by children; and for a pollard willow by men, when, on their way home in the dusk, they saw him motionless by some rushy bank, unobservant ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... walk a little faster," said Lawson, who was not so unobservant. He felt vexed that the women should see him with Effie, but now that he was with her he must at least ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... was mute, and poured forth those tears on his account, which my own unhappiness had been unable to extort. In the midst of my tears, I was not unobservant of his motions. These were of a nature to rouse some other sentiment than grief or, at least, to mix with it a portion ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... swollen and her eyes red. She looked anything but lovely. Grant, however, was instantly so moved that he did not notice her homeliness. Also, he was one of those unobservant people who, having once formed an impression of a person, do not revise it except under compulsion; his last observation of Margaret had resulted in an impression of good looks, exceptional charm. He bent upon ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Perhaps it was the sudden, dramatic change from agonising anxiety to peace and security which had been too much for Ellen—yes, that was what was the matter with her, that and the universal excitement about these Avenger murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London. Even Bunting, unobservant as he was, had come to realise that his wife took a morbid interest in these terrible happenings. And it was the more queer of her to do so that at first she refused to discuss them, and said openly that she was utterly uninterested in murder ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... towards her with a puzzled expression. Julius Savine smiled, but his sister-in-law, who had remained silent, but not unobservant, broke in: "You believe in the hereditary transmission of character, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... school—defined woman, "a featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy." Whether she is more featherless than the male can be decided at a trifling expense of time, money, and reason: you have but to go to court. But as for envy and jealousy, I think it is pure, unobservant, antique Cant which has fixed them on the female character distinctively. As a molehill to a mountain is women's jealousy to men's. Agatha may have a host of virtues and graces, and yet her female acquaintance will ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Hastings was satisfied. There was nothing like passion there. Unobservant as he was in most things, he was more clear-sighted in regard to matters of love, than any other affection of the human mind. He had himself loved deeply and intensely, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... was captured. Toussaint listened, ran to the door, and quickly returning, put the blue pack from the shelf into his pocket, leaving in exchange one of his own. He hesitated about altering the position of the cards on the shelf, but Kelley and Loomis were unobservant young men, and the half-breed placed the pink cards on top of his blue ones. The little yellow curtain again hung innocently over the shelves, and Toussaint, pouring himself a drink of whiskey, faced round, and for the first time saw the window that had been behind his back. He was at it ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... wish to obstruct his flight. I thought of it with transport, and once more threw myself upon the bed, and wrapped my averted face in the carpet. He would probably pass this door, unobservant of me, and my muffled face would save me from the agonies connected with the sight ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... toward Ka-ula; Question each breeze, note every rumor, Even the whisper of Malua-kele. Search high and search low, unobservant. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... consciously observes usually observes the obvious, and may rank as a discoverer only among the unobservant. Truth may be looked for, but he who hunts her shall rarely find when the truth he seeks is something not suited for scientific formulae. The real observer is he who does not observe, but is gradually aware that he knows. Sometimes he ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... γε»Ώε
η« γεζ°γεΉ΄εεθθ¦ζ‘ηγε
Άη΅δΉε·²γ being in a low station, slanders his superiors. He hates those who have valour merely, and are unobservant of propriety. He hates those who are forward and determined, and, at the same time, of contracted understanding.' 2. The Master then inquired, 'Ts'ze, have you also your hatreds?' Tsze-kung replied, 'I hate those who pry out matters, and ascribe the knowledge ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... that sacred contagion pass from soul into soul. How much beyond whole Libraries of orthodox Theology is, sometimes, the mute action, the unconscious look of a father, of a mother, who HAD in them "Devoutness, pious Nobleness"! In whom the young soul, not unobservant, though not consciously observing, came at length to recognize it; to read it, in this irrefragable manner: a seed planted thenceforth in the centre of his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... is that, although I had been conscious of something odd, I never thought they were girls. Directly I knew it, I knew that I had been the most unobservant ass alive; for they couldn't possibly ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... memory. A new blank now pervaded his lost faculties, desolate as that which had overwhelmed them in the night when he first stood in the farm-house garden by the young chieftain's grave. He moved onward, unobservant, unthinking, without aim or hope, driven by a mysterious restlessness, forgetting the very presence of Antonina as she followed him, but still mechanically grasping her hand, and dragging her after him ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost was benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head, unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his steering hand against the gee-pole in ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... "What a stupid, unobservant fellow you must be, Joe," said Edgar, "not to be able to recommend a cook or a gardener, and you living, as I may say, in the very midst of such useful personages. Now, Aileen, I can recommend both a cook ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... she said, "how stupid and unobservant I was! I knew nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day. New York simply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was so happy at being among my own people that every one I met ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... said, "are not so unobservant as you seem, but you hate facts. Vera and your friend Lawrence have been in love with one another since their first meeting, and my dear ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... back to school that morning, Laura never knew. At the sight of the great stone building her inner disturbance was such that she was nearly sick. Even the unobservant Marina was forced ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson |
