"Abstractedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed less of spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was probably because of the saddening sequel of that late interview—thus now replied: "Colonel John Moredock," repeating the words abstractedly; "that surname recalls reminiscences. Pray," with enlivened air, "was he anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... "My husband?" asked she abstractedly. "It is true, my father sold me to Lord Neville, and as the priest had joined our hands, men called him my husband. But he very well knew that I did not love him, nor did he require my love. He needed a nurse, not a wife. He had given me his name as a father gives his to a daughter; and I was his ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... When Ruey spoke in that way, Philip knew she meant it, and he sighed at the prospect of discordant breakfasts through a series of experiments. A text about "A dinner of herbs" floated through his mind as he walked abstractedly toward ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... settled herself comfortably back in her chair, and, picking up a bit of Angela's toast from the tray, nibbled abstractedly at the crust. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... their chairs eagerly up to the doctor's, but for a minute he did not seem to see them, but sat gazing abstractedly into the fire, then he took a long draw ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... trice. Ocock was one of the busiest of men nowadays—he no longer needed to invent sham clients and fictitious interviews—and he utilised the few odd minutes it took to procure a signature, jot down a note, open a drawer, unlock a tin box to remark abstractedly on the weather and put a polite inquiry: "And your good lady? In the best of health, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... raised her hand abstractedly to adjust the curtain, Paul saw the flash of her betrothal ring. He caught her hand in his and quietly slipped the ring from her finger. She seized the jewel with her free hand and tried to ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... had the cow-pox should be found susceptible of the smallpox, would this invalidate the utility of the practice? For, waiving all other considerations, who will deny that the inoculated smallpox, although abstractedly it may be considered as harmless, does not involve in itself something that in numberless instances proves baneful ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... reached down inconveniently with one hand and turned back the blankets, and laid Lovin Child in his bed and covered him carefully. On his bench beyond the dead line Cash sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and sucked at a pipe gone cold, and stared abstractedly into ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... all means," she answered, with a lift of her head which suggested to Desmond a jerk on the curb-chain. In moving off together they passed close to Garth. But Quita, who was abstractedly opening and closing her fan, did not seem aware of his presence; and he stood looking after them—nonplussed and inwardly blaspheming. He did not hold the key to this new phase of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... last look completed Helen's understanding of the situation, and she listened abstractedly while ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... elsewhere, I would turn my eyes to the very quarter to which theirs are directed. I would reason this matter with the House on the mere policy of the question; and I would undertake to prove that an early dereliction of abuse is the direct interest of government,—of government taken abstractedly from its duties, and considered merely as a system ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to carry a tool than you would think," he went on, gazing abstractedly into Schomberg's wide-open eyes. "Suppose some little difference comes up during a game. Well, you stoop to pick up a dropped card, and when you come up—there you are ready to strike, or with the thing up you sleeve ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Captain Flanagan, his peg-leg crossed and one hand abstractedly polishing the brass ferrule; "Yessir, the question is, what ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... chagrin, his own and the Judge's futile attempts at tact. Mirabelle was tact-proof; you might as well try subtle diplomacy on a locomotive. He took another deep breath, and gazed abstractedly out over the roof-tops. He wished that Henry would write. Henry had his defects, but the house was not quite livable without him. Mr. Starkweather was swept by an emotion which took him wholly by surprise and almost overcame him; he sat up, and began to wonder where he could ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... the remark, abstractedly, in the direction of her neighbour, who only looked at her in a bored and ill-tempered fashion, as befitted one who had gout without arched feet ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... a thousand pound bellows. (He wanders out abstractedly. DANIEL follows him to the door and shouts after him)—Goodbye, Andy. And may you have the best ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... I do not here mean duration—that is, existence in so far as it is conceived abstractedly, and as a certain form of quantity. I am speaking of the very nature of existence, which is assigned to particular things, because they follow in infinite numbers and in infinite ways from the eternal necessity of God's nature (I. xvi.). I am speaking, I repeat, of the very existence of particular ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... heaven-taught ploughman a genius of no ordinary rank, a man who possessed the spirit as well as the fancy of a great poet. He was a poet, and it mattered not whether he had been born a peasant or a peer. 'His poetry, considered abstractedly and without the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to command our feelings and obtain our applause.... The power of genius is not less admirable in tracing the manners, than in painting the passions or in drawing the scenery ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... garden at the back of the house, and walked abstractedly from alley to alley. We know that generally the role of men in the situation in which M. de Camors at this moment was placed is not very easy or very glorious; but the common annoyance of this position was particularly aggravated to him by painful reflections. Not only ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... looked anxiously at her and then at Keith. The young man was staring abstractedly at the window, striving to recall the vision that had appeared there, and he felt, rather than saw, his hostess start and change color when her eyes fell upon the ring he was wearing. He lifted his hand covertly, and turned the trinket around in the light, but he tried in vain ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... which he had them wound up would be utterly impossible. He sat in the cook's arm-chair, leaning a little back, his feet placed upon the fender, and his eyes, as before, immovably, painfully, and abstractedly fixed upon the embers. He was now the centre of a circle, for they were all crowded about him, wrapped up to the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and walked away abstractedly, his eyes still turning in the direction of the box, although he did not even start to go up into ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... darned thing?" he asked fretfully, turning to Luck, who was scowling abstractedly into ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... coffin, the lid not yet nailed down. There, prostrate on the floor, tearless, speechless, was the miserable Catherine; poor Sidney, too young to comprehend all his loss, sobbing at her side; while Philip apart, seated beside the coffin, gazed abstractedly on that cold rigid face which had never known one frown for his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... prince, a beautiful daughter unfortunately in love with a shepherd, and a treacherous minister. Beaumont listened wearily, and, seeing that no mention she could make of her singing would avail her, she commenced to fidget abstractedly with one of her big diamond earrings. In the meanwhile Montgomery's difficulties were increasing. To follow successfully the somewhat intricate story of king, conspirators, and amorous shepherd a sustained effort of attention was necessary, and ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... party,' said Ernest, seating himself, and looking abstractedly round the room. 'Why, Berkeley,' as his eye fell upon the Venetian vase, 'you've positively got some more gew-gaws here. This one's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Everyone seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. Dreamy eyes gazed abstractedly in crystal goblets, as if vainly trying to trace in its crimson depths the outline of an imperial sceptre. At last ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... too," said Lohengrin, a lowering look on his face. "If it doesn't, it will either snow, or hail, or be clear." And he gazed abstractedly ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... it!" The boy's pale face flushed as he spoke; his voice trembled over the last words and he turned his head away, winking his eyes hard. Oscar's own eyes grew round with amazement; it was all he could do to keep from whistling. He listened to his aunt's reproaches in silence, abstractedly sliding up and down a freshly tarred rope; and, at their close, when sentence was pronounced (keeping his high spirits below deck the rest of the day), he merely nodded his head and walked off saying: "All right, Aunt Nellie, that's fair enough, I am sure; ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... was over," she rejoined, abstractedly, "when my hands were drawn as you see them by neuralgia ten years since. But I did not suffer as much then, I believe, as I do now; besides, I was younger, happier, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers—not slaves, but free men. Afterward—years and years afterward—news came from another ship, or else he ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... them at the end of the week a dullness of despair had come upon her. Again she saw herself trapped and helpless, lacking even the spirit to attempt escape. She greeted Jack almost abstractedly, and he observed her throughout the evening with anxiety in his eyes. When it was over he drew her aside for a moment as she ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last, abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... house, but he was never willing to oppose his wife's wishes. At this particular moment, while he talked confidentially with a supernumerary of his office who was destined, later, to play an unconscious part in a political intrigue resulting from the death of La Billardiere, he watched, though half-abstractedly, his wife and ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... "Nonsense!" said the count abstractedly. "Pray did you see anything?" he continued, banteringly, to Lucrezia, and to another attendant who was in the room. They answered that they had not: but Lucrezia was white, and shook convulsively. A wild, frantic sob, burst from the Lady Adelaide. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... features. It is hard to see that the lower part of the face is too delicately refined away towards the chin to be in full and fair proportion with the upper part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend (always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are subject to a slight nervous contraction, when she smiles, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... that functionary's guidance he examined the points of entrance for the different wires used for lighting and communication; looked over the private-bell installations, and ascended again to the corridor, abstractedly dusting his fingers. There he found a group of the building's tenants, among whom he ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... log-cabin exactly here," said Raymonde, munching abstractedly. "It'll face the sunset, and he can sit and watch the glowing west, and hear the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... kept it now; it would choke me if I wore it as that man's wife. Take it back;" and she tendered to him the little charm which she had always worn round her neck since he had given it to her. He took it abstractedly, without thinking what he did, and placed ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... abstractedly, she was counting compresses. She stopped long enough to ask, "Is Hilda ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... tell me!" he murmured, abstractedly, scarcely thinking of what he was saying, and only conscious of the thrill and ecstasy of love which seemed to him the one thing necessary for ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... creations. He spoke kindly to her, but not cordially. To her ear the voice seemed to come from a great distance out of the past; and while she looked upon him, that optical change passed over her vision, which all have experienced after gazing abstractedly on any object for a time: his form grew very small, and receded to an immeasurable distance; till, her imagination mingling with the twilight haze of her senses, she seemed to see him standing far off on a hill, with the bright horizon of sunset for a background ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... of life, but instinctively felt that there must be something beyond phenomenal existence. In political economy Mill relied upon common sense and practice in affairs to make the requisite allowance for general laws founded on human propensities regarded abstractedly. His conviction was, in short, that nothing should be taken for granted because everything might be explained; and he desired to tie men down to accepting no belief, or even feeling, that could not be justified by reason. His System of Logic was, as he has himself ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... began, in calmer tone, "seeing that the reasons were good—more plainly, seeing it was God's will that the Child should not be found—I settled my faith into the keeping of patience, and took to waiting." He raised his eyes, full of holy trust, and broke off abstractedly—"I am waiting now. He lives, keeping well his mighty secret. What though I cannot go to him, or name the hill or the vale of his abiding-place? He lives—it may be as the fruit in blossom, it may be as the fruit just ripening; but ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... because you understand me, but I cannot quite explain," said Mirah, rather abstractedly—still searching for ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... I suppose so," he said; and after an interval, he added abstractedly, "This cannot, however, go on; no, no—it cannot. Sooner or later it must have ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... coulee was left at peace, with scratching hens busy with the feeding of half-feathered chicks, and a rooster that crowed from the corral fence seven times without stopping to take breath. In the big corral a sorrel mare nosed her colt and nibbled abstractedly at the pile of hay in one corner, while the colt wabbled aimlessly up and sniffed curiously and then turned to inspect the rails that felt so queer and hard when he rubbed his nose against them. The sun was warm, and cloud-shadows drifted lazily across ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... into the Park, Lyveden made for a solitary chair and sat himself down in the sun. For a while he remained wrapped in meditation, abstractedly watching the terrier stray to and fro, nosing the adjacent turf with the assiduity of a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... it to be a reproach to his nature, if he does not distinguish himself from these, or, if he does not leave some trace behind him, that he has existed rationally and profitably both to himself and others. But if this be expected of man, considered abstractedly as man, much more will it be expected of him, if he has had the advantages of knowing the doctrines of Christianity, and the sublime example of the great Author of that religion. And the same observation, I apprehend, will hold true with respect to societies of men. For if ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... then seating herself by the window Maggie looked out abstractedly, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing save the sound of the pen, as it wrote down words of love for the gentle Rose. It was not a long epistle; and, as at the close of the Douglas letter he had asked a message from Theo, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... in this gold discovery than I have been willing to admit," he said abstractedly, "and in that case ... Mr. Ford, upon what terms will you consent to go on and whip this ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the fire half abstractedly. "Three of us were named," he said, "to have a conference with General Johnson." He turned to her, his eyes aglow, "I'll never forget that meeting. He asked us to be seated with his usual courtesy. Then ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... arises with respect to cases of throwing goods overboard in a storm: abstractedly no man throws away his property willingly, but with a view to his own and his shipmates' safety any one ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire violence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... struggled bravely to throw off the feelings of surprise and doubt; and so, reassuring his faith again and again by really noble efforts, took from his pocket the lunch his mother had prepared, and ate it hungrily although abstractedly. As he did so, he felt the animal joy in food and rest, and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... be but one man on the premises, a big, benevolent-looking fellow, whose placid face wore an unaccustomed expression of nervous tension. He came stumbling out of the house, and walked abstractedly around the horses. He was making strange motions with his head, strongly indicative of a tendency to strangulation, and ever and anon he clutched his white collar and looked toward the house with an air of ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... make him out," resumed Barker, abstractedly; "he never opens his mouth without saying something so indescribably half-witted that to call him a fool seems the very feeblest attempt at characterisation. But there's another thing about him that's rather funny. Do you know that he has the one collection of ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... for what king will ever call 'Etats again, if he can possibly help it! The new legislators were pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of all men. We are all born so, no doubt, abstractedly; and physically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish a perfect government, and give the same education to all men. But are they so in the present constitution of society, under a bad government, where most have had no ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to his intention," muttered St. John abstractedly. He was thinking deeply, his fine brows ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the doorway looking abstractedly at the beacon, her fingers smoothing her snowy apron the while, she was thinking thus to herself: "Perhaps father is right. If that Prairie Star were only at Vancouver or Winnipeg instead of here, our Val could be something, more than a prairie-rider. He'd have been different, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... off his professional gear, and was undistinguishable from the sombre mass of his fellow citizens. He was out on the open space near the great tent, looking abstractedly at a man blowing with distended cheeks into a lung-testing machine. Rounders stood before him with the respect due to a man who snatches meat ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... on this subject (or on any other) on the pure ground of principle, antiquity and precedent cease to be authority, and hoary-headed error loses its effect. The reasonableness and propriety of things must be examined abstractedly from custom and usage; and, in this point of view, the right which grows into practice to-day is as much a right, and as old in principle and theory, as if it had the customary sanction of a thousand ages. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... himself; and I should not be surprised if by his own eloquence and popularity only he were to carry it; and yet I regret that he has taken the lead in it. The cause is so lovely, that even ambition, abstractedly considered, is too impure to take it under its protection, and not to sully it. It should have been placed in the hands of the most virtuous man in France. This man is the Duc de la Rochefoucauld. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... while trying to concentrate on a way out. Sunshine had shone uninterruptedly on one side of his space suit for as long as five minutes. Despite the insulation inside, that was too long. He turned quickly to expose another part of himself to the sunlight. He knew abstractedly that the metal underfoot would sear bare flesh that touched it. A few yards away, in the shadow, the metal of the hull would be cold enough to freeze hydrogen. But here it was fiercely hot. It would melt solder. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... farmer, a brown face and neck, long restless sinewy hands, perpetually twiddling with a cigar or a gold pencil-case—generally the cigar, or rather the extinct stump of it, which he every now and then sucks abstractedly, in total oblivion as to its condition. His dress would pass muster in towns—well cut, and probably from Bond Street. He affects a frock and high hat one day, and knickerbockers and sun helmet the next. His ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that she was present at table. She talked so little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not strike him as possessing ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... into the next room as before, he failed to notice his favourite picture, and in place of asking to be placed with his back to the light as he had hitherto done, sat with his hands clasped, gazing abstractedly out of the window. That night the Prince of Wales was summoned from Cambridge, it was said by his sister, Princess Alice, who took upon her the responsibility of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Mrs. Pine-Avon again; he could not: and on leaving the house walked abstractedly along the streets till he found himself at his own door. In his room he sat down, and placing his hands behind his head thought ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... two days of gaiety, two days of moroseness—an endless, almost invariable round. The sharp pull-ups, when they occurred, resulted usually in a spurt of work for Anthony, while Gloria, nervous and bored, remained in bed or else chewed abstractedly at her fingers. After a day or so of this, they would make an engagement, and then—Oh, what did it matter? This night, this glow, the cessation of anxiety and the sense that if living was not purposeful it was, at any rate, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... her head abstractedly. "I did see him once, several weeks ago; but I haven't, since. We had quite a talk, then; and, Billy, I've been wanting to speak to you," she hurried on, a little feverishly. "I didn't like to leave, of course, till ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... to hunt; but hitherto hunting had been very little in his thoughts. He had been down to the vicarage once or twice, he had met her once in the lanes, and he had longed for a glimpse of her daily; as yet he had done nothing else. He opened his letters on this particular morning slowly and abstractedly, tossing them into the fire, one after the other, as he read them, and not paying very much ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... trifle aside, to get into a better light, and speaking almost abstractedly. "Oh, yes, to be sure! She is my sister,—the youngest. There are three of them. That flesh tint is one of ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to live with those people?" he said in one place, abstractedly. Carrie heard it, but it made ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... side by side, were drinking noisily from a small depression into which the water oozed slowly. The girl watched them a moment abstractedly, sighed and sat down in the sand, her hands in ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... abstractedly, his brow contracting. "Yes, yes; I know," he interrupted. "The girl in Fourteen. I have discounted her case long ago. She has ceased to interest me.... Dead, of course! Nothing else ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... a heavy sigh, and let his fingers toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge of Celia's penumbra ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... the convalescents. There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose, for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... should you have held your tongue about his death? But if he was dead, and you had a reason for killing him, you might have held your tongue for fear of being accused." Then after a silence he added, abstractedly: "Cyprus is a beautiful place, I believe. Romantic scenery and romantic people. Very intoxicating for ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... went to find the book, while Dr. Leslie, puffing his cigar-smoke very fast, looked up through the cloud abstractedly at a new ornament which had been placed above the mantel shelf since we first knew the room. Old Captain Finch had solaced his weary and painful last years by making a beautiful little model of a ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... almost cries for respite from the unrolling splendours. Yet these scenes, so wonderful from a purely poetical standpoint that no one could wish them away, are (to our humble thinking) nevertheless the artistic error of the poem. Abstractedly, the development of Shelley's idea required that he should show the earthly paradise which was to follow the fall of Zeus. But dramatically with that fall the action ceases, and the drama should have ceased with it. A final ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... most inclement of the three wintry May evenings Lorand was standing alone at his window, and gazing abstractedly at the street through the ice-flower ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Tai-y to her senses. She at length realised that her legs felt rather tired. After lingering about abstractedly for a long while, she quietly returned into the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, supporting herself on Tzu Chan. As soon as they stepped inside the entrance of the court, her gaze was attracted by the confused ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of truth which says, 'Whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely,' also says, 'The soul that sinneth [or lives and dies in sin unpardoned] shall die.' Thus sin is the object of God's hatred, and not the man, abstractedly considered. May we therefore each of us have grace to look to Christ for full and complete salvation, who hath put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, whereby he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified!—Ryland ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in The Spectator, who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Bradwardine possessed an attraction which few men can resist, from the marked interest which she took in everything that affected him. She was too young and too inexperienced to estimate the full force of the constant attention which she paid to him. Her father was too abstractedly immersed in learned and military discussions to observe her partiality, and Flora Mac-Ivor did not alarm her by remonstrance, because she saw in this line of conduct the most probable chance of her friend securing at length ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking at him, and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody disposition. Will Ladislaw was stretched on the rug contemplating the curtain-pole abstractedly, and humming very low the notes of "When first I saw thy face;" while the house spaniel, also stretched out with small choice of room, looked from between his paws at the usurper of the rug with silent ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... while his eyes followed that sweeping green bowl of the sea. "Not far off," he said abstractedly. "Two thousand miles radius—and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a big globular shell two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, I suppose; work out an approximation of ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... consummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello's speech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the fact that Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is, abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of construction in Othello were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before a play-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe, feel grave misgivings about the first half ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... error of falsehood had been charged, has supplied important additions to the evidence which substantiates the truth of Revelation. Against the alleged absurdity of the laws of Moses, again, such works as that of Micholis have disclosed much of that relative wisdom which aims not at the abstractedly best, but the best which a given condition of humanity, a given period of the world's history, and a given purpose could dictate. In pondering such difficulties as still remain in those laws, we may remember the answer of Solon ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... her mind the claims of each are, generally speaking, fairly balanced—and the quotient, after the calculation has been worked out, although correct, is small. Our argument, after all, only goes to prove that women, abstractedly taken, have more principle, more conscience, and better regulated minds than men—which is true if—if they could always go correct as timekeepers; but the more complex the machine, the more difficult it is to keep it in ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... tableaux for the evening, while, with her cheek upon her hand, Cornelia listlessly fingered a diamond necklace which her father had just given her. The blazing jewels slipped through her pale fingers all unnoticed, and she looked up abstractedly when Mr. Graham touched her, and repeated his question for the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... ails you today?" said her mistress, when Eliza had upset the wash-pitcher, knocked down the workstand, and finally was abstractedly offering her mistress a long nightgown in place of the silk dress she had ordered her to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... circumstances may constantly arise which render the use of a manuscript the more advisable course; but I have been considering how the case stands in itself, and attempting to set down what is to be aimed at as best. If religious men once ascertain what is abstractedly desirable, and acquiesce in it with their hearts, they will be in the way to get over many difficulties which otherwise will be insurmountable. For myself, I think it no extravagance to say that a very inferior sermon, delivered without book, answers the purposes for which all sermons are ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... satisfactorily met. But suppose for a moment that we grant (what is not the case) that in the metaphysical disquisitions of the experienced casuist such a distinction might be maintained, how can we expect it to be recognized, and felt, and acted upon by the large body of Christians? Abstractedly considered, such an interpretation in a religious act of daily recurrence by the mass of unlearned believers would, I conceive, appear to reflecting minds most improbable, if not utterly impossible. And as to its actual bona-fide result in practice, a very brief sojourn in countries where ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... any enemies—that sort of man never has, except himself. How can I get hold of the girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to watch Rainham, and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." He stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over the stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was laboriously working a great, empty lighter across the wide, smoke-coloured river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea suggested ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... which must infallibly have produced the medium, I abandoned it when I heard Orellana's account, and found that Nature had already done in Eldorado precisely what I was trying to do. You see," continued the old man abstractedly, "I had put youth, and love, and hope, besides a great many scarce minerals, into the crucible, and they all dissolved slowly, and vanished—in vapor. It was curious, but they left no residuum except a little ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... Raeburn, taking up a Marechal Niel rose from the table and studying it abstractedly. "I've had a sentence of Auerbach's in my head all day, 'The martyrdom of the modern world consists of a long array of thousands of trifling annoyances.' These things are in themselves insignificant, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... sentences which were so good that I resolved we must try harder to prevent interruptions, that he might keep all his writing up to that standard. But while engaged in letter-writing, some point arose, and, forgetting my laudable resolution, I put a question to him. Answering me abstractedly, he went on with his writing. Then I realized how inexcusable it was to intrude my trivialities at such a time. Castigating myself and resolving anew, I wrote on in contrite silence. After a little Mr. Burroughs paused and lifted his head; his expression ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... disgrace, David had worked on at his problem. He had been trying to find a single process to replace the various operations of pounding and maceration to which all flax or cotton or rags, any vegetable fibre, in fact, must be subjected; and as he went to Petit-Claud's office, he abstractedly chewed a bit of nettle stalk that had been steeping in water. On his way home, tolerably satisfied with his interview, he felt a little pellet sticking between his teeth. He laid it on his hand, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... round. So far Mark, although watching the fingers of the opposite player intently, had seen no sign whatever of unfair play. He now redoubled his attention. Cotter won the first game, his adversary the three next. Mark noticed now that after looking at his hand Emerson looked abstractedly, as if meditating before taking the next step; there was no expression in his face, but Mark fancied that his eyes rested for a moment on the man standing next to himself. He looked at his watch and then, as if finding the hour later than he had expected, moved away from his place, and presently ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... sudden and dramatic in appearing and can be made immediate use of, whereas the master is slowly formed, and even then turns out unsatisfactory in many ways. He is apt to be that well-known and inconvenient sort of person who, when he comes in out of the rain to dress for his wedding, abstractedly prepares to retire instead, and then, still more abstractedly, puts his umbrella to bed and stands himself in the corner. All the same, it is no less divine to create a master by slow, laborious methods than to snatch a masterpiece apparently out of nothing-at-all. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... immediately struck by a winsome face at an upper window. "Lud!" he cried laconically, and dismounted, taking several dogs from his hat as he did so, and one from his pocket; for he was devoted to animals, Bloodworthy goes on to say, and often spent days stroking their soft ears abstractedly. Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he inquired of the landlady as to whose was the face he had seen. In a trice the story was told—the King waved his hand imperiously and took a pinch of snuff. "Send her to me," ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Barclay over the Exchange National Bank waiting for the junior member of the firm to come in; the senior member of the firm, who had just brought up an arm load of green hickory and dry hackberry stove wood, was standing beside the box-shaped stove, abstractedly brushing the sawdust and wormwood from his sleeves and coat front. The colonel was whistling and whittling, and the general kept on brushing after the last speck of dust had gone from his shiny coat. He walked to the window and stared into the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... The old man, with increased restlessness, changed his posture several times. Mrs Lupin and the young lady gazed in silence at the counterpane. Mr Pecksniff toyed abstractedly with his eye-glass, and kept his eyes shut, that he might ruminate ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... thrown by his genius into out of the way corners of life never steadily shines in its higher beaten ways; and that beside his pictures of what man is or does, there is no attempt to show, by delineation of an exalted purpose or a great career, what man is able to be or to do. In the charge abstractedly there is truth; but the fair remark upon it is that whatever can be regarded as essential in the want implied by it will be found in other forms in his writings, that the perfect innocence of their laughter and tears has been itself a prodigious blessing, and that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... unconnected; distinct; adrift; straggling; rift, reft[obs3]. [capable of being cut] scissile[Chem], divisible, discerptible[obs3], partible, separable. Adv. separately &c. adj.; one by one, severally, apart; adrift, asunder, in twain; in the abstract, abstractedly. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "Of course," he announced abstractedly, "the pressing problem is food. We've quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters. We've got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered, I think we'd better count on the fishermen. At sunrise we'd better ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... old dean waited in silence until Landers had passed hesitatingly through the door; then followed him out into the hall. A moment, and he returned, standing abstractedly by the lecture table. He picked up his scattered notes absently, shaking the ends even with a painstaking hand; then as carefully scattered them as before. He looked up at the silent, waiting class, and those who were near saw the tears sparkling in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... and, as it were, abstractedly. I heard the voice of one whose mind was fixed on a ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... on the veranda, still gazing abstractedly at the landscape, gave a low and apparently unconscious murmur, as if enraptured with the view. Mr. Windibrook, recalled to an attempt at dignity, took up his hat and handkerchief. "When you have remembered yourself and your position, Miss Trixit," he said loftily, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... artful politician, he had only to appeal to a dominant passion or prejudice, and he was sure of making his fortune. Like a cunning, popular orator, he had only to inflame the passions of the people, and he would pass as a genius and a prophet. Few are so abstractedly and coldly intellectual as not to be mainly governed by their tastes or passions. Even men of strong intellect have frequently strong prejudices, and one has only to make himself master of these, in order to lead those who are infinitely ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a sudden clangour among the bass-notes—the music seemed to be jumbled into confusion, and the ear was stunned by a painful and intolerable dissonance. On looking more intently, he perceived that the composer had let one hand fall abstractedly upon the key-board, while the other executed, by itself, a passage of extraordinary difficulty and involution. Then, for the first time, the thought struck him that the musician was deaf.[17] Alas! the supposition was too true: Beethoven was cursed with the loss of his most precious faculty. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various |
