"Absent-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... driven a flood of rain into the cabin through the open door, and water twinkled in puddles here and there on the floor's puncheons. They sat down side by side, Father Beret fingering the letter in an absent-minded way. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Belding, coolly, as his hand moved down to the sheath swinging at his hip. "Nell, I'm that absent-minded these days!" ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the visitor. He was a young man, about twenty-seven, decently dressed, well made, slender and dark, with a pale, rather muddy-coloured face and black lustreless eyes. He seemed rather thoughtful and absent-minded, spoke jerkily and ungrammatically, transposing words in rather a strange way, and getting muddled if he attempted a sentence of any length. Liputin was perfectly aware of Stepan Trofimovitch's alarm, and was obviously pleased at it. He sat down ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he seen a pallor so death-like and chilling. The face was more than pale; it was white. Kimberlin's observing faculty had been sharpened by the absinthe, and, after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort two or three times to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might be due to the recent removal of a full beard. Besides the pallor, there were ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... just after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But women were curious creatures, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... he said, sharply, "you are devilish absent-minded. It is a bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your mind. And having nothing on its own mind—or no mind to have anything on—it hates you for your airs ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... dollars at all, but three hundred thousand dollars," says he. "I forgot. Go ask your president if he'll please let me open a account, especial since I bought four thousand shares in this bank the other day when I was absent-minded—my banker out in Cheyenne told me to do it. You can see why I come in, then—I wanted to see how the hands in this business was carrying it on, me being a stockholder. Now run along, son," says he, "and bring the president out here, because ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... won't take a minute to get there. Are you listening? On The Green at five o'clock. Come towards me as soon as you see me and at once we'll walk together towards the avenue. Wait till six, and if I don't come, will you still hold yourself in readiness at home? Don't forget. Don't be absent-minded and forget what you are there for, and even if there's a barrel-organ playing dreadful tunes, you'll wait ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... hardly been so spoilt before—not even by some good ladies in England—as he was during these eventful weeks at Durban. The letters and messages sent home were in many cases of a most touching and tender character, and once more Tommy Atkins proved himself to be anything but an 'Absent-minded Beggar.' ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... this attempt was a failure. If Edgar made any poetry while in the water he did not mention it; but he was absent-minded and unsociable all the way to the river and back—sky-gazing for curious cloud-forms, listening for bird-notes and hunting wild-flowers, and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... all,' and turned her back on me. I then proffered Elizabeth a similar greeting and said, 'Surely, Elizabeth, you haven't forgotten me!' Elizabeth is really funny. She replied: 'So sorry! I've always been absent-minded!' She looked at me steadily with such a cool mirth in her eyes—she has nice eyes, too—and I must have had mirth in mine, also, because I remember that at precisely that minute I thought up a perfectly wonderful joke on Elizabeth and Jane and their mother. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... only a few days after this that a letter arrived for Mr. Gascoyne which almost turned the little Parsonage upside down. Gwen could tell from Father's manner that something had happened, he seemed so unusually agitated, so perplexed, and sometimes so absent-minded that he forgot all that was going on around him. Something was wrong, argued Gwen, and as she did not like to question Father himself, she plucked up ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... straight and erect as ever, and moved about the grounds with that same haughty air of perfect supremacy, as of one who was monarch of all he surveyed in the county of Surrey. But Elma could see, for all that, that he was absent-minded and self-contained; he answered all questions in a distant, unthinking way; some inner trouble was undoubtedly consuming him. His eyes were all for the two Warings. They glanced nervously right and left every minute in haste, but returned after each excursion straight to Guy ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... think it's any early mornin' joke to take a wash-up in that there Chinese coffin—why, try her yourself, about midnight." Then he addressed Shoop singly. "If I was you, and you got kind of absent-minded and done likewise, and I seen you, do you think I'd go snitch to the boss? Nix, for it might ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... H. is described as high-tempered, irritable, lacking in physical activity, clumsy, and unsteady. Plays little. Just "stands around." Indifferent to praise or blame, has little sense of duty, plays underhand tricks. Is slow, absent-minded, easily confused, in thought, never shows appreciation or interest. So apathetic that he does not hear commands. Voice droning. Speech poor ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... was constrained and short. The maiden was absent-minded, and though she would have entered into it with heart and soul, she found herself unable to bend her will, and even while confessing, her thoughts were fixed on her lover, whom she knew was impatiently waiting to embrace her as soon as she ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the drives seemed largely left to take care of themselves, the walks were such as the frequenters chose to make over the grass or through the woods; the buildings—the aviary, the conservatory, the dairy, the stables—which formed part of the old pleasance, stood about, as if in an absent-minded indifference to their various roles. The weather had grown a little more wintry, or, at least, autumnal, as the season advanced toward spring, and one day at the end of February, when we were passing a woody hollow, the fallen leaves stirred crisply with a sound ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... fell. Even she had heard—vaguely in her studio—of the scandal of Judge Boughton, and she wondered how she had been so absent-minded as to invite a member of his family to ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... you did," he admitted. "Can it be possible that I am becoming absent-minded? Henry, I am going to tell you something very flattering. Can you believe it? It is largely on your account that I consented to revisit ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... when attacked, he hesitates, stares in an absent-minded manner, and then completes his interrupted sentence, unaware that he has acted strangely. Whatever act he is engaged in is interrupted for a second or two, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... by the little table, gazing intently on the picture. Her great eyes seemed to devour it, and yet there was something absent-minded, speculative, in her steady look. She did not speak until Esther played the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... up and spent it, having probably just discovered that it was a fallacy. It was in the days of the younger Pitt, however, that it came out in full bloom. After it had been for several years in operation, a retired and absent-minded mathematical student, Robert Hamilton, shewed its falsity in a book printed in 1813. The exposure was conclusive, and no one since that time has ventured to support ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... into the fire in an absent-minded state; but Jennie's words had started a new idea. Was that it? Was that the whole matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was cross? How ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... his chair and began walking up and down the small room, stopping now and then to inspect a bureau drawer or to readjust one of the curtains shading the panes of glass. In the same absent-minded way he drew out one of the trunks, unlocked it, paused now and then with some garment in his hand only to awake again to consciousness and resume his task, pushing the trunk back at last under the bed and continuing his walk about the narrow room, always ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I can't call him Mr. Braddock, or Professor Braddock, when I live with him, so 'father' is the sole mode of address left to me. And after all," she added, taking her lover's arm, "I like the Professor; he is very kind and good, although extremely absent-minded. And I am glad he has consented, for he worried me a lot to marry Sir Frank Random. I am glad ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... well as he was able. It seemed to him that the first steps to everything in life, according to his mother, were dusting and dishwashing. His face was downcast and he put the dishes on the table in an absent-minded way. ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... because the two floors looked exactly alike to the virginal Western eye. The original point of my own story was that the man to be entrapped walked into his own house after all, in spite of it being differently painted and numbered, simply because he was absent-minded and used to taking a certain number of mechanical steps. This would not work in the hotel; because a lift has no habits. It is typical of the real tameness of machinery, that even when we talk of a man turning mechanically we only talk metaphorically; ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... reaching for it to replace Chopin; but I snatched it up before he could get it. Like most truly great men he is a little absent-minded, and he didn't seem to notice anything, but just held out his hand in farewell. But when my Professor shakes hands it means more than that; it means benediction, recognition, salutation—lots of things; for it is rumoured at the Academy that he never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... hesitating and wavering disappeared of themselves. Fire gleamed in his eyes, and occasionally the boldest and most daring ideas flitted through his mind. Why not, for instance, have marten fur on the collar? The thought of this almost made him absent-minded. Once, in copying a letter, he nearly made a mistake, so that he exclaimed almost aloud, "Ugh!" and crossed himself. Once, in the course of every month, he had a conference with Petrovich on the subject of the cloak, where it would ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... spending a couple of days in their company and reviving old times, but on such occasions they often see him sitting by himself under the shelter of some old remnant of a former wreck, his calm blue eyes fixed in an absent-minded fashion upon the distant level horizon of Old Ocean, and at such times no one ventures to disturb him, for well they know that he is holding silent communion with the spirit of poor little Joe, who went out with the tide, ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... he declared—"that is, if it weren't absurd to think such a thing." Then, more soberly, he explained: "No, my girl, it is you who don't realize. I am carrying big projects in my mind—big, ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great things depend. They no doubt make me seem preoccupied and absent-minded; but it is a wife's part to understand, and make allowances, and not intrude trifles which may throw everything out of gear. Don't think I'm scolding, my girl. I only speak to reassure you and—and help you to comprehend. Of course I know that you wouldn't ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... we miss Gifford," said Miss Deborah, who had gone out into the hall to put on her overshoes. "He was such a useful child." Lois came to help her, for Mr. Denner was far too timid to offer assistance, and the rector too stout, and Mr. Dale too absent-minded. As for Mr. Forsythe, he did not notice how Miss Deborah was occupied, until Lois had joined her; and then his offer was not accepted, for Miss Deborah felt shy about putting out her foot in its ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... to this wickedness, colonel, Mr. Fogg is becoming so absent-minded that he torments my life; he makes me utterly wretched. Four times now has he brought his umbrella to bed with him and scratched me by joggling it around with the sharp points of the ribs toward me. What on earth he means I cannot imagine. He said he thought somehow it was the baby, but that is ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... was no indication of any filial impatience. It was merely to remind her parent that something was still expected of him, before he drifted off again into an absent-minded study of the medical journal clutched between his fists. Olive Keltridge would have been the last person in the world to dissent from the general adoration of her father. He was all in all to her, as she ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... With an absent-minded gesture, Daniel reached out and picked up the paper that was lying nearest him. It had fallen on the face of the doll. He unfolded it and saw, written in his own hand, the music to the "Harzreise im Winter." Under the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... lure his new master into a frolic, the dog fell sober and paced majestically alongside him, once or twice earning an absent-minded pat on the head by thrusting his muzzle into the cup ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... hardly know. Two boys and a girl, I believe. I don't even know their names; haven't seen their father for twenty years. Good fellow, Anthony; a little absent-minded and heedless, but a good fellow always. I was glad to be ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... recent date that a glimpse of Rottingdean has become almost as necessary to the Brighton visitor as the journey to the Dyke. Had the Legend of the Briar Rose never been painted; had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd remained unchronicled and the British soldier escaped the label "Absent-minded Beggar," Rottingdean might still be invaded only occasionally; for it was when, following Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. Rudyard Kipling found the little white village good to make a home in, that its public life began. Although Mr. Kipling ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... answer to the dinner-horn, the plowman came riding slowly home, it was evident from his unwonted seriousness of look and manner that a thought had struck the mind, not a bullet the body of Burlman Reynolds. It was further evident from the absent-minded way in which he fed Cornwallis, throwing him two dozen instead of one dozen ears of corn; and further still, from the absent-minded way in which he fed himself, leaving his bacon untoasted and eating nothing but bonny-clabber ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... see how she'd take it. But as a matter of fact I never could seem to find just the right openin' until, there one night after dinner, as she finishes a new piece she's tryin' over on the piano, I wanders up beside her and starts absent-minded tearin' little bits off a corner of ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... even he found no favour in Mrs. Tiralla's eyes. She finished the dance with him; but just as he, with laboured breath and beating pulse, was about to commence an intimate, low-toned conversation with her, she nodded an absent-minded "Thanks," without listening to what he was saying, and was immediately carried off by Mr. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... captive raised one limb and gave an absent-minded tug to the belt it wore. Shann, noting that gesture, was struck by a wild surmise, leading him to study the prisoner more narrowly. Allowing for the alien structure of bone, the nonhuman skin; this ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... falsehoods,—mainly the consequence of the severity of the parental discipline and the desire to escape the punishments I had to endure when transgressing the sometimes whimsical injunctions laid on me,—morbidly conscientious. I was absent-minded and often forgot my duties, feeling, however, always the sting of remorse for any omission, but, beyond taking apples or nuts for my own eating, I do not think that I ever transgressed a commandment deliberately or knowingly; ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... take hold and understand. All that had happened before his death seemed real and vital to her. But when Jan tried to interest her in plans for the future, the voyage home, the children, the baby that was due so soon, Fay looked at her with tired, lack-lustre eyes and seemed at once to become absent-minded ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... than whom there is no comrade in the Revolution more fearfully misunderstood. Comrade Biedenbach did not betray the Cause. Nor was he executed by the comrades as is commonly supposed. This canard was circulated by the creatures of the Oligarchy. Comrade Biedenbach was absent-minded, forgetful. He was shot by one of our lookouts at the cave-refuge at Carmel, through failure on his part to remember the secret signals. It was all a sad mistake. And that he betrayed his Fighting Group is an absolute lie. No ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... made should be considered finished. The hands should not stray to the hair to re-adjust hair-pins—an absent-minded habit. The nervous toying with ear-rings or brooches, or dress buttons, is another mannerism to be guarded against. The hands should learn the grace of repose. It is a great triumph of nervous control for a woman to hold her hands still when they ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Convention is to be held, it is stated, behind locked doors. Why not add a charming element of adventure to the affair by entrusting some thoroughly absent-minded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... he was limping along, he said to Mrs. Wood: "I am getting more absent-minded every day. Have you ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... them. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley saluted the Boer War in verse of much truculence, but no quality; and when Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley lacked quality one began to inquire into causes. Mr. Kipling's Absent-minded Beggars, Muddied Oafs, Goths and Huns, invited one to consider why he should so often be first-rate when neglecting or giving the lie to his pet political doctrines, and invariably below form when enforcing them. For the rest, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... steamer, the blue hills before us, we passed by the Duke's handsome castle, without dreaming how and why I should stand there at the window this year, an old wig of a Minister before me, who unravelled his views on national polities, while I was thinking, with an occasional absent-minded "Quite so," of our trip of '47, and sought with my eyes the spot on the Mayence bridge whence you, in your little Geneva coat, embarked on the steamer; and then I thought of Geneva. * * * Countess ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... if you do not confide to her your plans Gentleman in a good state of preservation Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men Rapture of obliviousness Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... 'Bad day t' be absent-minded,' whispered Uncle Eb, as he rose and tiptoed to the window and peered through the frosty panes. 'May o' got faint er sumthin'. Ol' hoss brought 'im right here—been ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... bewildered Carmen pushed into the great crowd in the shed, the absent-minded man suddenly remembered that he had left a bundle of Panama hats underneath his bunk. Dropping the girl's hand, the impetuous fellow tore back up the gang plank and dived ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... up, singing as though in absent-minded idleness, and vanished into the house. It would have been difficult to tell whether or not she had heard ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... a trifle absent-minded, maybe, on that point," explained Billy. His gaze happening to wander to the wheel, encountered Captain Jo Pomery's; and Captain Jo, who had ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... it, sir, you must look out and not hit the man behind you and knock the bomb out of your hand. That has happened before to an absent-minded fellow who was about to toss one at the Boches, and it doesn't do to be absent-minded when you ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... during the last few minutes of our stay, the chief's arm was thrown across his little daughter's shoulders as she leaned confidingly against him. While the parting words were being exchanged he was engaged in a somewhat absent-minded but none the less successful, examination of her head. Many of the others were similarly occupied. There was no evidence of their being conscious that there was anything extraordinary in what they were doing, nor any attempt at concealing it. Apparently ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... was not under the influence of brandy he was sleeping from the effects of opium. In three days he was willing to pay anything the apothecary asked, and seemed scarcely conscious of the payments he made. He kept up a show of playing the accustomed game of cards, but he was absent-minded, and was not even angry at his daily losses. The apothecary had more money in his pocket than he had possessed for many a day. As Arnoldo Meschini sank deeper and deeper, the chemist's spirits rose, and he began to assume an air of unwonted prosperity. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... silent in her uncertainty. His expression was grave, almost absent-minded. And again her troubled eyes rested on the disturbing symmetry of feature and figure in all the unconscious grace of repose; and in his immobility there seemed something even of nobility about him which she had ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... was absent-minded, and Mucluc Charley nudged him in the ribs. Marcus O'Brien cleared his throat and ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... came to himself, there crept into his mind a sense that things had been happening while he was away. All the eyes around the table seemed continually to turn either towards Deb, who, still flushed, and bestowing absent-minded smiles upon anybody and anything, was certainly different from her usual stately self; or upon Claud Dalzell, who sat beside her, and seemed to have appropriated some of her lost dignity; or upon Mr Pennycuick, who fumbled oddly with carving knife and gravy spoon, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... delicacies were taken in a somewhat surreptitious way, and the takers generally wore an absent-minded look, as if the purloining was not quite intentional on their part. But they were all good customers of the grocer, and the abstractions were doubtless looked on by him as being in the way of trade; just as the giving ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... physically as when I went away. A mysterious veil had fallen between her wistful spirit and the outer world. Her vision was dimmer and her spirit at times withdrawn, remote. She laughed in response to my jesting, but there was an absent-minded sweetness in her smile, a tremulous quality in ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the Savannah River, and we traveled miles and miles to reach the fishing-ground. We found the water there alive with fish, and anchored where they were thickest; and then the person who was guiding the expedition discovered that he had left the bait on the wharf. He is the most absent-minded man south of the Ohio anyhow. In the old days before Georgia went dry he had to give up carrying a crook-handled umbrella. He would invariably leave it hanging on the rail. So I should have kept the bait in mind myself—but I didn't, being engaged at the time in sun-burning ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... important things. Like time and tide they wait for no man. Somebody might be dead or dying. So summoning all her courage, she cleared her throat. Then she gave a bashful little cough. Betty looked up with an absent-minded stare. She had been so busy polishing a figure of speech to her satisfaction that she had forgotten where she was. For an instant the preoccupied little pucker between her eyebrows smote the timid freshman with dismay. She felt that she had gained her ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... manners may have all the grace without wanting to make such selfish terms for it. She avoids society and lives quite alone, seeing no one but a horrible French sister-in-law. Do let me hear that you've made her patience a little less absent-minded. Make her WANT to forget; make her ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... magar (or Nerbada crocodile) may pop up from the surface, which may here serve as a warning to the young lady who trails her hand in the water—and I have yet to be in a boating-party where the young lady did not trail her hand in the water—that on the Nerbada it is perhaps as well to resign an absent-minded hand to the young officer who sits by her in the boat lest Magar should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... to chatter for some minutes, but Mr. Mix was absent-minded. He had chewed the cud of his own virtue for too long a time, and it had given him a sour stomach. He was thinking that if her gift to him were in money (and from her hints he rather expected it) he might even manage to find, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... gent, he bows as easy and natural as if he was bein' introduced at an afternoon tea party. "Glad to know you," says he, stickin' out his hand, which Pinckney, bein' absent-minded just ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... soon as possible, I placed the foot of the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted in the table drawer in stead of the letter-box, an error to which absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... absent-minded fashion. "That cat of Miss Charity's just walked away with one of those ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... and turned away unwillingly towards the house, full of a sense that something wonderful had happened to him. He was absent-minded, but he stopped to pat a little dog whose attentions he usually ignored, and he picked a creamy-white rose as he crossed the lawn and wondered why it should remind ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to accomplish it? Absent-minded moments were many that week, when, sitting in his office chair, in fancy he was astride the wonderful chestnut sorrel and trying to prevent an anticipated whirl. One such moment, toward the end of the week, occurred in the middle of a conference with Hegan. Hegan, elaborating a new and dazzling legal ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... in the centre, all the tree-animals on branches around him, the deeps drained off at his feet, many monsters visible or intimated, the air alive with wings—finches up to condors. That picture sank deep, Skag, so deep that in absent-minded moments I half expected to find ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... or four men, could hardly have been more unlike. Boileau was blustering, blunt, peremptory, but honest and frank; Racine, of a pleasant and tranquil gaiety, but mischievous and sarcastic; Moliere was naturally considerate, pensive, and melancholy; La Fontaine was often absent-minded, but sometimes exceedingly jovial, delighting with his sallies, his witty naivetes, and his arch simplicity. These meetings, which no doubt had a great influence upon French literature, La Fontaine, in one of his prefaces, thus describes:—"Four friends, whose acquaintance had begun ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... days a number of the cadets noticed that Snopper Duke seemed to be much preoccupied. He paid hardly any attention to what his pupils were doing and was so absent-minded that often he answered the simplest questions in the ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... Billy was hardly out of sight when along came Bobby Coon. Bobby Coon was absent-minded, or else he was so sleepy that he didn't know what he was doing, for Bobby Coon had been out all night. Anyway, when he reached Unc' Billy Possum's hollow tree, he began to climb up it just as if it were his own. He looked in at Unc' Billy's door. There was the most comfortable bed that he ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and then forget I ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... to Europe on a matter of business. This was the first of January. The fact that the weather suddenly turned cold to the extent of thirty degrees below zero did not seem to attract his attention. He was absent-minded on that question! When it came to going out to hire an expressman to haul his effects to a storehouse he found no one would venture out with his horse until the thermometer should rise, and his astonishment knew no bounds! ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... Miss Cornelia Hatch (familiarly known as Colney Hatch, in remembrance of the famous English Insane Asylum), was not actually mad, though many of the scholars thought her so. She was a special student of natural history, botany, and zoology; she was absent-minded and forgetful to the last degree. When she came into class, she often had to be brought there, some good-natured classmate dragging her away by main force from her private experiments. If she did remember to come of her ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... the sofa with the broken spring—and promptly forgot his existence. But her indifference was not reciprocated; the man was painfully aware of her presence, and after endeavouring to carry on the conversation with Isabel, grew absent-minded and incoherent, and presently, as if he could not help himself, got up and, edging to the sofa nervously, sat ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... overlook that particular hiding-place, the one just under our eyes, within reach of our hands! How could one imagine that a thief would leave sixty thousand francs in an open cardboard box, in which he places his hat when he comes in, with an absent-minded air? That's just the one place we don't look in.... ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... that alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he beheld a pallor so chilling, so death-like. The features were more than pale. They were ghastly as sunless frost. Carringer's powers of observation had been sharpened by the absinthe, and after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort on several occasions to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might be due to the recent shaving and removal of a full beard. The eyes were black, and his lower lip was purple. The hands ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... perfect," she assured him. "That's because they never go into details. They're not so vulgar as to come right out and TELL that you've been in jail for stealing chickens. They just look absent-minded and say in a low voice, 'Oh, very; but I scarcely think you'd like her particularly'; and then begin to talk of ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... absently. "Always doing that. Confusing them...." He dropped the tray where it belonged, shoved his hands into the chef's cleaning recess and waved them around, then came back, still looking absent-minded, and stopped before Trigger's chair. He studied ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... moral ruin had been brought about by a few lines of praise from Pierre Loti, the touching appreciations of prison life by Penitence Murray, and the voluble intellectuality of Thapoulos, Jennings and Smith the sculptor, Miss Van Tuyn began to feel absent-minded. Her power of attraction was quite evidently being seriously challenged. She was now certain—how could she not be—that Craven had not merely gone to Number 18A, but ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... time they reached the ranch house, Bet's eyes were glowing in an absent-minded way and she passed Ma Patten in the ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... was an absent-minded man, as any man engaged in thought on very great subjects, whether of science, jurisprudence, or politics, has the right to be. Garfield asked him whether it was true that, on one occasion, when preparing an argument, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... I fancy," I said, standing the boot on the bar counter, but keeping my hand on it in an absent-minded kind of way. Presently I yawned and stretched myself, and said in ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... guest remarked upon the distrait and absent-minded appearance of the three Ministers, and deduced from the circumstance a ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... answered, and told all that had happened, and ever and again broke out into rejoicing over their reunion. Who would have thought, to see them there, that any thing could be wanting to the perfect happiness of these four people? But Rico knew another tale. In the midst of all the merriment, he became absent-minded, and fell into one of his old dreamy moods. It did not last as long as formerly, however. He must have reached a satisfactory conclusion pretty soon; for suddenly his reverie was over, and he said these words, with the utmost decision, "Stineli must be my wife this very moment, ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... this discourse in an absent-minded way, for she was not at all interested as to what some strange lawyer in Nogales might think of ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... The absent-minded young missionary, with Fanny jammed between his ankles, and looking out miserably upon the world, and two ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... unicorn, so beautiful and so bright; and so much larger and handsomer than the one she had on. Hsiang-yn put out her arm and, taking the gem in the palm of her hand, she fell into a silent reverie and uttered not a word. She was quite absent-minded when suddenly Pao-y appeared ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a gust of wind through the trees, which set them creaking and crackling with vague apprehension, for the wind is always the mischief maker—the tattler—the brawler who starts the trouble—and the peaceful, slumbering absent-minded prairie fire, nibbling away at a few dead roots and grass, had been too much for it. Here was a perfectly good chance to make trouble ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... office and the waiters' quarters. By the time he had come under the eye of the office clerk and the waiters he had become another man in every inch of his body, in every instinctive gesture. He strolled among the servants with the absent-minded insolence which they have all seen in their patrons. It was no new thing to them that a swell from the dinner party should pace all parts of the house like an animal at the Zoo; they know that nothing marks the Smart Set more than a habit of walking where one chooses. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... table, and the table well filled with members, for the honorary secretary's harmless foible was known and admitted. The table and the chairs, the scraping of the chair-legs on the bare floor, the agenda papers and the ornamentation thereof by absent-minded pens, were the same as in the committee's youth. But the personnel of the committee had greatly changed, and it was enlarged—as its scope had been enlarged. The two Lechford hospitals behind the French lines were now only a part of the committee's ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... but it had no meaning to him; and I left him to his Rose, almost wishing that something would happen to him soon to shake him up, even if, shaking him up, it shook off a few of the purple blossoms that he thought so necessary to the tree of life. Thinking of him I almost talk like him in his absent-minded moments. ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... thought of Molly throbbing like a fever in his brain, it was still possible to grind his grist and to subtract carefully the eighth part as a toll—while Judy, hushed in day dreams, went on making butter in a habit of absent-minded tranquillity. Life seldom deals in cataclysmic situations—at least on the surface. Living side by side in a married intimacy for months, Abel and Judy were still strangers to each other. Their bodies touched while their souls were crucified at ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... dwarfed by the suggestion) Lamb's "Convalescent" and other similar work. "Jack Abbott's Breakfast," which is, or was, exceedingly popular with Hunt's admirers, is an account of the misfortunes of a luckless young man who goes to breakfast with an absent-minded pedagogue, and, being turned away empty, orders successive refreshments at different coffee-houses, each of which proves a feast of Tantalus. The idea is not bad; but the carrying out suits the stage better than the study, and is certainly far below such ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... corresponded. Besides, she had never yet told me that she loved me. Far from it, she had often boasted that she knew other little boys whom she preferred to myself, that I was a good companion, with whom she was always willing to play, although I was too absent-minded, not attentive enough to the game. Moreover, she had often shewn signs of apparent coldness towards me, which might have shaken my faith that I was for her a creature different from the rest, had that ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... heed neither heat nor cold." And again: "may the clouds tower on high, may night come on, may the rain fall in torrents, I heed them not. Alas, my heart looks only toward the lover." It is she who is so absent-minded, thinking of him, that her maid suspects her passion; she who, when a royal suitor is suggested to her, exclaims, "'Tis love I ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... necessarily bring him into conflict with his passions and the demands of his blood; the sovereign does it purposely in order that he may learn to control both. The Prince is scarcely listening to the field-marshal when his turn comes; he is absent-minded, for Nathalie, the Princess of Orange, an orphan who has taken refuge at the Brandenburg Court, and whom he secretly loves, is present, and the Electress is leaving with her and the other ladies while his orders ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... with blood. The dyspeptic symptoms when present are followed by diarrhea. The limbs are cramped and rigid, the feet bloated, and the patient becomes melancholy and relinquishes all hope of recovery. As the disease progresses, the patient lacks firmness and is absent-minded. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and during most of the evening Webb had been trying to find him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webb could have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring his toddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent an hour with the governor tonight—at my club. In fact, I supped with him in one of the private dining rooms." We looked up, startled, but the major went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest you to know that every time I see ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... he kept the whole family an hour and a half at the table, telling them in a loud whisper all about the fair, until father said really he would have to take us to the one next year. Afterward he sat out on the porch watching old Peg graze around the yard. I thought he was in one of his absent-minded fits, but when I came out, he called me to him, and, setting his lips to my ear, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Mlle. de Brabender. Her lips were firmly pressed together, and she looked shocked, just as she did sometimes when my godfather told some story that she did not approve at table. My uncle, Felix Faure, was gazing at the floor in an absent-minded way; the notary had a spiteful look in his eyes, my aunt was holding forth in a very excited manner, and M. Meydieu kept shaking ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt |
