"Attentiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aspect of a half-empty workroom, chilled her. Miss Summers looked spiteful, Rose Anstey was sniffling with a cold, the others were listless and tired. It was a muggy morning, and all spirits were low. Sally's were lower than any others in the room. She began to work with only half her ordinary attentiveness, broke her cotton, snapped a needle, fidgetted. Her eyelids were hot, and she felt a headache begin to throb faintly in promise of greater effort later in the day. She was restless and wretched, looking at the door which probably hid Gaga. Even the memory of last night's kisses was stale ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... room with Blanche, who there informed him artlessly of Crombie's consideration and attentiveness in restoring the errant shoes. When they came back Littimer insisted upon having the young man remain a little longer and drink a glass of port with him. Before taking his departure, however, Crombie, who felt free ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the compelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary individual or even of the human group—by this perpetual widening, deepening, and unselfing of your attentiveness—you are to enlarge your boundaries and become the citizen of a greater, more joyous, more poignant world, the partaker of a more abundant life. The limits of this enlargement have not yet been discovered. The greatest contemplatives, returning from their ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... would promote, then, is the art, the literature, of which among other things it may be said that it solicits a certain effort from the reader or spectator, who is promised a great expressiveness on the part of the writer, the artist, if he for his part will bring with him a great attentiveness. And how satisfying, how reassuring, how flattering to himself after all, such work really is—the work which deals with one as a scholar, formed, mature and manly. Bravery—andreia or manliness—manliness and ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... with somber attentiveness. The past three days had taught her more of life than had her entire eighteen years. She had lately begun to see what college might mean to the girl who lived up to its traditions. Until the moment of hearing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... good-humouredly and accepted the position. "And none of us grudge you being the head," said Jackson, sagely, "except, maybe, one, and he don't count." Heron made no response; but he wondered for a moment whether the one who grudged him his leadership could possibly be Mackay, whose eyes had a quiet attentiveness to all his doings, which looked almost like criticism. But there was no other fault to be found with Mackay's manner, while against Fenwick's dogged air Percival felt ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy's head to disbelieve any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid nature himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him. Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by the attentiveness and modest bearing ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... under observation for advancement to some executive position has all the basic qualifications of judicial sense, discrimination and attentiveness to details, but you are uncertain whether he has enough imagination to devise new ways and means of doing things and developing business in new fields. If you wish to try a simple but very effective test along this line, you can adopt the following standard psychological ...
— Power of Mental Imagery • Warren Hilton
... fact that he was a stranger, excited strong interest, and all eyes followed the arrow with eager attentiveness. ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... international marriages have been happy. The American wife of a European finds many compensations—for although her husband does not allow her freedom to follow her own whims, and may not even permit her to spend her own money, he gives her a ceaseless attentiveness that never relaxes into the careless indifference of the husbands across ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... more reserved and serious than usual; he had the air of a condescending schoolmaster, permitting himself and those under his authority a discreet and decorous pleasure. Sanin saw no signs in him of any marked attentiveness, of what the French call 'empressement,' in his demeanour to Gemma. It was clear that Herr Klueber considered that it was a matter settled once for all, and that therefore he saw no reason to trouble or excite himself. But his condescension never left him for an instant! Even during a long ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... been too much for me," she murmured, lying down and shutting her eyes; and Edith, disciplined in affection and attentiveness, immediately took off her hat and settled down to getting her mother well ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... enemies of the sun, occupied the air and the land about me; nor will I deny that I felt a rebel, knowing well that men were made to work in happy dawns and to sleep in the night, and everything in that short and sacred darkness multiplied my attentiveness and my illusion. Perhaps the instincts of the sentry, the necessities of guard, come back to us out of the ages unawares during such experiments. At any rate the night oppressed and exalted me. Then I suddenly attributed such exaltation ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... they passed. It was a world into which we can only look, not enter, for none of us have his secret. But part of his secret was in the gift and cultivation of a passionate temperance, an unrelaxing attentiveness to whatever was rarest and most delightful in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... softly, sitting on a low stool, his head bent and arms hanging loose at his sides. Nejdanov stood before him lost in a sort of dreamy attentiveness, and though Markelov had called him a happy man, he neither looked happy nor did he ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... talking abruptly, warned by the sudden attentiveness of the class in front of him. They were all staring; even Guellick, in the fourth row, was almost half awake. Then one of them, taking his silence as an invitation ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... a new celebration of the procession and the spectacles in honor of the god. Numa, in other respects also a wise arranger of religious offices, would seem to have been especially judicious in his direction, with a view to the attentiveness of the people, that, when the magistrates or priests performed any divine worship, a herald should go before, and proclaim with a loud voice, Hoc age, Do this you are about, and so warn them to mind whatever sacred action they were engaged in, and not suffer any business or worldly ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... attentiveness with which he waited for her reply he began to light his motor lamps. Condescension toward Rosie Fay suddenly struck him as offensive, no matter ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... money!—came alone,—full of remorse at deserting him, and worry because of his loneliness, and leaving a pining Bingo behind her. But, to her silent annoyance, as soon as she arrived at Green Hill she encountered a new and tiresome attentiveness from Edith! Edith was inescapably polite. She did not urge upon Eleanor any of those strenuous amusements to which she and Johnny were devoted; she merely gave up the amusements, and, as Johnny expressed it, "stuck to Eleanor"! Eleanor couldn't understand it, and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the young Lady had been once before, in her earlier years, deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much business.—As her carriage towards her mother was ever affectionate in the extreme, it is believed that to the increased attentiveness, which her parents' infirmities called for by day and night, is to be attributed the present insanity of this ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... prettiest touches of all, was, when at the relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: till from one sign of dolor to another, she did, with an alas! I would fain say, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... louder, more slowly, dropping out all unnecessary or unusual words. Very soon he had gained an audience and Peetka had lost one. As the stranger went on describing their experiences the whole room listened with an attentiveness that would have been flattering had it been less strongly dashed with unbelief. From beyond Anvik they had come? Like that—with no dogs? What! From below Koserefsky? Not really? Peetka grunted and shook his head. Did they think the Ingaliks were children? Without dogs that journey was ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... was not without effect. Removing his spectacles, and saying he had about finished his chapter, the old man kindly presented the volume, which was received with thanks equally kind. After reading for some minutes, until his expression merged from attentiveness into seriousness, and from that into a kind of pain, the cosmopolitan slowly laid down the book, and turning to the old man, who thus far had been watching him with benign curiosity, said: "Can you, my aged friend, resolve me ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... again on the yellow floor of the porch, within range of Miss Prudence's vision, but not near enough to disturb her, Marjorie bit the unsharpened end of her pencil and looked long at the puzzling sentences on the foolscap. With the attitude of attentiveness she was not always attentive; Mr. Holmes told her that she lacked concentration and that she could not succeed without it. Marjorie was very anxious to "succeed." She scribbled awhile, making a comma and a dash, a parenthesis, an interrogation ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... forgotten their existence, and she displayed all the rancor of a woman who discovers suddenly a moth hole in the long undisturbed folds of a treasured cashmere shawl. Her precisely timed visits had not the slightest suspicion of attentiveness back of them, and Claire guessed almost at once that they were more in the nature of assaults carried on in the hope that she would meet enough opposition to insure an honorable retreat. Unlike Mrs. Thomas Wynne, Aunt Julia inquired minutely into family matters, ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... no Prince, but there was no best hotel. Old Ventimiglia, in its huddled picturesqueness, must delight any man with eyes in his head; new Ventimiglia must disgust any man with a vacancy under his belt. As we sat in the shabby dining-room of a seventh-rate inn (where the flies set an example of attentiveness the waiters did not follow), pretending to eat macaroni hard as walking-sticks and veal reduced to chiffons, I feared the courage of our employers would fail. They could never, in all their well-ordered American lives, have known anything so abominable as this experience ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... restraint of hasty speech or action. In order to possess these qualities, it is not necessary ever to be obtrusive with our attentions. Sometimes people pain us by thrusting upon us attentions which we do not want. There is a kind of officious attentiveness which is really the expression of a species of vanity. It is true we ought to be observant, and if we see where we can really help others by offering kind acts or services, we ought to be willing to do it. But to young people ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... more of the old order its influence, its importance, than did the house when inhabited, and out of its curl papers. Nothing could speak more of law and order and care, and the "proper" condition of things, and the self-respect of housemaids, the passing effectiveness of sweeps, and the unobtrusive attentiveness of carpenters! But to the child there had been a glorious sense of loneliness and licence as she danced up and down the broad vacant spaces and jumped over the rolls of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward |
