"Abstracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Huntley to begin the English Language lesson, for though every one was of course very abstracted, it gave some ostensible occupation. Before the hour was over Miss Bishop sailed into the room. She looked pale and anxious, but spoke with ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... speaker; a butterfly, or the figure in a carpet may engage your attention in preference to him; or if these objects be absent, the simply averting your eye, looking through the window in quest of outward objects, will show that your mind has not been abstracted, and will display to him at least your wish of not attending. He may, however, possibly have lost the habit of watching your eye for approbation; then you may assault his ear: if all other resources ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Babel of discord might have awakened the slumbers of the very dead, and, therefore, was not long ere it dispelled the abstracted reveries of Edith Bellenden. She sent out Jenny to bring her the cause of the tumult which shook the castle to its very basis; but Jenny, once engaged in the bustling tide, found so much to ask and to hear, that she forgot the state of anxious uncertainty ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... noticed that Alfred Blumenthal appeared abstracted, as if continually occupied with grave thoughts. One day, as he stood leaning against the window, gazing on the stars and stripes that floated across the street, he turned suddenly and exclaimed: "It is wrong to ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... published works for certain libraries; but this is a trifling evil compared with the restrictions imposed upon the duration of copyright, which, in respect to works profound in philosophy, or elevated, abstracted, and refined in imagination, is tantamount almost to an exclusion of the author from all pecuniary recompence; and, even where works of imagination and manners are so constituted as to be adapted to immediate demand, as is the case of those of Burns, justly may it be asked, what reason can be assigned ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... eyes abstracted and intent, and a mouth whose essential selfishness and cruelty was unconsciously stressed by the compression of her lips: the woman heard him as he might have been a disembodied voice. Now and again, however, she nodded intently and, when he finished, had a pertinent ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... years of tenderness, cling within their hearts to all the lost privileges of love they must by tradition affect to despise. My prayer for the little lamb that was I presented no aspect of incongruity to my uncle; it left him silent and solemnly abstracted: the man being cast into a heavy muse upon its content, his head fallen over his breast, as was his habit, and his great gray brows drawn down. How still the night—how cold and clear: how unfeeling in this frosty calm and silence, save, afar, where the ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondency of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same; he must therefore content himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... was truthful, and he had but a lame story to tell. Nineteen-and-sixpence had been abstracted from the till. Nobody knew how it had been done, and nobody had the least idea who was the thief. Mrs. Church, who would have given her niece unlimited time to return the money had there been a real, proper, ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... Vayu (wind) to blow, depended upon Brahman, and that it is through Brahman that all the gods and all the senses of man could work. The whole process of Upani@sad thought shows that the magic power of sacrifices as associated with @Rta (unalterable law) was being abstracted from the sacrifices and conceived as the supreme power. There are many stories in the Upani@sads of the search after the nature of this great power the Brahman, which was at first only imperfectly realized. They identified it with the dominating ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... trivial fool, the brainless fop; The staid and sober priest and minister; And she who worshiped at proud fashion's shrine; The mental giant, serious and sad; The thoughtful student and philosopher; And some of intellect diminutive; The man of letters, with abstracted mien, And he whose every thought was on the toil Which made his bare existence possible; The blushing maiden, pure and innocent; The stately grandam, dignified and gray; The matron, with the babe upon her breast; The silly superannuated flirt, Who nursed her ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... Friendship, th' abstracted union of the mind, Which all men seek, but very few can find; Of all the nations in the universe, None can talk on't more, or understand it less; For if it does their property annoy, Their property their friendship will ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... conversation dropped, and James appeared to be abstracted in thought. He said but little about the matter to Benjamin, neither commending nor censuring, until his ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... those gentlemen whose close attention to the interest of the innholder has, perhaps, abstracted them, in some degree, from any regard to the necessities of a soldier, will consent to allow him five pints a-day, I shall contend no longer; for though I cannot agree that it is a sufficient provision, yet, as other ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... officials, while they appear to have been regularly filed and docketed for reference. Indeed, the Minoan methods have already borne the test of having been accepted as evidence in a modern court of law. 'In 1901,' says Dr. Evans, 'I discovered that certain tablets had been abstracted from the excavations, and had shortly afterwards been purchased by the museum at Athens. It further appeared that one of our workmen—a certain Aristides—had left the excavation about the same time for Greece, and had been seen in Athens offering "antikas" for sale under suspicious ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... told himself also that he could not dare to express an opinion on the matter himself without a close inspection of those postmarks,—that a close inspection might probably take two hours, and that the two hours would finally have to be abstracted from the already curtailed period of his nightly slumbers. Then he thought of the state of his tables, and the difficulties as to space. Perhaps that idea was the one strongest in his mind against ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... that. She brought the paper and pencil and went after Blue, while Marthy, sitting up in bed, wrote her note. Billy Louise was eager to start; and I don't think anyone should blame her if she hurried Marthy a little, and if her parting words were few, and her manner slightly abstracted. She knew just how Marthy was feeling—or thought she did; and she was simply wild with ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... empty chest of drawers in vain, but at last, on some shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large sheets of coarse white paper. The shelves were covered with it loosely for the sake of cleanliness. He abstracted one of these sheets, and cut it into squares of the ordinary note-paper size, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that Arthur Benham was there, the O'Haras, and, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... glittering Thames, To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass, deg. deg.95 Have often pass'd thee near Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown; Mark'd thine outlandish deg. garb, thy figure spare, deg.98 Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air— But, when they came from bathing, thou ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... a reputation, when a boy, of effecting my objects by pure dint of teasing. Many is the shilling I have abstracted, in this way, from my mother's purse, who, constantly affirmed that it was sore against her will. Now, it seems to me, that M. C—— may, very easily, have acquired so much command over a credulous ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had appeared on the horizon. Jack had not shared with her his confidences in the business of the ranch. He told her he did not want to worry her with such cares. True, there were times when he was deeply abstracted; but in her presence his moroseness vanished quickly. Carefully as he had tried to hide his secret, she had, with a woman's intuition, seen beneath the surface of things and realized that something was lacking to complete ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... saints. And though the Westminster Confession of Faith continues to be subscribed by intrants into the ministry (the covenants owned by the Reformed Church of Scotland, as a part of her confession, being abstracted from the confession of this present church), yet how little of that system and order of doctrine is now taught? the generality having just as much of Christ, and the doctrines of his cross, in most of their discourses, as is to be found in the writings of Plato, Epictetus and Seneca, and the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... macadamized road. Nor was he beguiled into forgetting the tedium of walking over them, as his companion was, by the fascination of the shells and sea curiosities to be picked up on them. Many a mile have I trotted along beside him or behind him, gathering these treasures, while he strode forward, abstracted, with his gaze fixed towards the long ridge of the horizon. The sands at Rhyl, near which Milton's friend was said to have been lost, were like a rolling prairie; at low tide the white fringe of the surf could scarcely be descried at their outermost verge, yet within ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... that Andrew, who had been absent for some time, and had only returned just in time for supper, looked worried and abstracted, and replied almost at random to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... senses. He eats little and sleeps little, and all he eats is fruit, and when he sleeps, if he sleeps at all, it is in the field on the hard earth like a brute beast. Sometimes he gazes at the sky, at other times he fixes his eyes on the earth in such an abstracted way that he might be taken for a clothed statue, with its drapery stirred by the wind. In short, he shows such signs of a heart crushed by suffering, that all we who know him believe that when to-morrow the fair Quiteria says 'yes,' it will ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... subjects love their king; that a husband loves his wife, and a mother her children, and vice versa; also when it is said, that any one loves his country, his fellow citizens, and his neighbour; in like manner of things abstracted from persons; as when it is said that a man loves this or that. But although the term love is thus universally applied in conversation, still there is scarcely any one that knows what love is: even while meditating on the subject, as he is not then able to form any distinct idea concerning ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of this Charles Vaughan has been abstracted by Mr. W. B. Rye (Genealogist, iii. 33) from the Hereford Will Office. It was made 9th April, 1707, and proved 29th May, 1707. The testator is described as of Skellrog, Llansanffread, and mention is made of his wife Margaret Powell, and of a son William. This ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... to the witchcraft proceedings. They were probably all deposited at the time in the clerk's office of Essex County. A considerable number of them were, from some cause, transferred to the State archives, and have been carefully preserved. Of the residue, a very large proportion have been abstracted from time to time by unauthorized hands, and many, it is feared, destroyed or otherwise lost. Two very valuable parcels have found their way into the libraries of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Essex Institute, where they are faithfully secured. A few others have come to light among ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... known you in the world! You've grown so fa—I mean, you are so well built. I've grown? Nonsense!—and besides, what did you expect me to do in six years?—and moreover, it is abominably rude of you to presume to speak of me in that abstracted and figurative manner—quite as if I were a debt or a taste for drink. It is really only French heels and a pompadour, and, of course, you can't have this dance. It's promised, and I hop, you know, frightfully.... Why, naturally, I haven't forgotten—How ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... little square of window one could see a patch of clear sky, with white clouds crossing it, and a gust of the clean air of morning was blown into our cell. Gib sat looking at it with his eyes abstracted, so that I feared a renewal ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... In emulation of Leander and Don Juan, he swam, I hear, to the opposite shores the other day, or some world-shaking feat of the sort: himself the Hero whom he went to meet: or, as they who pun say, his Hero was a Bet. A pretty little domestic episode occurred this morning. He finds her abstracted in the fire of his caresses: she turns shy and seeks solitude: green jealousy takes hold of him: he lies in wait, and discovers her with his new rival—a veteran edition of the culinary Doctor! Blind to the Doctor's great national services, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... form, with Aristotle, corresponds to the opposition between the element of generality and the element of particularity. Matter is indeterminate; form is determinate. Matter, abstracted from form, in thought, is entirely without predicate and distinction; form is that which enters into the definition of every subject, and without which it could not be defined. Matter is capable of the widest diversity of forms, but is itself without form. Pure form ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... On the contrary, he appeared so preoccupied, so abstracted, that I reproached him with indifference to my troubles. It is not possible that he knew all, while I briefly summed up a portion of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... him to speak, and consequently never exchange ill words with him; for you, Porthos, who carry matters in such a magnificent style, and are a god to your valet, Mousqueton; and for you, Aramis, who, always abstracted by your theological studies, inspire your servant, Bazin, a mild, religious man, with a profound respect; but for me, who am without any settled means and without resources—for me, who am neither a Musketeer nor even a Guardsman, what I am to do ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so kind to me as you have. They've all been—the other sort. I used to think of you a good deal, and I wanted to do some little thing to show you I was really grateful. On the boat I used to notice you because you were so quiet and abstracted. Then you were grandfather's room-mate and gentle and kind to him. You looked different from the others, too; your ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... now turned away the conversation to other subjects; but from his abstracted manner it was evident that Mrs. Hart was still foremost ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that Jim Smith, in appropriating his uncle's wallet, abstracted therefrom a five-dollar bill before concealing ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... master's arm, was talking to him with visible earnestness. And the daughter from the window, and the wife from her work, directed tender anxious eyes towards the still thoughtful form so dear to both. For the last day or two Riccabocca had been peculiarly abstracted, even to gloom. Each felt there was something stirring at his heart—neither as yet ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... me again. They were my own vehement longings for the pleasures of wealth that awoke, though it was in love's name that I now asked for them. In the evenings I grew abstracted and moody, rapt in imaginings of the pleasures I could enjoy if I were rich, and thoughtlessly gave expression to my desires in answer to a tender questioning voice. I must have drawn a painful sigh from her who had devoted herself to my happiness; for she, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... whose substance and theme are thus briefly abstracted is, at this moment, making a noise in the world. It is ascribed by report to two bishops—not jointly, but alternatively—in the sense that, if one did not write the book, the other did. The Bishops of Oxford and St. David's, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the examiner, "if you have anything further to say that bears directly upon the question of those abstracted securities?" ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... was much worried when he learned that Merrick had fallen in with a captain of a tramp vessel who was ready to go on a hunt for the treasure. And he was still more worried when Dick told him of the letters which had been abstracted from his coat pocket by the thieves. Among them was one from Mrs. Stanhope mentioning the treasure hunt and how she would be on hand at Philadelphia to board the steam yacht ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... was too unnatural to last, and he reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction that must come when her youth began again to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful abstracted face he found it hard to keep back some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it was difficult for him to tone down his spirits to the proper pitch of respectful sympathy with her grief. His existence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... had grown dreamy and abstracted. The hand that had pushed back her heavy hair fell on her lap. She looked at it and its shining rings, and Mrs Jefferson's sharp glance followed hers. Was there a plain gold circlet among that glittering array?—was the beautiful stranger wife ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... fallen into the hands of a person, who publishes it for the satisfaction of the public, abstracted from all private regards; which are never to be permitted to come in competition with ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... crown of his slightly bald, V-shaped head, to his feet with the hard click in the heels; and yet that man paid no particular attention to Dolan. It was "Hello, Jake," with a nod, as they passed, maybe only an abstracted stare and a grunt. But at night, as they walked together over the town under the stars or moon, a lonely soul rose out of the tall body and spread over ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed enquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... smiled, as if in pity at her own momentary forgetfulness, discovering by the act a row of teeth that would have shamed the purest ivory; when, replacing the veil, she bowed her face, and rode in silence, like one whose thoughts were abstracted ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... female who walks yonder, wondering, and asking questions, at every thing she sees. The proud Jewess, supported by her husband and father, moves in another direction. She is covered with brocade and flaunting ribbons; but she is abstracted from everything around her, because her eyes are cast downward upon her stomacher, or sideways to obtain a glimpse of what may be called her spangled epaulettes. Her eye is large and dark; her nose is aquiline; her complexion is of an olive brown; her stature ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... which interested Colonel Lowerby so, was again abstracted. Something had brought back that hateful moment to her memory; she could hear Feto, the dancer's shrieks, and see the blood; and she shivered suddenly and clasped ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... painting, the purest of all Tuscan artists. For with him there is no need for making allowances or disentangling essentials. The vivid organic line need not be sought in details nor, so to speak, abstracted: it bounds his figures, forms them quite naturally and simply, and is therefore not thought about apart from them. And the colour, integral as it is, and perfectly harmonious, masses the figures into balanced groups, bossiness and bulk, detail and depth, all unified, co-ordinated, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... On the contrary, It is written (1 Cor. 14:32): "The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." Now this were impossible if the prophet were not in possession of his faculties, but abstracted from his senses. Therefore it would seem that prophetic vision is not accompanied ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the door, where he had left it; but this did not startle him. His thoughts appeared to be still abstracted by the subject which had occupied them since the affray, and he was walking mechanically about the office. He went to the safe as much from the force of habit as for any reason, for he always secured it when he was about ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... about Germans—crude short things not worth repeating—and jerking his thumb towards the intent Fritzing, winked at a detective who was standing near. The detective did not need the wink. His bland, abstracted eyes were already on Fritzing, and he was making rapid mental notes of the goggles, the muffler, the cap pulled down over the ears. Truly it is a great art, that of running ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Yaspard had made one quiet visit to the old ruin by himself, and had found that the things they secreted in the old chimney had disappeared. From a remark of Tammy's, Lowrie had concluded that the "natural" had discovered their hiding-place, and had abstracted the articles in question. It would have been a simple matter to ask the truth and claim the property, but that course was not the one a Viking-boy was at all likely to ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... and care in restoring her balance of mind, the vomiting ceased, and she gained over two stones in weight. Work was found for her in some occupation connected with the War, and she left the Nursing Home to undertake this, bearing with her four pounds which she had abstracted from the purse ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... while the stale odour of tobacco smoke through the other varied smells. At one end of the room was a round table with a faded red cloth, strewn with newspapers, the corners of which had generally been abstracted for the purpose of lighting cigars,—the "Army List," the king's regulations, and the Racing Calendar. At the other end, a large screen, battered at the edges from frequent packings, diverted the course ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... pleasure-grounds, or wander for hours in the halls and galleries of the castle, gazing on the pictures of his ancestors. He ever experienced a strange satisfaction in beholding the portrait of his grandfather. He would sometimes stand abstracted for many minutes before the portrait of Sir Ferdinand in the gallery, painted by Reynolds, before his grandfather left England, and which the child already singularly resembled. But was there any other resemblance between them than form and feature? ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Person envied has been in any Circumstance of Glory and Triumph. At such a time the Mind of the Prosperous Man goes, as it were, abroad, among things without him, and is more exposed to the Malignity. But I shall not dwell upon Speculations so abstracted as this, or repeat the many excellent Things which one might collect out of Authors upon this miserable Affection; but keeping in the road of common Life, consider the Envious Man with relation to these three Heads, His Pains, His ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Amber's room, together with the somewhat curious circumstance that nothing whatever was missing from the personal effects of the Quains, forced him to make an explanation. For his own belongings had been rifled and the bronze box alone abstracted—still preserving its secret. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the interference of the Brooke girl) had overlooked the document. Subsequently the Brooke girl had found and entrusted it to Lanyard. (No matter why!) He on his part had exerted his utmost inventiveness in hiding it away. Nevertheless it had been discovered and abstracted within ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... practised by the fairies against "the human mortals," that of carrying off their children, and breeding them as beings of their race. Unchristened infants were chiefly exposed to this calamity; but adults were also liable to be abstracted from earthly commerce, notwithstanding it was their natural sphere. With respect to the first, it may be easily conceived that the want of the sacred ceremony of introduction into the Christian church rendered ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper walked onward at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps. But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pass. He grows more and more abstracted and detached. One morning Nelly Dean finds him downstairs, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... his nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from all around him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so much affliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his own solitary thoughts—whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards myself, it happened that I was standing close to the edge of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... in which Cardross scarcely joined. The young man was not himself at all—silent, abstracted; and there was an expression in his face which almost frightened his mother, so solemn was it, yet withal so ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... purse. In addition to some small change (and I have a good memory for such things), it had contained one hundred and eighty-five dollars in gold and paper. The purse I found, but its contents, with the exception of the small silver, had been abstracted. I spoke to the cook about it, when I went on deck to take up my duties in the galley, and though I had looked forward to a surly answer, I had not expected the belligerent ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... supposing such minuter rules of military duty beneath his notice, or conceiting himself to be born a general, because he made an indifferent subaltern. The truth was, that the vague and unsatisfactory course of reading which he had pursued, working upon a temper naturally retired and abstracted, had given him that wavering and unsettled habit of mind which is most averse to study and riveted attention. Time, in the mean while, hung heavy on his hands. The gentry of the neighbourhood were disaffected, and showed little ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the most extensive of all.—In spite of the subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely, and although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal; and first, to articles of furniture which could not be easily abstracted, to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of the palaces, chateaux and churches; next, and above all, to real estate, fixtures and buildings. To meet its expenses it put all that up for sale, and whoever wants anything has only to come forward as a buyer, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which contains a detailed table of the bureaucracy of the country. However, we know now from inscriptions that the bureaucracy at the beginning of the Chou period was not much more developed than in late Shang time. The Chou-li gave an ideal picture of a bureaucratic state, probably abstracted from actual conditions in feudal states ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... in respect of speech. O king of Mithila, I am staying in thee without touching thee at all even like a drop of water on a lotus leaf that stays on it without drenching it in the least. If, notwithstanding instructions of Panchasikha of the mendicant order, thy knowledge has become abstracted from the sensual objects to which it relates? Thou hast, it is plain, fallen off from the domestic mode of life but thou hast not yet attained to Emancipation that is so difficult to arrive at. Thou stayest between the two, pretending that thou hast reached the goal of Emancipation. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... glass case has been broken open, and a silver cup and oar, prizes for sports at college, I believe, have been abstracted. Also the money from the till below; and I am sorry to say, young Hornblower is absconded, and suspicion lies heavy on him. They do say the young man staked heavily on that mare of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... amid the darkness, and we joined them as they sat around it. We made ready some hot coffee by way of refreshment; but when some of the party sought to replenish their cups, it was found that Tete Rouge, having disposed of his own share, had privately abstracted the coffee-pot and drank up the rest of the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... reducing agent in the manufacture of the various metals, especially in the metallurgy of iron. Most of the metals are found in nature as oxides, or in forms which can readily be converted into oxides. When these oxides are heated with carbon the oxygen is abstracted, leaving the metal. Retort carbon and coke are used to make electric light carbons and battery plates, while lampblack is used for indelible inks, printer's ink, and black varnishes. Bone black and charcoal have the property of absorbing ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... behold 430 Her seas yet smiling, her once happy vales; Nor can my tongue give utterance to a name Of note belonging to that honoured isle, Philosopher or Bard, Empedocles, [P] Or Archimedes, [Q] pure abstracted soul! 435 That doth not yield a solace to my grief: And, O Theocritus, [R] so far have some Prevailed among the powers of heaven and earth, By their endowments, good or great, that they Have had, as thou reportest, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Bertha, who smiled on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of that light repartee which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our house gave her the balance of their regard and pity. For there were no audible quarrels between us; our alienation, our repulsion from ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... abruptly: he had been rattling on just in the merry way that Russell now most loved to hear, but, as he was talking, he caught the touch of sadness on Russell's face, and saw his long, abstracted, eager ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... being expanded against a piston is made to expand against and to get up velocity in itself. The jet of steam is then made to impinge against vanes or to react against the moving orifice from which it issues, in either of which cases its velocity and energy are more or less completely abstracted and appropriated by the revolving member. The Parsons turbine utilizes a ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... a momentary silence when the Colonel ceased, and then a clearing of the throat and a preliminary movement of the arms gave warning that Mrs. Gradinger was going to speak. The unspoken passage from Racine evidently sat heavily on her chest. Abstracted and overwrought as he was, these symptoms aroused in Sir John a consciousness of impending danger, and he rushed, incontinent, into the breach, before the ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"—and VERY far from having ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... mines of carbon once abstracted from the atmosphere by plants. In these coal-beds are often found fern leaves, toads, whole trees, and in short all forms of organized matter. These all existed as living things before the great floods, and at the breaking away of the barriers of the immense lakes, of which ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... widely shared are essential. Whatever is unique in the situation, since dependent upon the peculiarities of the individual and the coincidence of circumstance, is not available for others; so that unless what is shared is abstracted and fixed by a suitable symbol, practically all the value of the experience may perish in its passing. But abstraction and the use of terms to record what is abstracted put the net value of individual experience at the permanent disposal of mankind. No one can foresee ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... revived in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the brass-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... possible. Thus, the form of all phenomena may exist a priori in the soul as a pure intuition previous to all experience. So we can only speak of space and of extended objects from the standpoint of human reason. But when we have abstracted all the forms perceived by our sensibility, there remains a pure intuition which we call space. Therefore our discussion teaches us the objective validity of space with regard to all that can appear before us externally ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... that, seeing Tommy Dye riding toward him, he had only a grave word of greeting, without any of the merry banter that the adventurer had come to expect. He stopped, however, feeling that Tommy had something to say, but he listened in rather abstracted silence, till Tommy spoke of having been to see the Sisters in order to ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... same abstracted air, his head upturned, "there's a good place for hanging a big lamp, if there is one in the new lot, and there are spots where I can hang twenty or more smaller ones. I will cover the side walls with stuffs and embroideries and put those long Italian ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of principles for rules, and the necessarily co-ordinate practice of leaving abstractions untaught till the mind has been familiarised with the facts from which they are abstracted, has resulted the postponement of some once early studies to a late period. This is exemplified in the abandonment of that intensely stupid custom, the teaching of grammar to children. As M. Marcel says:—"It may without hesitation be affirmed that grammar ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... with emotion. "Shout," cried one of the peasants; "shout, the boy may hear you!" "Alas," answered the father, " he cannot hear; you forget that my child is deaf and dumb!" At that instant, Theodor, who for a brief while had stood apart, abstracted and silent, approached St. Aubyn and grasped his hand. "Shout!" repeated he, with the earnestness of a command; "call your boy by his name!" St Aubyn looked at him with astonishment; then in a clear piercing voice obeyed. "Charlie!" he cried; "Charlie, my boy! where are ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... deliciously unconscious, abstracted, businesslike air. He really left her nothing to do but enjoy his company, while he went ahead and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... in this abstracted manner, until he had manufactured into delicate shavings the whole of his raw materiel, when he very deliberately resumed a position of more ease and security, by resting his chair on two legs instead of one, and putting both his feet on the mantel piece. Then, lighting his cigar, he said in his ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... simply won't qualify it," I said to myself. I didn't admire her, but I liked her, and I had known her so long that I almost felt heartless in sitting down at such an hour to a feast of indifference. I must have seemed abstracted, for the early years of my acquaintance with her came back to me. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down, hut the lady I had taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. I tried my other neighbour, ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... in this Synod were conducted with the highest ability on both sides. Guizot took a part on the side of orthodoxy. The published report will be found abstracted in the British Quarterly, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... hastened to add, "I don't believe that Stephen was fool enough to kill Rivers over that fake North & Cheney, but weren't you producing inferences that hadn't been abstracted from any ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... seen that this discussion of modesty is highly generalized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal mechanism of the process. Hohenemser admits that fear is a form of psychic stasis, and I have sought to show that modesty is a complexus of fears. We may very well accept the conception of psychic stasis at the outset. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... speech, partly because he is not attending to it himself, his thoughts being busy with the approaching crisis of his fortune, and drawn away to the other matters which he has in hand, and partly because in her trance of wonder at what he is relating she seems abstracted and self-withdrawn from the matter of his discourse. His own absent-mindedness on this occasion is aptly and artfully indicated by his broken and disjointed manner of speech. That his tongue and thought are not beating time together appears in that the latter end of his sentences keeps ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... field. She drew more and more into herself, slipped more and more from out the routine life of Drift. She became self-centered, and when her body was not absent, as happened upon most fine days, her mind abstracted itself to extreme limits. She grew shy of fellow-creatures, found no day happy of which a part had not been spent beside a cross, showed a gradual indifference to the services of the church which not long since had attracted ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... took a long time to put. Hilda gazed into the reflection of her own pretty face as if she saw it not. Her brown eyes looked through the mirrored eyes in the glass with an almost abstracted expression. Suddenly a smile flitted ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... had any opportunity of meddling with them. Moreover, Lunison, throwing himself at Eginhard's feet, confessed with many tears what actually took place. It will be remembered that after the body of St. Marcellinus was abstracted from its tomb, Ratleig deposited it in the house of Deusdona, in charge of the latter's brother, Lunison. But Hunus, being very much disappointed that he could not get hold of the body of St. Tiburtius, and afraid to go back to his abbot empty-handed, bribed Lunison ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... trees, and has a music pagoda in its centre. This plaza has an elevation of over six thousand eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. What a queer old city it is, with its steep, narrow, twisted streets! It might be a bit abstracted from Moorish Tangier, or from the narrow thoroughfares of Granada, close by the banks of the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... is also useful. After a few minutes the moth will come out of its dug-out with an abstracted expression on its face, and commit suicide by jumping into the mouth of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... made in her own mind. All the cruel pain, the sullen brooding, the hot anguish, the desolation, the jealousy seemed to surge over her heart and soul like the waves of a deadly sea. If she saw her husband silent and abstracted, she said he was thinking of Madame Vanira; if she saw him laugh and light of heart she said he was pleased because he was going to see Madame Vanira. She had sensible and reasonable grounds for jealousy, but she was ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... not difficult, gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to repeople them with the group once, as we know-five hundred years ago—assembled within them,—Giotto intent upon his work, his wife Ciuta admiring his progress, and Dante, with abstracted eye, alternately conversing with his friend and watching the gambols of the children playing on the grass before the door. It is generally affirmed that Dante, during this visit, inspired Giotto with his taste for allegory, and that the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... abstracted, something had been added: the back of one of the Bank of England notes had been used ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... with the aid of a piece of yellow soap, a bucket of water, and a jack-towel, and then walked down the darkened garden to the house. He paced the paved yard on tiptoe, and peeping through the kitchen-window, saw his father seated alone at the fireside Armstrong looked up with his customary mild, abstracted gaze. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... essentially dramatic, and consequently in so far as the means prevented the due fulfilment of that conception in so far must the Lady necessarily fall short of the adequate realization of her high role. The action is too much abstracted, the characters too allegorical, to satisfy in us the dramatic expectations which they nevertheless call forth; while, on the other hand, they remain too concrete and individual to be adequately rendered by ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... It touched and called up great vanity in his breast, and not till then could he placably confront the look. He tried a course of reading. Every morning he was down in the library, looking old in an arm-chair over his book; an intent abstracted figure. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw his lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and then for that day; lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently heard nothing that I said; took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly did not know, by either sight or hearing, when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the measure of the language, the principal distinction appears to me to consist in this: that Poetry admits of but few words expressive of very abstracted ideas, whereas Prose abounds with them. And as our ideas derived from visible objects are more distinct than those derived from the objects of our other senses, the words expressive of these ideas belonging to vision make up the principal part of poetic language. That is, the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... and for some reason, unknown even to herself, she did not acquaint her parents with the interview. She endeavoured to occupy her mind by busying herself with the little household affairs, but her manner was abstracted, so feigning exhaustion she went to her room, at an earlier hour than usual. She slept, but not that deep, quiet, undisturbed slumber that wraps in oblivion all the senses. She dreamed strange dreams, in which she saw strange faces, but the one face ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... publications, backed by three or four desperate and fatal conversation, during the greater part of the night, had run wild upon the all—engrossing topic of the times. The Baron, who had been unusually silent and abstracted in the earlier portion of the evening, at length seemed to be aroused from his apathy, took a leading part in the discourse, and dwelt upon the benefits, and more especially upon the beauties, of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... when he awoke next morning found that his little friend was not with him. He dressed himself; and then made another discovery, which was, that every farthing of his money had been abstracted from his pockets. Of this unpleasant fact he ventured to complain to one or two boys, who were lying on other beds with their clothes on; they laughed at him, called him a greenhorn, and made use of other language, which at once let ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... 1. Abstracted from all consideration of the profundity of criticism that is displayed, no man can avoid being struck with the humour and pleasantry in which they are conceived, or the elegant and gentlemanlike language in which they are ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... silent and abstracted. During the last ten days of enforced idleness he had considered the subject for hours at a time and from every conceivable angle, with the result that a certain possibility occurred to him and persisted ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... dance to her perfect admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners—and all sorts of men without an idea in their heads have that—while I turn all colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy, and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad at repartee—Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)—sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... composed for the most part of blacks and persons of mixed blood, had previously given other indications of mischievous and dangerous propensities. Early in the same month property was clandestinely abstracted from the depot of the Transit Company and taken to Greytown. The plunderers obtained shelter there and their pursuers were driven back by its people, who not only protected the wrongdoers and shared the plunder, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... and water was made at last, and the guests, having been previously regaled with cold leg of mutton and bread and cheese, soon afterwards took leave; Kate amusing herself, all the way home, with the recollection of her last glimpse of Mr Mortimer Knag deeply abstracted in the shop; and Mrs Nickleby by debating within herself whether the dressmaking firm would ultimately become 'Mantalini, Knag, and Nickleby', or 'Mantalini, Nickleby, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... his shoes out at the heel and the toe, as most men do, more than at the middle. Yet his gait was not altogether awkward, and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along thus, silent and abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as curiosity. His melancholy, in the words of Mr. Herndon, 'dripped from him as he walked.' If, however, he met a friend in the street, and was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am in no mood for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and whose hand abstracted these jewels." ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... manner which indicated that both of them thought they were locking up and making secure that which would destroy their hopes. They seemed under the conviction that the will was in the bureau; and if they had been men otherwise than merely what, as the world goes, are called honest, they might have abstracted the document; for the generous Rachel never even looked at their proceedings, grieved as she was at the death of her father. They were, at ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... several hours. The report of the tragedy quickly spread through the ship, and the three conspirators hurried off to remove the pearl from the dead man's chest before the officers should come to examine it. The cheap lock was easily picked with a bent wire, and the jewel abstracted; but now the question arose as to who should take charge of it. The eagerness to be the actual custodian of the precious bauble, which had been at first displayed, now gave place to equally strong reluctance. But someone had to take charge of it, and after a long and angry discussion Nilsson was ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Sunday both he and the Finn folks were at Berg church, and he secretly abstracted a handful of mould from one of the Finn graves, and put it in his pocket. The same evening, when they came home, he strewed the mould over his father's lines unobserved. And, oddly enough, the very next time his father cast his lines, as many fish were caught as in the good old times. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... talk for a long time in this way, his eyes abstracted from Joseph, fixed on the darkness of the room. While listening to him Joseph had often asked himself if there were a real inspiration behind that lean face, carven like a marble, with prominent nose and fading chin, or if he were a ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... time a slight improvement took place in his situation. His mother, to whom he was indebted for all the happiness of his childhood, opened a day school, and, as it abstracted her from the groveling cares of a butcher's shop, his home was made much more comfortable; and, instead of being confined to his father's business, he was placed in a stocking loom, with the view of bringing him up to the trade of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labor. An animal, whose body is at rest and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep, of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... daytime hiding-places. Many heirlooms are owned by Jerseymen hereabout that were received from Kidd's sailors in exchange for apple-jack and provisions, and two sailor-looking men are alleged to have taken a strong-box out of Money Hill some years ago, from which they abstracted two bags of gold. After that event the hill was dug over with great earnestness, but without other result to the prospectors than ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child's body might be there at the table her spirit was far ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... came Hobbes; with a cry from the sofa, There where he lay, the great Hobbes, contemplative, corpulent, witty; Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrase and fancy; Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing, Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics; Studious; careless of dress; inobservant; by smooth persuasions Lately decoyed into kilt on example of Hope and the Piper, Hope an Antinous mere, Hyperion of calves the Piper..... "'Ah! could they only be taught,' he resumed, 'by a Pugin of ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,—that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,—was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was complete. It was that which made him the true image of Shakespeare's thought, in the glittering halls of Elsinore, on its midnight battlements, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... have begun to accumulate, and to bear a fruit of generalities; his glance sometimes seeming to state, 'I have already thought out the issue of such conditions as these we are experiencing.' At other times he wore an abstracted look: 'I seem to have ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... struck off two imitations of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern allusions, which it was my intent only to lug in from time to time to make 'em popular. Stuart has got these, with an introductory letter; but, not hearing from him, I have ceased from my labours, but I write to him today to get a final answer. I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... from her into the crowd of silver willows beside the brook, she stood looking after him with the abstracted gaze of one who dwells not in the world of objects, but in the exalted realm ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... remains into top-dressing for corn land. The sacred well was also run off into a drain, and the site marked by a modern cattle trough. The burial-ground at Strageath is still in use, but the corner stones of the old church have been brutally abstracted for use in neighbouring buildings. These desecrations ill agree with what is truly stated by my predecessor in the New Statistical Account, that "the inhabitants of Muthill, until very lately (i.e., about 1835), held S. Patrick's name in so high veneration that ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... spirits entered the attics and garrets, announcing their presence by clanking of chains; at last they became so familiar that they invaded the dormitories, where they dragged the sheets off the sisters and abstracted ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the smaller wheels I found in a state of neglect and dilapidation as to its outer case, and thinking it a good opportunity to discover something as to the meaning of the system in general and of "Um mani panee" in particular, I quietly abstracted the inner contents, in full assurance that it would never be missed; that the wheel itself would go round as merrily as ever, and that, as far as the prayers were concerned, there were still sufficient left behind, considering the reduced ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... trivial occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery of his treasure. His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground again, as if he half expected to find in some other waif a hint or corroboration of his imaginings. Thus abstracted, the figure of a young girl on horseback, in the road directly before the bushes he emerged from, appeared to have ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... somewhat abstracted during the ride, just as she had been during the entire trip so far. She was, Malone knew, prying into every mind she could touch. He smiled inwardly when ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... bored with William was when he turned inventor. It came rather as a surprise to us; and when he began to be abstracted, profoundly meditative, almost sullen, with an apparent desire to be alone, we thought at first that it was the onset of hydrophobia. In fact, we looked it up on the back of the ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... but scarcely six feet square, and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch of stone covered with matting, on which lay, at a painful angle, a richly dressed Chinaman. A single glance at his dull, staring, abstracted eyes and half-opened mouth showed me he was in an opium trance. This was not in itself a novel sight, and I was moving away when I was suddenly startled by the appearance of his hands, which were stretched helplessly before him on his body, and at first sight seemed to be in ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte |
