"Distract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interests, and making mutual concessions and patriotic considerations necessary at all times, yet they were spared the most dangerous of all feelings under which our country has suffered of late; for, amid all the perturbing causes to interfere with and distract their counsels, partisan animosity was at least unknown. There was in that day no such thing as political party in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... and freaks will distract attention, and the clowns will break the rhythm of the whole with their buffooneries—but the solidity of the procession as a whole: the impressiveness of things that pass and pass and pass, and keep on and keep ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... showers. Faith to the witness Jove's praise doth apply; Ceres, I think, no known fault will deny. The goddess saw Iasion on Candian Ide, With strong hand striking wild beasts' bristled hide. She saw, and as her marrow took the flame, Was divers ways distract with love and shame. Love conquered shame, the furrows dry were burned, And corn with least part of itself returned. 30 When well-tossed mattocks did the ground prepare, Being fit-broken with the crooked share, And seeds were equally in large fields cast, The ploughman's hopes ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... while the poem was still in the press. It was written, he says, to divert his mind, "to wring his thoughts from reality to imagination—from selfish regrets to vivid recollections" (Diary, December 5, 1813, Letters, ii. 361), "to distract his dreams from ..." (Diary, November 16) "for the sake of employment" (Letter to Moore, November 30, 1813). He had been staying during part of October and November at Aston Hall, Rotherham, with his friend James Wedderburn Webster, and had fallen ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... distracting the 'Athenaeums,' Robert complains, as they distract other things, but in time you will recover them, I hope. Mr. Leighton has made a beautiful pencil-drawing, highly finished to the last degree, of him;[64] very like, though not on the poetical side, which is beyond ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... O wretched piety, that art so distract In thine owne constancie, and in thy right Must be unrighteous. If I right my friend, I wrong my husband; if his wrong I shunne, 170 The duty of my friend I leave undone. Ill playes on both sides; here and there it riseth; No place, no good, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... been her head-gear on Sundays and important occasions, but to this the old lady positively objected. She was not going on a mere visit of state or ceremony; her visit at Midbranch would require her whole attention, and she did not wish to distract her mind by wondering whether her bonnet was straight on her head or not, and she was so unaccustomed to the feel of it that she would never know if it got turned hind part foremost. She could never be at her ease, nor ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... from Hedgeville he would know her. Everyone knew the girl at Hoovers', whose father and mother had deserted her. Bessie had long been one of the most interesting people in town to the farmers and the villagers, who had little to distract or ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... be together! That very sweet girl, Miss Murray, was so much distressed about her brother to- day,—something was the matter with him—a touch of fever, I believe,—that she begged me to let Fulke dine with them in order to distract Mr. Denzil's mind. Fulke is a dear boy, you know—very consoling in his ways, though he says so little. Then Mr. Courtney volunteered to join them, and there they are. The Chetwynd Lyles are gone to a big dinner at ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... regarding the railroad were being carried on, another matter arose to irritate Mr. McKettrick, and, in some measure, to take the keen edge off his attention. Scattergood usually endeavored to have some matter arise to irritate and distract when he was engaged on a major operation, and it was for this reason he had bought the four strips of ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... its awful port assumes, And in the tempest shake thy crimson plumes, I mark thy lofty mien, thy steady eye, So fall thy foes! with tears of joy I cry. But ne'er may Anarchy, with eyes a-flame, And mien distract, assume thy awful name; Her pale torch sheds afar its hideous glare, And shows the blood-drops in her dabbled hair; 90 The fiends of discord hear her hollow voice, The spirits of the deathful storm rejoice: As when the rising blast with muttering sweep Sounds 'mid the branches of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... dissipate, emit, put forth, shoot forth, disgorge, distract, exude, radiate, throw off, disperse, eject, give up, send ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... lover? Fault have I none save poverty; so, by Allah, I am resolved to remove me from this region and wander over the wild and the word; for my position in this city is a torture and I have no friend nor lover therein to comfort me; wherefore I am determined to distract myself by absence from my native land till I die and take my rest after this shame and tribulation." And he began to improvise and recited ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... apparently indifferent to Larkin's collapse, began to dance a jig behind the bar. A look of scowling reproach instantly appeared on Sonora's face. It was uncalled-for since, far from being heartless and indifferent to the man's misfortunes, the little barkeeper had taken this means to distract the miners' attention ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... emotions obtained yet more powerful dominion; again did remorse distract him, and there were moments of darkness, when his spirit questioned the justice of the Creator. Why was not his crime visited on his own head? Why did the guiltless and unstained fall thus around him, and he remain unharmed? and it needed all the eloquence of Nigel, the pious reasonings of the ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... got with your "Nibelungen"? It will be a great joy to me to grasp your creation through your immediate aid. For heaven's sake, let nothing distract you from this, and continue to weld ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Drama, abhors lengthiness; like the Drama, it must be kept doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... says, because it saves him from hearing a lot of things he doesn't wish to hear. "It is like this," he once said to me: "deafness gives you a needed isolation; reduces your sensitiveness so things do not disturb or distract; allows you to concentrate and focus on a thought until you run ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... your windows, always take care to have them well up, when they are not being used. A little piece slipping down, and flapping with every draught, will distract a patient. ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... of bread, and laxness of principle brought down the old republics, so also ours may fall. Although the outward in this painting, and the classical, is wrought to as fine a point as in any French picture, it is so subordinate to the severity of the thought, that while it pleases it does not distract. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... again to herself in her solitude at Grenoble, that these politicians, at least, owed her divorce, Vaudrey, not knowing what to do after a weary day of troubled rest, mechanically entered the Opera House to distract his ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... planning a new war. He aimed at the final destruction of the Hsiung-nu, so that access to central Asia should no longer be precarious and it should thus be possible to reduce the expense of the military administration of Turkestan. The war would also distract popular attention from the troubles at home. By way of preparation for war, Wang Mang sent a mission to the Hsiung-nu with dishonouring proposals, including changes in the name of the Hsiung-nu and in the title of the shan-yue. The name Hsiung-nu was ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... turned in early, tired out, and scarcely had we rolled ourselves in our blankets when a dismal howl made us "say things," and in half an hour all the dingoes in North Queensland seemed to have gathered around the camp to distract us. The noise they made was something diabolical, coming from both sides of the creek, and from the ranges. In reality there were not more than five or six at the outside, but any one would imagine that there were droves of them. Not liking to discharge our guns on account of C———'s mustering, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... read the Psalms for the day, and one sermon in Clark. Scruples distract me, but at church I had hopes to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... had been taken from her since she had been forbidden to see her mother and sister. The present was dreary, the future nothing but gloom and apprehension, and she had little to distract her attention. She strove hard to fulfil what she knew were duties, her household concerns and the readings she had fixed as tasks; but these over, she did not try to rouse her mind from her cares; nor ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deity more real to the worshiper, to make the latter more sharply conscious of the divine presence, to fix the attention, and so far to further a real communion. On the other hand, it tended to produce a low physical conception of the divine person, and to distract the mind of the worshiper from the ethical side of worship. Its moral effect was dependent on the man's character and thought. When the image was regarded as the symbol of an ethically good Power, it was a reenforcement of pure religious feeling; ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... like the rest.—Here a slight shrug of the shoulders and curl of the lip contradicted her words,—yet, with a tone of rigid determination, she added, that it was also best she should cherish no tastes and form no associations which might distract her imagination and further turn her heart from this virtuous resolution; and therefore must she say farewell, firmly and finally, to the, she doubted not, most worthy gentleman who had done her the honor to entertain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... lady of his love. But however she came back it would be she, the Beloved. He felt exultantly how little, after all, the frame mattered. Last time he had found her, his love had been set in the sunshine and the splendor of the Alpine snows, with nothing to jar, nothing to distract it from itself. And that was good. To-day, it was opening, a sudden and wonderful bloom, in the midst of the murky discomfort of an English November, the droning hum of the machinery of his daily work. And this, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... had had nothing to distract his attention, he might have thought too much about his handsome partner, and then gone home and dreamed about her, which is always dangerous, and waked up thinking of her still, and then begun to be deeply interested in her studies, and so on, through the whole syllogism which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... had engaged a box for the season, and the girls attended nearly every matinee performance. The first few times Patty could scarcely listen to the music for her admiration of the wonderful building, but after she became more accustomed to its glories, it did not so distract her attention from the stage. Mr. and Mrs. Farrington occasionally gave opera parties, and dinner parties, too, but the girls were not allowed to attend these. Although indulgent in many ways, Mrs. Farrington was somewhat strict about the conventions for her ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... islanders was edifying, the costumes worn by these strange converts were such as somewhat to distract the attention of the visitors. A black coat or the waistcoat of an English uniform was the only garment worn by some, whilst others contented themselves with a jacket, a shirt, or a pair of trousers. The most fortunate were wrapped in cloth mantles, and rich and poor ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... most good it is for us and for you to think upon it; so far as our words suit the current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to them; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of what we ought to think and feel, follow your own reflections, and let the words neither offend you nor distract you. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... It would distract us from our purpose to give a full description of the grievances of the Spanish colonies in America. They were justified and it is useless to try to defend Spain. Granting that Spain carried out a wonderful work of civilization in the American continent, and that she is entitled to ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... were both nice girls, accomplished, well-dressed of course, and well enough looking; but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains whom their taste would allow to influence their fate, and they had come home to the occupations they had left, with no hopes and no fears to distract them. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and never mingle with its waters. Not for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than two premises to a conclusion, and in art is intolerant of all void space, entangling its figures in labyrinths of ornament which Maya herself might have devised to distract the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... genius, it is written: 'Almost any worldly state in which a man can be placed is a hinderance to him, if he have other than mere worldly things to do. Poverty, wealth, many duties, or many affairs, distract and confuse him.' One sentence more is all that can be added here; and if it seems to be suggested by an aphorism of Bacon, it is equal to it in pith and penetration:—'Every felicity, as well as wife and children, is a ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... we go into the woods in the spring, our self-consciousness leaves us and we speedily make ourselves at home. We take things for granted, and are not careful about trifles. A great many things are going on, but the multiplicity does not distract us. We do not ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... pierced by her yearning still. Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass, Nor the loved streams that glide along low banks, Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain; Nor other shapes of calves that graze thereby Distract her mind or lighten pain the least— So keen her search for something known and hers. Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on, Unfailingly each to its proper teat, As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... characteristick consists in an increase of the force and fullness."—Ib., p. 71. "The character of this opening fulness and feebler vanish."—Ib., p. 31. "Who, in the fullness of unequalled power, would not believe himself the favourite of heaven?"—Ib., p. 181. "They marr one another, and distract him."—Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 433. "Let a deaf worshipper of antiquity and an English prosodist settle this."—Rush, on the Voice, p. 140. "This phillipic gave rise to my satirical reply in self-defence."— Merchant's Criticisms. "We here saw no inuendoes, no new sophistry, no ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... her had suddenly vanished before the accumulation of adverse facts. Again she collapsed, withdrawn into a sort of silent meditation from which Hortense's affectionate attentions were unable to distract her. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... main branches along trellises to a length of 50 and even 60 feet, so as to give the sap the longest possible distance to travel; and, further, for the purpose of concentrating into the fruit the whole result of the wine, all the buds and little shoots, which would distract therefrom, are carefully taken away. This gives to the vine a very curious look, but it serves well to illustrate how greatly wines differ as to whether they require short or long pruning. It also helps to a better understanding of the two main styles of training the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... it was soon discovered that the change was almost confined to forms of practice, and that the essentials of abuse were likely to be carefully preserved. All these, and other arguments, artfully modified to distract the people, were urged by the new bishops in the Netherlands, and by those whom they employed to arrest the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... piece of paper, and with his pencil commences figuring upon it. He wants to get at the cost of free and slave labour, and the relative advantages of the one over the other. After a deal of multiplying and subtracting, he gives it up in despair. The fine proportions of the youth before him distract his very brain with contemplation. He won't bother another minute; figures are only confusions: so far as using them to compute the relative value of free and slave labour, they are enough to make ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... allowed himself to be persuaded; he was taken to the hospital, and Esther remained at home waiting for the fateful afternoon. Now that the dying man was taken from her she had no work to distract her thought. The unanswerable question—would Chasuble win?—was always before her. She saw the slender greyhound creatures as she had seen them at Epsom, through a sea of heads and hats, and she asked herself if Chasuble was the brown horse that had galloped ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... this is the foundation of all."[76] The senses and the memory, which collect and store up facts, must be assisted; there must be a ministration of the senses and another of the memory. For not only are instances required, but these must be arranged in such a manner as not to distract or confuse the mind, i.e. tables and arrangements of instances must be constructed. In the preliminary collection the greatest care must be taken that the mind be absolutely free from preconceived ideas; nature is only to be conquered by obedience; man must ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... be especially taken care of, that, the body being then in a ferment and disturbed, no cares of the soul, no business about necessary affairs, no labor, should distract and seize it, lest they should corrupt and sour its humors, Nature not having had time enough for settling what has been disturbed. For, sir, all men have not the command of that happy ease and tranquillity which Epicurus's ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments, occasionally, riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... cherished a rather hopeless inclination for Henry; now that he had lost that bold girl, she tremulously assured herself, perhaps it was not quite so hopeless. Laura, too, had an idea that such might possibly be the case, and hoping at least to distract her brother, about whom she was becoming quite anxious, she had Ida over to tea once or twice, and, by various other devices which with a clever woman are matters of course, managed to ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... last month you have fortunately had so much to distract your thoughts that you have not had time to dwell upon your loss. Moreover, you have needed all your strength and your energy for your search for your sister, and right sure am I that your father, who was as sensible as he was wise—and the two things do not always go together—would be far ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... engaged I did all in my power to distract Gwen's attention, as much as possible, from her father's body. Whenever she regarded it, the same intense and set expression overspread her countenance as that which at first had alarmed me. I was glad when Maitland returned from the window and began mixing some of the chemicals I had brought him, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... that the men were all right, but the system all wrong; and that the proper thing was to adopt SULTAN OMAR'S plan, and give the supreme control of the War to a Cabinet of not more than four members, who with no administrative details to distract them might be able to "teach the doubtful battle where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... worthy contemplations of the means to procure it." In 1612 a new edition of the Essays appeared, with additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality. Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his own phrase, "of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... imperfect representations of our actors and affairs, that you suppose our dissensions owing to French intrigues—we want no foreign causes; but in so precarious a letter as this I cannot enter into farther explanations; indeed the French need not be at any trouble to distract ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... three poor helpless infants? If they were a little more grown up, they might be helpful to me and to each other; but at their age how shall I ever rear them without the tenderness of a mother? And to see them pine away before my face, and not know how to help them, will distract me. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... her eyes dilated. Actress that she is, she could control her muscles; but she could not control the beating of the blood in her brain. I felt that she was conscious of this betrayal, under the gaze of the policeman, and she laughed to distract his attention. My heart ached for her. I thought of a meadow-lark manoeuvering to hide the place where her nest lies. Poor, beautiful Maxine! In spite of her pride, her high courage, the veneer of hardness which her experience of the world had given, she was infinitely ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... was then, as it is now, the greatest military position on the Atlantic coast of the United States; and although the two could not communicate by land, they did support each other as naval stations in a war essentially dependent upon maritime power. Philadelphia served no purpose but to divide and distract British enterprise. Absolutely dependent for maintenance upon the sea, the forces in it and in New York could not cooeperate; they could not even unite except by sea. When Clinton relieved Howe as commander-in-chief, though less than a hundred miles away by land, he had to take a voyage ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... northward along the uninteresting streets beyond. At this moment, it occurred to me that Godfrey was behaving singularly as though he were hastening to keep an appointment; but I judged it best not to distract his attention from the street before us, and restrained the question ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... preferable to any public hearing. I never heard Grieg play at a concert, but I am sure that the hour I sat near him in his Bergen home, while he played and his wife sang, gave me a better appreciation of his skill as an interpreter than I could have got in a public hall with an audience to distract his attention. One afternoon I called on Saint-Saens at his hotel after one of his concerts in New York. Talking about it, he sat down at the piano, ran over his Valse Canariote, and said: 'That's the way I ought to have ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... tutor had to spend half his time in chasing her to rescue his hat, a book, an ink-bottle, or some other article which she threatened to destroy; and, sometimes she was so depressed that he had to give up trying to teach her, and just do his best to distract her. In her eighth year she was able to follow the church-service in the prayer-book, and make out the hymns, but that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to trials and vicissitudes and endowed with the same wishes, (for the observation, "there is no sex to soul," is certainly not untrue,) condemned, perhaps, to a succession of arduous though minute duties in which, oftentimes, there is nothing to charm and little to distract, unless she be allowed the exercise of her pen must fall into melancholy and despair, and perish, (to use the language of Mad. de Stael,) "consumed by ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... me know what it is; come, don't distract yourself alone; let me bear a share of your grief, as well as I ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... the last analysis, Melanchthon, by reason of his deviations from Luther, which will be set forth more fully in the following, was the ultimate cause and originator of most of the dissensions which began to distract the Lutheran Church soon after the death of Luther. Andrew Musculus, who assisted in drafting the Formula of Concord, brought out this fact (though in terms too strong) when he characterized Melanchthon as a "philosophical theologian and a patriarch of all ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... was more anxious and doubtful than he had ever been. He hesitated a moment, and then requested that after we took our places the audience should preserve absolute silence, and refrain from even the slightest movement until the feat was over. The merest trifle might distract the attention of the performers and render their eyes and hold unsteady, he said. He left the stage, and the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... top buttons under your vest without anybody noticing that you're going to make a fresh start. This is a form of politeness that is necessary lest you alarm your host. Always do it that way, and in the meantime, if you can think of one, tell a funny story. It serves to distract attention from what you're doing, which is the success of all card tricks, sleight-of-hand performances, and getting a tummy full. Also that is probably the reason why napkins are worn in the lap instead of in the neckband of your collar. Incidentally I see ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... pictures are the thing. This, indeed, is a perfectly ponderable theory. But it may be questioned whether in its ardour it does not go a little far. For it affirms that people are a confounded nuisance at art exhibitions, and should not be permitted to be there, to distract one's attention from the peaceful contemplation of works of art, and to infuriate one by their asinine remarks in the holy presence of beauty. I have heard it declared with very impressive spirit, and reasoned with much force, that only one person, or at most only one person and his ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... and helped him with his work so that he had to think how much stronger she was. She evidently wished to take away from him all rights as master of the house. Sometimes she pretended to be very lively, to distract him and to prevent him from brooding. He had not done anything to carry out his plan, but she did not believe that ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... I must confess that I have but a very confused recollection. Many things conspired to distract my attention. Whether it was that my disappointment at not seeing Berenice indisposed me to be pleased, or whether the chanting was not this day, or at this synagogue, as fine as usual, it certainly did not answer my expectations. However ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... till she finds him, and there the first time he opens his eyes is that sweet, quaint piece of innocence leaning over him. He is shut up with her for ten days or so; she is as graceful as a sylph, and has a tender sort of baby face that's enough to distract a man, and I don't see how he could possibly leave that vessel without being in love with her, unless some other woman had already got hold of his heart. No, even if St. George did not know himself that he cared for her, he ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... ruyne must affryghte you You have not flynte enoughe to arme your soule Agaynst compassyon; & that kylls a souldior. Let me have roame to breathe at lardge my woes And talke alone, least the proceedinge ayre That easeth me beget in you a payne. Leave me, pray leave me: my rude vyolence Will halfe distract your spyrrytts, my sadd speeche Like such a noyse as drownds all other noyse Will so afflyct your thoughts & cares on me That all your care besyde must be neglected. My tyme of patyence ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... flatteries and compliments, this is an agreeable pastime: for you, it is a life-and-death struggle; all is hazarded on the one throw. For it will of course occur to you, that if you are rejected at the first trial, you will never pass current with any one else. A thousand different feelings now distract you. You are jealous of your rivals (for we will assume that there is competition for the post); you are dissatisfied with your own replies; you hope; you fear; you cannot remove your eye from the countenance of your judge. Does he pooh-pooh your efforts? You are a lost man. Was that a smile? ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... there is no such thing as nigger archaeology; for which let us be thankful. Here, at any rate, are no great names to scare us into dishonest admiration. Here is no question of dates and schools to give the lecturer his chance of spoiling our pleasure. Here is nothing to distract our attention from the one thing that matters—aesthetic significance. Here is nigger sculpture: you may like it or dislike it, but at any rate you have no inducement to judge it ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the street, distract and insensate with grief and madness. I found the city seething with sullen unrest—not yet openly hostile to the powers that abode in the Castle of the Wolfsberg—too long cowed and down-trodden for that, but angry with the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... new dreams affright My lab'ring soul! what visions of the night Disturb my quiet, and distract my breast With strange ideas of our Trojan guest! His worth, his actions, and majestic air, A man descended from the gods declare. Fear ever argues a degenerate kind; His birth is well asserted by ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... "In order to distract the country's attention from internal dissensions and the Eastern frontier," [Footnote: Life of Lord Granville, vol. ii., p. 313.] M. Ferry developed that "Colonial policy" of which Sir Charles ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... furnished with copies also, they cannot plead 'surprise,' as in the introduction of new matter, and as plaintiff's counsel relies evidently upon the jury's attention to his opening, he would not be the first person to distract it." After a pause he added, addressing the Colonel, who remained standing, "The Court is ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... made in the afternoon at the Museum, were still spread open before him, and he suddenly closed the book, fearful of anything calculated to distract him from the mood of tense resistance. His life, and more than his life, depended upon his successfully opposing the insidious forces which beyond doubt, invisibly ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... she sat for a moment, endeavoring to abstract her thoughts from all outward objects, so as the more readily to determine what course to adopt. But for a while it seemed as though it was impossible for her to fix her mind aright. Each instant some intruding trifle interfered to distract her attention from the only great object which now should claim it. A long-forgotten incident of the past would come into her mind—or perhaps some queer conceit which at the time had caused laughter. She did not laugh now, but none the less would she find ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mind back with some effort from the consideration of the greater issues to fix it on the smaller ones. In its way Drusilla's interference was a welcome diversion, since the point she raised was important enough to distract Olivia's attention from decisions too ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... neither fame nor profit was the immediate result; and the author of the Ode on the Passions had little reason to expect, from its reception by the public, that it was destined to live as long as the passions themselves animate or distract the world. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... lips, the very residuum of all that is repulsive in the greatest city of the world. The noise of the traffic and the constant pressure from the crowds passing, their incessant and disjointed talk, could not distract me. One moment at least I had, a moment when I thought of the push of the great sea forcing the water to flow under the feet of these crowds, the distant sea strong and splendid; when I saw the sunlight gleam on the tidal wavelets; when I felt the wind, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... with a hacking cough, or what I may properly denominate, especially from the result it produced, a 'king cough,' because a king or an ace was invariably its effect. The cough always came on at the most convenient moment to distract the attention of the other players, and was evidently indulged in for the purpose of abstracting their attention from the table and from the manoeuvre he was about to perform. However, I never saw him "slip the card," and I never had cognizance of its execution, but certain it was ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... most inflexible, stern and immovable. The passions which agitate or distract the mind, never alter its expression, nor do the highest ecstacies of which their nature is susceptible, ever relax its rigidity. With the same imperturbability of feature, they encounter death from the hand of an enemy, and receive ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... I felt my presence an indiscretion and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I put it to Mark that clearly I had best leave them in the morning; to which he replied that, on the contrary, if he was to pass the next days in the fidgets my company would distract his attention. The fidgets had already begun for him, poor fellow; and as we sat in his study with our cigars after dinner he wandered to the door whenever he heard the sound of the Doctor's wheels. ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... until bridges were constructed across the Apurimac at the distance of twelve leagues from Cuzco[35], as the enemy had broken down all the bridges over that river, and it was necessary either to construct new ones, or to make a circuit of more than seventy leagues to get to Cuzco. On purpose to distract the enemy, the president caused materials for the construction of bridges to be carried to three different points on the Apurimac; one on the great road of the Incas[36], a second in the valley of Cotabamba, about twelve ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... everything. But to have a friend die within your reach, while you are yet unable to help him, is the saddest of all. All this anxiety Julia suffered without even the blessed privilege of showing it. The pent-up fire consumed her, and she was at times almost distract. Every morning she managed to be on the upper porch when the doctor went by, and from the same watch-tower she studied his face when he ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... politicians with regard to the rebellion. In 1843 the leaders of the Repeal Association stated in one of their manifestoes, as an argument in favour of repeal, that England had resorted to the diabolical expedient of fomenting a rebellion in order to distract the country and give excuse for military violence and so bring about a Union. But the Nationalists of to-day have so completely identified themselves with the rebels of 1798 that within the last few years splendid monuments have been erected in all the towns of Wexford and the adjoining ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... these figures, tangled in some rare knot of Fate, and of Desire: these he painted, not attending much to the bustle of existence that surrounded them, not permitting superfluous elements to mingle with them, and to distract him. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... seemed complete when suddenly Mme. d'Holbach died from a most loathsome and painful disease in the summer of 1754. Holbach was heart-broken and took a trip through the provinces with his friend Grimm, to whom he was much attached, to distract his mind from his grief. He returned in the early winter and the next year (1755) got a special dispensation from the Pope to marry his deceased wife's sister, Mlle. Charlotte-Susanne d'Aine. By her he had ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... interest in your husband's business affairs, and sympathize with the cares and anxieties which beset him. Distract his mind with pleasant or amusing conversation, when you find him nervous and fagged in brain ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a mercy the fiddle is gone!' said Alda. 'I used to hear him playing it somewhere among the out-houses in the spring, and it was enough to distract ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... endless disputes between the religious and secular clergy[10] at this period tended to distract the attention of both from their spiritual work, and to give rise to considerable disorder and discontent. On the one side, men like the Paris professor, John Poilly and Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... explained Mr. Hallowell senior, "there will be nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself every minute you will be imbibing ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... not know her husband's crimes, but thinks he is hiding on account of debt, and is expecting him to fetch her away every moment. I think if we could distract her thoughts from this one subject she might get better; but she is very ill, bodily as well ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... to be alone during this period of discipline when my soul was perforce purged of its troublesome ferments. It was well that my neighbor should have gone where she might distract ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... glared redly to the sky, and were immediately responded to by answering signals, which were observed from the ramparts. The solitary sentinel on St. John's Bastion reported an armed body of men approaching. It was a feint to distract attention from the point where Montgomery was to make ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... for something to distract her aunt's attention, and caught sight of a colored man, dressed in sober gray, who was ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... prevented his capturing an incalculable amount of American property that would otherwise have fallen a sacrifice." "My calculations were," he wrote on another occasion, "even if I did not succeed in destroying the convoy, that leaving the coast as we did would tend to distract the enemy, oblige him to concentrate a considerable portion of his active navy, and at the same time prevent his single cruisers from lying before any of our principal ports, from their not knowing to which, or at what moment, we might return."[423] This was not only a perfectly sound ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... bed and deplored with many a sigh that bitter fact. And if aught had been wanting to increase the weight of fear and anguish on my already over-burdened mind, and to aid in what almost seemed an infernal plot to utterly distract me, I had it in fresh, wild conjectures touching Madonna Paola. Where indeed could she be that Ramiro's men had failed to find her for all that they had scoured that part of the country in which I had left her to wait for my return? ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... hard to be valiant; but the effort exhausted her strength. As the days went on, even Aristide's inexhaustible conversation failed to distract her from brooding. She lost the trick of laughter. In the evenings, when he was most with her, she would sit, either in the shop or in the little room at the back, her blue childish eyes fixed on him wistfully. At ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Sam on his private vendetta with the clock that no ordinary happening would have had the power to distract him. What occurred now was by no means ordinary, and it distracted him like an electric shock. As he sat on the floor, passing a tender hand over the egg-shaped bump which had already begun to manifest itself beneath his ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... I think. I smile. And this too for a time is a diversion—that people no longer distract me. I carelessly restore the world. Let there be people, I say. And, alas, there are. I abdicate. I hand my Godhood ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht |
