"Inattention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the system. The instruments are costly, measurers have to be specially trained, and even so may make a mistake—an error of two twenty-fifths of an inch will prevent identification—the search among the records may take an hour or more, and, moreover, through carelessness or inattention, the whole data may be wrong. For six years—from 1895 to 1901—this system was in force at Scotland Yard. The maximum number of identifications in any one year was 500. In 1913, by the aid of finger-prints, 10,607 persons ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... the girls soon found that what their father demanded was application, and that inattention displeased him much more than stupidity. His smile, though rare, was one of the sweetest things in the world, and his approbation was delightful, and gave a stimulus to the entire day's doings. Mysie was more than ever in dread of being handed over to the Rotherwoods, though ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years he devoted himself solely to this one object. During those years he lived but to calculate and think, and the most ludicrous stories are told concerning his entire absorption and inattention to ordinary affairs of life. Thus, for instance, when getting up in a morning he would sit on the side of the bed half-dressed, and remain like that till dinner time. Often he would stay at home for days together, eating what was taken to him, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... appealed to Jeanne. Which star would she prefer? Jeanne did not know; she had not been listening. Carlino was greatly annoyed; he seemed to want to reprove her, not so much for her inattention, as for the hidden thoughts which had caused it; and then, fearing to say too much, he sent her away to meditate, to dream, to write the philosophy of smoke and clouds. But when she, not in the least annoyed, was about to leave the room, he called ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... of duration was gone. Awareness drifted in formless inattention until a focal point, a mere nucleus of intellect, captured and held it. The nucleus strengthened, became an impression of identity—not his own identity, nor any that he knew, but that of some Other. From this other presence came insistently the warmth and gentleness ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... Imogen seated herself, before she discovered, by a casual glance over the prospect, and at some distance, a youth, who seemed to advance with hasty steps towards the castle. At first she was tempted to turn away her eye with carelessness and inattention. There was however something in his figure, that led her, by a kind of fascination for which she could not account, to cast upon him a second glance and a third. He drew nearer. He leaped with an active bound over the fence that separated ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... than Cure.—We might mention numerous other diseased conditions which grow out of inattention to the laws of health relating to the sexual organism; but to dwell longer upon this part of the subject would be to depart from the plan of this work, and we must forbear. This whole class of maladies is noted for obstinacy ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... The mind was intensely receptive, when it was receiving at all. But I remember, too, that, when the great judge began to speak, then his mind was (so to speak) streaming out; and he was particularly impatient of inattention or interruption, and particularly non-receptive of anything that might be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... We join up with the laggard inattention of custom. With himself each man brings his rifle, his pouches of cartridges, his water-bottle, and a pouch that contains a lump of bread. Volpatte is still eating, with protruding and palpitating ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... her care, that these bodies will do their part in life, well or ill, as she treats them wisely or foolishly. Here is true missionary work. A thoughtful, intelligent, judicious nurse can show a mother that an adenoid may be responsible for Johnny's inattention, as it causes dullness of hearing, how Mary's fretfulness is caused by too little sleep or by insufficient ventilation of her room at night. She can explain how irregular eating causes the children to be cross and ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... observed her with a shrewd eye. In spite of his inattention of the night before, the interest of Miss Mallory's appearance upon the scene at Tallyn had not been lost upon him, any more than upon other people. The rumor had preceded her arrival that Marsham had been very much "smitten" with her amid the pine woods of Portofino. Marsham's taste was good—emphatically ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are native, and a stimulus possessing one or more of them is a natural attention-stimulus. But the individual also learns what is worth noticing, and what is not, and thus forms habits of attention, as well as habits of inattention. The automobile driver forms the habit of attending to the sound of his motor, the botanist forms the habit of noticing such inconspicuous objects as the lichens on the tree trunks. On the other hand, any one forms the habit of not noticing repeated stimuli that have no importance for him. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... my right, but my duty to tell you of; and it is your duty and your interest to correct them. In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weakness of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and indifference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the orbit is capable of receiving a much larger body than that part of the eye which appears within it when in life, so that were you to proportion your eye to the size the orbit is capable of receiving it would be far too large. Inattention to this has caused the eyes of every specimen in the best cabinets of natural history to be out of all proportion. To prevent this, contract the orbit, by means of a very small delicate needle and thread, at that part of it farthest from the beak. This may be done with such nicety that the stitch ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But to have ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... with pieces of the high-pressure engines, all unfixed, and scattered about in the engine-room and on deck. The boilers were in the small boats, and occupied nearly one half of their length, Mr. Galloway having, through inattention or otherwise, caused them to be made of the same dimensions as the boilers for the great vessels, which, by the by, had been improperly increased from sixteen feet, the length determined on, to twenty-three feet." The inspection ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... talking William Winning, for grinning George Highing, for crying Edward Daring, for swearing Henry Wheeling, for stealing Peter Bitting, for spitting Robert Hocking, for smoking Frederick Mention, for inattention Joseph Footing, for pea-shooting Luke Jones, for throwing stones Matthew Sauter, for squirting water Nicholas Storms, for upsetting forms Reuben Wrens, for spoiling pens Samuel Jinks, for spilling ink Simon McLeod, for laughing aloud Timothy Stacies, for making faces Victor Bloomers, for taking ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the original terms of the capitulation made with him, their infringement in almost every particular, and his own necessitous condition. But Ferdinand was too busily occupied with his own concerns, at this crisis, to give much heed to those of Columbus, who repeatedly complains of the inattention shown to his application. [4] At length, on the approach of a milder season, the admiral, having obtained a dispensation in his favor from the ordinance prohibiting the use of mules, was able by easy journeys to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... speak of his own life. He did not shrink from talking about himself, for he was free from that exacerbated, timid vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips. He talked to her in his restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her shoe, and thinking that the time was bound to come soon when her very inattention would get weary of him. And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping head that made him think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from the foam of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... one very important consideration in connexion with glueing operations that must not at any time be lost sight of—that of atmospheric temperature. Much trouble may be brought about by inattention to this help or obstruction, for it will act both ways according to circumstances. In the glueing of important parts in the construction of pianofortes, the operators are careful to have the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... the Grecian art of desultory equitation (where a single rider governs a plurality of horses by passing from one to another) that the flying contest with difficulty and peril, may challenge an anxiety of interest, may bid defiance to the possibility of inattention, and yet, after all, leave the jaded spectator under a sense of distressing tension given to his faculties. The sympathy is with the difficulties attached to the effort and the display, rather than with any intellectual sense of power and skill genially unfolded under natural excitements. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... in the different galleries; but I have been taught discretion on such occasions by a ridiculous incident which occurred the other day, as absurdly comic as it was unlucky and vexatious. A friend of mine observing an artist at work in the Pitti palace, whom, by his total silence and inattention to all around, she supposed to be a native Italian who did not understand a word of English, went up to him, and peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed with more truth than discretion, "Ah! what a hideous attempt! that will never be like, I'm sure!" "I am very sorry you think so, ma'am," ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... his scholars to such essays, but never made them tasks. I gained some distinction upon these occasions, and the Rector in future took much notice of me; and his judicious mixture of censure and praise went far to counterbalance my habits of indolence and inattention. I saw I was expected to do well, and I was piqued in honor to vindicate my master's favorable opinion. I climbed, therefore, to the first form; and, though I never made a first-rate Latinist, my schoolfellows, and what ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the Big Ape could but have divined the causes that led to my momentary inattention it might have brought ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... 33 into 28 fathoms; where it had again caught. This change of place had not been perceived; and it was difficult, from the circumstance having occurred at the relief of the watch, to discover with whom the culpable inattention lay; but it might have been attended ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... sun. It is manifest that the instruction received under six years of age, would soon be effaced by the incessant toil of subsequent life. The account given in a former connection of the adult school under the charge of Mr. Morrish, at Newfield, shows most clearly the past inattention to education. And yet Mr. M. stated that his school was a fair specimen of the intelligence of the negroes generally. One more evidence in point is the acknowledged ignorance of Mr. Thwaites' teachers. After searching ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... complaint of the don, just then, and that the sting of injustice under which Don Andres squirmed seemed less poignant and vital than the hurt he himself was bearing. He answered him at random; and he might have betrayed his inattention if they had not at that moment ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... carelessly lying on the floor of her room for the first person to notice, thought Ricardo! It seemed as if the girl had gone out of her way to make the weight of evidence against her as heavy as possible. Yet, after all, it was just through inattention to the small details, so insignificant at the red moment of crime, so terribly instructive the next day, that guilt was generally ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... there is in this little world of ours, that is mysterious and beyond our comprehension, and nothing so much so as the want of union in the marriage relation. For there the greatest fondness is often turned to the greatest inattention. But, oh, may Heaven save me from ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... has been slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, and numerous other incidents have occurred in connection with it. The most interesting is the story of the Grecian mother who, with her infant, was on the roof, when, in a moment of inattention, the child crept to the edge, and was balanced on the very verge. To call to it, to touch it, would have insured its destruction; but the mother, without a second's thought, bared her breast, and the child eagerly ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... very kind to her, and she really had nothing to complain of on the score of inattention. Mary, who happened to be the only daughter at home, took her in charge and put her through a steady course of gardens, glasshouses, family pets, and old furniture—for none of which Mittie cared a rap. What she had wanted was a gay young party, plenty of fun and merriment, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... old; the professor was wholly given up to his profession, which he jokingly called his sweetheart; and, though he cut half of his acquaintances in the street through inattention and the shortness of his sight, he had eyes in his head, and upon occasions could use them. He therefore repeated ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... them. The preservation of silence was insisted upon most rigidly, and penances of such a nature were imposed for breaking it, that it was a constant source of uneasiness with me, to know that I might infringe the rules in so many ways, and that inattention might at any moment subject me to something very unpleasant. During the periods of meditation, therefore, and those of lecture, work, and repose, I kept a strict guard upon myself, to escape penances, as well as to ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... long meditated on the subject of the Court of Chancery, in which he will exhibit to the world the whole conduct of Brougham since he has held the Great Seal, his early haste and precipitation, his recent carelessness and delay, his ignorance, inattention, and incompetence for the office he holds. In this he expects to be supported by Wetherell, Knight, and Pemberton, three of the most eminent Chancery lawyers, while Brougham has nobody but Horne (of the profession) to defend him. If this should occur he may thank ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... chinoiseries; he knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac. The Baroness, in her progress through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations. She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about the various objects with a curious mixture of alertness and inattention. If there had been any one to say it to she would have declared that she was positively in love with her host; but she could hardly make this declaration—even in the strictest confidence—to Acton himself. It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... morning with her head full of cuspadores. She missed all her lessons, and got a bad mark for inattention, but the thought of a cuspadore kept her from worrying ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... were on duty; I am glad to have an opportunity of explaining that I never saw you till the moment I left the ball-room, and this lady (pointing to the Duchesse de Montsorel) must be the excuse of my inattention. ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... and down the room, talking; he seemed overjoyed with the chance, and as if he could not forego it for a moment. "Well, sir, I wish that I could say as much! But I have been here forty years, hoff and on. I am born at Quebec"—in his tremulous inattention, Northwick was aware that the man had said the same thing to him all those years before, with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact upon him—"and I came here when I was twenty. Now I am sixty. Hall the Americans know ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... often troubled with the colic. I have as much inattention, and have, I think, lower spirits than usual, which I impute to my having no ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... absent-minded chap, Sir James Jackson, who went to the RIGHT dinner-party by mistake?' he asked, 'and apologized like mad, by Jove! and insisted he couldn't stay. The people nearly had to tie him down in his—' Captain Gordon stopped, arrested by his companion's sudden and complete inattention. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... James's timidity and indolence fixed him, during most of his reign, in a very prudent inattention to foreign affairs, there happened this year an event in Europe of such mighty consequence as to rouse him from his lethargy, and summon up all his zeal and enterprise. A professor of divinity, named Vorstius, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... from them." The parents guilty of this neglect to instruct their children, are, Lindsey declares, traitors to their children. From his own experience he judges that nine-tenths of the girls who "go wrong," whether or not they sink in the world, do so owing to the inattention of their parents, and that in the case of most prostitutes the mischief is really done before the age of twelve; "every wayward girl I have talked to has assured me of this truth." He considers that nine-tenths of school-boys and school-girls, in town or country, are very inquisitive regarding ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of meritorious persons who have never identified themselves with current political opinions, and who have slipped into public employment, thanks to some brief moment of inattention on the part of the politicians. These intruders sometimes get on by the mere force of circumstances, but they never reach the highest posts which are always reserved, as indeed is proper and fitting, for those in whom the people has ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... and hunted my revolver from my overcoat pocket. I was nervous for a moment, and angry at the inattention that might have cost me ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... of mind, like the movements of the planets, to statistics, and have not already obtained accurate prevision of its successions or sequences as we have of physical phenomena, it is simply the consequence of our inattention to, or ignorance of, all the facts. We answer, there are no facts so directly and intuitively known as the facts of consciousness; and, therefore, an argument based upon our supposed ignorance of these facts is not likely to have much weight ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... so cheery as usual as he made his way into the city. This suggestion of Martha Merrick's regarding his inattention to duty to his beloved nieces was ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... to waiting at table. Seventh month: Pleasing appearance and nice manners so striking that am promoted to waiting on the Sisters! Eighth month: Slight check in career. Sister Bond ate Sister Westhaven's egg! Grand row! Wardmaid clearly to blame! Inattention in such important matters cannot be too highly censured. Mop and pail again! How are the mighty fallen! Ninth month: Promoted to sweeping out wards, where I found a friend of my childhood in Lieutenant Thomas Beresford (bow, Tommy!), whom I had not seen for five long ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Thorndyke's comment, when he heard of the event, "he had his uses. He has relieved society of two very bad men, and he has given us a most instructive case. He has shown us how a clever and ingenious criminal may take endless pains to mislead and delude the police, and yet, by inattention to trivial details, may scatter clues broadcast. We can only say to the criminal class generally, in both respects, 'Go thou and ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... inattention to your admonitions, and feel myself sensibly affected by the remembrance of the many anxious moments you have passed on my account. For these, and all my other transgressions, however great, I supplicate the Divine forgiveness; and encouraged by ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... Coleridge's eyes were brown—"strange, brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." A Coleridge with brown eyes is one man, and a Coleridge with grey eyes another—and, as it were, more responsible. As to Rossetti's eyes, the various inattention of his friends has assigned to them, in all the ready-made phrases, nearly all ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... law was in large part responsible for this lack of prestige. "Too great inattention," complained a Boston lawyer, in the Columbian Centinel in 1801, "has hitherto prevailed as to the preservation of the decisions of our courts of law. We have neither authorized nor voluntary reporters. Hence we are compelled to the loose and ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... fort, but as he paid no attention, Major Putoff fired a shot to make the vessel heave-to and leave the mail. The shot passed through the foresail, but was not heeded. A second shot was fired and then Johnson considered it prudent to heave-to and go ashore. He was sternly questioned as to his inattention to the first orders to heave to, and replied that being a young sailor he did not understand how to heave-to. The officer told him to bring the mail ashore, but was met with a refusal, it being contrary to instructions. Johnson started back to his craft ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the effect of walking and inattention," the doctor said. "If I could have taken him in hand within an hour of his being hit, the matter would have been simple enough; but I cannot search for the ball, or in fact do anything, till we have reduced the swelling. You ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... general calamities of mankind, the death of an individual, however exalted, the ruin of an edifice, however famous, are passed over with careless inattention. Yet we cannot forget that the temple of Diana at Ephesus, after having risen with increasing splendor from seven repeated misfortunes, [128] was finally burnt by the Goths in their third naval invasion. The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had conspired ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... instead of affording you any real instruction, have only given you habits of inattention, which you will find very difficult to overcome; for your eyes have wandered over the page, while your thoughts have been with the fool's, to the ends of ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... enough before long," laughed Dan, and his momentary inattention to his duties at the wheel was promptly seized upon by the wily sea, which smacked the rudder hard and nearly spun the wheel out of his grip. "Stop talking, will you!" roared Dan, wrestling at the spokes. "Do you want me to put you ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... think that Molly has hit the mark in this, too?" Rose asked, turning her eyes on Pennington. He had been listening with an air of light inattention and now he answered tersely, as if conquering some inner reluctance by over-emphasis, "Couldn't ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hedged in, as we have shown, with strict rules and regulations, backed by fines in case of the slightest inattention, and the certainty of prompt dismissal in case of gross neglect or disobedience, with the possibility of criminal prosecution besides looming in the far distance, our friend, John Marrot, knowing his duties well, and feeling perfect confidence in himself and his superiors, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... boy's interested air, with its hints of suppressed excitement and his marked inattention to the books and papers which were his business, at last caused the older man to make a remark. It was ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... immediately succeeding phase in the history of Greek philosophy was a curtailment, but only in the most superficial sense a criticism, of the activity of the philosopher. In the Periclean Age philosophy suffered more from inattention than from refutation. The scepticism of the sophists, who were the knowing men of this age, was not so much conviction as indisposition. They failed to recognize the old philosophical problem; it did not appeal to them as a genuine problem. The sophists were the intellectual men of an ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... of Aristotle down to the present day, has been in disgrace with man. Father has handed down to son, and author to author, that this nocturnal thief subsists by milking the flocks. Poor injured little bird of night, how sadly hast thou suffered, and how foul a stain has inattention to facts put upon thy character! Thou hast never robbed man of any part of his property nor deprived the kid of a ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the moderner Italian patriotism, the Via Roma. The sole poetic novelty of my experience was in my being offered loaves of bread which, when I bought them, would be given to the poor, in honor of what saint's day I did not learn. But it was all charming; even the inattention of the young woman over the book-counter was charming, since it was a condition of her flirtation with the far younger man beside me who wanted something far more interesting from her than any brief sketch ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... herself, or interfered with anyone. She worked like a drudge; she tramped through the wet streets, carrying parcels and baskets; she labored with the childish inattention of the little ones' French lessons; as she became shabbier and more forlorn-looking, she was told that she had better take her meals downstairs; she was treated as if she was nobody's concern, and her heart grew proud and ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Maud Mary's inattention to the fair and the dolls was so obvious that I followed my godmother's advice, and "made the best of it" by saying, "I'm afraid you're very ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a subject of the highest importance in moral training, and deserve the serious attention of committees as well as teachers: inattention to these matters, may demoralize every child that enters the school. In many schools throughout the country I have seen great want of attention to this subject, the seats were too high, the circular holes too large, causing ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... went round and round, and she felt as though she should faint; but Miss Simmonds came in, bringing a waft of fresher air as she opened the door, to refresh the body, and the certainty of a scolding for inattention to brace the sinking mind. She, too, was ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... insult you, Schults," said he, reaching over and helping himself from a barrel of apples which stood close by. "I jes thought I'd warn you." "Now, dere's dat Gheorge Bohn," continued Schults, with apparent inattention to what George had said. "I see his nhame in der bapers as one uv der leaders in dis supremacy humbug. Who makes Bohn whadt he is on Dry Pon'? Who makes Gheorge Bohn whad he is in dis counthry? Dem very peeples who he is now thrin' ter kill. Dem broke down ristercrats, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... his glass of wine. "I am perhaps too sensitive to any kind of inattention; but it's not wholly ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... there is no doubt that good health wards off worry. Deep breathing of fresh air by producing well oxygenated pure blood, will do much to restore mental balance, especially if this want of mental balance is, as is often the case, partly due to inattention ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... condition of Mr O'Connell's own tenantry bear out our assertions, that indolence, inattention, and want of industry, are the real blights of Irish prosperity? They have no dread of being dispossessed or deprived of the benefit of their improvements; they don't, we are told, pay rack-rents; yet the security which he must feel upon living under the protection of "the Liberator" cannot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... both, and the perfect security in which I felt myself, prevented me from reflecting upon this extraordinary and even alarming request. I returned all the letters excepting one or two which, from inattention, were left between the leaves of a book. A little time before this, M. de Malesherbes told me he should withdraw the letters I had written to Duchesne during my alarm relative to the Jesuits, and, it must be confessed, these ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... waved her hand, as if to reply that they were free to make fun of her if they pleased. But at this moment she perceived that Gervais, profiting by her inattention, was busy seeking his "paradise lost." And thereupon she set him on the ground: "Ah, no, no, monsieur!" she exclaimed. "I have told you that it is all over. Can't you see that people would laugh ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... air of a provincial lecturer on logic and belles-lettres. A few good Whigs of the old school adjourned upstairs, the Tories began to converse de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, the Radicals were either snoring or grinning, and the great gun of the north ceased firing amidst such a hubbub of inattention, that even I was not aware of the fact ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and distractions, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel, but will do as a skilful painter did formerly, draw a veil before the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... answering us very correctly, they are really addressing us without understanding us, and without our understanding them. To such ambiguous discourse is due the surprise we sometimes feel at their sayings, to which we attach ideas the children themselves have not dreamed of. This inattention of ours to the true meaning words have for children seems to me the cause of their first mistakes, and these errors, even after children are cured of them, influence their turn of mind for the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... so-called states of dispersed attention. The latter states are rare in normal individuals, although they may be rather frequent in certain types of low-grade mental defectives. This of course means that states of "inattention" do not exist in normal people. So long as consciousness is present one must be attending to something. The "day dream" is often accompanied by concentrated attention. Only when we are truly thinking of nothing, and that can only be as ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... part of the stock brought from the Cape is dead, and from the inattention of the men who had the care of the cattle, those belonging to Government and two cows belonging to myself are lost. As they have been missing three weeks, it is probable they are killed by the natives. All ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... wakefulness of the adversary, by his knowledge of their weakness, and by his command of opportunity. But this is a fault lying rather in the conditions of human life than in political institutions. There is no known mode of making attention and inattention equal in their results. It is enough to say that in England, when the nation can attend, it can prevail. So we may say, then, that in the American Union the Federal Executive is independent for each four years both of the Congress and of the people. But the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... mental energy to be preoccupied. The absent-minded man is oblivious of ordinary matters, because his thoughts are elsewhere. One who is preoccupied is intensely busy in thought; one may be absent-minded either through intense concentration or simply through inattention, with fitful and aimless wandering ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... with one hand, and with the other tried to obey her shrill directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip beside him; he looked at us with a half-proud, half-shamefaced smile, calling down a rebuke for his inattention from ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... political condition constantly leads them to engage in serious occupations; and they act inconsiderately, because they give but little time and attention to each of these occupations. The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... distracting my attention from the Captain's words, he wheeled round upon his heel and learnt the cause of my inattention. Immediately he smiled and called to ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... it could have been regarded, the assemblage of persons thus indicated to Goisvintha must have arrested inattention itself. Near a confused mass of weapons, scattered on the ground, reclined a group of warriors apparently listening to the low, muttered conversation of three men of great age, who rose above them, seated ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Jerkley, with the inattention of a man diverted from serious thought to an unimportant topic. "They are the windows of the room in which Mrs. Mardale died a quarter of a century ago. Mr. Mardale locked the door as soon as his wife was taken ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... to thread the narrow passage; the slightest inattention would have brought her upon the reefs. Those who could employ their eyes kept looking now at the approaching stranger—now at the direction where they hoped the frigate would appear. At length old Doull's deep voice was heard exclaiming, "We are free now, sir, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the irate father gave Antonie his arm and led her from the room. But Frau von Eschenhagen, already highly incensed, felt that her son's inattention to his sweetheart was an additional insult, and now turned upon ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... have the effect of calling off our attention from those deep underlying causes which must be dealt with if we are not to engage in the hopeless task of trying to fill a cistern the tap of which has been left running. This absorption in the effect and inattention to the cause is to a certain degree bred in us by the very nature of the duties that devolve upon us as women. John Stuart Mill has compared the life of a woman to an "interrupted sentence." The mere fact that our lives ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... was Swift's desire to attain, and for having attained he deserves praise. For purposes merely didactic, when something is to be told that was not known before, it is the best mode; but against that inattention by which known truths are suffered to lie neglected, it makes no provision; it ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... was an alert, vigorous mind, bright and strong like a steel trap, and her brother's vagueness and growing habit of inattention irritated her. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... man sat down until the ladies were seated; or omitted any little act of politeness which could contribute to their comfort. Nor did I ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... space for rest or food. The idea that her present ministration was to save her soul in the sight of the Lord, had grown upon her, and was now rooted firmly in her mind—she never gave way to fatigue or inattention,—every moan, every restless movement of the suffering girl, obtained her instant and tender solicitude, and when she prayed now, it was not for herself but ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... feel out the interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire—the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate manner, and the air of bland inattention with which they receive your remarks, only to be detected in the fixed or wandering eye. He had learnt the art of being interested in other people, and in what they had to say, and of indicating by a subtle tact in speech that he was following them, and intelligently sympathizing ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... after hearing Charlotte's reminiscences; 'how close I have lived to a world of which I was in utter ignorance! How little did we guess that, by the careless ease and inattention of our household, we were carrying about a firebrand, endangering not only poor Walter, but doing fearful harm wherever ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vessels. As I have an opportunity of seeing themselves, or their Secretaries very often, and am on an intimate footing with the latter, I am frequently a witness of their complaints and murmurs; Congress need not therefore conclude, that their inattention to Mr Jay's Memorial, is pointed or a proof of its ill will, for I have seen near eighty Memorials from a Minister more nearly connected with them than we are, few of which ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... known many instances of singers undergoing very disagreeable operations on their throats for chronic diseases of various descriptions; now, my observation and experience assure me that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the root of the evil is chronic inattention to food and raiment. It is a common thing to hear a singer say, 'I never touch such-and-such food on the days I sing.' My dear young friend, unless you are an absolute idiot, you would not partake of anything on the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Garrison's inattention was suddenly swept away by the clatter of hoofs audible above the noise contributed by the bays. A horse, which Garrison instinctively, and to his own surprise, judged to be a two-year-old filly, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... to be attributed the peeling of the berries, their being scratched, and various injuries which the produce sustains. And while on the subject of "Works," I cannot help noticing the extreme carelessness and inattention which, on visiting properties, the works and buildings present to our view. It is utterly impossible to manufacture good produce unless the machinery and buildings are kept in good order; and the parsimony which is thus displayed in this necessary outlay is fallacious, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Antony Babington, but Cavendishes, Pierrepoints, all the young pages and grandsons who dwelt at castle or lodge, and attended Master Sniggius's school. Nay, the dominie himself, though owning that Mistress Cicely promoted idleness and inattention among his pupils, had actually volunteered to come down to Bridgefield twice a week himself to prevent her from forgetting her Lilly's grammar and her Caesar's Commentaries, an attention with which this young lady ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... talking earnestly together, while Concho, now mindful of his crippled mule, made his way back to the trail where he had left her. But she was no longer there. Constant to her master through beatings and bullyings, she could not stand incivility and inattention. There are certain qualities of the sex that belong to ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words. We call that fire of the black thundercloud 'electricity,' and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and if the child be fed out of doors in its carriage it is well to have a flannel bag of some kind to slip over the bottle to keep it at the same temperature until the meal is finished. Many cases of colic are caused by inattention to this point. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... paths on the same errands know it only by name. It is a series of similar coincidences which has led us to consider the dagger, the musket, and certain innocent-looking white powders as having some little claim to be regarded as dangerous. It is the practical inattention to similar coincidences which has given rise to the unpleasant but often necessary documents called indictments, which has sharpened a form of the cephalotome sometimes employed in the case of adults, and adjusted that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... arm the negro on the basis of freedom, the Rebels in their desperation will, and although we have the negro sympathy, we may lose it through delay and inattention, and in that event, prepare for years of conflict. The negroes, at the outset of this Rebellion, were ripe for the contest. Armies of thousands of them might have been in the field to-day. Now the President's Proclamation finds them removed within interior Rebel lines, and to furnish ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... ordered, that even the most innocent blunder is not committed with impunity; because, were errors licensed where they do no hurt, inattention would grow into habit, and be the occasion of much hurt."—Kames, El. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... its regulations, inattention to its recommendations, if not disobedience to its authority, not only in individuals but in States, soon appeared with their melancholy consequences—universal languor, jealousies and rivalries of States, decline ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... introduction perhaps to accident, the best introduction in the world for a subject of ingenuity, which, though it could not have been formally proposed without pedantry, may be continued with ease and good humour; but which will be frequently and effectually stopped by the listlessness, inattention, or whispering of silly girls, whose weariness betrays their ignorance, and whose impatience exposes their ill-breeding. A polite man, however deeply interested in the subject on which he is conversing, catches at the slightest hint to have ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... lighted it. Further, his comment upon Mr. Port's discourse—which was a more than ordinarily thoughtful and accurate weighing of the relative merits of thin and thick soups—obviously were delivered quite at random. At first Mr. Port was disposed to resent this inattention to his soulful utterances; but as the subject was one in which, as he well knew, his friend was profoundly interested, he ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier |
