"Unobservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked at him. "Mr. Holland," she said, "you must think me singularly unobservant. Do you suppose I don't see that you dislike my brother. You refused the pencil—you did refuse it plainly enough—because Billy had given it to me. I will not offer it to you again. I know that Billy sometimes does rub people up the wrong way, but I should think any one of any ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... these works at home, Apries was not unobservant of the revolutions occurring in Asia, upon which he maintained a constant watch, and in the years which followed the capitulation of Tyre, he found the opportunity, so long looked for, of entering once more upon the scene. The Phoenician navy had ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Hastings, as the reader already knows, was a somewhat unobservant man of what was passing around him in the world. He had his own deep, stern trains of thought, which he pursued with a passionate earnestness almost amounting to monomania. The actions, words, and even looks of those ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During a war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we, therefore, be unobservant spectators of the progress of society within the last twenty years; of the silent but powerful change wrought, by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the poor ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... to importunity, and unmindful of the unities of time and place, went freely about, from gourd to gourd, concocting in him a punch. At which, Samoa expressed much surprise, that he should be so unobservant as not to know, that in Mardi, guests might be pressed to demean themselves, without its being expected that so they would do. A true toss-pot ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to the Day house early on Sunday morning, and her unobservant aunt did not notice the marks the young girl's sleepless night had left upon her countenance. Aunt 'Mira was too greatly distracted just then about a new gown she, with the help of Mrs. John-Ed. Hutchins, had made and was to wear for the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... you are!" he said. "Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... embarrassment became obvious even to unobservant Mr. Lyle, who longed for an opportunity of asking ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... anything, and that the only danger lay in the chance of being discovered in the deed. One day when the master had left the room to confer with some visitor at the door, he spied Annie in the act of tying her shoe. Perceiving, as he believed, at a glance, that Alec Forbes was totally unobservant, he gave her an ignominious push from behind, which threw her out on her face in the middle of the floor. But Alec did catch sight of him in the very deed, was down upon him in a moment, and, having already proved that a box on the ear was of no lasting ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to most of them anyhow, just as Stefansson does with the Eskimos: she wears the usual tribal adornments, and beadwork, and skins; she's as dazzling as any other beauty, in her box at the opera; and she sleeps and eats in the family's big stone igloo near Fifth Avenue. An unobservant citizen might almost suppose she was one of us. But every now and then her neglect of some small ceremonial sets our whole tribe to chattering about her, and eyeing her closely, and nodding their hairy coiffures or their tall shiny hats, whispering around their ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... admirable, and usually sound thoughts were the result of long hours of reflection. They belonged to her nature and a quality of judgment which, even in her most extravagant romances, is never for a moment swayed from that sane impartiality described by the unobservant ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... that, as they entered; saw Notely enter with his easy, unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of prosperous people with an eye to appearances. Then quite suddenly the car, rounding a turn, came into a different region, one of cultivated wildness, of studied effects so cleverly disguised that they would seem to the unobservant only the efforts of nature at her best. A long, heavily shaded avenue of oaks, with high, untrimmed hedges of shrubbery on each side, curved enticingly before them, and all at once, Burns, looking sharply ahead, called, "There, by that ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... impossible to make more than a rough estimate of the extent of the disturbed area. Even when the boundary lies on land, it traverses some districts which are thinly populated and others where the inhabitants are unobservant, and unlikely to notice the slow oscillations which were alone perceptible at great distances. The shock was, however, felt at Boston (800 miles from the epicentre), La Crosse on the upper Mississippi (950 miles to the north-west), at several places in Cuba (between 700 and 710 ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... and arms, however, is not the work of Maoris; that was done, probably, by natives at some of the islands, or by sailors. I hardly think that those who read the narrative will agree with Bishop Williams's opinion that it is "a mere romance." It is more like the story of an ignorant, unobservant, careless sailor, who entertained no idea that any importance would be attached to his statements. Many mistakes were probably made in the work of dictating the narrative to a fellow-sailor. If Rutherford had been bent upon making a romantic story, he ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... attention, divert the attention, distract the mind; put out of one's head; disconcert, discompose; put out, confuse, perplex, bewilder, moider^, fluster, muddle, dazzle; throw a sop to Cerberus. Adj. inattentive; unobservant, unmindful, heedless, unthinking, unheeding, undiscerning^; inadvertent; mindless, regardless, respectless^, listless &c (indifferent) 866; blind, deaf; bird-witted; hand over head; cursory, percursory^; giddy-brained, scatter-brained, hare-brained; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... neighborhoods, get so accustomed to bad sanitary conditions that they hardly notice them. Volunteer workers are not so likely to fall into this error, though it is possible for volunteers to be very unobservant. They often feel that things are all wrong, without being able to state the specific difficulties. An observant visitor will learn the condition of the cellar, walls, yard, plumbing, and outhouses; will learn to take the cubic contents ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... us to do what is worthy and prohibiting what is unworthy saw fit in his wisdom to specify the accompanying rewards and punishments that he who observes may find pleasure and joy in his obedience, and the unobservant may be ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... Short the spells and far between that we should have taken—the one would not have turned round the other, but when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand—and the canoe would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove—the cloud-mountains, immovable as those of earth, and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or IN TERROREM, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to help my Lord yet a little more," the Prince continued, apparently unobservant of the lowering face behind the crucifix. "He remembers angels came down the night of the nativity in the cave by Bethlehem; he cannot forget the song they sung to the shepherds. How like these honors to the Bodhisattwa!"—and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... know," Featherstone rejoined pointedly, and Foster saw that Alice had said nothing about his recent visit. She gave him an inquiring glance, as if she wondered why he did not state his reasons for going to Newcastle, but he looked as unobservant as he could. He could not signal her, because while this might escape his host's notice he was ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... but gave it up and glanced nervously up and down the little porch. Jane Gladys noted this with surprise, for he was usually quiet and unobservant, "like th' toad in th' garden, what squats under a bush all day an' fergits he's alive till a fly lights on his nose," as she expressed it to ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... irrefutable that, without a dissenting word from the Bench, the prisoner was committed to stand his trial at the ensuing assizes. Mosk made no defence; he did not even offer a remark; but, accepting his fate with sullen apathy, sunk into a lethargic, unobservant state, out of which nothing and no person could arouse him. His brain appeared to have been stunned by ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... deep, the Mississippi, he conceived the ambition and the ideal of learning to know and to master that mysterious water. His dream, in time, was realized; he not only became a pilot, but—which is infinitely more significant—he changed from a callow, indolent, unobservant lad, with undeveloped faculties, to a man, a master of the river, with a knowledge which, in its accuracy and minuteness, was, for ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... biological orthodoxy behaves just as the old biological orthodoxy did. In the days before Darwin, those who occupied themselves with the phenomena of life, passed by with unobservant eyes the multitudinous facts which point to an evolutionary origin for plants and animals; and they turned deaf ears to those who insisted on the significance of these facts. Now that they have come to believe ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the Rue St. Louis, not unobservant of the dark looks of the Honnetes Gens or the familiar nods and knowing smiles of the partisans of the Friponne whom he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... she listened. Was it not what Moffatt had always said of himself—that all he needed was time and elbow-room? How odd that Ralph, who seemed so dreamy and unobservant, should instantly have reached the same conclusion! But what she wanted to know was the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... though to the unobservant eye intent upon her tea and cakes, saw every one who came and went. Many officers were in the restaurant, but one only attracted her special notice. He was a young handsome man in the field-service kit of the French Army, and upon his sleeves and cap were the wings of the Flying ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... γε»Ώε
η« γεζ°γεΉ΄εεθθ¦ζ‘ηγε
Άη΅δΉε·²γ being in a low station, slanders his superiors. He hates those who have valour merely, and are unobservant of propriety. He hates those who are forward and determined, and, at the same time, of contracted understanding.' 2. The Master then inquired, 'Ts'ze, have you also your hatreds?' Tsze-kung replied, 'I hate those who pry out matters, and ascribe the knowledge to their wisdom. I hate ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... of such a high, clear intelligence that when affairs were confused, obscure, and difficult he was often the only one who could see at once what was advisable and feasible. He was not, as perhaps some thought, too unobservant to notice the condition of the government everywhere. He knew right well how we are governed, and noted especially the spirit and the intentions of those with whom he had to do. We, however, must keep a faithful, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... other shoulder, and pulled off his remnant of felt in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay road, ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... have warned those concerned in her welfare that the quiet and seclusion of Bourhill were beginning to pall upon her. As she improved in her bodily health her mind became more active, and she began to pine for something more exciting than country walks and drives. They were not altogether unobservant of the growing change in her, of course, but attributed it to a returning and healthful interest in the simpler pleasures of life. All this time George Fordyce had not come to Bourhill, nor had any letters passed between him and his promised wife. It would be ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of Mr. Goodyear's work upon "Gum-Elastic and its Varieties," presents at least something unique in the art of book-making. It is self-illustrating; inasmuch as, treating of India-rubber, it is made of India-rubber. An unobservant reader, however, would scarcely suspect the fact before reading the Preface, for the India-rubber covers resemble highly polished ebony, and the leaves have the appearance of ancient paper worn soft, thin, and dingy ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... unobservant, all this while; but steps out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level sunlight; prying into several things. When a man's faculties, at the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much. That Lady in slouched gypsy-hat, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... woman, Comptesse, who has heretofore played the game so brilliantly, you have grown singularly unobservant. I am not a crusader, liberating captive Christian knights. I am France's servant, playing a somewhat guileful game which is as ancient as Ulysses, and subject to ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... as a rule, unobservant; they go on in the old way until the horse flinches in action or stands "pointing" in dumb appeal to his owner, telling with mute but touching eloquence of his tight-ironed, feverish foot, the dead frog, and the insidious disease, soon to destroy the free action ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... same Luck's too derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run into trouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch I don't aim to pick posies too unobservant." ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... skilful enough to win the Major's lasting favour. He was always slow to interfere in domestic matters, but he was not unobservant. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of mine which fastened me to my gridiron, and I straddled my craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I never once had thought until now. Then I tightened the belt about my hollow body, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour I had been wholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was over now, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Of course I saw none. Had we indeed been off our course before the fire broke out? Had we burned to cinders aside and apart from the regular track ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, he whistled—an unusual thing for him to do in the street—then assumed the air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by began to look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by accident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised for his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that was responsible for Dove's state of mind, and for the heightening and radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go early to the theatre, and to stand at the doors for at least three-quarters of an hour, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... unobservant man's acute flashes of vision, and Mrs. Westmore's beauty was like a blinding light abruptly turned on eyes subdued to obscurity. As he spoke, his glance passed from her face to her hair, and remained caught in its meshes. He had never seen such hair—it did not seem ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... men and women is like the knife of the anatomist; it works on the dead. Unite sympathy to observation, and the dead spring to life." It is thus to the shy, in their moments of tremor, that we should endeavor to be calmly sympathetic; not cruel, but indifferent, unobservant. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... congregated seem, each individual is leading the beatified existence of an epicurean god. The world without—its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, evil and good—all are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Unobservant even of what passes in its immediate vicinity, its whole soul is concentrated in itself; yet not sluggishly and apathetically, for its body is throbbing with life and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its pleasures. The rolling waves waft fresh and choice ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... they come, and not the less fulfil their destiny, perchance melt at once on the Indian's face. What a world we live in, where myriads of these little discs, so beautiful to the most prying eye, are whirled down on every traveller's coat, the observant and the unobservant, on the restless squirrel's fur, on the far-stretching fields and forests, the wooded dells and the mountain tops. Far, far away from the haunts of men, they roll down some little slope, fall over and come to their bearings, and melt or lose their ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter. He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... quivered. She kept a lieutenant of the name of D'Oyley Hughes, an expert in demolition parties; and he went aboard the tramp and reported any quantity of stores—a six-inch gun, for instance, lashed across the top of the forehatch (Silas Q. Swing must have been an unobservant journalist), a six-inch gun-mounting in the forehold, pedestals for twelve-pounders thrown in as dunnage, the afterhold full of six-inch projectiles, and a scattering of other commodities. They put the demolition charge well in among the ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... felt at ease sitting amongst them and was glad she was there and not at the English end of the table. Down here, hemmed in by the Bergmanns with Emma's little form, her sounds, movements and warmth, her little quiet friendliness planted between herself and the English, with the apparently unobservant Minna and Elsa across the way she felt safe. She felt fairly sure those German eyes did not criticise her. Perhaps, she suggested to herself, they thought a good deal of English people in general; and then they were in the minority, only four of them; it was evidently a school for ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... greatest of all causes of non-observation is a preconceived opinion. This it is which, in all ages, has made the whole race of mankind, and every separate section of it, for the most part unobservant of all facts, however abundant, even when passing under their own eyes, which are contradictory to any first appearance, or any received tenet. It is worth while to recall occasionally to the oblivious memory of mankind ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... 30. l. 14. Hence one moment, thus deserted. Conjugal duty is carried to a great height in the laws of Menu: "Though unobservant of approved usages, or enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered as a god by a ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... Romoaldo here: And here my brethren, who their steps refrain'd Within the cloisters, and held firm their heart." I answ'ring, thus; "Thy gentle words and kind, And this the cheerful semblance, I behold Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, Have rais'd assurance in me, wakening it Full-blossom'd in my bosom, as a rose Before the sun, when the consummate flower Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee Therefore entreat I, father! to declare If I may gain such favour, as to gaze Upon thine image, by no ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... how I could have been so unobservant as to overlook this. Here was a clue worth having. Poirot delicately dipped his finger into liquid, and tasted it gingerly. He ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... eyelashes, a perfectly-shaped Grecian nose, a strong mouth, whose upper lip had a curve of softness, a clear-cut chin with one dimple, small ears set high in the head, and a rich creamy complexion—that was what flashed upon Carmichael as he turned from the retrievers. He was a man so unobservant of women that he could not have described a woman's dress to save his life or any other person's; and now that he is married—he is a middle-aged man now and threatened with stoutness—it is his wife's reproach that he does not know when she wears her new spring bonnet for ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... mossy knoll. For hours they talked there, their voices low, save once or twice when Danton's rose. They seemed to have lost all count of time, all heed of appearances. Menard and the priest made an effort at first to appear unobservant, but later, seeing that their movements were beyond the sight of those unheeding eyes, they took to watching and speculating on the course of the conversation. The night came on, and the dark closed over them. Still the murmur of those low voices ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... woman not been very indifferent or unobservant, she would have noticed the striking difference between the manner and appearance of Lizzie Stevens and the class who generally came to see McCloskey. She did not, however, appear to observe it, nor did she manifest any curiosity greater ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... well enough named "the grace of God,"—can that sacred contagion pass from soul into soul. How much beyond whole Libraries of orthodox Theology is, sometimes, the mute action, the unconscious look of a father, of a mother, who HAD in them "Devoutness, pious Nobleness"! In whom the young soul, not unobservant, though not consciously observing, came at length to recognize it; to read it, in this irrefragable manner: a seed planted thenceforth in the centre of his holiest ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... knew well enough what Aglaya was to him. He never spoke of it, but he had seen her face when she had caught him starting off for the Epanchins' house on several occasions. When the Epanchins left Pavlofsk, she had beamed with radiance and happiness. Unsuspicious and unobservant as he was, he had feared at that time that Nastasia might have some scheme in her mind for a scene or scandal which would drive Aglaya out of Pavlofsk. She had encouraged the rumours and excitement among the inhabitants of the place as to her marriage with the prince, in order ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... grandeur around them, and buried all traces of Susa and Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... any time and under any circumstances; but if that is the only reason for asking the Government to pay owners part of the cost of manning their ships, then they are living in a fool's paradise, and are much too credulous about public philanthropy, and very unobservant and illogical too if they imagine that national interests are entirely centred in the industry they happen to be engaged in. It would be just as reasonable for Armstrong's or Vickers' to request a subsidy for training ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... still sky of that brow, not a ripple disturbed the still sea of that cheek. She did not hate, she did not love the sufferers: the painter would not have her hate, for that would be to the injury of her loveliness: would not have her love, for he hated. Sometimes she floated above, as a still, unobservant angel, her gaze turned upward, dreaming along, careless as a white summer cloud, across the blue. If she looked down on the scene below, it was only that the beholder might see that she saw and did not care—that not a feather of her outspread pinions would quiver ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... at her parents' portraits in her bedroom, for they had both been of a florid texture and full habit; and she had now long refused sugar and the comforts of sweetmeats dear to the palate of her age and sex. And mostly was this self-denial practised for the sake of a young and unobservant friend, one Stephen Craig, who had so far evinced no unusual inclination for her, or for anything except cigars and masculine society of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... are so irreligious, depraved by nature, so wandering in their affections, so brutish, so subject to disagreement, so unobservant of marriage rites, what shall I say? If thou beest such a one, or thou light on such a wife, what concord can there be, what hope of agreement? 'tis not conjugium but conjurgium, as the Reed and Fern in the [5783]Emblem, averse and opposite in nature: ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in sudden horror, now fixed in dread upon the ground. This shew of terror encreased ours, we gasped with him, each neck was stretched out, each face changed with the actor's changes— at length while Macduff, who, attending to his part, was unobservant of the high wrought sympathy of the house, cried ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... herself for what she was, an inveterate laugher. She belonged essentially to the eighteenth century—the century of the wits. She enjoyed the spectacle of men and women making fools of themselves, and she did not hide her enjoyment under a pretence of unobservant good-nature. She observed with malice. It is tolerably certain that Miss Mitford was wrong in accepting the description of her in private life as "perpendicular, precise, taciturn, a poker of whom every one is afraid." Miss ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... unobservant person could not help but see birds here. I had expected to find water-fowl, for the Colorado delta is their breeding place; but I little expected to find so many land birds in the trees along the river. Instead of having a lonesome trip, every ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... their burden before the altar, leaned each against a pillar, stolid and unobservant, but ready to drop to their knees so soon as the chanting of Vespers should reach the crypt from ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg, which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. "Yes—let us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some queer towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense, so silent, so unobservant—who sees nothing and knows nothing and never laughs, but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the piece de resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service, the typical Frenchman; ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... the friendly overture; that also was not his way. But neither did he respond to it. He stood passive, looking out over the park with unobservant eyes. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... do it consciously or not,—since we have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded, unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on his way home from the court-house, he had stopped at a cabin where liquor was sold. As a ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... gives its own colouring, or is unobservant of some colours which the eye presents, and makes from all presented to it its own selections and combinations, and suits them to its own conception and creation. It has always been admitted that the painter's mind does this with objects of form, omitting much, generalizing or selecting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... for an hour in his office, dispatching his accumulated two-days' mail, all unobservant of the cat-like tread of Einstein, the office boy, moving in and out. He lingered in a gloomy reverie, after checking up his correspondence, and a half hour's sharp dictations, absorbed in the cautious letter of Hugh Worthington, Esq., the man ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... that had accomplished its purposes so long and with so trustworthy a regularity that the thought of hitch, lapse, failure never presented itself as a really tangible consideration. Each day he grew a shade paler, a degree feebler, but the change came too gradually for the unobservant and over-habituated eyes of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... father's intended marriage with madame came on Leam with a crushing sense of terror and despair. Unobservant youth sees little, and even what it does see it does not comprehend. Though the girl had accustomed herself by slow degrees to many works and ways which mamma had never known; though the faculties which had been, as it were, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... hay and the wheat, or at the coming of the green leaf, or the yellowing of the acorns, when the cawing of the rooks is incessant, a kind of autumn festival. It seems so natural that the events of the year should be met with a song. But somehow a very hard and unobservant spirit has got abroad into our rural life, and people do not note things as the old folk did. They do not mark the coming of the swallows, nor any of the dates that make the woodland almanack. It is a pity that there ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... favor, cautioning her only not to speak to Margaret about Wyvis Brand. When every one was out of the way Lady Caroline knew that she could more easily have a conversation with her daughter, and Margaret was well aware of her intent. The girl looked mild and unobservant as usual, but she was busily engaged in watching for danger-signals. Her father's manner was decidedly flurried: so much was evident to her: the very way in which he avoided her eye and glanced uneasily ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... so absorbed in His anticipations of the near Cross as to be unobservant of the wrangling among the Apostles. Even then His heart was enough at leisure from itself to observe, to pity, and to help. So He at once turns to deal with the false ideas of greatness betrayed by the dispute. The world's notion is that the true ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the seven months since her husband's death. She had aged considerably. Her spirit, her courage, were undiminished, but the years had at last levied the toll which a happy wifehood had denied them. Nor was Murray unobservant of these things. His partner in the fortunes of Fort Mowbray was an ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... table, she exclaimed, "I regret, Madame, that I can tell you nothing—nothing at all! I feel ill—very ill!" and, indeed, she had turned, even to Sylvia's young and unobservant eyes, terribly pale. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a retired poet—a few real types tenderly and sincerely drawn, and a few more worked out by thinking about what he imagined they would be, not by knowing them. Browning, roving through his class and other classes of society, and observing while he seemed unobservant, drew into his inner self the lives of a number of women, saw them living and feeling in a great diversity of circumstances; and, always on the watch, seized the moment into which he thought the woman entered with the greatest intensity, and smote that into a poem. Such poems, naturally lyrics, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... all his own fault, and but for it he now thought he should not have been so unobservant of things about him. Could he, but for such weary nights of sleepless wandering and watching, have let his darling boy drive those young horses, filling the carriage so full of his brothers and sisters that there was no room for any beside ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot blame you, for the days ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... made to Mrs. Graham's sense of propriety. There was an old lady who had once been Clara's governess—a gentle, mild-tongued, unobservant person, who was greatly in want of a home. Mrs. Alison was easily induced to promise the support of her presence to Lettice during the days or weeks which Lettice hoped to spend at Bute Lodge. She was a woman of unimpeachable decorum ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... seeing him. They that are atheists, they that are destitute of all acts, they that are disobedient to preceptors and transgress the injunctions of the scriptures, they that are unacquainted with and, therefore, unobservant of duties, and they that are wicked of conduct, become shortlived. They that are of improper behaviour, they that transgress all restraints, they that are unscrupulous in respect of sexual congress, become shortlived here and have to go to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... regiment she first belonged to, had any suspicion of her sex, and it was not discovered until after her death, when she had been an Inspector General of the Army Medical Department for many years. And there have been women in the ranks too, and at sea. It was really not extraordinary that an unobservant and unsuspicious creature like yourself should have ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... away upon Brother Bonaday, whom preoccupation with trouble had long ago made unobservant. Brother Copas reeled in a few feet ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... begins. Here the man needs no windows, for this is his true home and all his walls have fallen away. The majority of men have as yet but very little consciousness at such a height as this; they rest dreamily unobservant and scarcely awake, but such vision as they have is true, however limited it may be by their lack of development. Still, every time they return, these limitations will be smaller, and they themselves will be greater; so that this truest life will be ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... all I took to my room, coming down only for meals. I couldn't eat a thing, and Cyrus noticed it—it is queer how observant men are about some things and how unobservant about others. He didn't tell me what he was going to do, but in the afternoon Dr. Denbigh came to see me. That's the way they do—I'm liable to have the doctor sent in to look me over any time, whether I want him or not. Dr. Denbigh is an excellent friend and a good doctor, but at my time of life ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... habits. The failures of the city schools are less apparent because the atmosphere of urban life is itself socializing. The walk or ride to the city school is likely to make some contribution of socializing character even to the unobservant child. It is still true that the education outside of the schools, the spontaneous instruction provided by the children themselves in addition to the publicly constructed school, impresses itself most upon the childish mind. The urban school is greatly strengthened in its social function by ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... passed through the Pagan's toiling mind as, unobservant of all outward events, he paced through the streets of the beleaguered city. Already he beheld the array of the Goths preparing the way, as the unconscious pioneers of the returning gods, for the march of that mighty revolution which he was determined to lead. The warmth of his past eloquence, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... be so utterly wanting in Theological instinct, or so depraved of taste; so utterly unused to the study of GOD'S Word, or so unobservant of the characteristic method of it,—as to imagine that there is something trifling in the specimens of Interpretation before us. I am only concerned to maintain that they are Divine. You may think what you please about them. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... age, saw in the night time—she alone being awake—a young woman, with black, or very dark hair, which hung loose, and with a black cloak on, standing near the middle of the floor, opposite the hearthstone, and fronting the foot of her bed. She appeared quite unobservant of the children and nurse sleeping in the room. She was very pale, and looked, the child said, both "sorry and frightened," and with something very peculiar and terrible about her eyes, which made the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... ten cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all laugh, had missed no portion ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... said the other, who had taken his seat. 'I'll let you hear from me, you know, about the Scheme and—other things. Don't wait.' He seemed curiously unobservant of these ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Y. should fall on her knees and rejoice. She would if she could leave young Jack or Jill; but she can't—she—never—can. That's what sent Mr. Y. to sleep. It is just as well perhaps that Mrs. Y. is unobservant. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... his father, Kenelm ordered the stranger to be admitted, and in another minute there entered a young man of handsome countenance and powerful frame, in whom, after a surprised stare, Kenelm recognized Tom Bowles. Difficult indeed would have been that recognition to an unobservant beholder: no trace was left of the sullen bully or the village farrier; the expression of the face was mild and intelligent,—more bashful than hardy; the brute strength of the form had lost its former clumsiness, the simple dress was that of a gentleman,—to use an expressive idiom, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the curious exaltation in his manner a few days before the ceremony, and I cannot help thinking that in a moment of enthusiasm, realising that this was his only chance of burial in the Abbey, he took advantage of the bowed unobservant heads during the prayer of Committal and crept beneath the pall into the great actor's tomb. What his feelings were at the time, or afterwards when the vault was bricked up, would require the introspective pen of Mr. Henry James and the curious imagination of Mr. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... Dumont seemed to be putting him in the way of making a fortune. He was distasteful to her, because she saw that he was an ill-tempered sycophant under a pretense of manliness thick enough to shield him from the unobservant eyes of a world of men and women greedy of flattery and busy each with himself or herself. But for Leonora's sake she invited him. And Leonora was appreciative, was witty, never monotonous or commonplace, most helpful in getting up entertainments, and good to look at—always ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... valiant enough in case of open war, but she hated heartily—as who does not hate?—a chilling atmosphere of disapproval, in which no good-fellowship can flourish. Of course the club soon betrayed its common interest, and because Mary Beck was unobservant for the first week or two, Betty took little pains to conceal the fact that she and the Grants had a new interest in common. Then one day Becky did not come over, though the white handkerchief was displayed betimes; ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost was benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head, unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his steering hand against the gee-pole ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... unobservant people might think that our road was walled on one side by gray-blue rocks, but in reality they are dark, uncut sapphires, a facade decoration for the Fairy King's palace. Those same dullards might talk of ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... suspiciously, a few women whose hearts were tuned to a sympathy with the Princess in her imprisonment, or touched with the notion of a romantic attachment, smiled upon him their encouragement. The Countess of Berg for once was unobservant, however. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... unobservant eye the muskrat house in the alders might have looked like a mass of drift in which the rank water-grass had taken root. But within the clumsy pile, about a foot below the centre of the dome, was a shapely, small, warm chamber, lined with the softest grasses. From one side of this ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... certain looseness in the shoulder, so that, at any quick movement of it, it clicked. If I struck the ball well and truly in the direction of point this defect did not matter; but if the ball went past me into the hands of the wicket-keeper, an unobservant bowler would frequently say, "How's that?" And an ill-informed umpire would reply, "Out." It was my duty before the game began to take the visiting umpire on one side and give him a practical demonstration ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... darkness I had been unobservant of a narrow slide in the upper panel, but had scarcely uttered these words of threat when the flare of a discharge almost in my very face fairly blinded me, and I fell backward, aware of a burning sensation ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... unobservant, Mr. Brent," he said. "Our profession, as you know, sir, leads us to the cultivation of that faculty. Now, I've thought a good deal about this matter, and I'll tell you a conclusion I've come to. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... with him, the regaining of his old fatal influence over Elwood, he appeared morose and dissatisfied. Something had not worked to his liking in the complicated machinery of his plans, and he showed his vexation so palpably as soon to attract the attention of his submissive but by no means unobservant wife, who, after a while, plucked up the courage ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... clothing, in the condition of the body, and in the expression of the face. So the motives of man festoon his personality with flaunting and infallible signs to be known and read by all men who care to take the trouble to learn. Some of them are so plain that there is scarcely any grown person so unobservant as not to have seen them. Others are more elusive, but none the less legible to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind; so that I was brought up in such a perfect inattention to those matters, as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me. Indeed, I am so unobservant of it, that to this day I can scarce tell, a few hours after dinner, of what dishes it consisted. This has been a great convenience to me in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... better suited to the great flat snow-shoes by her side, with which she has made her way hither across the deep snow. She speaks but little, yet her keen and watchful glances show that she is by no means unobservant of what is going on around her. See! one of the market women has stopped just in front of her, but it is only to have a good look at the glossy wrapper, white as snow, which glistens quite ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... Tree, or Venetian Sumach. Spain to Caucasus, 1656. On account of its singular appearance this shrub always attracts the attention of even the most unobservant in such matters. It is a spreading shrub, about 6 feet high, with rotundate, glaucous leaves, on long petioles. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, but the feathery nature of the flower clusters, occasioned by the transformation of the pedicels and hairs into fluffy awns, renders this Sumach ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... when she forgot her prayer, and Cummins did not notice it. He failed to notice it the next night, and the next. Plunged deep in his own gloom, he was unobservant of many other things, so that, in place of laughter and joy and merry rompings, only gloomy and oppressive shadows of things that had come and gone filled the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... unobservant. "I think," he said solemnly, "Meg's more tired nor me. P'raps you'd better ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... through her own skirt, or has other powerful cause for dismay. Then he saw Noel in the hall, and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose eyes were playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and he became seated between them in the taxi. The most unobservant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More. There was a passage therein which he itched to show George Laird, who ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with increasing indignation, for the first time apprised of the fact thus made known to him. Unobservant of such things generally, it had never occurred to him to reflect on what had long been patent to the jealous eyes of Cypriano. Besides, the thing seemed so absurd, even preposterous—a red-skinned savage presuming to look upon his sister in the light of a sweetheart, daring ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... not unobservant of this by-play that was passing around him. He easily read in the expressive looks of Tiburcio the secret of his heart, and involuntarily contrasted the manly beauty of the young man with the ordinary face and figure of the Senator. As if from this he apprehended some obstacles ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... on Diana's hand seemed to indicate that he was instinctively pursuing his wild dream of love. At last he slowly raised his head, and his lips being almost on a level with Diana's face, he made an effort to touch those of his lovely guest, but as if unobservant of the movement, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Mr. Mackellar," said she. "You have done most properly in what you too modestly call your interference. I am much to blame; you must think me indeed a very unobservant wife" (looking upon me with a strange smile), "but I shall put this right at once. The Master was always of a very thoughtless nature; but his heart is excellent; he is the soul of generosity. I shall write to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when the humour seized him, Mrs. Bloomfield was struck with the kind and gentleman-like manner with which he met his young kinswoman on this trying occasion, and the affectionate tones of his voice, and the winning expression of his eye, as he addressed her. Eve herself was not unobservant of these peculiarities, nor was she slow in comprehending the reason. She perceived at once that he was acquainted with the state of things between her and Paul. As she well knew the womanly fidelity of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... no difficulty in recognizing about a score of diverse sounds, each of which indicates a particular turn of their mind. Almost all of these different notes have slight variations of expression which fit particular situations. Thus the crow of these birds, which may seem to the unobservant a very unvaried sound, discloses to those who have lovingly studied them at least half a dozen distinct modifications. In the fledgling male who just begins to feel the spirit of his kind, and who goes through his performance in the adolescent way, it is a cheap ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... these guns are shown 500 yards north-west of the bridge), fell upon them as they endeavoured to cross long hedges of prickly pear, and to climb through strong wire fences. Nor were other Boer artillerymen, posted close to the railway station, unobservant of the British flanking movement. Their shells fell thick among the ranks of the detachment, while the burghers in the trenches on the south side of the river, turning their aim from the right and centre of the 9th brigade, poured their fire against those who were the more dangerous enemy, because ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... and unobservant In what state God's other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the question cannot fail to have occurred to the most unobservant reader, why the history of the Family of Bethany and the Resurrection of Lazarus, in themselves so replete with interest and instruction—the latter, moreover, forming, as it did, so notable a crisis in the Saviour's life—should have been recorded only by the Evangelist John. Strange ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... had so well executed the work assigned him in the boarding party's plans, proved himself neither inefficient nor unobservant. He approached me now, with a salute, which ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... by, no unobservant witness of this scene. He noted something in those two men's eyes that recalled the fierce quarrel of the two boys; and as soon as it was possible for him to get away, he went off after the Blounts, determined, if possible, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... for acting, she was perfect. In the ordinary scenes of ordinary life, such as befell her during her visit to Fawn Court, she could not acquit herself well. There was no reality about her, and the want of it was strangely plain to most unobservant eyes. But give her a part to play that required exaggerated, strong action, and she hardly ever failed. Even in that terrible moment, when, on her return from the theatre, she thought that the police had discovered her secret about the diamonds, though she nearly sank through ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to interest themselves long about the affairs of their neighbours. The Baroness had her trumps to think of, her dinners, her twinges of rheumatism: and her suspicions regarding Maria and Harry, lately so lively, now dozed, and kept a careless, unobservant watch. She may have thought that the danger was over, or she may have ceased to care whether it existed or not, or that artful Maria, by her conduct, may have quite cajoled, soothed, and misguided the old Dragon, to whose charge she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... three windows appear, and satisfied its tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went to bed, and here was his cigarette-end on the sill of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... other hand, is the most unobservant creature under the sun. He rarely understands even what is going on under his nose. It is all very well to say that his superior mind is wrapt up in percentages, or absorbed in grand schemes for the regeneration of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... education. It has always been my humble experience that one learns more of use in one hour's keen observation than by reading all the books in the world, and when that sense is keenly developed it is quite extraordinary with what facility one can do things which the average unobservant man thinks utterly impossible. It most certainly teaches one to simplify everything and always to select the best and easiest way in all one undertakes, which, after all, is ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... or yarns, in hanks or skeins and in warps, and lastly in the form of woven pieces. These different forms necessitate the employment of different forms of machinery and different modes of handling, it is evident to the least unobservant that it would be quite impossible to subject slubbing or sliver to the same treatment as yarn or cloth, otherwise the slubbing would be ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech |
