"Distract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not ashamed to talk like that! She sang and played the piano only to do me a kindness, because I positively entreated, almost commanded her to do so. I saw that she was sad, so sad; I thought how to distract her mind—and I heard that she had such marvellous talent! I assure you, Fedor Ivanitch, she is utterly crushed, ask Sergei Petrovitch even; a heart-broken woman, tout a fait: ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... month you have fortunately had so much to distract your thoughts that you have not had time to dwell upon your loss. Moreover, you have needed all your strength and your energy for your search for your sister, and right sure am I that your father, who was as sensible as he was wise—and ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... use of punctuation than that employed by the well-known German editor. Wherever a variant reading is adopted, some good and recognized SHAKSPEREAN critic has been followed. In no case is a new rendering of the text proposed; nor has it been thought necessary to distract the reader's attention ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... nursery and school-room for companionship—insipid pabulum to the vanity of a young lady in her first glimpse of conquest, and who believed she had stricken down a quarry worthy of her bow. Having nothing to distract her, she considered the problem exhaustively from morning till night, and, if she were not in love with him before, she had got him into her head now, if not into her heart. His being so much with Cecil did not strike her as ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... he tried to distract himself by fancying how the discovery of their absence would be made. He heard the listless, half-querulous discussion about the locality that regularly pervaded the nightly camp. He heard the discontented voice of Jake Silsbee as he halted beside the wagon, and said, "Come out o' ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... cucumbers, or fed the roosters! Ungrateful girl! He drooped his head; finally he whistled a mazurka; then he jammed his casque down over his ears and went to the camp, where the sentinels were standing by the cannon: there, to distract his mind, he began a game of cribbage with the private soldiers, and sweetened his sorrow with the cup. Such was the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... something to distract her aunt's attention, and caught sight of a colored man, dressed in sober gray, who was coming toward ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... endangered by it, lay this too aside, and take instead some appropriate etude, or perhaps a little prelude by Bach. If, in the place of these, you choose for instruction a ponderous sonata, in which the music would distract the attention of the pupil from the improved technique, you give up the most important aim of your instruction, and occupy yourself with secondary matters; you will censure and instruct in vain, and will never attain success. You must consider, reflect, and give your mind to ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... life, and that she ought to be thankful that the little it had given her was not taken from her. She hugged that little to herself now that its worth had been revealed to her. A short absence from Paris, ordered by her doctor to distract her in her grief, travel with Olivier, a sort of pilgrimage to the places where they had loved each other during the first year of her marriage, softened her and filled her with tenderness. In the sadness of seeing once more at the turn of the road the dear face of the love which they thought ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... This was one of Desire's "windows with a view." He was always stumbling upon them. But he knew she was shy of comment. "We'll tell Aunt Caroline that," he murmured hopefully. "It may distract her mind." ... ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to march in two columns on either bank of the Adige, drive the French from Rivoli and push on towards Mantua: and yet a third division, led by Davidovich from the district of Friuli on the east, received orders to march on Vicenza and Legnago, in order to distract the French from that side, and possibly relieve Mantua if ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... many points the churches are merely maintaining an observance of definitions which their intellects no longer really accept)—their professed beliefs, then, shall I say?—in all matters of doctrine are not more heterogeneous than those which distract the councils and the congregations of the Establishment. It is only on matters of administration and Church discipline that they fundamentally differ. We count upon the Free Church Bishops to give us a majority both on the secularization ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments, occasionally, riot and insurrection. ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... little boy drunk teat-distilling showers. Faith to the witness Jove's praise doth apply; Ceres, I think, no known fault will deny. The goddess saw Iasion on Candian Ide, With strong hand striking wild beasts' bristled hide. She saw, and as her marrow took the flame, Was divers ways distract with love and shame. Love conquered shame, the furrows dry were burned, And corn with least part of itself returned. 30 When well-tossed mattocks did the ground prepare, Being fit-broken with the crooked share, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... to himself and to me, now that I was established in my recovery, to inform me that, while he forgave my intrusion on a privacy he had already begged me not to break, he must desire that there should be no recurrence of attentions to his daughter, which might distract a heart destined either for the service of a free Catholic in regenerated Ireland, or for that ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... Proposition we may give salt is soluble, or water rusts iron: the copulative exponible is exemplified by salt is savoury and wholesome; and so on. But this procedure has some disadvantages: it is often cumbrous; and it may distract the reader's attention from the point to be explained by exciting his interest in the special fact of the illustration. Clearly, too, so far as Logic is formal, no particular matter of fact can adequately illustrate any of its doctrines. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... phase set in, Maudie had sent into Dawson for Potts, O'Flynn and Mac, that they might distract the Colonel's mind from the pardner she knew could not return. But O'Flynn, having married the girl at the Moosehorn Cafe, had excuse of ancient validity for not coming; Potts was busy breaking the faro bank, and Mac was waiting till an overdue ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... to her—"Stop!" he cried, "Rebecca! do not wound your future peace. I plainly see under what prejudices you have been accused, under what fears you have fallen. But do not be terrified into the commission of a crime which hereafter will distract your delicate conscience. My requesting you of your father for my wife will satisfy his scruples, prevent your oath—and here I ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... the cardinals; and that he had a daughter, Novella, so accomplished in law as to be able to read her father's lectures in his absence, and so beautiful, that she had to read behind a curtain lest her face should distract the attention of the students. He is said to have died at Bologna of the plague in 1348, and an epitaph in the church of the Dominicans in which he was buried, calling him Rabbi Doctorum, Lux, Censor, Normaque Morum, testifies to the public estimation of his character. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... exert yourselves, my dears," she would explain, "to make the evening pleasant for the young men. And they require something to distract their attention from the too earnest pursuit of ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... in advising that the sick be not suddenly interrupted so as to distract their attention, says that the rule applies to the well quite as much as to the sick. She adds: "I have never known persons who exposed themselves for years to constant interruptions who did not muddle away their intellects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... let me know what it is; come, don't distract yourself alone; let me bear a share of your grief, as well as I have shared in ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... of having made a lapse, for he hurried on, as though to distract my attention from it, "I don't take any stock at all in such matters. 'Rats and mice and such small deer,' as Shakespeare has it, 'chicken feed of the larder' they might be called. I'm past all that sort of nonsense. You might as well ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... northward along the uninteresting streets beyond. At this moment, it occurred to me that Godfrey was behaving singularly as though he were hastening to keep an appointment; but I judged it best not to distract his attention from the street before us, and restrained the question which rose ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... stopping them by distracting their attention by some pleasant or conspicuous object which makes them forget that they want to cry. Most nurses excel in this art, and rightly used it is very useful; but it is of the utmost importance that the child should not perceive that you mean to distract his attention, and that he should be amused without suspecting you are thinking about him; now this is what ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Yet I do enjoy the bed with sheets, it is an inexpressible luxury. How I have longed for it, but in vain, when suffering fever, to be able really to undress! But I must not write of such matters, nor of more serious ones that distract my judgment and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... refitted, and the fleet furnished with fresh supplies of provisions and ammunition; but his principal motive was to take on board a number of troops provided for a descent upon France, which had been projected by England and Holland, with a view to alarm and distract the enemy in their own dominions. The queen was so pleased with the victory that she ordered thirty thousand pounds to be distributed among the sailors. She caused medals to be struck in honour of the action; and the bodies of admiral Carter and captain Hastings, who had been killed in the battle, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Drama, abhors lengthiness; like the Drama, it must be kept doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... straight quays, on this tranquil bank, she took the air on summer evenings, watching the graceful course of the river, and the distant landscape. In the morning she traversed these quays with holy zeal, in order to go to church, and that she might not meet in this lone road any thing to distract her attention. Her father, who liked her lofty studies, and was intoxicated at his daughter's success, was still desirous of initiating her in his own craft, and made her begin to engrave. She learned to handle the burin, and succeeded in this as in every thing else. As yet she ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the island to another, in order to meet feigned attacks by the enemy who were ready to turn any of those diversions into a real assault, on finding the Jersey people unprepared. The Lieutenant-Governor had no choice but to distract and weary his men, marching them backwards and forwards to S. Aubin, S. Clement, and Gorey, according as the invaders appeared at one or other of those landing-places. The militiamen were worn out by these tactics, and were moreover of the class ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... begin a little conversation about things in general. Even in these three days, nature and youth had done something for Lucy. She had slept and rested, and the unforeseen misfortune which had come in to distract her grief had roused all the natural strength that was in her. As she was a little nervous about this interview, not knowing what it might end in, Lucy thought it her duty to be as composed and self-commanding as possible, and, in order to avoid all dangerous and ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and even 60 feet, so as to give the sap the longest possible distance to travel; and, further, for the purpose of concentrating into the fruit the whole result of the wine, all the buds and little shoots, which would distract therefrom, are carefully taken away. This gives to the vine a very curious look, but it serves well to illustrate how greatly wines differ as to whether they require short or long pruning. It also helps to a better understanding of the two main styles of training ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... two of the million-mark bills which Germany paid over in the indemnity, y'understand, are not. So, therefore, my advice to England is, examine the German indemnity carefully, and don't let no returned sultan's skull distract your attention, even if it would be made of plaster of Paris with a round hold on top for keeping matches in it, and on ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... not thought, of course, of going down to dinner; she had, instead, sent Victor word simply that she begged to be excused from joining him for that meal. Then, unable longer to endure Chou Nu's efforts to comfort or distract her, Sofia had stepped out of her street frock and into a negligee and, dismissing the maid, returned to the chaise-longue upon which, in vain hope of being able to cry out the wretchedness of her heart, she had thrown herself ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Nevers, and myself did all that lay in our power to distract or relieve the sorrows of the Prince; but the loss of Mademoiselle de Chatillon, his charming spouse, was much more present with him than that of his states; the bitterness which he drew from it was out of the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... more suited to reanimate torpid intelligence and feeling, or to distract and console melancholy among the unfortunate insane, these edifices majestic in their general effect and comfortable in their details, these grandiose parks, with luxuriant plantations and verdant flowery lawns, whose harmonious association ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... sense. He was a little mistaken in this, but not the less resolved that money in some way he would have in order to fulfil his promise to his father, and for the ulterior purpose of giving the squire some daily interest to distract his thoughts from the regrets and cares that were almost weakening his mind. It was 'Roger Hamley, Senior Wrangler and Fellow of Trinity, to the highest bidder, no matter what honest employment,' and presently it came down to 'any bidder ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... friend ———, who left her as a keepsake for my boy. Jamie dotes upon her; and I do assure you I regard her almost as a second Whittington's cat: neither mouse nor chitmunk has dared intrude within our log-walls since she made her appearance; the very crickets, that used to distract us with their chirping from morning till night, have forsaken their old haunts. Besides the crickets, which often swarm so as to become intolerable nuisances, destroying your clothes and woollens, we are pestered by large black ants, that gallop about, eating up ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... mean who trade with it now? No—nothing of the sort. They use it to distract and perplex the public mind; to draw it off from the one paramount obligation which the times impose upon the nation—the obligation of saving the national existence by the military extinction of the rebellion, regardless of all other ends and aims. They trade upon the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tongue. Its purpose is to make the words grow large, as it were; to expand and emphasise their meaning; hence the wisdom of the advice—"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action." If the action distract the listeners' attention from the word its ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... soldiers, and such as had never handled a weapon before. Besides, they had wholly neglected all religious usages, had not obtained favorable sacrifices, nor made inquiries of the prophets, natural in danger and before battle. No less did the multitude of commanders distract and confound their proceedings; frequently before, upon less occasions, they had chosen a single leader, with the title of dictator, being sensible of what great importance it is in critical times to have the solders ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the land where troubles cease, Where toils and tears are o'er;— The blissful clime of rest and peace, Where cares distract no more; And not the shadow of distress Dims its ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... careening the gallant little craft to her covering- board, whilst it drove her along at the rate of a good honest nine knots in the hour. There was no other sail anywhere in sight, nor indeed anything to distract attention from the little vessel herself, save the shoals of flying-fish which now and then sparkled out from under our forefoot and went skimming away through the air to leeward, until they vanished with a flash, only to reappear, perhaps, next moment, with their ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... feeling that "my works were not seen to advantage when placed in juxtaposition with those of an essentially different kind," that I "determined to have an exhibition of my own, where no discordant elements should distract the spectator's attention." It is true that occasionally it has been borne in upon my mind that those whose "works are of an essentially different kind," are unwilling to place mine in juxtaposition ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... was caused by the immense crowd blocking the court, only pushed aside by archers on horseback, who separated the people. The marquise now went out, and the doctor, lest the sight of the people should completely distract her, put a crucifix in her hand, bidding her fix her gaze upon it. This advice she followed till they gained the gate into the street where the tumbril was waiting; then she lifted her eyes to see the shameful object. It was one of the smallest of carts, still splashed with mud ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... just what's wanted," said the Major, "to ensure the success of the day. A musical composition of yours, O'Grady, played by our own town band, will be quite likely to distract the Lord-Lieutenant's attention from the fact that here's no statue here ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... counsel of her family, for well she knew the outburst of condemnation, incredulity, and grief that would assail her there. They could not help her yet; they would only augment perplexities, weaken convictions, and distract her mind. When she was sure of herself she would tell them, endure their indignation and regret, and steadily execute the new purpose, whatever ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... might be found—everything is possible; but such are devoted more or less to a variety of plants, and the departments are not all gathered beneath one roof. I confess, for my own part, a hatred of references. They interrupt the writer, and they distract the reader. At the place I have chosen to illustrate our theme, one has but to cross a corridor from any of the working quarters to reach the showroom. We may start upon our critical survey from the very dwelling-house. Pundits of agricultural science explore the sheds, I believe, ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... especially—in whose presence he felt himself as diffident as she did in his. He was thinking of ladies in velvet dresses and diamonds, who could talk wittily of pictures and theatres and books, who could amuse him and distract him. And meanwhile she went about in her old stuff dress, her cotton apron and rolled-up sleeves, cooking and washing and cleaning—for her child and for him. She felt through every nerve that he was constantly aware of details of dress or menage that jarred upon ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stationery. Hermia eyed her Dresden chocolate-pot uncheerfully. This breakfast gift had reached her with an ominous regularity on Mondays and Thursdays for a month, and the time had come when something must be done about it. But she did not permit unpleasant thoughts, if unpleasant they really were, to distract her from the casual delights of retrospection and the pleasures of her repast, which she finished with a thoroughness that spoke more eloquently of the wholesomeness of her appetite even than the real excellence of the cooking. Upon Titine, who brought her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... distract the attention from another dog.[45] A very gaunt poodle came along at the moment. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... tired out, and scarcely had we rolled ourselves in our blankets when a dismal howl made us "say things," and in half an hour all the dingoes in North Queensland seemed to have gathered around the camp to distract us. The noise they made was something diabolical, coming from both sides of the creek, and from the ranges. In reality there were not more than five or six at the outside, but any one would imagine that there were droves of them. Not liking to discharge our guns on account of C———'s ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... shalt please to restore her to her former health, give her grace to be ever mindful of that mercy, and to keep those good resolutions she now makes in her sickness, so that no length of time nor prosperity may entice her to forget them. Let no thought of her misfortunes distract her mind, and prevent the means toward her recovery, or disturb her in her preparations for a better life. We beseech thee also, O Lord, of Thy infinite goodness, to remember the good actions of this Thy servant; that the naked she hath clothed, ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... was a very magnificent chamber; but not so magnificent as he who sat in it. He was but just come from supper, and wore his orders on his coat; but all his dress could not distract those who looked at him from that kingly Stuart face that he had. He was, perhaps, the heaviest looking of them all, with not a tithe of Monmouth's brilliant charm, or the King's melancholy power; yet he too had the air of command and more than a touch of that strange ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... I am retracing my steps during the long wandering reveries which distract my thoughts along the path through which I saunter at random, my soul takes wing, and suddenly I recall little incidents of a gay or sinister character which, emerging from the shades of the past, flit before my memory as the birds flit through the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... I daresay a great many of you are thinking that it is far harder for you, in the distractions and rush and conflict of business and daily life, than it is for people like me, whom you imagine as sitting in a study, with nothing to distract us. I do not know about that; I fancy it is about equally hard for us all; but it is possible. I have been in Alpine villages where, at the end of every squalid alley, there towered up a great, pure, silent, white peak. That is what our lives may be; however noisome, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... noon, part of the twilight, chief surely of the worshippers who swept on in the pale procession that received gifts from the desert's hands. She could no longer imagine the desert without him. The almost painful feeling that had come to her in the garden—of the human power to distract her attention from the desert power—was dying, perhaps had completely died away. Another feeling was surely coming to replace it; that Androvsky belonged to the desert more even than the Arabs did, that the desert spirits were close about him, clasping his hands, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... appeal very strongly to the Western sense of religious beauty. Where the stanzas are full of the technical terms of the Buddhist system of self-culture and self-control, it is often impossible, without expansions that spoil the poetry, or learned notes that distract the attention, to convey the full sense of the original. In all these distinctively Buddhist verses the existing translations (of which Professor Max Mueller's is the best known, and Dr Karl Neumann's the best) are inadequate and sometimes quite erroneous. The connexion in which they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the morning two rockets glared redly to the sky, and were immediately responded to by answering signals, which were observed from the ramparts. The solitary sentinel on St. John's Bastion reported an armed body of men approaching. It was a feint to distract attention from the point where Montgomery was ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... glades and touched the surface of the rolling ground, where, in the hollows, on the heights, on the sloping sides of the dingles, knots of trees of yet more luxuriant and picturesque growth, planted or left by the cultivator's hand long ago, and trained by no hand but nature's, stood so as to distract a painter's eye; and just now, in the fresh gilding of the morning, and with all the witchery of the long shadows upon the uneven ground, certainly charmed Fleda's eye and mind both. Fancy was dancing again, albeit with one hand upon gravity's shoulder, and the dancing was a little nervous too. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... here said, "I am certain he is ill; he's in a fever. You must not distract and torture yourself about his predictions. You sent for Doctor Torvey; ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... safety. If he were safe, I should feel comparatively happy; happiness, in its full extent, I never can hope to enjoy; but if he were only safe—if he were only safe, my dear Mrs. Brown! I know that he is hunted like a beast of prey, and under such circumstances as disturb and distract the country, how can ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... lately much to distract her attention," says the jest-hunting Squire; "but her things were never better in spite of—. Well we won't touch ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... obliged him to use an umbrella and a walking-stick as crutches. He was also nervous in crossing crowded thorough-fares, and particularly so at night; while he always liked to make Lehrs cross my threshold in front of him to distract the attention of Robber, of whom he stood in obvious terror. Our usually good-natured dog became positively suspicious of this visitor, and soon adopted towards him the same aggressive attitude which he had shown to the sailor Koske on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... imitative in origin. Whether any of them are of value, as Lindley thinks, in arousing the brain to activity, or as Mueller suggests, in drawing off sensations or venting efferent impulses that would otherwise distract, we need not here discuss. If so, this is, of course, a secondary and late function—nature's way of making the best of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the other day, overwhelmed by the sufferings of my poor body, I began to re-read my treaty of Combourgeoisie with your city, to distract the ennui of my malady, when the countess' little dog who had been gamboling about me dragged off, while I was not looking, the ribbon and seal, which greatly annoyed me. I send you back the paper, therefore, asking you to be as good as to affix another seal, by which ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... tricks and frauds and deceits, and after the day is over I write these lines and try to inoculate myself with a serum or toxin that will serve as a safeguard on the morrow to ward off the things which try to annoy and distract me from my purpose: to do, and to be, as nearly right and fair as I can, in act and thought ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... I can henceforth bear anything. I shall never see her again. Oh, why cannot I fall on your neck, and, with floods of tears and raptures, give utterance to all the passions which distract my heart! Here I sit gasping for breath, and struggling to compose myself. I wait for day, and at sunrise the horses are ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... notice with a certain shame and surprise that all I have been writing has been done in order to distract my thoughts. Yes, that is true. I speak about landscapes, homesickness, and so forth, while all my thoughts are at Ploszow. I did not want to acknowledge it, even to myself. I feel restless, and something seems to weigh me down. It ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... should never be so gorgeous as to distract the mind from the picture. "Frames are to protect the picture and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... be delighted. An ache of loneliness was creeping over me. I wanted to put off as long as possible getting back to the hotel. I wanted to distract my thoughts from dwelling upon to-morrow and what I was going to say to Christopher. To-morrow—that seems the end ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... be as zealous in allaying the troubles of France as he had been successful in fomenting discord—a remark which Beza did not let pass unchallenged, for he declared that he neither had distracted nor intended to distract his native land. From inquiries respecting Beza's great master, Calvin, his age and health, the discourse turned to certain obnoxious expressions which Lorraine attributed to Beza himself; but the latter entirely disclaimed ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... esquilador's agile fingers, and occasionally encouraged the patient, their constant companion and playmate both in quarters and the field, by expressions of sympathy and affection. The arrival of Paco, who established himself behind the esquilador, in a gap of the circle, was insufficient to distract their attention from the important and all-absorbing interest of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... care in entire security. The world had quite fallen from her, or so much of it as she had seen at Florence, and in her indifference she lapsed into life as it was in the time before that with a tender renewal of her allegiance to it. There was nothing in the conversation of the vice-consul to distract her from this; and she said and did the things at Venice that she used to do at Middlemount, as nearly as she could; to make the days of waiting pass more quickly, she tried to serve herself in ways that scandalized the proud affection of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of theirs. These torments, added to my desolate life—receiving nothing but torments, and where I should look for some comfort, together with the consideration of my cruel destiny, my days and times worn out in trouble and imprisonment—is sufficient either utterly to distract me, or to make me curse the time that ever I was born into the world, and ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... guns. These were to anchor in a close north-and-south line along the west face of the works, at about nine hundred yards distance. They were to be supported by forty gunboats and as many bomb vessels, besides the efforts of the ships-of-the-line to cover the attack and distract the garrison. Twelve thousand French troops were brought to reinforce the Spaniards in the grand assault, which was to be made when the bombardment had sufficiently injured and demoralized the defenders. At this time the latter numbered seven thousand, their ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... turned to the writing-table. She resolutely took pen and paper, but the least thing seemed to distract her attention—the coronet on the note-paper cost her five minutes of far-off reflection. She took up the pen again, and wrote ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... sight indeed for Tor Glen, and one that might well distract the whole school's attention. Two discreet ponies were picking their way down the zig-zag path, while behind walked a man. But greatest wonder! on each pony was seated a real lady. Erect and gracefully, too, did they keep their seats, as the patient beasts ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... feeling to the whole body. Sometimes it seems as if the very substance of my flesh were so many eyes looking out at will upon a world new created every day. The silence and darkness which are said to shut me in, open my door most hospitably to countless sensations that distract, inform, admonish, and amuse. With my three trusty guides, touch, smell, and taste, I make many excursions into the borderland of experience which is in sight of the city of Light. Nature accommodates itself ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... under the table, in whose good graces he was also thus firmly planting himself. As Trebassof had prayed his companions to let his young friend satisfy his ravening hunger in peace, they did not concern themselves to entertain him. Then, too, the music served to distract attention from him, and at a moment somewhat later, when Matrena Petrovna turned to speak to the young man, she was frightened at not seeing him. Where had he gone? She went out into the veranda and looked. She did not dare to call. She walked into the grand-salon and saw the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... corner, where the water-jets gleamed out of the blackness like rods of twisted crystal. He entered the narrow street, or rather alley, leading to the bridge. In the state of blank misery he was in his eye seized upon the smallest objects as if to distract his mind, and he observed—as he might not have done had he been happy—that in the lighted upper room of the corner house they had trained growing ivy ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... succeeds as its functions and organs become fitted to its environment. Man succeeds as he fits himself to a moral environment. To the undeveloped man the world is full of forces which are hostile or indifferent to his right action; a thousand things distract him from doing right; he is like a creature in a watery world with half-developed fins. But as a man becomes morally developed he finds moral opportunity everywhere,—finds occasion for service, for admiration, gratitude, reverence, hope. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... many millions of livres. With her own hands she packed away the more precious and portable of them, while she arranged with her brother for the safe-keeping of the others. All day she was at work in a mood of feverish energy, doing anything and everything which might distract her thoughts from her own defeat and her rival's victory. By evening all was ready, and she had arranged that her property should be sent after her to Petit Bourg, to which castle she intended ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and take no revenge upon Thy tender youth; A love from me to thee Is firm, what ere thou dost: It troubles me That I have call'd the blood out of thy cheeks, That did so well become thee: but good boy Let me not see thee more; something is done, That will distract me, that will make me mad, If I behold thee: if thou tender'st me, Let me not ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... road, an ambulance dashing up to lift his bruised hopes tenderly and take them off somewhere for sanitary treatment, or even some childish sympathy of theirs commissioned to run up and offer him a nosegay to distract him in his walk toward old disappointments and old cares. He only knew they were welcome visitants in his mind. Sometimes the mind seemed to him a clean-swept place, the shades down and no fire lighted, and these young creatures, in their heavenly ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... have been served or even real lamb chops, but no power of special dishes served to distract the students ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... and copy out for me forty times the compound verb, 'I cough without necessity to distract the attention of my comrade Rapaud from ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... time she opened her mouth, a tiger padded in her direction down a path of currant bushes. There are, it may be admitted, heroic exceptions. The chaffinch sits in the plum and blusters out his music, cat or no cat. To be sure, he only sings, a flush of all the colours, in order to distract our attention. He is not an artist but a watchman. If you look into the buddleia-tree beside him, you will see his hen moving about in silence, creeping, dancing, fluttering, as she gorges herself with insects. She is a fly-catcher ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... we have no others to share our devotion, to distract our attention. Our only one should be, as near as a mother can make ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... trouble in securing quietness, attention, and docility. There was almost a painful earnestness in the old-fashioned faces which pored over the school-books; even such a rare event as the entrance of a foreigner failed to distract these childish students. The younger pupils were taught chiefly by object lessons, and the older were exercised in reading geographical and historical books aloud, a very high key being adopted, and a most disagreeable ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... morning, and allotting to every hour its appropriate work. "Leisure and I have taken leave of each other," said he. And yet such was the happy arrangement of his employments, that, amidst a multiplicity that would distract an ordinary man, he declares that "there are few persons who spend so many hours secluded from all company as myself." "The wonder of his character," said Robert Hall, "is the self-control by which he preserved himself calm, while ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... not want to pick a quarrel out of our many just causes of complaint. But it will be as well that Lincoln and Seward should see that we are long patient, and do nothing to distract their attention from the arduous task they have ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... have had wandering thoughts in the time of this duty, I have laboured to compose my mind, and fix it upon God; then with great force hath the tempter laboured to distract me, and confound me, and to turn away my mind, by presenting to my heart and fancy, the form of a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like, as if I should pray to these: To these he would also (at sometimes especially) so hold my mind, that I was as if I could think of nothing else, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... to plunge himself into the Corri-nan-shian, and the sobered mood in which he now returned homeward, industriously seeking out the most practicable path, not from a wish to avoid danger, but that he might not by personal toil distract his attention, deeply fixed on the extraordinary scene which he had witnessed. In the former case, he had sought by hazard and bodily exertion to indulge at once the fiery excitation of passion, and to banish the cause of the excitement from his recollection; ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... display and because he was planning a new war. He aimed at the final destruction of the Hsiung-nu, so that access to central Asia should no longer be precarious and it should thus be possible to reduce the expense of the military administration of Turkestan. The war would also distract popular attention from the troubles at home. By way of preparation for war, Wang Mang sent a mission to the Hsiung-nu with dishonouring proposals, including changes in the name of the Hsiung-nu and ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... tell him soon, but not just yet. I do not want to distract his mind from his lessons, and I wish to be quite sure first. I think I should wait till I hear from ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... colorless and exhausted, but clinging to Tod still in a queer pathetic way, and letting him pull at her collar and her ribbons and her hair. The touch of his relentless baby hands and his pretty, tyrannical, restless ways seemed to help her a little and half distract her thoughts. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... husband; by day as by night she is heard silently sobbing; she is a constant visitor to the place of rest; with the greatest reluctance will she follow the raised camp. The friends and relatives of the young mourner will incessantly devise methods to distract her mind from the thought of her lost husband. She refuses nourishment, but as nature is exhausted she is prevailed upon to partake of food; the supply is scant, but on every occasion the best and largest proportion is deposited upon the grave of her husband. In the mean time the ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... child, I can't tell. You know perfectly well yourself. Be preoccupied, absent-minded, indifferent, when he comes. Make him repeat what he says, and then answer him at random. Look as though you had a thousand things to distract your attention, and treat him as though he were the chair ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... safely reforming; above all to proceed as fast as the innumerable difficulties which impede their course will let them, in bringing Ireland into a state of quiet and contentment, and to pave the way for some definite settlement of the great questions which distract that country. This I believe to be the object of Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, but at the same time they have colleagues and supporters who have more extensive and less moderate views, and who would like to see the Government more cordially allied ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... by means of two lay alcaldes, who are appointed annually by the ayuntamiento from the citizens of the city. When the appointees are men of wealth, they resign, for this charge alone occasions them ill-humor and serious occupations which distract them from their business. Those who accept or desire it, can have no other stimulus than that of vile interest, tolerating prohibited games, etc. It is, then, necessary to appoint two lawyers with suitable pay to be judges of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... well, D'Urville. The number of his assailants prevents the archers on the Turkish craft using their bows. Fire those bow guns!" he shouted to the knights forward: "Take steady aim at the galley. It will distract ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... we can all of us do something. If one has the courage and good sense, when in a melancholy mood, to engage in some piece of practical work, it is wonderful how one can distract the great beast that, left to himself, crops and munches the tender herbage of the spirit. For myself I have generally a certain number of dull tasks to perform, not in themselves interesting, and out of which little pleasure can ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Concorde, and in the Tuileries gardens beyond the breeze dreamily stirred the foliage which hid from Lynde's view the gray facade of the gutted palace, still standing there, calcined and cracked by the fires of the Commune. Presently all this began to distract him, and when he returned to the hotel he was in a humor that would have been comparatively tranquil if so many tedious miles had not stretched between ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... newly-elected King of Poland, was a veteran soldier of great military renown. He placed himself at the head of other divisions of the army, and endeavored to distract the enemy and to divide their forces. At the same time, Alexis himself hastened to the theater of war that he might animate his troops by his presence. The Turks, finding themselves unable to advance any ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... have another advantage. The singers on the platform, all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the minister, and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them, studying all the faces and all the dresses. If one of them sits up very straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder why he does n't sit up; if his hair ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to distract Mary V's mind from her mother's lack of feeling. She obediently turned out the lights,—all the lights, since they meant to kill Johnny in cold blood!—and wept anew upon the darkened porch, while swarms of mosquitoes hummed just without the ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... those in the next. This sameness is not accidental. The more real the murderer's fancied security is made in this paragraph to appear, the more startling in the next paragraph will be the revelation of his mistake. Hence no novelty in the words or in their arrangement is allowed to distract our attention from the dominant thought. The sentences are made to look and sound alike and to be alike that their effect may be cumulative. The principle of Parallel Construction, the principle that sentences similar ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... specialization, and with specialization came even greater efficiency. Anyone who specializes will likely be more efficient because of the mastering of skills. He will also have a minimum of other cares to distract him. Of course, for the consumers, foreign or domestic, greater farming efficiencies resulted in abundant food at ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson. "'Not without regard to the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'—tell me again what that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... islanders was edifying, the costumes worn by these strange converts were such as somewhat to distract the attention of the visitors. A black coat or the waistcoat of an English uniform was the only garment worn by some, whilst others contented themselves with a jacket, a shirt, or a pair of trousers. The most fortunate were wrapped ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... inclination for Henry; now that he had lost that bold girl, she tremulously assured herself, perhaps it was not quite so hopeless. Laura, too, had an idea that such might possibly be the case, and hoping at least to distract her brother, about whom she was becoming quite anxious, she had Ida over to tea once or twice, and, by various other devices which with a clever woman are matters of course, managed to throw ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy |
