"Distracting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I will ask Mrs. Gordon to teach me the spirit of acquiescence, and one of those distracting games—besique or halma, or some of the other infernal pastimes that heaven decrees for recalcitrant spirits ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... set up a louder and more distracting yell. Getting desperate, Anson seized her in his arms, and, despite her struggles, began tossing her on his shoulder. The child understood him and ceased to cry, especially as Gearheart began to set the table, making a pleasant clatter, whistling ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... entertain serious apprehensions, as to the stability of his mind's restoration. It is on this account, that I have felt so anxious that one of his relations should be near him. Change of scene is absolutely necessary, as soon as change of scene can be safely adopted. Every distracting thought must be avoided, and the utmost care taken that no agitating topic is discussed in his presence. These precautions may do much; but should they have no effect, which I think possible; as a medical man, I should then recommend, what as a member of his family may startle you. My advice ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... sight your mobile face Depicts your joys or woes distracting; We marvel at your winsome grace— And wish you'd learn ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... poor master was so disturbed in his mind,' said Matthew, 'the doctor bid me run as fast as I could for the stuff he had ordered: which I did. But I was obliged to wait till it was made up; and when I come back my poor dear master was more distracting light-headed than ever. But still he kept raving about the parchment; and his cousin, Sir Barnard; and you, Mr. Trevor: all which the Doctor said we must not heed, because he did not know what he said. Though, for all that, I could not but mightily fear there was something hung heavy on his mind: ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... more than an indissoluble legal contract. It was rooted in their life. It was one of those things for which they were willing to fight; and their readiness to fight for the national idea was the great salutary fact. Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... from cramping bondage, come to an understanding with herself, face her heart and soul, and—as it were—look them in the eyes and know them for what they were, good or evil. In the presence of this total stranger there was something unpleasantly distracting which she could not and did not ignore, something which roused her antagonism and which at the same time compelled her attention. She had been conscious of it in the train, conscious of it in the tunnel at twilight, at night in the hotel, and once again in Count Anteoni's garden. This ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and was brought to a climax when the logical and serious Starkweather began summing up for the defense. While he was speaking Stewart took a position so as to gaze continually into the face of his opponent, evidently with the intention of disconcerting him, and of distracting the attention of the jury. Starkweather was not a little irritated at Stewart's absurd look and attitude. In spite of this, however, he grappled with the strong points at issue, and elucidated them ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... antagonist are equal, and there are only two more holes left to play in the match for the medal? It is a serious moment; not one of the little crowd of observers, the gallery that accompany the players, dares to speak, or even cough. The caddie who sneezes is lost, for he will be accused of distracting his master's attention. The ladies begin to appear in the background, ready to greet the players, and to tell the truth, are not very welcome to the nervous golfer. Everything turns on half an inch of leather in a "drive," or a stiff blade of grass in a putt, and the interest ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... second summer in looking for a sympathetic woman, with the intention of making her my wife. May I never see such a hard-working, distracting season again! Not that such women were hard to find—they were only too plenty: at one time I had six who were devoted to me. One sympathized with my love of music; we sang duets together in the evening; it was delightful, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... proved himself to be a true friend, and one, moreover, blessed with an amount of energy for which she had never given him credit. He prevailed on his sister-in-law to come to Vienna, so that she could help Bertha to tide over the first few weeks of her bereavement, besides, in some slight degree, distracting her thoughts. He settled the business affairs capably and quickly. His kindness of heart did much to cheer Bertha during those sad days, and when, on the expiration of his leave, he asked her whether she would be his wife she acquiesced with a feeling of the most profound gratitude. She was, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... the Ghost of Jacob Marley all through their confabulation, even when the spectre's voice, as we are told, was disturbing the very marrow in his bones. True, it is there stated that, all through that portentous dialogue, he was only trying to be smart "as a means of distracting his own attention." But the jests themselves are too delicious, one would say, for mere make-believes. Besides which, hear his laugh at the end of the book! Hardly that of one really so long out of practice—"a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh, the father of a long, long line of brilliant ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the task, he has the greatest literary pleasure of his life yet to come. Type, size of book, excellent as a library edition; and the illustrations, so far as they have gone, are good, and not too distracting. And so, after this unequivocal expression of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... sure the papers are printing too much miscellaneous reading. The perusal of this smattering of everything, these scraps of information and snatches of literature, this infinite variety and medley, in which no subject is adequately treated, is distracting and debilitating to the mind. It prevents the reading of anything in full, and its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that the majority of Americans read nothing except the paper. If they read that thoroughly, they have time for nothing else. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his tent, and, reclining, fell into a reverie of distracting thoughts. The history of his life and mind seemed with a whirling power to pass before him; his birth, in clime unknown to the Patriarchs; his education, unconsciously to himself, in an Arabian literature; his imbibing, from his tender infancy, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... in amusing him, or distracting his attention from anything which her intuition warned her might lead to dangerous questioning. She sang to him, and read to him, choosing lighter stories from the magazines, and preferably those in which ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... sort seemed to be in the air. Ideas of big dealings already loomed large in the minds of the little army of clerks. Telephones were handled longingly. Those of the firm who were members of the Stock Exchange abandoned any work of a distracting nature and held themselves ready for a prompt rush across ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... admitted that utility and right coincide, not in particular instances, but in classes of actions. But is it not distracting to the conscience of a man to be told that in the particular case they are opposed? Happiness is said to be the ground of moral obligation, yet he must not do what clearly conduces to his own happiness if it ...
— Philebus • Plato
... most conspicuous spot, where the flesh is tender and the suffering plainly visible. The Episcopalian or Catholic uses a small tack, and drives it as much out of sight as possible, covering it over with stained glass, and distracting the attention with music; but the bald, cruel, unjust, immoral, degrading, and dishonest principle is ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... the truth, her grief was tragic. She gave hollow sobs, she received shocks that threw her backward, in a distracting attack of terror and anguish. She remained there choking, uttering from time to time a piercing scream amidst the profound roar of her affliction. She would have dragged herself along the ground, had not Suzanne taken her round ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... of distracting his mind from morbid brooding over what was past helping, he went into society, and endeavoured to interest himself in young ladies. But in these efforts his success was indifferent. Whenever he began to flatter ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... affinity for the bottom of water, not for the top. The situation was a trying one and the way the captain of the vessel kept dancing about his deck saying things in a foreign tongue, but quite comprehensible, was distracting; but I did not devote myself to giving him the information he asked for, as to what PARTICULAR kind of idiot I was, because he was neither a mad doctor nor an ethnologist and had no right to the information; but I put a raft on the line of a very light ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... away by more attractive thoughts. Hence the impressions are respectively strong and weak. Moreover, to the intellectual listlessness which a pupil's lack of interest in any study involves, must be added the paralysing fear of consequences. This, by distracting his attention, increases the difficulty he finds in bringing his faculties to bear upon facts that are repugnant to them. Clearly, therefore, the efficiency of tuition will, other things equal, be proportionate to the gratification with ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... I pray imperfectly, as I am forced by my distracting fears and apprehensions; and O join with me, my dear parents!—But, alas! how can you know, how can I reveal to you, the dreadful situation of your poor daughter! The unhappy Pamela may be undone (which God forbid, and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... promising himself great enjoyment of the quiet time so that he might the better prepare for the school examinations that were coming on. "I used to think the children bothered with their noise and their chatter, but the stillness is ten, times more distracting, I think." ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Hoboken had boiled his mother-in-law. It is of no moment now why he had boiled his mother-in-law, though at the time the consideration of this question had filled columns upon columns of the daily newspapers. There had been a controversy between the gentleman and his mother-in-law, prolonged and distracting, and the long and short of a very painful conjunction of circumstances is that the gentleman had felt himself reduced to the necessity of doing something serious to his mother-in-law, and, thus moved, he had boiled her. It would have been wiser, doubtless, had he taken ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... his question to each of the natives in turn, whether they saw the parties plainly enough to make sure they were white men. The servants were positive on this point, adding the distracting statement that they were dressed precisely like the two absent members of the little company, and that each carried a rifle ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... ludicrous lights as this same subject of death; and the reason is at once obvious—yet recherche—videlicet, Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild, dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times men talking about it ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of warning, spoken at the wrong moment, in the wrong tone, might be disastrously misunderstood; and the distracting sense of being purely responsible for his own trouble, stung him to renewed irritation. All capacity for work had been dispelled by that vexatiously engaging son of his, with his heart in India and his ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... special faculty of brain is developed to an extraordinary degree, and the man is able to put forth the most strenuous exertions at a pinch. Let us name some typical examples. Turner was a man of phenomenal industry, but at intervals his temperament craved for some excitement more violent and distracting than any that he could get from the steady strain of daily work. He used to go away to Wapping, and spend weeks in the filthiest debauch with the lowest characters in London. None of his companions guessed who he was; they only knew ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... red most women achieve, but a delicate pink like the inside of a shell that made her look even more irresistibly distracting than before. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... scrub. By that time Jeff had begun to talk about the land and what he hoped to do with it next year. He meant at least to prune the orchard and maybe set out dwarfs. At first Lydia did not half listen, knowing his purpose in distracting her. Then she began to answer. Once she laughed when he told her the colonel, in learning to dig potatoes, had sliced them with the hoe. Father, he told her, was what might be called a library agriculturist. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... plant in the memory of all who read it, even those who merely open the book for the sake of glancing at it or distracting their mind, an intense repugnance for young women educated in a boarding school, and if it succeeds in doing so, its services to the public will have ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... one in vain. That single channel into which my thoughts are incessantly impelled is destructive of all order and connexion. The efforts of the understanding are assassinated by the emotions of the heart; till the reproaches of principle become intolerable, and the delusions of hope distracting!—A state of such painful inutility is ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... soliciting their curiosity, will overpower them, and they will be just as they were before: whereas, if, without saying anything about the street disturbances, you open a counter-attraction by starting some very interesting talk or demonstration yourself, they will altogether forget the distracting incident, and without any effort follow you along. There are many interests that can never be inhibited by the way of negation. To a man in love, for example, it is literally impossible, by any effort of will, to annul his passion. But let 'some new ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum Of Mammon's distracting and wearisome strife To stand and deliver a lecture on "Some Conditions of Intellectual Life," I cursed the offender who gave him the hall To lecture on ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... did not wonder at this, for her eyes were streaming with tears, and her face, which was doubtless a pretty one under ordinary conditions, looked so distorted with distracting emotions that she was no fit subject for any man's eye, let alone that of a hard-hearted officer of the law on the lookout for the guilty hand which had just appropriated a jewel worth anywhere from ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... gallant Frenchman saw only the most entrancing vision of a girl his eyes had ever looked upon. Within the bounds of reason—which meant in honour and within the regulations of the establishment—he would have done anything to win one of those distracting smiles which brought into play two little round dimples. He ordered his own carriage to take his guests to the grim hill behind the town; he sat by Virginia as they were driven up the white, winding road; and when at last the convict coachman drew ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... of equilibrium is reached when a man is free from the distracting influences of anger and goodwill, joy and sorrow. When these emotions exist in due proportion and extent the state of harmony is attained. From the first proceed all great human enterprises. The state of harmony is the path along which all good men will ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... distinguished member of the London Bar, but spent his Summers at the home of his ancestors a few miles out from Alpin. Here, in as romantic a locality as is known even to the Highlands, with his kindred about him he enjoyed a full measure of repose from the distracting cares of the great metropolis. At the time of my visit his brother, an officer of the British army, just returned from India, was with him. Both gentlemen wore kilts for the time; and all the appointments of the house ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... have destroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if not impossible; the only thing, therefore, left to save the commonwealth is, to prevent their return too frequently. The objects in view are, to have Parliaments as frequent as they can be without distracting them in the prosecution of public business: on one hand, to secure their dependence upon the people; on the other, to give them that quiet in their minds and that ease in their fortunes as to enable them to perform the most arduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... innermost feeling, now, is that "The Return" is a left-handed production. Looking through that story lately I had the material impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very distracting. In the general uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the stout and distended silk. Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for the remainder of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of dismal wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectfully of any pages of mine. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... sarcastic, fond of pleasure, fond of society, fond of wine and kisses, and intellectual talk and polished company. You see Luther throwing himself into the cloister, that he might subdue his will to the will of God; prostrate in prayer, in nights of agony, and distracting his easy-going confessor with the exaggerated scruples ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of which a new and popular edition is now presented to the American public has very little in common with the thousand and one war publications which are distracting the attention of a bewildered and satiated reader. It was not compiled in feverish haste since the war began. It was written years before the war, and represents the outcome of two decades of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... manhood, nor even reached the blossom of youth. To live was then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre are said to have more than once proved too distracting for our greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the unspeakable magnificence ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... had to be checked by raising the physical standard far above the national average, and recruiting died down to manageable proportions. There was a quite genuine belief that the war might easily be too exclusively considered; that for the great mass of people it was a disturbing and distracting rather than a vital interest. The phase "Business as Usual" ran about the world, and the papers abounded in articles in which going on as though there was no war at all was demonstrated to be the truest form ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... with women and children, in charge of the fourth officer and half-a-dozen seamen. From her they learned the vessel's name and whereabouts, and having directed her on her way to the Porth, hurried forward again. They passed another boat similarly laden, and presently heard the distracting cries of swimmers, and drove straight into the wreckage and the struggling crowd of bodies. The life-boat rescued twenty-seven, and picked up four more on a second journey: the first seine-boat accounted for a dozen: the second (in which Hobart pulled ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... amazement of her relatives, joined the Society of Friends. But if she had been tempting in her worldly gear, she was a hundred times more bewitching in her soft grays that were exquisite in quality, and her wide brim, low-crowned beaver tied under her dimpled chin with a bow that was distracting. The great blue eyes were of the melting, persuasive kind, her voice had a caressing cadence, and her smile was enough to conquer the most obdurate heart, and yet withal she had an air of masquerading and enjoyed it to the full. She was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not as good a right as any ancient of them all to say, Ubi libertas, ibi patria. It is no real paradox to affirm that a man's love of his country may often be gauged by his disgust at it. But we think it might fairly be argued against him that the very absence of that distracting complexity of associations might help to produce that solitude which is the main feeder of imagination. Certainly, Hawthorne, with whom no modern European can be matched for the subtlety and power of this marvellous ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. "A poet, Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great scholar. My father says ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... average person allows his involuntary attention to rest upon every trifling thing, and to be distracted by the idlest appeals to the senses. He finds it most difficult to either shut out these distracting appeals to the senses, and equally hard to hold the attention to some uninteresting thing. His attention is almost free of control by the will, and the person is a slave to his perceptive powers and to his imagination, instead of, being a master ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... breakfast at 8 a.m. and got started on both motors at 10.45, but soon found that we were unable to move the full loads owing to the blue ice surface, so took to relaying. We advanced under three miles after ten hours' distracting work—mostly pulling the sledges ourselves, jerking, heaving, straining, and cursing—it was tug-of-war work and should have broken our hearts, but in spite of our adversity we all ended up smiling and camped close ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... anyone could stir, Dana King, the second speaker on the negative side, leaped to his feet with a burst of oratory that was obviously for the sole purpose of distracting attention from poor Jerry. And something in the good nature of his act, in his reckless wandering from the subject of the debate to gain his end, won everyone's admiration. As one wakes from a consuming nightmare so poor Jerry roused ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... too friendly with Sabina Dinnett. You can't think how I should hate anything like that. It isn't fair—it isn't fair to the woman, or to me, or to the family. You must see yourself that sort of thing isn't right. She's a very good girl—our champion spinner Best says; and if you go distracting her and taking her out of her station, you are doing her a very cruel turn and upsetting her peace of mind. And the others will be jealous, of course, and so it will go on. It isn't playing the game—it really isn't. That's all. I know ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... secure uniformity of external conditions for the test; the aim has been rather to make it so simple as to render strictly experimental conditions unnecessary. The test may be made in any room that is reasonably free from distracting influences; the subject is seated with his back toward the experimenter, so that he cannot see the record; he is requested to respond to each stimulus word by one word, the first word that occurs to him other than the stimulus word itself, and on no account more than one word. If an untrained ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... them may still call to mind Miss Leaf, who first taught them their letters—sitting in her corner between the fire and the window, while the blind was drawn down to keep out, first the light from her own fading eyes, and, secondly, the distracting view of green fields and trees from the youthful eyes by her side. They may remember still her dark plain dress and her white apron, on which the primers, torn and dirty, looked half ashamed to lie; and ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... for he roomed in Mother McKay's cottage on the hill, back of the city, and Mother McKay kept a shebeen. To-day, however, Dick had felt that he could stand no more of Mother McKay's liquor nor of the honest dame's society, either. The rum was weak and harsh and the society was distracting to his thoughts. What he wanted was matured liquor and quiet, so that he might nail down his somewhat vague plans of returning to Chance Along and overthrowing the skipper thereof. The hour was that of the evening dusk. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... taken up and echoed close at hand, men called out in loud tones short, sharp, seemingly vital things, and were answered distantly. A bell jangled, and feet went down the corridor. Then came a stillness more distracting than sound, and then a great gurgling and rushing and splashing of water. The young man's eyebrows lifted. He hesitated, and dashed out of the room. Presently came a stupendous bang to vary the noises without, then a distant cheering. The young ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... these rivers that give Dort her peculiar charm. There is a little cafe on the quay facing the sunset where one may sit and lose oneself in the eternally interesting movement of the shipping. I found the town distracting under the incessant clanging of the tram bell (yet grass grows among the paving-stones between the rails); but there is no distraction opposite the sunset. On the evening that I am remembering the sun left a sky of fiery orange barred by ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... quarter as we did so; and so well had everything worked with us that I believe none of the Frenchmen had the slightest suspicion that anything was wrong until we had actually run them aboard and thrown our grappling-irons. Then the excitement was even more distracting than before, everybody crying out at once; officers and men vying with each other in giving the most contradictory orders, and nobody dreaming of obeying any single one of them. The surprise was complete; and when our lads followed me over the ship's bulwarks, with drawn cutlasses, we found ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... bear seized him with her teeth and tossed him with an incredibly slight effort. The other dogs, nothing daunted by the fate of their comrade, attacked the couple in the rear, biting their heels, and so distracting their attention that they could not make an energetic attack in any direction. Another of the dogs, however, a young one, waxing reckless, ventured too near the old bear, and was seized by the back, and hurled high into the air, through which it wriggled violently, and descended with a sounding ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... present, from all this Section of melancholy History is: Modern Diplomacy is nothing; mind well your own affairs, leave those of your neighbors well alone. The Pragmatic Sanction, breaking Fritz's, Friedrich Wilhelm's, Sophie's, Wilhelmina's, English Amelia's and I know not how many private hearts, and distracting with vain terrors and hopes the general soul of Europe for five-and-twenty years, fell at once into dust and vapor, and went wholly towards limbo on the storm-winds, doing nothing for or against any mortal. Friedrich ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... paper float around the globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... government of the islands. This will be followed by a description of the commercial system and of the state of the arts and of education, religion, and some features of social life during the eighteenth century and in the first years of the nineteenth before the entrance of the various and distracting currents of modern life and thought. In some cases significant details will be taken from the works of competent witnesses whose observations were made somewhat earlier or later. This procedure is unobjectionable in describing a social condition on the whole ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... there's no reason why I should go with you except to suit myself. You'll excuse me for a moment, please." He turned back. Meanwhile, Dicky had been distracting the mind of the lady with evasive and cheerful suggestions of urgent business calling Kingsley to Cairo. He saw the plot that had been laid, and it made him very angry, but nothing could be done until he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the charge of chief minister to that prince's eldest son Pepin, who, at his death at Milan in 810, appointed the saint tutor to his son Bernard, then but twelve years of age. In this exalted and distracting station, Adalard appeared even in council recollected and attentive to God, and from his employments would hasten to his chamber, or the chapel, there to plunge his heart in the centre of its happiness. During the time of his ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... first storms. It was soon able to use the question of the King as a means of distracting attention from the massacres, and of giving the party a ground on which it might hope to meet the Gironde on more even terms. For any attempt at moderation on the part of the Girondins could be met with ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... that we begin to experience the full effect of what Faraday has called "mental inertia"—not only the difficulty of recognising, among the concrete objects before us, the abstract relation which we have learned from books, but the distracting pain of wrenching the mind away from the symbols to the objects, and from the objects back to the symbols. This however is the price we have to pay for ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... confused account of the meeting, which he expressly calls the third council, but makes some important statements about it. He says that it put an end to the dissensions which had been distracting the Buddhist Church for nearly a century and that it recognized all the eighteen sects as holding the true doctrine: that it put the Vinaya in writing as well as such parts of the Sutra-pitaka and Abhidharma as were still unwritten ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... reality. ("Challenge," I understand, is the catch-word they use.) Both these qualities were supposed to distract attention from the drama itself. The answer, almost too obvious to be worth stating, is that the grotesque and the eccentric are vastly more distracting than the elaborate; and that, if you only sound the loud symbol loud enough the audience has no ear left at all for the actual words. As for the "challenging" of reality the new school would argue that, as the stage is a thing of convention to start with—artificial ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged themselves under their standard; and their bands were not unfrequently augmented by children, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... The riotous glee, the music, the color that whirled and reeled through the great street of Toledo at this season bewildered and pained me. Though I knew and was accustomed to the wild vagaries of carnival, yet this year they seemed to be out of place, distracting, senseless, and ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... readily be imagined how distracting such a life must have been, how fatal to all mental concentration on high objects, not to speak of the habits, of which it was too sure to sow the seeds. The frequent visits to Dumfries, which his Excise work entailed, and the haunting of the Globe Tavern, already spoken of, led to consequences, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... any proportionate success. An attempt has been made in the preceding pages to indicate the main reasons for the failure of the Thebais. One more reason may perhaps be added here. Over and above the poet's lack of originality and the highest poetic imagination, over and above his distracting echoes and his artificiality, there is a lack of moral fire and insight about the poem. Statius gives us but a surface view of life. He had never plumbed the depths of human passion nor realized anything of the mystery of the world. His reader never derives from him the consciousness, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... same reverence is the careful observance of punctuality at the service. A church service is, by its very nature, a more intimate and important service to the attendant than any other. Therefore, to come in late, thus distracting the attention of those who have gone to church for meditation or worship, is a far more flagrant offense against the rights of others, than is the disturbing of their pleasure at a theatre or a concert by ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... began to push back their foes, led by Col. Field. The latter himself, however, was soon slain; he was at the time behind a great tree, and was shot by two Indians on his right, while he was trying to get a shot at another on his left, who was distracting his attention by mocking and jeering at him.[32] The command then fell on Captain Evan Shelby, who turned his company over to the charge of his son, Isaac. The troops fought on steadily, undaunted by the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to promote Mr Richard Chichester to that position, in recognition of the extraordinary valour which he had displayed on the previous day by boarding the Spanish ship and attacking her crew, single-handed, in the rear, thereby distracting the attention of the enemy and contributing in no small measure to their subsequent speedy defeat. This decision on the part of the Captain, strange to say, met with universal and unqualified approval; for Dick's unassuming demeanour and geniality of manner had long since made ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... other respects good and pious, imagine that it is impossible to preserve inward peace amid bustle and turmoil. There are some even, strange to say, who though dedicated to God by their holy calling, complain if they are employed by their community in laborious and troublesome offices, calling them distracting functions and occupations. Assuredly, these good people know not what they say, any more than did St. Peter ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... through my notes, I find that this was not my first idea. The distracting intervening woman was to have been of a commoner type, intellectual indeed rather than sensuous, but yet of the predatory type and class, which delights in the capture of man. When I began to write the first scene in which Eugenie was to appear, she was ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have ever attained to the same eminence in any department which Mezzofanti reached in that of languages, there hardly ever was one who had so little of the mere student in his character. In the midst of these varied and distracting occupations, he was at all times most assiduous in his attendance upon the sick in the public hospitals, of which he acted as the chaplain. There was another also of his priestly duties, for the zealous discharge ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... concealed infirmities of the intelligence, conspire to reduce our discovery of justice and truth to a process of haphazard, in which we more often miss the mark than hit.[2] Pleasure, ambition, industry, are only means of distracting men from the otherwise unavoidable contemplation of their own misery. How speak of the dignity of the race and its history, when we know that a grain of sand in Cromwell's bladder altered the destinies of a kingdom, and that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter the whole surface of the earth would ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... not at all distracting is the variety of excellence that one contemplates here; such matters! and such scholars! The sweetly playful pencil of Albano, I would compare to Waller among our English poets; Domenichino to Otway, and Guido Rheni to Rowe; if such liberties might be permitted on the old notion of ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... The mist in which they had long been enveloped was swept away, and these colossal figures of soldiers, patriots, and counsellors loomed large and clear across the ages, their majesty enhanced by distance and by art, which conspire to efface all that is accidental, petty, and distracting. We cannot see these figures as they appeared to the Renaissance world. One of the chief results of modern historical labour and research has been that it has peopled the Middle Ages for us, and interposed a whole society of living men, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... healthful employment of the mind, distracting one from too continual study of himself, and leading him to dwell rather upon the indigestions of the elements than his own. "Did the wind back round, or go about with the sun?" is a rational question ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... not in so quiet a situation in the bosom of the other conspirator; his mind was tost in all the distracting anxiety so nobly ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and his model, these two statues remain the finest equestrian monuments in the world, their one possible rival being Can Grande at Verona. Donatello has decorated Gattamelata's saddle and armour with a mass of delicate and vivacious detail, which modifies the severity without distracting the eye. The putti which act as pommels to the saddle are delightful little figures, and the damascened and chased fringes of the armour are excellent. Moreover, the armour does not overweight the figure. The horse, of rather ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... it is only during the last thirty or forty years that my countrymen have blotted their historical scutcheons by this fondness for change. Where travelling is necessary for the attainment of some worthy object, then it is wise and excellent,—but where it is only for the purpose of distracting a self-satiated mind, it is of no avail, and indeed frequently does more ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... youth is wasting his precious energy capital in late hours, pleasure seeking, and often dissipation, the country youth is storing up power and vitality; he is being recharged with physical force by natural, refreshing sleep, away from the distracting influence and enervating excitement of city life. The country youth does not learn to judge people by the false standards of wealth and social standing. He is not inculcated with snobbish ideas. Everything in the great farm kindergarten teaches him sincerity, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... quiet gathering. The more aggressive members of the Venetian populace are pretty sure to get afloat on such an occasion, and a dozen different kinds of irresponsible craft were being propelled, with more or less skill, and a distracting absence of etiquette, among the decorous gondolas, whose long-suffering masters shouted themselves hoarse in their efforts to enforce the conventional rules ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... experience, and after considering the effect produced on children when pictures are shown to them during the narration, I have come to the conclusion that the appeal to the eye and the ear at the same time is of doubtful value, and has, generally speaking, a distracting effect: the concentration on one channel of communication attracts and holds the attention more completely. I was confirmed in this theory when I addressed an audience of blind people[4] for the first time, and noticed how closely they attended, and how much easier it seemed to them because they ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... neither the French nor the Prussians are armed with air guns. Your mistake arose from puzzling over those distracting war reports, in which the word ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... two or three messengers on most urgent business; calls each of them back once or twice to give fresh instalments of his defective instructions; and having at last dismissed them, regrets as usual that he has only five minutes to spare, whereof he spends half in telling you the distracting number and importance of his engagements. If he have to consult a ledger, the book is thrown on the desk with a thump as if he wished to break its back, and the leaves rustle to and fro like a wood in a storm. Meanwhile he overlooks, while ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... excitement, when the noise of a light footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore they turned to what they called Christian ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it. He had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of blue peacock's breast laid on one side of it like a ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... his father while the Crimean war was distracting the East by new problems and new warfare. Christian allies fought for the Infidel, and France and England declared themselves to be on ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... pistol cut her short. Then, instantly, in the dim depths of the house, shot followed shot in bewildering succession, faster, faster, filling the place with a distracting tumult. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Petersburg, Caroline Dravikine entered the Gregoriev house in Moscow. Piotr, his face alight with relief, showed her into the room where brother and brother-in-law sat together. There she flung off her wraps, commanded tea, and exerted all her power towards distracting the thoughts of those two men who showed not half her courage in the face of a calamity which could touch neither of them as it must touch her, who had kept the one greatly unselfish affection of her life for the sister now lying at the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... waist-deep there was a sensation—a delusion if you will—that all the important vital organs had become detached from their customary alignments and were crowding up into the throat, impeding utterance and distracting the thoughts from ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... my feeling it, and amid all the distracting cares and pressing thoughts that embarrassed me, I only awoke when the roll of the caleche sounded beneath my window, and warned me that I must be stirring and ready for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... bad cold, then finally announced that tubercular complications had set in, and as nearly as Von Barwig could find out the boy was now rapidly wasting away with the dreaded white disease. Von Barwig looked around him helplessly; the light was bad, the air rank poison and the noise and commotion distracting. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... in pictorial art, of the forespace corrugated with lines paralleling the bottom line of a frame. It would be as difficult for a bicyclist to propel his machine across a plowed field as for one to drive his eye over a foreground thus filled with distracting lines when the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... have seen Godfrey—he has failed me. What shall I do? I must go to my father; perhaps he will relent, and pity my distress. My heart is torn with distracting doubts. Oh, that I could pour into some faithful bosom my torturing situation! Clary is ill—and left to ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... antagonists were not enemies. Stephen, on the other hand, as Mr. Henry Adams says, was a 'high-minded fanatic.' To be interested in any but the great cause was to rouse his suspicions. 'If you,' he once wrote to Wilberforce, 'were Wellington, and I were Massena, I should beat you by distracting your attention from the main point.' Any courtesies shown by Wilberforce to his opponents or to his old friend Pitt seemed to his ardent coadjutor to be concessions to the evil principle. The Continental war, he held, was ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... awkward human being I ever saw in my life. He knew very well how to manage men and nations, but he never knew what to do with his feet and hands: he kept shuffling them about in the most nervous and distracting manner," said Emma Cavendish, in behalf ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that they would spend a whole long day together, he would have abundant opportunity of getting to know something about the character and disposition of this new acquaintance, so that she should no longer be to him a puzzling and distracting will-o'-the-wisp. What had he come to London for but to improve his knowledge of men and of women, and to see what was going on in the larger world? And so this earnest student ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... and mobile force kept much on the move, for the sake of covering the designs of its own army, distracting those of the enemy, or maintaining supremacy in a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to distract Straker's attention; and still, with an air of distracting him, of sheltering her sad sister, Mrs. Viveash, she led him back into ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... her a wildly beseeching glance and Beth and Rob began at the same time to ply her with distracting questions. I think she seemed to divine that there was something in the situation that was not to be explained, ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... pacing this leafy retreat, both of whom we have seen before, but under circumstances so distracting that we took little note of their appearance, fine as it undoubtedly was in either case. However, we are more at leisure now, and will pause for an instant to give you some idea of these two prominent men, with one of whom our story will henceforth ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... guerillas, who, from time to time, deploy and forage between the lines."[1693] As these sabre-cuts, dealt with the emphasis of gesture and inflection, flashed upon the galleries, already charmed with the accomplishment of his speech and the grace of his sentiment, loud hisses, mingled with distracting exclamations of banter and dissent, proclaimed that the spell of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... sit out the next dance?" I asked. "It isn't a Bunny Hug or Tango, or anything distracting ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... there ready for use at the moment of action. A definite time should be set apart when the mind can be withdrawn from other thoughts and compelled to give all its attention to this matter. On first waking, or just before going to sleep. If one is not too tired-one can usually best get away from the distracting details of life. The resolutions should be written down, with the most important words or phrases underlined, to serve as catchwords and mottoes. They should be read aloud and repeated from memory, as well as thought over silently, thus ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of easy surroundings. Human nature is not self-sufficient for the work of contemplation. There is need of health and vigour, and the means of maintaining it, food, warmth, interesting objects around you, leisure, absence of distracting care or pain. None would call a man happy upon the rack, except by way of maintaining a thesis. The happiness of a disembodied spirit is of course independent of bodily conditions, but it would appear ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... with long poles projecting in front and cross-pieces at the end; the cart is then pushed and pulled by several men. The population is 13,000, and is increased by many country people in the mornings, who come to market, so that the streets and piazzas are crowded with a most distracting variety of costumes. Both men and girls from the country wear little red caps. The men have great light-coloured woollen coats which they throw over their shoulders without putting their arms in, light shirts, sometimes with an embroidered jacket, trousers with embroidery round the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... anger tortured him until midnight. Then he had a high fever and a distracting headache, and, the physical torment being the most insistent and distressing, he gave way before it. With such agonizing tears as spring from despairing wounded love he threw himself upon his bed, and his craving, suffering heart at length found rest ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... miners greatly desire that Ireland will remain quiet for a short period, and thus refrain from distracting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... entreated, sighs! Plays with unhappy men as cats with mice; Till fading beauty hints the late advice. Her prudence dictates what her pride disdain'd, And now she sues to slaves herself had chain'd! Then comes that good old character, a Wife, With all the dear, distracting cares of life; A thousand cards a day at doors to leave, And, in return, a thousand cards receive; Rouge high, play deep, to lead the ton aspire, With nightly blaze set PORTLAND-PLACE on fire; Snatch half a glimpse at Concert, Opera, Ball, A Meteor, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... were a god, is a descendant of the blood-thirsty wolf or jackal. Even frogs and toads and fishes may be tamed, provided they have the uniform sympathy of one person, with whom they become intimately acquainted without the distracting and varying attentions of strangers. And surely all God's people, however serious and savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes,—all are warm with ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... suspicion. He was like a child in the simplicity of his selfishness, as far as his art was concerned, but in all matters aside from it he was chaotically generous. His formlessness was sometimes almost distracting; he presented himself to the author's imagination as mere human material, waiting to be moulded in this shape or that. From day to day, from week to week, Maxwell lived in a superficial uncertainty whether Godolphin had really taken his play, or would ever produce it; yet at the bottom ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... they became more generous, but they clung with tenacity to the Brown Scapular and the First Sunday of the month. I am quite sure they have turned somersaults in their graves since the introduction of the myriad devotions that are now distracting and edifying the faithful. But they could make, and, alas! too often perhaps for Christian modesty, they did make, the proud boast that they kept alive the people's faith, imbued them with a sense of the loftiest morality, and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... among the light summer clouds, gazing down upon the many-voiced tumult of the crowded city, with that calm philosophic abstraction which always characterizes the moon, as if she, up there in her airy heights, were so infinitely exalted above all the distracting problems and doubts that harass our poor human existence. We entered a concert garden, which was filled with gayly dressed pleasure seekers; somewhere under the green roof of the trees an orchestra was discoursing strains of German ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... marching directly toward the Saracens, with loud shouts, and attacked their army with great spirit. The land attack was assisted by the Christian navy, which approached the shore, making a horrible noise, and distracting the attention of the Saracens, who feared to be attacked in flank and rear. After a sharp encounter, the Saracens fled towards Ascalon, many being slain in the battle and pursuit, and others drowned, by leaping into the sea to avoid being slain. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... necessity for carrying along the man and the horse at the supreme moment, for distracting them, necessitates the full gallop before attacking the enemy, before ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... never died. The courage of Washington has never died. This war was a vital necessity—let us recognize it. This war was an ordination of Providence—let us confess it. There were issues distracting and dividing this country which no legislation, no government, and no decrees of courts could settle. At one time or another they had to be fought to their final conclusion upon the battle-field. When ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... strength nor the coolness of judgment to face the issue. His vacillating nature had been still further weakened by intermittent fever, as well as by the events of this year, so fatal to his house. The climate of Mexico did not suit him. What with malarial fever and dysentery, as well as with distracting responsibilities and cares, he was a physical wreck. Not only had he month after month felt his hopes grow faint and his throne crumble under him; not only had he every cause to lose faith in his star as well as in his own judgment: but the cannon of Lissa must have vibrated with painful distinctness ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... once the force of this manoeuvre, which would have the effect of distracting attention from the Neck—executed the order with a grin. "You're a knowing one, Dandy Jack," ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... distraction for our troops at all, it was perhaps at the collection. Not that the giving of their centimes or francs was distracting, rather was it the manner of Collection a la Francais. It is taken up by the most handsome young ladies of the congregation—our American Tag Days were perhaps suggested by it. Marching before the Mademoiselles and striking sharply on the pavement with his staff, solemnly comes the aged Master of ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... the evils that were distracting Europe, a general council was summoned to meet at Constance. The council was called at the desire of the emperor Sigismund, by one of the three rival popes, John XXIII. The demand for a council had been far from welcome to Pope John, whose character and policy could ill bear investigation, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common weal, without distracting you from your ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... have frequently to sacrifice their time or pleasure for your sake, and that you should not repay them for their kindness by acts of disobedience, disrespect, and stubbornness. By spending your time in idleness, in giving annoyance to your teacher, and in distracting others who are willing to learn, you show a want of appreciation and gratitude for the blessings God has bestowed upon you, and please the devil exceedingly; and as God will hold you accountable for all His gifts, this one—the opportunity of learning your religion—will ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... of these still small voices grew distracting as the whisper of an unseen clock. They dominated the silence, paralysing thought, and compelling her to note every change in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... well for us frequently to remember that the silence of the dead is no true exponent of their real state. Incoherent and wild as the thoughts and feelings sometimes are, under the distracting influence of affliction and death, and all uncertain as we are about the departure of the soul, we are not left without sure and most satisfying information respecting the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... underlie the workings of destiny are usually about as clear as those which bereft Samson of his locks or left the lone figure of Marius seated amid the ruins of Carthage. And yet, even in the face of time-worn contradictions apparent to the most superficial and credulously minded, pretty, distracting Bessie Van Ashton had begun to cast her eyes in the direction of Dick Yankton, the handsome, open-handed, devil-may-care son of nature who regarded the world of fashion to which she belonged with about as much concern as he did the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... editor, whose brain is employed in inventing new ideas for his subordinates to carry into execution, to that very important functionary, the proof-reader, who corrects the errors of the types, there is a distracting amount of detail work performed every day. The Herald is managed with very little friction; the great machine runs as if oiled. With an abundance of capital, an ungrudging expenditure of money in the pursuit of news, a great working-force ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of them. With a howl of consternation, he whirled on his heel and ran like a frightened deer. As he did so, he ducked his head and leaped from side to side, after the manner of the Digger Indians of the present day, with a view of distracting the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... of the field, he became famous and popular. He prided himself on the fact that his playing was addressed rather to the hearts than to the sensitive ears of his audiences, and during his later years he adopted certain mannerisms by way of distracting attention from his somewhat imperfect performances. He never made any pretension to being a musician of the modern school, nor of any regularly recognised school of music, but his concert pieces were ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... indeed an integral and important, though strictly subordinate, part of the comprehensive plan adopted by the lieutenant-general for the spring campaign. Besides distracting the attention of the Confederates, and either drawing off a large part of their forces from Sherman's front or else causing them to give up Mobile without a struggle, the control of the Alabama River would give Sherman ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... battle in Flanders sank into an uneasy winter torpor. The second as well as the first thoughts of the German command for the campaign of 1914 in the West had come to nought, or to what was nearly as bad, a stalemate; and the East was calling with an urgent and distracting voice ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... Malesherbes or Choiseul was anxious to please the dauphin and the Jesuit party at Versailles. The most probable explanation is that the authorities were eager to silence one at least of the three elements of opposition, the Jansenists, the lawyers, and the philosophers,—who were then distracting the realm. The two former were beyond their direct reach. They threw themselves upon the foe who happened ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... expecting to see the student return; and, when hope was reluctantly abandoned, he arose to his feet, a startled and admonished man. Still discretion did not desert him. He saw the uselessness, and even the danger, of distracting the attention of the workmen, and the ill-fated scholar was permitted to pass away without a word of regret or a comment on his fate. None knew of his loss but the wary mariner, nor was his person missed by any of those who had spent the day in his company. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... examples of two different ways in which inconvenient or distracting particulars of history or tradition might be reduced to serve the ends of imagination and the heroic design. Njla keeps up, more or less, throughout, a continuous history of a number of people of importance, but always with a regard for the principal ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker |
