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More "Distraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unexperienced, he knew not what course to take; to confess his crime to Candidus, and solicit his interposition, was little less dreadful than to stand before the frown of a court of justice. Having, therefore, passed the day with anguish in his heart and distraction in his looks, he seized at night a very large sum of money in the compting-house, and setting out he knew not whither, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... requires no extraneous aid, will naturally see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but new and unwelcome difficulties,—trial and distraction to themselves, temptation and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear and does not lead to security. They will come to see how vast a service they may render to the Church by ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... and gone. Fortunately it came at a time when there was no distraction. For had it occurred whilst we were at a station, we might not have secured the necessary calm and isolation. Mrs. Harker yielded to the hypnotic influence even less readily than this morning. I am in fear that her power of reading the Count's sensations ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... was to rush in and complete the family circle, but some fine sense restrained her. For distraction she plunged into the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... 'self-consuming care,' the opposite of trust. Its misery is forcibly expressed by the original meaning of the Greek word, which implies being torn in pieces, and thus paints the distraction and self-inflicted harrassment which are the lot of the anxious mind. Prudent foresight and strenuous work are equally outside this prohibition. Anxiety is so little akin to foresight that it disables from exercising it, and both hinders from seeing what to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the newspaper press, and in the Repeal Association itself, stigmatised the rent as mercenary. This new party divided influence with "the Liberator" upon the boards of the Corn Exchange, and in public meetings generally, and was the cause of great distraction in the councils and operations of the Repeal Association. At first they treated O'Connell as conscientiously wrong-headed on the subjects of moral and physical force; but they gradually widened their ground of attack, and suggested that he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a slow train is no joke, you know, George, and I couldn't afford the express," he said apologetically, when his brother upbraided him for his distraction ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... pleaded the harassed key-attendant, hurrying up with the burden of his own distraction. "There's a silly fathead got in what thinks this is a left-luggage office, so far as I ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... He wanted distraction, and unable to think of any better relief, he turned into Lubi's for a merry dinner. The little gilt gallery was in disorder, Sally Slater having spent the afternoon there. Her marquis was with her; her many admirers clustered about the cigarette-strewn table, anxious ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... girls raised a hideous cry, and, burying their faces in their mother's lap simultaneously, screamed until the eight flaxen tails vibrated; Mrs. Kenwigs meanwhile clasping them alternately to her bosom, with attitudes expressive of distraction. ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of lunacy or distraction I fell down and struck my face against the corner of a pallet-bed, in which my mistress lay, and with the blow the blood gushed out of my nose; and the cabin-boy bringing me a little basin, I sat down and bled into it a great deal; and as the blood came from me I came ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... her self-controlled, serene, sorrow-accepting temperament, should be driven to such an act of unholy madness. Yet Maurice allowed the frightful fantasy to work within his brain until it clothed itself with a shape like reality, and drove him to the verge of distraction. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Irene at all just then. After they returned from the theatre, where the Colonel roared through the comedy, with continual reference of his pleasure to Penelope, to make sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the whole affair had been for the girl's distraction rather than his, "I don't believe but what it's going to come out all right about the children;" and then she told him of the letter, and the hopes ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... manner three times, and from these three passions most of his good poetry flowed. First there was Cassandre, the beautiful girl of Florentine extraction, whom he saw singing to her lute, when he was only twenty-two, and loved to distraction. She married another and became the star of Ronsard's song. She was the irruptive heroine of that witty and delightful ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... preparation for it, or a cause of dispute that shall bring it on. In effect, it is fundamentally contrary to a relation of amity, whose essence is a perfectly free communication. Everything done to prevent it will provoke a foreign war. Everything, when we let it proceed, will produce domestic distraction. We shall be in a perpetual dilemma. But it is easy to see which side of the dilemma will be taken. The same temper which brings us to solicit a Jacobin peace will induce us to temporize with all the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hovered his thoughts; this gentle, quiet companion for the autumn of his life—the thought was singularly attractive—infinitely more so than the thought of Dora or Bee that had always possessed also an element of distraction alarming to a man of ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... But hours passed, and he did not come, and she did not go down—too truly miserable. It grew dark, but she did not draw the curtains; the sight of the windy moonlit garden and the leaves driving across brought a melancholy distraction. Little Gyp came in and prattled. There was a tree blown down, and she had climbed on it; they had picked up two baskets of acorns, and the pigs had been so greedy; and she had been blown away, so that Betty had had to run after her. And Baryn was walking in the study; he was so busy ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... come up to prevent was, in the strangest and drollest, or at least in the most preposterous, way in the world, that not Cornelia's presence, but her very absence, with its distraction of his thoughts, the thoughts that lumbered after her, had made the difference; and without his being the least able to tell why and how. He put it to himself after a fashion by the image that, this distraction once created, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... noble, impartial, and generous Churchman who could see the difficulties of cultivated Dissenters, and enter into them sympathetically. Why Mr. May took the trouble to draw her out on this point it is more difficult to explain. Poor man, he was in a state of semi-distraction over Cotsdean's bill. The ten days had shortened into three, and he was no nearer finding that hundred pounds than ever. Even while he smiled and talked to Phoebe, he was repeating over and over to himself the terrible ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... up to the crops above. Behind that bright emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their engineers and architects, had seen it—land to cultivate, folk and cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... phrases, illustrations, and arguments such as you think the average man will readily understand. Avoid anything which would cause confusion, distraction, or prejudice in his mind. Use every reasonable means to win his good ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... are you?' said the corporal, bending forward and scratching his back with both hands, very pleased at the chance of some distraction. 'It's abreks one has to hunt here and not boars! You've not heard anything, Uncle, have you?' he added, needlessly screwing up his eyes and showing his ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... very placid, slow sort of mind. He went through his tasks without any excitement or distraction, although occasionally a vague curiosity as to what Elsie could want the atlas for, and what the letter said about them, did wander through his brain. When school was ended he slipped out unobserved with a small atlas, which he had had difficulty ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... so well that I have nothing to add to excuse me specially for my negligence or idleness, or whim or distraction, or—or—or—You know that I can explain myself better in person, and, this autumn, when I take you home late by the boulevards to your mother, I shall try to obtain your pardon. I am writing to you without knowing what my pen is scribbling, as Liszt is at this moment ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... so thick as those that kept within doors, and even then they died more out of distraction and melancholy than plague. But I confess, good people, I could not in any sort master the sickness, or come at a glimmer of its nature or governance. To be brief, I was flat bewildered at the brute malignity of the disease, and so—did what I should have done before—dismissed all conjectures ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... beseech you! I knew not what I said; forgive me, ah, forgive me!—for you are merciful, as you are pure and true. If you were aware of all, you would know that I could not insult you, if I would. Trouble, distraction, have made me coarse,—false, too, to myself as unjust and injurious to you; for I know your virtues, and believe in them as I believe in little else in this world or the next. If in my hour of agony and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... nature only intended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist upon making it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art, expecting an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinite variety, pleasure and distraction, to contribute to their lives what the arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to less limited and less intense idealists. So this passion, when set up against Shakespeare, Balzac, Wagner, Raphael, fails them. They have staked everything ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Drever took a secret pleasure in looking through the little window across Stromness harbour, and, from his position at the desk, watching the movements of the shipping, it is probable he would have erected some curtain there. The window offered a distraction to us all, for it often took our attention from our tasks, and caused many interruptions in the course of the day. But, as I have indicated, Andrew was not a severe taskmaster, and that, perhaps, was one reason of our ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,—the killing of useful, indispensable men who have no right to die; who deserve, not for themselves, but for the world, leisure, freedom from distraction, expert medical advice, and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Senlis had already tasted the bitter draft of war making. The people had become bitter to the point of losing care of their own safety. They were reckless, driven to distraction. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... hungry, perhaps, to be greatly troubled by her air of uneasiness and distraction. He bent over his plate, not noting that she sipped her coffee with a spoon, touching no food. At last he pushed back with a sigh of repletion, and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... memorable day I spent in a state of delightful distraction, as if I had been ravished into the seventh heaven, and feared to be cast out again presently, as my unworthiness deserved. What if it were possible, after all?—this, what Carlos wished, what he had said. The heavens shook; the constellations above ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... adventure; but a woman came after him—sunrise to sunset behind. She had followed him from the place of the multitudes, where all the people dwell together. He had seen her there; he had loved her there; he had fled in fear from her beauty; he had fled in distraction away back to his own place. Now—his joy showed, past telling. But she had come without a mother to give her in marriage; and marriage ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... pages of books this pamphlet can be made to serve as a text-book for the whole course, making the teacher independent in his order of exposition of any other text-book. The syllabus assists the general audience in following the lectures without the distraction of taking notes; and guides the reading and thinking of the students during the week. The syllabus contains a set of 'exercises' on each lecture. These exercises, unlike examination questions or 'quizzes,' are not tests of memory, but are intended to train the student to work for himself; they ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... conviction of the sufficiency of Christ's revelation which makes him so deadly a critic both of the ritualist and the socialist—two terms which on the former side at least tend to become synonymous. He would have no distraction from the mystery of Christ, no compromise of any kind in the world's loyalty to its one Physician. Simplify your dogmas; simplify your theologies. Christ ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... ridiculous, you know, loving you to distraction, but not daring to enjoy you when they might; you were in their power, yet they could not give the reins to their passion; they kept awake watching you with their eyes glued to bolt and seal; the enjoyment that satisfied them ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... emphatically announced, is after all a mere man in buckram; and I am almost sorry that in doing this, I shall be obliged to expose one more proof of Mr. Everett's having neglected the study of "the beggarly elements," in order to devote himself, without distraction, to the understanding of the delectable types and allegories of the New Testament. Mr. Everett certainly is a scholar and a man of talents, but he does not perfectly know, nor will [fn56] understand, the contents of the Old Testament; and the ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... affairs began to look black indeed. By the end of the month Exeter was being besieged by the rebels, and on the 8th August the French ambassador, taking advantage of the general distraction, bade the Lord Protector open defiance at Whitehall.(1302) At midnight instructions were sent to the mayor to seize all Frenchmen in the city who were not denizens, together with their property. By this time, however, Exeter had been relieved and the insurrection ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... studied, sly, ensnaring art, Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth? Curse on his perjur'd arts, dissembling, smooth! Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd? Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, Points to the parents fondling o'er their child? Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild? ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... impressionable young Gourgaud, the thought-wrinkled Las Cases, the bright pleasure-loving Montholons, the gloomy Grand Marshal, Bertrand, and his mercurial consort, over whose face there often passed "a gleam of distraction"—these were not fashioned for a life of adversity. Thence came the long spells of ennui, broken by flashes of temper, that marked the voyage and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... If there was 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 ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... am surprised that in these days when woman claims equal privilege with man, she will submit to it. In the act of getting a living she also suffers, and loses something of the power to live. If the distraction of the city hurts the man she is not less injured by the torpor of the suburb. Let a woman be never so intelligent and keenly wrought, a suburb will soon enfeeble her, and take the fine edge off her spirit. ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... surprised and shocked these ladies by assuming an air of grief and distraction as extreme in itself as it was unaccountable ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... was a slight distraction to Miss Kimpsey's nervous thoughts. The little school-teacher had never been in it before, and it impressed her. "It's just what you would expect her parlor to be," she said to herself, looking furtively round. She could not help her sense of impropriety; she had always been taught that ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... give you the run of the Mermaid Club. Is there any one you want to see, or anything of that sort?' and doing it as steadily as possible for fear that he should mistake the carelessness of whisky for the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight. I turned on him, holding it. 'What are ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... for protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I received her - here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from town to this house, through a raging storm, and presented herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... very multiplicity lies our difficulty. The narrative in the Autobiography doubtless gives a correct general outline of his life in Leipzig and of its main results for his general development, but its cool, detached tone leaves a totally inadequate impression of the froward youth, torn to distraction by conflicting passions and conflicting ideals. With the contemporary testimonies our difficulties are of another kind. The testimonies of his friends regarding his personal traits are often contradictory, and equally so are his own self-revelations. ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... though invulnerable, never went to battle but completely armed. Courts are to be the theatres of your wars, where you should be always as completely armed, and even with the addition of a heel-piece. The least inattention, the least DISTRACTION, may prove fatal. I would fain see you what pedants call 'omnis homo', and what Pope much better calls ALL-ACCOMPLISHED: you have the means in your power; add the will; and you may bring it about. The vulgar have a coarse saying, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... forward as the enemy of an established delight. He did not hunt himself,—but neither did he shoot, or fish, or play cards. He recreated himself with Blue Books, and speculations on Adam Smith had been his distraction;—but he knew that he was himself peculiar, and he respected the habits of others. It had fallen out in this wise. As the old Duke had become very old, the old Duke's agent had gradually acquired more than an agent's ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of a family, and no bakery, cook-shop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation. A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howling desolation; and then ensues a long season of breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild Irish immigrant after another introduces the style of Irish cottage life into ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Burns of this. But besides rendering regular farm industry impossible, the weekly absences from home, which his new duties entailed, had other evil consequences. They brought with them continual mental distraction, which forbade all sustained poetic effort, and laid him perilously open to indulgences which were sure to undermine regular habits and peace of mind. About this time (the beginning of 1790), we begin to hear of frequent visits to Dumfries on Excise business, and of protracted lingerings at a ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Lupin was waiting for. Once rid of the obstacle, he caught Daubrecq a smart kick on the shin with the tip of his patent-leather boot. The result was the same as with the blow which he had given him on the arm. The pain caused a second's apprehension and distraction, of which he at once took advantage to beat down Daubrecq's outstretched hands and to dig his ten fingers into his adversary's ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... those seated on the ground, those going on the road addressing those passing on high, the mind intent on one object alone; so that if a heavenly form had flown past, or a form entitled to highest respect, there would have been no distraction visible, so intent was the body and so immovable the limbs. And now beautiful as the opening lily, he advances towards the garden glades, wishing to accomplish the words of the holy prophet (Rishi). The prince, seeing the ways prepared and watered and the joyous holiday appearance ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... of his love-born resolution he began to search among his papers for an unfinished scenario called Enid's Choice. When he had found it he set to work upon it with a concentration that seemed uncanny in the light of his day's distraction and dismay. Lillian's Duty and the evening's bitter failure had already ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... busy hum during the adjustment of bets on "first blood," and the combatants very considerately refrained from doing serious injury during this temporary distraction; but within five minutes more they had exchanged chest wounds, but too ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... fate, but his wife was inconsolable. She lay in a state of partial distraction, in the lodge. As she lay here, she thought she heard some one groaning. It was repeated through the night, and in the morning she carefully scanned the place, and running her fingers through the grass, she discovered the secret belt, on ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... hollowness of their days with an extraordinary amount of running about. There was incessant shifting of interest from one focal point to another of the colony, a perpetually restless swarming hither and yon to some new centre of distraction, a continual kaleidoscopic parade of the most wonderful and extravagant clothing ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... was laughed at and interrupted by their clamours, for the violence of his manner threw him into a confusion of periods and a distortion of his argument; besides he had a weakness and a stammering in his voice, and a want of breath, which caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for the audience to understand him. At last, upon his quitting the assembly, Eunomous the Thriasian, a man now extremely old, found him wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, and took upon him ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... again before I get through this far in prayer my mind has been drawn away by some distraction. Someone has come in late. Two adorable little girls who are sitting on opposite sides of their mother are almost overcome by delight in something which is much too subtle to be comprehended by the adult mind, the drafts in the coal stove need readjusting, how noisy the cars are out on the ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... waiting for the girls, and they were so nervous that they did not enjoy the dinner Mrs. Lewis had prepared, at which lack of appetite she wondered much. But she ascribed their distraction, and their rather strange comments, to the alarm ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins d'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survecu a leurs emotions a l'egard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction de l'habitude ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... I would leave all to follow you. For, oh my love! how could I enjoy father or mother, country or kin, and you a wanderer in the earth, without a place whereon to lay your head! That single thought would cover my days with darkness, and drive me to distraction. But give me your company, my Gabriel, and then welcome that foreign land with all its shady forests! Welcome the thatched cottage and the little garden filled with the fruits of our own fondly mingled toils! Methinks, my love, I already see that distant sun rising with gladsome ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... caused sad distraction, And I come for satisfaction, Which if he denies to give, One of us ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... not my original sense of reconciliation and reverence, but only a sort of complacency at having experienced such a sense, that lasted in me during the drive home (and that, too, despite the distraction of the crowds of people who now thronged the sunlit streets in every direction), I had no sooner reached home than even my spurious complacency was shattered, for I found that I had not the forty copecks ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... off his good mien (for he was well made and very handsome in his person), the King's daughter took a secret inclination to him, and the Marquis of Carabas had no sooner cast two or three respectful and somewhat tender glances but she fell in love with him to distraction. The King would needs have him come into the coach and take part of the airing. The Cat, quite overjoyed to see his project begin to succeed, marched on before, and, meeting with some countrymen, who were mowing a meadow, he said ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... curious, anxious for information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presently he became restless and eager for information, for distraction, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... he should not move it towards diverse objects when it stops. He should not taste any pleasure (sukham) and by wisdom remain unattached, by strong effort making it motionless and still. When he neither passes into dissolution nor into distraction; when there is no sign, no appearance that is the perfect Brahman. When there is no object of knowledge to come into being, the unproduced is ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... circumstances, as her yield is a mere nothing. Goats are very mischievous—they make their way out of all enclosures, and trespass everywhere. They butt at whatever is bright or new, or strange to them; and would drive an observer, who employed astronomical instruments on stands, to distraction. In an open country, where there are no bushes for a kraal, nets must be taken, and stakes cut, to make enclosures for the sheep. If they stray at all, the least thing scares them, and they will wander very far, and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... citadel were in a state of distraction and alarm. All night long the flashing of lights, the blare of trumpets, the shouts of excited patriots, the sound of hurrying feet in the city, had disturbed their troubled souls, and when affrighted partisans of the defeated party came hurrying for safety into the Cadmeia, with tidings ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was told that his father was not yet back and he resolved to wait for him in the drawing-room. He lit a cigarette, let it go out again and, at first in a spirit of distraction and then with a growing interest, looked around him, as though he were trying to gather from inanimate objects particulars relating to the man who lived ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... perfect composure, for what I have to surmount is great. Minna is unable to understand what an unhappy married life we have led; she imagines the past to have been quite different from what it was, and if I found consolation, distraction, and forgetfulness in my art, she verily believes I had no need of them. Enough. I have come to this resolution with myself: I can no longer bear this everlasting squabbling and distrustful temper if I have to fulfil ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Mirestone, realizing that any distraction would break Peter's train of thought, sat quietly in the corner finishing off the Dutchman's supply of wine. He watched Peter closely through his slitted eyes, and it seemed that his compelling stare was the only force that could drive the frightened Peter on. Every so often ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... the fire was lighted in her heart and, as her longing waxed fiercer, she clung to him and cried, "By Allah, we will not sleep save side by side!" "Allah forefend!" he replied and prevailed against her and lay apart till the morning, when love and longing redoubled on her and distraction and eager thirst of passion. They abode after this fashion three full told months, which were long and longsome indeed, and every time she made advances to him, he would refuse himself and say, "Whatever ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... phrase, "the spice of life," both brought the same recurring motif that "a great many people are at this moment paying rather too much attention to the spice of life, and rather too little attention to life." Not in any "distraction from life is the secret we are all seeking, the secret of enjoying life. I am perfectly certain that all our world will end in despair unless there is some way of making the mind itself, the ordinary ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... meantime, she will try to regain him. Of course she will succeed. What rivalry could stand against her? If her power over him is lessened, it is that she has not chosen to exert it She has but to will it, and he is again her slave. Twenty-eight days! twenty-eight days of doubt and distraction.' And starting up, he walked out into the park, not choosing the swept path, but wading knee-deep in snow where it lay thickest in the glades. He was recalled to himself by sinking up to his shoulders ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... his care to be the same that Amu'lius had exposed on the Ti'ber, and at length divulged his suspicions to Rom'ulus. Nu'mitor made the same discovery to Re'mus. From that time nothing was thought of but the tyrant's destruction. He was beset on all sides; and, during the amazement and distraction that ensued, was taken and slain; while Nu'mitor, who had been deposed for forty years, recognised his grandsons, and was once more ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... under a mad moon with some wild humor in my blood from an earlier incarnation and I can't—I simply can't be conventional. I've tried doing as other—and nicer—girls do but it wearies me to the point of distraction. Their lives are so pale, so empty, so full of pretensions. They have always seemed so. When I used to romp like a boy my elders told me it was an unnatural way for little girls to play. But I kept on romping. If it hadn't been natural I shouldn't ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... and her face took on some slight vestige of colour. Her spirit was a thing for which I might then have come to love her had it not been that already I loved her to distraction. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... years after these great happenings Hereward stayed in Flanders, grieving for the woes that had come upon his native land. Not that he sat moping all the time, for some deed of arms was ever on hand to afford distraction; but in the main his thoughts all turned on schemes for freeing England from the French tyrant. But not till Gyda, Harold's widowed mother, came to Baldwin for sanctuary did he take any ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... an agreeable distraction to Maggie's grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke's side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... cause of his affliction. My worst fears were realized. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, bilious-looking old gentleman rose, and applied his auger with such pertinacity that we were all bored nearly to distraction. I dared not look at Thackeray, but I felt that his eye was upon me. My distress may be imagined, when he got up quite deliberately from the prominent place where a chair had been set for him, and made his exit very noiselessly into a small anteroom leading into the larger room, and ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... look under my bed, Dave!" squealed Frank, in mock distraction. "I've always expected to find a ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... unresisting hand of the Duchess in both of his, and gently pawing it in a manner that would have been disgusting to a spectator—"what can I say, after your candid avowal? Simply, that you are the most ingenuous, the most delightful creature in the world. I love you to distraction; and yet I will not urge you to depart from the course which you seem determined to pursue, though by adhering to that course you deprive me, as well as yourself, of the most exquisite delights this world can afford. Nevertheless, let us be friends, if we cannot be lovers. See, my hair is gray; ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Herbert's letters are given, and these alone would go to stamp him as a wonderful man. His conscience was awakened by the popular outcry against his sin of simony, he plunged into his new duties at Thetford with ardour in the vain hope of distraction, but failed to find that consolation he had hoped to; and so about 1093 he determined on a visit to Rome to tender his resignation and confess his sin to Pope Urban. He journeyed to Rome and was kindly received, and the absolution he desired readily granted. The Pope was glad to see an ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... the rear of the room a connecting door, leading presumably to the bedroom, was open. A clean-shaven, dark-eyed man of perhaps thirty-five, Kenleigh obviously, was pacing nervously up and down. His face was pale, his hair ruffled; and, in his distraction, apparently, he had forgotten to remove the cloak which he was wearing over his evening clothes. In the far corner of the room, Meighan, the detective, knelt upon the floor amidst a scene of grotesque disorder. The door of a very small safe ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Tongue almost always white, towards the end dry, reddish, black, rough; the Face pale, Lead-coloured, languishing, cadaverous; a frequent Sickness at the Stomach; mortal Inquietudes; a general sinking and Faintness; Distraction of the Mind; dosing, an Inclination to ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... noctis, vigiliae cubandique taedio, nunc toro residens, nunc per longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque expectare lucem consueverat.' This is the very picture of Ennui that has become mortal disease. Nor was Nero different. 'Neron,' says Victor Hugo, 'cherche tout simplement une distraction. Poete, comedien, chanteur, cocher, epuisant la ferocite pour trouver la volupte, essayant le changement de sexe, epoux de l'eunuque Sporus et epouse de l'esclave Pythagore, et se promenant dans les rues de Rome entre sa femme et son mari; ayant deux plaisirs: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... am a wretch—a very wretch, that have felt only for myself!—I! who ought to have shewn the fortitude of a man, who ought to have supported you, I! have increased your sufferings by the conduct of a child! Forgive me, Emily! think of the distraction of my mind now that I am about to part with all that is dear to me—and forgive me! When you are gone, I shall recollect with bitter remorse what I have made you suffer, and shall wish in vain that I could see you, if only for a moment, that I ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... business, deeming this visit both useless and dangerous, sat down and turned over the leaves of a picture book. And Guillaume made Salvat tell him what he had done on the day of the crime; how like a stray dog he had wandered in distraction through Paris, carrying his bomb with him, originally in his tool-bag and then under his jacket; how he had gone a first time to the Duvillard mansion and found its carriage entrance closed; then how he had betaken himself first to the Chamber of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... intoxicate Jenny. She heard the soft humming of the engine, and saw lamps and other vehicles flashing by, with a sense of effortless speed that was to her incomparable. If only she had been mentally at ease, and free from distraction, she would have enjoyed every instant of her journey. Even as it was, she could not restrain her eagerness as they overtook a tramcar, and the chauffeur honked his horn, and they glided nearer and nearer, and passed, and seemed to ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... seen the tyrant arrayed in his terror till then. Never before or since have I seen horror so intensely depicted. It seemed actually as if O'Connor's mind had been unsettled by the shock; the few words he uttered were marked with all the incoherence of distraction; but it was not words that marked his despair most strongly, the appalling and heart-sickening groans that came from the terror-stricken and dying man must haunt me while I live; the expression, too, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... were not the meals of Rabelais who said, "the great God makes the planets and we make the platters neat." By that time, the ranch-house meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction, not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten by Ross or me ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... me. After that night it required frequent bathing and much searching for a week or ten days before I felt free from the awful pests of that filthy den. Thus it was that my first crossing of the Jordan did not bring me to a "land of rest," but to an experience akin to distraction. ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... is the first day of Dora's written matriculation. Father wanted her to withdraw because she looks so ill, but she would not for she said it would be a distraction for her and that she would like to finish with the High School. Next year she is to go to a preparatory school for the Gymnasium. She ought really to go to a dancing class, for she is nearly 17, but since she is in ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... the amazons had, in the fray, reduced each other from the waist upwards to nearly a state of nudity. On either side the partisans were numerous, the combatants eager to renew the fight, and the spectators, the majority of whom were of Irish distraction, anxious for the result, when the officious interposition of official authority, terminated the "tug of war," and the honor of the two ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... arm-chair in her room, she would begin laughing and crying at the same time, with a sort of tearless grief, or else relapse into convulsions, and scream out dreadful, incoherent words in a horrible voice. It was the first dire sorrow which she had known in her life, and it reduced her almost to distraction. She would begin accusing first one person, and then another, of bringing this misfortune upon her, and rail at and blame them with the most extraordinary virulence, Finally she would rise from her arm-chair, pace the room ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Mr Gray declard to me that he did not hear me mention a Word of Mr Hancocks Election - that a conversation happend between Mr John Cotton & my self (Mr Gray being present) relative to Mr Otis - that Mr Cotton said Mr Otis' Conduct must be the Effect of Distraction or Drunkeness - that I said I did not think so - but that it rather proceeded from Irritation - that he (Mr Gray) said if Mr Otis is distracted why should Mr Hancock pursue him - & that I answerd that Mr Hancock might be ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... fears, regrets, self-accusations, revolts, swarmed insect-like in Hadria's brain, as the train thundered through the darkness, every tumultuous sound and motion exaggerated to the consciousness, by the fact that there was no distraction of the attention by outside objects. Nothing offered itself to the sight except the strange lights and shadows of the lamp thrown on the cushions of the carriage; Henriette's figure in one corner, Hannah, with the child, in ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... or his reason, for one or the other will pay the forfeit if this goes on. I know how much I am asking, and how little right I have to ask anything; but I think you will listen to me as it is for my father. Oh, Mr Bold, pray, pray do this for us;—pray do not drive to distraction a man who ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Although driven almost to distraction by the horror of her predicament, he worked with a cool, swift efficiency. Only the pale, anxiety-drawn expression on his face showed how great was the strain. He finished the last spectrometer observation, snatched out a pad ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... that men may, after a drinking bout, or after they wake from sleep or when in need of relaxation from the pressure of business, take up this light literature, and not only expunge the traces of antiquated books, and obtain a new kind of distraction, but that they may also lay by a long life as well as energy and strength; for it bears no point of similarity to those works, whose designs are false, whose course is immoral. Now, Sir Priest, what are your views on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... great surprise, although no one had dared to ask it, Hatteras gave the order to lower and man the whale-boat; he was glad to give the men some distraction, and also to get a few barrels of oil. They heard the order ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... and skinning the gentle-eyed animals. It was not that he did not feel some disgust at the work; but it meant bread to the men he was with, and he might as well help them. It was an experience, and, above all, it was distraction. When the women had seen him at work they welcomed him with demonstrative joy to the hot meals which they prepared twice a day for the hunters. Caius was not quite sure what composed the soups and stews of which he partook, but they ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... demand for payment of a heavy debt. This debt I owed to Jules, who loved me with all his heart, who was in possession of my father's promised word and mine also. Yet I could not give up your friend. In a state of distraction I told him all; we meditated flight. Yes, I was so far guilty, and I make the confession in hopes that some portion of my errors may be expiated by repentance. My father, who had long been in a declining state, suddenly grew worse, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... carry it through as he could, unhampered by those popular suffrages and Parliamentary checks and privileges which he held to be mere euphemisms for ruin and mutual throat-cutting all through the British Islands in their then state of distraction; and it must therefore have been a serious consideration with him how far, in the public interests, or for his own comfort, he could put himself in new shackles for the mere name of King. What, for example, of the proposed restitution of the ninety-and-odd excluded members to the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... with that object, when the weather was fine, go for a solitary walk—a thing, I need not say, she hated in itself, though now it was her forlorn hope, in the poor possibility of falling in with some distraction. But the hope was not altogether a vague one; for was there not a man somewhere underneath those chimneys she saw over the roof of the laundry? She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she had often talked about him, and often ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... separate apartment, that I only acted thus to procure what you call pleasure? Truly you would be very much mistaken. Indeed, never have I refused to fulfill the duties of my state, but I assure you that the greater part of the time, I yielded to them only through complaisance, or as a distraction, always with regret at the importunities of men. We love men and marry them because they have certain qualities of mind and heart; and no woman, with the exception of those, perhaps, whom I do not care to name, even attaches ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Pangs of Death come upon that dear Body which I had often embraced with Transport, when I saw those cherishing Eyes begin to be ghastly, and their last Struggle to be to fix themselves on me, how did I lose all patience? She expired in my Arms, and in my Distraction I thought I saw her Bosom still heave. There was certainly Life yet still left; I cried she just now spoke to me: But alas! I grew giddy, and all things moved about me from the Distemper of my own Head; for the best of Women was ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... no cause to doubt, our desires being so reasonable, our intentions so loyal, and the manner so dutiful. Neither need we fear that this is the critical parliament, as has been insinuated; or that this is the way to distraction: but assure ourselves of a happy issue. Then shall the king, as he calls us his great council, find us his true council, and own ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Of course if you had no fortune, or much less than you have, he could not think of marrying you. That is clear. I never pretended the contrary. But that does not contradict the fact that he loves you to distraction, if ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... am I? whither is't you lead me? Methinks I read distraction in your face, Something less gentle than the fate you tell me. You shake and tremble too! your blood runs cold! Heav'ns guard my love, and ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... but of those, also, who had thus nobly and fearlessly administered it in the critical hour of its mortal danger. A contrary course would only lead to disaster in the momentous operations of the war, and to distraction and weakness among the people, whose duty and disposition it is to sustain the Government in all honest efforts to conquer the rebellion. The temptation insensibly to depart from this pure and patriotic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... formulation of the principle (in Chapter III). Furthermore, a fundamental treatment, prior to Chapters VI and VII, permits maximum brevity in the discussion, therein. The commander, having mastered the fundamentals dealt with here, can later follow the detailed procedure with minimum distraction due to reference ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... were with her, we all agreed that to have the care of her would be distraction! "She seems the girl in the world," Mrs. Thrale wisely said, "to attain the highest reach of human perfection as a man's mistress!—as such she would be a second Cleopatra, and have the world ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... architect and contractor." And if epics were inaugurated by banquet, this class would certainly propose the health of the poet and printer, after the King and the publishers. Only sheer ennui sometimes drives it to seek distraction in the artist's work. It prefers the novelist among artists because the novel gives the longest surcease from ennui at the least ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... and nowhere to go, the misery of being derelict of God and Man, the misery of the idle, poor or rich. And this is one of the miseries of unoccupied childhood. The unoccupied adult, thus afflicted, tries many distractions which are, to say the least, unsuited to children. But one of them, the distraction of seeing the world, is innocent and beneficial. Also it is childish, being a continuation of what nurses call "taking notice," by which a child becomes experienced. It is pitiable nowadays to see men and women doing after the age of 45 all ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... few days in early May we are forcibly reminded of the Florida peninsula, which fairly teems with these birds; they become almost superabundant, a distraction during the precious days when the rarer species are quietly slipping by, not to return again for a year, perhaps longer, for some warblers are notoriously irregular in their routes north and south, and never return by the way they travelled ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... to the theater a good deal, showing preference for the drama of strife, and she did not go anywhere for amusement. Distraction and amusement seemed to be dead issues for her. But she could become absorbed in any argument on the good or evil of the present day. Socialism reached into her mind, to be rejected. She had never understood it clearly, but it ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... mistress," cried Norris, "and do not let your grief and distraction place you in the power of your enemies. All may yet ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of inspiration the methods observed present an interesting similarity. The votary who aspires to a communion with the god, shuts himself out from the distraction of social intercourse and the disturbing allurements of the senses. In the solitude of the forest or the cell, with complete bodily inaction, he gives himself to fasting and devotion, to a concentration of all his mind on the one object of his wish, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Add to this a quality of beauty which cannot be caught by pen or pencil, and one can understand the singular sway she held over men and women alike. Mme. de Krudener, whose salon so curiously united fashion and piety, worldliness and mysticism, was troubled by the distraction which the entrance of Mme. Recamier was sure to cause, and begged Benjamin Constant to write and entreat her to make herself as little charming as possible. His note is certainly unique, though it loses much of its piquancy ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... first place, the child is peculiarly susceptible to the appeals of change, novelty, chance, or happy suggestion; and often the failure to respond to a stimulus is due to distraction or to discomfort rather than to lack of intrinsic interest. Again, fatigue is a matter of considerable importance. In respect to fatigue, I should say that the first signs of restlessness, or arbitrary loss of interest, in a series ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter or the first half of this century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities differing ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... a thing that might have otherwise seemed improbable. Finally, we may be able properly to estimate many an excuse offered by a defendant through considering his habits, especially when we are dealing with events that are supposed to have occurred under stupefaction, absolute intoxication, distraction, etc.[1] Hume, indeed, has assigned to habit the maximum of significance; his whole system depends upon the use of habit as a principle of explanation. He shows that the essence of all our inferences with regard to facts relates to ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... towards the melting relief, and the extreme self-agitations I had used to come at it, had wearied and thrown me into a kind of unquiet sleep: for, if I tossed and threw about my limbs in proportion to the distraction of my dreams, as I had reason to believe I did, a bystander could not have helped seeing all for love. And one there was it seems; for waking out of my very short slumber, I found my hand locked ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... like it. She has inherited the fine old superstition that art's pardonable only so long as it's bad—so long as it's done at odd hours, for a little distraction, like a game of tennis or of whist. The only thing that can justify it, the effort to carry it as far as one can (which you can't do without time and singleness of purpose), she regards as just the dangerous, the criminal element. It's the oddest hind-part-before ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... testimony, that the mischiefs arising, on every side, from this compendious mode of drunkenness, are enormous and insupportable; equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet, and distraction, harder to be borne, as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... my man's charging my pistols unknown to me. Him I have murdered for it. Such is my wedding day. I will immediately follow my wife to her grave, but before I throw myself upon my sword, I command my distraction so far as to explain my story to you. I fear my heart will not keep together till I have stabbed it. Poor good old man! Remember, he that killed your daughter died for it. In the article of death, I give you my thanks and pray for you, though I ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... and their relation to the various hours of the day and to the time of labor. But there was a strong tendency to recognize as still more important than the mere fatigue, the whole mental constitution of the motormen. The ability to keep attention constant, to resist distraction by chance happenings on the street and especially the always needed ability to foresee the possible movements of the pedestrians and vehicles were acknowledged as extremely different from man to man. The companies claimed that there are motormen who practically never have an accident, ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... of spur and bill, that in the space of twelve minutes, during which time the conflict lasted, she put a final period to the nocturnal invader's existence; nimbly turned round, in wild but triumphant distraction, to her palpitating nestling, and hugged it in her ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... dread took possession of her. Where had he gone? What was he doing? Doubtless enjoying himself—what bitterness there was in the thought! She did not grudge him any pleasure, but it was hard that he should find so little in her company. Why was there no distraction for her? The torment of her mind was awful; should she try his remedy? She went to the sideboard and poured herself out some whisky, but even as she raised it to her lips she felt it unworthy to have recourse to it, and put ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... thousand dollars worth of Turner's pictures upon his walls. The Fawkes family described Turner as a most delightful man: "The fun, frolic, and shooting we enjoyed together, and which, whatever may be said by others of his temper and disposition, have proved to me that he was, in his hours of distraction from his professional labours as kindly hearted a man and as capable of enjoyment and fun of all kinds ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... elsewhere, through the revival of arts and letters early in the fourteenth century. Cimabue, Giotto, and the Pisani, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, set culture forward on fresh paths divergent from previous mediaeval tradition. The gradual enfeeblement of the Empire and the distraction of the Church during the Great Schism prepared the means whereby both Renaissance and Reformation were eventually realized. The Council of Constance brought the Western nations into active diplomatical ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Bride with proud song and humble feast, and sped her parting with optimistic symbolisms of fire and wine, of spice and light and shadow. All around their neighbors sought distraction in the blazing public-houses, and their tipsy bellowings resounded through the streets and mingled with the Hebrew hymns. Here and there the voice of a beaten woman rose on the air. But no Son of the Covenant was among ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... period. Meanwhile we are protecting our citizens and stand ready to cooperate with any government which may emerge in promoting the welfare of the people of China. They have always had our friendship, and they should especially merit our consideration in these days of their distraction ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and the first pull of the bell was not answered, her anxiety rose to distraction. The little mansion showed no sign of life from the ground to the ornamental roof-ridge, and, in spite of its much-admired style, had to her eyes a sinister appearance, as also had the adjoining lodging-house, not less ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the first time he was permitted to follow his own views, instead of merely filling in with colour outlines already drawn for him; and he found his scheme for the decoration a serious temptation to distraction during the office. As he stood among the professed monks, in his own stall at last, he found his eyes wandering away to the capitals of the round pillars, the stone foliage and fruit that burst out of the slender shafts, the grim heads that strained forward in mitre and crown overhead, and even ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Distraction isn't really good for a man if he wants to reach a goal. No salesman ever got very far by carrying too many side lines. The poorest sort of monopoly for any man to undertake is a ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... in her distraction? She had broken away from him, and repudiated her wifehood. Was it not well done? If he believed ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... worried to distraction. He had the unhappy, panic-stricken eyes of an over-driven bullock that scents the slaughterhouse. And yet his dress was immaculate; he was tailored and laundered as though for an occasion of joy. Everything that he wore was discreetly festive, from the lavender gloves and shiny topper ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... immortality through a resurrection. You know you must die, and sincerely think that death will terminate your existence forever. You see your children one after another laid upon their dying bed, and with distraction shake the farewell hand of eternal separation, and with the most solemn melancholy and wo, look forward to the period when you must follow them down to the chambers of eternal silence, and ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... keeping the distractions away. With this definition of attention, we see that in order to increase the effectiveness of attention during study, we must devise means for overcoming the distractions peculiar to study. Obviously the first thing is to eliminate every distraction possible. Such a plan of elimination may require a radical rearrangement of study conditions, for students often fail to realize how wretched their conditions of study are from a psychological standpoint. They attempt to study in rooms with two or three ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... not realise her father's mental condition, and pointed out that whatever his past faults he was now lying in my house a dying man, and dying of a broken heart. I hoped and believed that my description of his anguish and his distraction would ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... your wife or Madam Imbert know any thing about it. I have had much trouble once or twice through women, and have determined never again to trust them. It is utterly impossible for a woman to keep a secret. She may love you to distraction, but confide a secret to her and she is never satisfied till she divulges it." Maroney eagerly listened to all White had to say, and then replied: "White, depend upon it, you are the right man for me! If you will only figure for me as well as you have done for yourself, ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... The distraction and perplexity of the teacher's life are, as was explained in the last chapter, almost proverbial. There are other pressing and exhausting pursuits, which wear away the spirit by the ceaseless care which they impose, or perplex and bewilder the intellect by the multiplicity and intricacy of their ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... so, I imagined, from, the viewpoint of poor Kauf. Manton, at the heels of his new director, was doing all he could to help. Phelps, following Manton about, seemed to be urging haste upon the promoter. The result was far from advantageous to picture making; it was concentrated distraction. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... unavailing victim to an amiable but excessive attachment, seventeen days before the death of her lord.' The period, though not very remote, was one in which the intelligence of events travelled slowly; and in this instance the distraction of the family must have served to retard it beyond the ordinary time. Her Ladyship's mother, when hastening from Edinburgh to her assistance, alighted one day from her carriage at an inn, and, on seeing two hearses standing ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... disturbed soul of the suffering chief of Ellerslie. "Ah! then," murmured she to herself, "are there two men in Scotland who will speak thus?" She looked up in his face. The plumes of his bonnet shaded his features; but she saw they were paler than on his entrance, and a strange expression of distraction agitated their before composed lines. His eyes were bent to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the drift of her new life, Vanessa was undisguisedly glad when distraction offered itself in the person of Mr. Dobrinton, a chance acquaintance whom they had first run against in the primitive hostelry of a benighted Caucasian town. Dobrinton was elaborately British, in deference perhaps to the memory of his mother, who was said to have derived part of her origin ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... dear," she drawled, "I love you to distraction! But as a daily companion?" Vaguely her eyebrows lifted. "As a real playmate?" Against the starch-white of her pillows the sudden flutter of her small brown throat showed with almost startling distinctness. "But as a real playmate," she persisted evenly, "you ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... is perhaps a questionable usage, Lord John Russell invited the retiring minister to explain his secession from office to the House. In the suspicion, distraction, tension that marked that ominous hour in the history of English party, people insisted that the resignation of the head of the department of trade must be due to divergence of judgment upon protection. The prime minister, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... could never think her handsome. She has really a good shape and complexion but no mein; and no woman has the use of her beauty without mein. Her charms are dumb, they want utterance. But whither does distraction lead me ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... blustering into a sixth marriage, and haunted by the ghosts of four dead wives and the wraith of the sole survivor, is not a figure precisely calculated to inspire patriotic fervour. Still, the circumstances of the play are sufficiently national, and it should serve well enough as a permissible distraction for non-combatants. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... you?" he exclaimed at length, in a voice trembling with emotion; "speak, if you would not drive me to distraction. Tell me whence you come, and why you now come ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... resolved not to again open them, that I might not be influenced by external objects, for distraction had gradually taken possession of me until I hardly knew what ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... 'em) and lots of other projects and enterprizes — be on the go the hull winter, with a dress so tight she couldn't breathe instead of her good loose robes, and instead of her good comfortable sandals have her feet upon high-heeled shoes pinchin' her corns almost unto distraction. And then to Washington to go all through it agin, and more too, and Florida, and Cuba; and then to the sea-shore and have it all over agin with sea ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... intimating by the slight movement of her head towards him, that their conversation was to become a tete-a-tete. "Well," she continued, "I suppose that life is that with all of us, only you see with us poor frivolous people, a search means nearly always the same thing—a search for amusement or distraction, whichever ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... those, also, who had thus nobly and fearlessly administered it in the critical hour of its mortal danger. A contrary course would only lead to disaster in the momentous operations of the war, and to distraction and weakness among the people, whose duty and disposition it is to sustain the Government in all honest efforts to conquer the rebellion. The temptation insensibly to depart from this pure and patriotic policy is great and almost irresistible. It is so easy and so natural for one in power to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... then how rarely the wits and labours of men have been converted to the severe and original inquisition of knowledge; and in those who have pretended, what hurt hath been done by the affectation of professors and the distraction of such as were no professors; and how there was never in effect any conjunction or combination of wits in the first and inducing search, but that every man wrought apart, and would either have his own way or else would go no further than his guide, having in the one ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... distraction without mama, anyhow," declared Kittie, departing for the kitchen, with her hands full of dishes, and scowling defiantly at the stove, where the fire was sizzling with a lazy sputter, while the dish-water taking advantage of the lull ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... down with a stern resolution of endurance—lips firmly compressed, eyes fixed in a stony gaze on the orchestra, whence issued by turns groans, shrieks, and screams, from sundry foully-abused instruments of music; accompanied by equally appalling sounds from flat, shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction, backed by gigantic "basses," (double ones surely,) who, with voices like the "seven devils" of the old Grecian, bellowed out divers sentimentalisms about dying for love, when assuredly their most proximate danger was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... his soliloquy he shook his head in a disconsolate manner, and betook himself to a novel by way of distraction. ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... that waiting! In my longing for Berna I had worked myself up into a state that bordered on distraction. It seemed as if a cloud was in my brain, obsessing me at all times. I felt I must question this man, though it raised my gorge even to speak of her in his presence. In that atmosphere of corruption the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of HAMLET causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of OPHELIA fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last that exposes affectation to ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... husbands. They wear a very pretty dress, and all have a great air of independence and self-respect; and the real Malays are very handsome. I am going to see one of the Mollahs soon, and to look at their schools and mosque; which, to the distraction of the Scotch, they call ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... not Billy, had been the movable quantity, and that the time she had given him had been hours of keen enjoyment to herself. Theodora was no saint. She was humanly tempestuous, superhumanly jealous. She could love her friends to distraction; she could give her time and strength and thought to them unreservedly; but in return she demanded a soleness of affection which ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... black and men in uniform, up and down the pillared spaces of the ball-room. People had not been asked to dance, and they seemed to walk about chiefly for observation. There was, of course, the opportunity of talking and of listening to the band which discoursed in a corner behind palms, but the distraction which is the social Nemesis of bureaucracy was in the air, visibly increasing in the neighbourhoods of the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief, and made the commonplaces people uttered to each other disjointed and fragmentary, while it was plain that few were aware ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... to get assistance for the unfortunate victim; and crying "Help! help!" as she saw the wretched man forced over the walls, she looked in a state of distraction towards her husband. "Dear Jane," said that individual, smiling blandly, "I told you you had overtired yourself with walking." Jane gazed round; there was Reginald sitting beside her, with her head reclining ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Chevalier Bayard! Such innocent happiness, too, in all seeming—only a little animated rambling talk upon all manner of subjects, from the loftiest problems in philosophy to the frothiest gossip of the Faubourg St. Honore; only the presence of two people who loved each other to distraction. A dim firelit room; a little commonplace woman coming in and out; two young men disputing in the dusk; and Clarissa in her low chair by the fire, listening to the magical voice that was now the only music of her dreams. If it could have gone on for ever thus—a sweet sentimental ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... documents. But one will have greater indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness. The Romans punished with the utmost severity the priests of the God Apis, when these had prostituted the chastity of a noble lady to a knight who loved her to distraction, making him pass as their god; while it was found enough to send the lover into exile. But if someone had done evil deeds without apparent reason and without appearance of passion the judge would be tempted to take him for a madman, especially if it proved that ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... I? whither is't you lead me? Methinks I read distraction in your face, Something less gentle than the fate you tell me. You shake and tremble too! your blood runs cold! Heav'ns guard my love, and ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... chains that held him to the stone, at a single bound, as the iron entered him, and trampling to death one of his drivers, dashed forward to wreak his vengeance upon the first object that should come in his way. That, to the universal terror and distraction of the now scattered and flying crowds, was the chariot of the Queen. Her mounted guards, at the first onset of the maddened animal, putting their horses to their speed, by quick leaps escaped. The horses attached to the chariot, springing forward to do the same, urged ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... other hand, a vigorous mind shut out from outer stimuli[1] finds in this circumstance the time to develop leisurely, finds a freedom from distraction that leads to clear views of life and a proper expression. A periodic retirement from the busy, too-busy world is necessary for the thinker that he may digest his material, that he may strip away unessential beliefs, that he may find what it is he really needs, strives for and ought ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... supplied him with that very black plug of tobacco which he brought forth shortly afterward. The one was the complement of the other, and each was handled with equal love and care. Soon the occupation of cutting up the tobacco and rubbing it gave a temporary distraction to his thoughts, which distraction was prolonged by the further operation of pressing the tobacco into the ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... been compelled to keep indoors. Of course, money has not been plentiful, and I could not afford a nurse. Consequently I myself have been compelled to nurse him. Monsieur, if you were a woman, you would know what men are when they are ill—how fretful, how difficult. There is not much distraction for the woman who nurses them. So, as I am in the house most of the day, I find what amusement I can in watching the doings of my neighbours. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... misguided people, who completely misunderstand the situation, hold that footballers should go to the Front and fight; but the Government take a more prudent view and will not allow this, holding that their agility on the field in League Matches and so forth is of high service as an anodyne and distraction. I have heard of more than one case of a well-known herculean player, accustomed not only to big money but applause and hero-worship, seriously wondering if fighting were not his real duty and if he ought not to make a bolt for the Front, but being compelled to acquiesce in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... what another person has already told me—it is, perhaps, what all the world would tell me—it is what I am sometimes disposed to tell myself. But look at me, madam, for I will now come before you, and tell me if there is madness or distraction in my look and word, when I repeat to you again, that I have fixed my affections ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... much violent emotion the rapid and eager preparations for travel proved a useful distraction. There was no time to lose; and Natalie very speedily found that it was she herself who must undertake the duties of a courier, her mother being far too anxious and alarmed. Once or twice, indeed, the girl, regarding the worn, sad face, almost repented of having accepted that ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... her disobedience that Demetrius had formerly professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena loved Demetrius to distraction; but this honorable reason, which Hermia gave for not obeying her father's command, moved not ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... seek distraction in my old College. I floated out into the untenanted meadows. Over them was the usual coverlet of white vapour, trailed from the Isis right up to Merton Wall. The scent of these meadows' moisture is the scent of Oxford. Even in hottest noon, one feels that the sun has not dried ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... not like—once, for an hour—and he has so troubled my quiet that I cannot put my mind upon my work. What does it matter, and why should a stranger who displeases me have power to compel my thoughts? It was but a trifle—the distraction of an hour, nothing more—and, whether I like him or not, by to-morrow I shall have ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... white; the light hair falling down below the linen folds. She has turned suddenly towards you; and there is an expression in the eyes—although they are very tender and gentle—as if the wildness of a momentary terror, or distraction, had been struggled with and overcome, that instant; and nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness remained. Some stories say that Guido painted it, the night before her execution; some other stories, that ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... conscience, to the greater glory of God, yet haunted in sleep and waking by the dim ghosts of ruin and defeat. He prophesied not, and he saw no visions, but he who was almost the world's physician in his day felt fever in its pulse and heard distraction in the piercing note ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... been ingenious and diversified. "She had seen Katherine at one of the windows,—the very picture of distraction." "She had been told that Katherine was breaking her heart about him;" also, "that Elder Semple and Councillor Van Heemskirk had quarrelled because Katharine had refused to see Neil, and the elder blamed Van ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... placid, slow sort of mind. He went through his tasks without any excitement or distraction, although occasionally a vague curiosity as to what Elsie could want the atlas for, and what the letter said about them, did wander through his brain. When school was ended he slipped out unobserved with a small atlas, which he had had difficulty ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... great-grandpapa). Charles and he must swear eternal friendship, and then he will pick up his sword, and exit right centre, waving the golden shield, to find his Princess. It will look very well, and as he goes out the Princess can enter left in distraction about the combat, and she and Charles can fall in each other's arms, and be blessed ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... heard this short dialogue. He was rather bored; he did not find Cacouna very amusing, and had not yet found even that last resource of idle men—a woman to flirt with. He was in the very mood to be tempted by anything that promised the slightest distraction, and there was undeniably something irritating in the idea of there being in the neighbourhood one sole and unapproachable beauty, and of that one being given up by common consent to a boy, a mere Canadian boor! Of course he could not understand that no one else could have seen this matter ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... madame, that on so solemn an occasion I should set an example myself. I must ask you henceforth to consider our intimacy entirely at an end. You must retire to Fontevrault, where Madame de Montemart will take care of you and afford you distraction by her charming society. Your children are in good hands; do not be in the least uneasy about them. Farewell. I wish you all the firmness and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in pep, and the surprises that he was forever springing on the camp were a perpetual joy. I suspect that he was not well versed in his scoutmasters' handbook. He was a sort of human north wind. He adopted the pose of being driven to distraction by "those kids" and he denounced them roundly and said there were too many of them and that he was going to pick out one and drown the rest. Then he would show up with a new one. He was a sort of free-lance scoutmaster ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and their old father were afraid; And to his sons afflicted Jacob said, You of my children have bereaved me, Joseph and Simeon now do cease to be; And of my Benjamin you would deprive me, These things do ev'n into distraction drive me. Then Reuben said, My father I resign To thy disposing these two sons of mine; Give me the lad, and let them both be slain, If I do not return him safe again. But he reply'd, I will not let him go, For why his brother is deceas'd you know; And if upon the way some evil ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... convention. For instance, the wind is always "most discreetly, most discreetly" ready, as indeed it was in Mlle. de Scudery's own chaste stories, to blow up sleeves or skirts a little, and achieve the distraction of the beholders by what it reveals. But on the whole, as was hinted above, Gauthier de Costes de La Calprenede is the most natural ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... offered knife an instant with distraction in his eyes, and the Don (not to carry this risky business too far), taking his hesitation for refusal, claps up the blade in his waist-cloth, where it lay mighty convenient ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... so much the more fuller of horror, as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled and overmastered senses of all, while (taken up with amazement) the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds and distraction of our Company, as who was most armed and best prepared, was not ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the year before I came here, where I had to room with a girl who almost drove me to distraction. She was a mild, modest little thing, ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... not seen wringing her hands and tearing her hair in distraction; nor is she heard to utter intemperate language against his persecutors, or to manifest resentment at the dispensations of Heaven: she neither curses man, nor blasphemes God; nor do we observe her fainting beneath the pressure of accumulated ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... And I know her metier even better than you do, Bertie, dear. She might go to her grave loving you to distraction, but she would never have an ex-convict for the father of her children—not if she knew it. It's in the Everton blood. Anybody who knew Phineas Everton as you and I did in the old school-days, ought to know exactly what to expect ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... had turned her back on Marjorie, in order to study her lesson without distraction, turned round suddenly and gave an exclamation of dismay. This startled Marjorie, and she dropped her sponge full of ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... sister Mary was as nothing, after the constant exercise I had been provided with for a whole month. Ever since I had practised that little deception on Miss Evelyn by attributing to her embraces the evident distraction I was in on the day of Mr. Benson's return, she had increased her pressures of my person, and could not but feel my stiff prick throbbing against her thigh, while she closely pressed my body against it with her arm. I ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... just this. I am not worth an honest man's love. I used to think I worshipped the ground poor Leslie walked on—I'm sure I loved him to distraction," the girl went on passionately. "Very well; suppose George asked me to marry him and I consented. In all probability, in the light of what has gone before, I should be tired of him in a year, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... he was capital in argument, but his ideas did not come from his own brain; he borrowed them from others, especially from Pokorsky. Pokorsky was quiet and soft—even weak in appearance—and he was fond of women to distraction, and fond of dissipation, and he would never take an insult from any one. Rudin seemed full of fire, and courage, and life, but at heart he was cold and almost a coward, until his vanity was touched, then he ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... harassed key-attendant, hurrying up with the burden of his own distraction. "There's a silly fathead got in what thinks this is a left-luggage office, so far as I can ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... tavern an' have much whiskey as I could stan' up to, an' dee'd pay for it; an' de jedge distracted 'em to tu'n me loose. P'laski, he wuz sort o' bothered; he ain' know wherr to be disapp'inted 'bout de hangin' or pleased wid bein' set up so as de centre of distraction, tell ole Mis' Twine begin to talk 'bout 'restin' of him. Dat set him back; but I ax 'em, b'fo' dee 'rest him, couldn' I have jurisdictionment on him for a leetle while. Dee grant my be-ques', 'cuz dee know I gwine to erward him accordin' to his becessities, ...
— P'laski's Tunament - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... President. At one time, when he was in London, he said to an intimate friend: "I never intended to engage in politics, but meant to follow my profession strictly. But my prospects and plans were all changed by a most sad event, which happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As a distraction from my grief, and because I saw that through a political following I could secure the friends I then needed, I accepted ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... when the same roof sheltered us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge of distraction. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the alleged hollowness of their days with an extraordinary amount of running about. There was incessant shifting of interest from one focal point to another of the colony, a perpetually restless swarming hither and yon to some new centre of distraction, a continual kaleidoscopic parade of the most wonderful and extravagant clothing the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... my bed, Dave!" squealed Frank, in mock distraction. "I've always expected to find a man under ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... flute together with waxed thread, which, although it could not restore it to its pristine elegance, enabled him to play with great effect sundry doleful airs, whose influence, when performed at night, usually sent his companions to sleep, or, failing this, drove them to distraction. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... a new source of distraction. It broke out before the tower was finished, stimulating Hawthorne's nerves, but disturbing that delicate mental equilibrium upon which satisfactory procedure of his writing depended. On May 26, 1861, he wrote to ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of them very profound or exalted studies in psychology; but they are truthful, natural, and ingenious; and it needed a sure and delicate hand to make them interesting and life-like. The feeble, solemn, timid, vacillating bishop, driven to distraction by some clerical scandal in his tea-cup of a diocese; the pompous ecclesiastic with wounded dignity and family quarrels; the over-sensitive priest whose conscience is more acute than his brain; the weak, generous, cowardly owner of an embarrassed ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... percentages were his hourly food; he received them even from programme sellers. At nine o'clock the hall was rather less than half full, and this was rightly regarded as very promising, for the management, like the management of every place of distraction in Paris, held it a point of honour to start from twenty to thirty minutes late—as though all Parisians had many ages ago decided that in Paris one could not be punctual, and that, long since tired of waiting ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... instead of the rival candidate, Francis I of France. By this election the king of Spain, who had not yet been in Germany and who never learned its language, became its ruler at a critical juncture, when the teachings of Luther were producing unprecedented dissension and political distraction. We shall hereafter refer to him by his ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... entered the service of the Church "was released from the distraction of family cares and the seduction of family ties. The Church was his country and his home and its interests were his own. The moral, intellectual, and physical forces, which throughout the laity were divided between the claims of patriotism, the selfish struggle ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... him go on in this way, felt prompted, with the idea of affording his mind some distraction, to think of this and to devise that expedient; but everything had been indulged in with surfeit by Pao-yue, and there was only this resource, (that suggested itself to him,) of which Pao-yue had not as yet had any experience. Bringing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... He got to calling rather often. I must say that I lured him on; I found his babble a distraction. Then, one day—Prather is nothing, if not transparent—he let out the fact that he was taking notes of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... possible." There are moments, when any creature that lives, has power to drive one into madness. I seemed to know the absurdity of this reply; but that was of no consequence. It added to the measure of my distraction. A little after seven I intreated a friend to go for Mr. Carlisle, and bring him instantly wherever he was to be found. He had voluntarily called on the patient on the preceding Saturday, and two or three times since. He had seen her that morning, and ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with consternation. In all directions expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the sea. Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... efforts, I seemed to be engaged in a hopeless struggle, without motive or end: and his idea, which was perpetually recurring to me, brought such bitter anguish with it, that I shut up the work with feelings bordering on distraction. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... female. A woman doctor (to instance another open calling) is rightly regarded as a doctor who happens to be a woman, not as a woman who happens to be a doctor. She undergoes the same training, and submits to the same tests, as the young men who find their distraction in the music-halls and flirt with nurses. Her sex is properly sunk, except where it may prove an advantage, and certainly it is never allowed to pose as an excuse for limitations, a palliative for shortcomings. Least of all is she credited (or debited) with any abnormality on account of it. But ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... Man lay unread. If Pelle laid down his work a moment in order to glance at it, there was Ellen nipping his ear with her lips; his free time belonged to her, and it was a glorious distraction in work-time, to frolic as carelessly as a couple of puppies, far more delightful than shouldering the burden of the servitude of the masses! So the paper was given up; Ellen received the money every week for her savings-bank. She had discovered a corner ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... keep the Church from being liberalised? there was such apathy on the subject in some quarters, such imbecile alarm in others; the true principles of Churchmanship seemed so radically decayed, and there was such distraction in the councils of the clergy. The Bishop of London of the day, an active and open-hearted man, had been for years engaged in diluting the high orthodoxy of the Church by the introduction of the Evangelical body into ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... yield up the last retreat of love and gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocent object—driven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped the other—my anger rose almost to distraction against both I do not know against which it rose higher—the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... him to the last; and on those occasions, when the nurse used to meet him in her walks, would enquire of her with the tenderest anxiety as to his health and looks. When the intelligence of his death, too, arrived, her grief, according to the account of this same attendant, bordered on distraction, and her shrieks were so loud as to be heard in the street. She was, indeed, a woman full of the most passionate extremes, and her grief and affection were bursts as much of temper as of feeling. To mourn at all, however, for such a husband was, it must be allowed, a most gratuitous stretch of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... pair met next morning, they neither looked at nor spoke to each other. Days passed full of depression and gloom for the young wife, who spent most of her time in seclusion, whilst the king sought distraction in the society of his courtiers. The chancellor, after his second interview with the queen, absented himself from court, not wishing to be furthermore drawn into a quarrel which he saw himself powerless to heal. During his absence the king ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... taken away!' I cried, starting up, and with streaming eyes, gazing on the building which, though I stamped my feet in my distraction, I was afraid to approach. 'Oh, is mamma taken away? Where is she? Where ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... especially to women, it seems to me that such talk is annoying to me, at any rate at present. When I get to your age, possibly my ideas may change. I don't for a moment wish to judge you or others; you apparently enjoy it, and it is a distraction from our serious work. I say simply that it is an amusement which I do not understand. You must remember that I entered the Order in consequence of a solemn vow of my dead father, that I regard the profession we make as a very serious one, and that my present intention is to devote my life ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... twisted oak, even the grand salon with the stately courtiers and captains, the gracious dames and damsels of the family of Secondat gazing down from the walls, all these distract the eye and the mind. The distraction is agreeable, but still it is a distraction. It leads you from the biographical into the social and historical mood. You are delighted as at Meillant or Chenonceaux with a corner of ancient France, marvellously rescued from the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... talking it over at supper tonight?" Pembroke proposed. "Maybe with less distraction I'll have a better picture of you—as ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... those yellow eyes he caught the flash of capricious resentment at the reminder. Then, indifferently, she brushed the distraction away. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... so supine? Why is his work so ill done, when he ought most to exert himself? He disgusts the world with his hang-dog looks. Alas! with the need for action, the power of action is gone. Despair—distraction—the Furies sit with him. Stunned, stupid, and wild—always agitated—it is not easy to compose his sermons as finely as heretofore. He is always jotting down little sums in addition and subtraction. The cares of the world—the miseries of what the world calls 'difficulties' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... still been a pleasure, but a much smaller one. I love your intellect to distraction, Clementine, but tell me, do you think it possible to love the intellect without ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... him from the temptations of distraction. He knew no women. He did not put himself in the way of meeting them. He kept away from theatres. He sunk himself in a routine of labour which, viewed from the outside, seemed dull and monotonous. Viewed from his stand-point of acquisition, of achievement, it was just ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... held firm. On the whole, however, Oberstein thought he could answer for his own troops: Upon Van Ende's division, although the crafty colonel dissembled his real intentions; very little reliance was placed. Thus there was distraction within the walls. Among those whom the burghers had been told to consider their defenders, there were probably many who were ready to join with their mortal foes at a moment's warning. Under these circumstances, Champagny hesitated about admitting these fresh troops from Brussels. He ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... courses. Then in a carriage we set out for the King's stand in the hunting-grounds, accompanied by a crowd of mounted game-keepers, who with great difficulty controlled the pack of sixty or seventy hounds, the dogs and keepers together almost driving me to distraction with their yelping and yelling. On reaching the stand, I was posted within about twenty' yards of a long, high picket-fence, facing the fence and covered by two trees very close together. It was from behind these that the King usually ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... at Roger's elbow John was watching like a hawk for all the little ways and means of pushing up the business. What a will the lad had to down bodily ills, what vim in the way he tackled each job. His shrewd and cheery companionship was a distraction and relief. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... struggled for and the things that are most envied are not those which give either the most intense or the most unmixed joy. Ambition is the luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance compared with the poignancy of suffering endured ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... against her was singularly striking and unanswerable—and he knew the world too well, not to feel extraordinary alarm at the possible consequences. In London, alone, without friends or acquaintances, a glance into the future almost drove him to distraction. At moments he was half mastered by the impulse to bear Caroline away, by a sudden coup de main; but his hand was held by the reflection, that even were such a wild scheme possible, success would be no means of security, inasmuch as Mrs. Clifford had given her address; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... (if any Man had Pretensions to greater Faculties than any other Mortal) was the Person; but such a Way of acting is Childish, and inconsistent with the Manner of our Being. And it appears from the very Nature of Things, that there cannot be any thing effectually dispatched in the Distraction of a Publick Levee: but the whole seems to be a Conspiracy of a Set of Servile Slaves, to give up their own Liberty to take ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Melissa, is it possible my father can be so cruel! Is he so unfeeling as to banish me from his house, and confine me within the walls of a prison, like a common malefactor?" She flung herself on the bed in a state little inferior to distraction. Her aunt told her it was all owing to her own obstinacy, and because she refused to be made happy—and ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... state of distraction, was eagerly embraced,—in such haste, indeed, that he left the palace without an instant's preparation, his feet destitute of shoes, and no garment but his close tunic, his outer garments and imperial robe having been discarded in his distraction. The utmost he did was to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... made to save the unhappy murderer was the last feeble glimmering of a flame about to be extinguished. He sank almost immediately afterward into a state of gloom and inactivity, until he was at length brought to perfect distraction by learning that he was to be summoned as a witness against the prisoner, ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... book shut. Later she opened it to the tale of Tomlinson. She did not entirely grasp it, but she could not entirely miss what it said. She hurried on; she wondered vaguely at the call of the Red Gods; here again, seeking distraction, she was whipped back to reality. There were the lines, staring at her, as though King had ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... wood by pieces of wall we were firing on the Russians, we heard behind us the bugle sounding 'Retreat' at the order of ——. At this moment my captain, indignant, ordered 'Forward' sounded to reestablish confidence which had been shaken by the distraction or by the inadvertance ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... soldier her babe fondly press'd; Not a word could she utter, no tear gave relief, But sorrow convulsively heaved her soft breast. Now nearer she presses—now severed for life The waves bear the lord of her bosom from view; Distraction suspends the red current of life, And she sinks on the beach as he sighs ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... morrow, and you know I am inclined to let things go on quietly as long as they will. Thus far I have merely gone to an office as I did before the war, or else have been absent on trips that were apparently civilian in character, and it has been essential that I should have as little distraction of mind as possible. I have lived long in hope that some decisive victory might occur; but the future grows darker, instead of lighter, and the struggle, instead of culminating speedily, promises to become more deadly and to be prolonged. There is but one way out ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign,—the Mitre,—and a bar that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's youngest daughter to distraction,—but let that pass. It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that Holly-Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... cannot change his nature so as to be like the Quiet above him (ll. 144-5). Hence, like the fish, Setebos had a dissatisfied consciousness of a bliss he was not born for. Discontent with himself, spite, envy, restlessness, love of power as a means of distraction, are the motives that, according to Caliban's reasoning, actuated Setebos in his ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... on and ended, with a good deal of distraction, caused by the dogs, and a mild little remark now and then from Mrs. Tempest, or an occasional wise interjection from Miss McCroke, who in a manner represented the Goddess of Wisdom in this somewhat frivolous family, and came ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... beside himself, but Mrs. Bumpkin had taken the precaution to hide the gun and the powder-flask, for she could not tell what her husband might do in his distraction. Possibly she was right. Tom's rage knew no bounds. Youth itself seemed to be restored in the strength of his fury. He saw dimly the men standing around looking on; he saw, as in a dream, the man cutting on the rick, and he ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... notable castles and two wide domains, was a stake worth playing high for, and a stake which appealed strongly to a houseless, landless man, with not even a name worth leaving to his son. Thus, while the Countess lavished her affection on young Wilhelm, noticing nothing of her husband's distraction in this excessive happiness, Count Herbert sat alone in the lofty Knight's Hall, his elbows resting on the table before him, his head buried in his hands, ruminating on the strange transformation that had taken place, endeavouring ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... my dear count, what a history you have told me! At your entrance into life you found an adorable woman, a perfect mistress, who thought of your future, made you a peer, loved you to distraction, only asked that you would be faithful to her, and you killed her! I know nothing more monstrous. Among all the passionate and unfortunate young men who haunt the streets of Paris, I doubt if there is one who would not stay virtuous ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... popularity was on the wane. Dowagers looked askance and matrons posed in a patronizing manner, the flippant correspondents of society journals and the compilers of sonnets in which that very hammock had been eulogized and metaphored to distraction now waited upon her, if at all in an entirely different manner. Strange how all classes began to recall the many peculiar or unaccountable things she had done, the extraordinary costumes she had worn, the fact that she lived alone, and the other fact that she made ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... curled, and her face took on some slight vestige of colour. Her spirit was a thing for which I might then have come to love her had it not been that already I loved her to distraction. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... made evident by his determined struggles to accompany us at the last; and it was not till he had been forcibly shut up in the coach-house that we were able to start. My grief at parting with him was lessened by the distraction of another question. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... mind she hailed the festival of the Devil Dance as a welcome distraction. Not even the impertinent curiosity of the spectators could drive her from her balcony. She followed the many phases with interest, although she could not understand the meaning of them. For the performance was a curious mixture of religion and blasphemous mockery, of horse-play and coarse ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... move it towards diverse objects when it stops. He should not taste any pleasure (sukham) and by wisdom remain unattached, by strong effort making it motionless and still. When he neither passes into dissolution nor into distraction; when there is no sign, no appearance that is the perfect Brahman. When there is no object of knowledge to come into being, the unproduced is ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... with him, whilst the cool evening wind played about us, I listened to a scheme he unfolded to me. He said he loved me to such distraction that he could not leave me, it would kill him; he could not wait until his marriage was set aside. He swore that he believed himself conscience free to marry, and swore a great oath that nothing should ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... exposed on the Ti'ber, and at length divulged his suspicions to Rom'ulus. Nu'mitor made the same discovery to Re'mus. From that time nothing was thought of but the tyrant's destruction. He was beset on all sides; and, during the amazement and distraction that ensued, was taken and slain; while Nu'mitor, who had been deposed for forty years, recognised his grandsons, and was once more placed on ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... devotion, would have been taken as a harmless platonic protestation. Unfortunately, the teeth of censure had fastened themselves upon some phrases, with the tenacity of ants; they might have escaped notice in the general distraction of thought, if it ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... instances have been recorded; once meeting with a book in an apothecary's, which he had been long looking for, he opened it, and read from morning till night without being roused from his pursuit by the distraction and tumult occasioned by a great wedding passing through the street. For some time he roved about Italy in an indigent and distressed condition, till he was hospitably received by the Lord of Ravenna, his patron ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... passed, he found himself seated on a rock which crowned the summit of one of the hills, his handkerchief loosened, his waistcoat open, his hat thrown off, his temples burning and throbbing with a feeling of distraction, and the agitated beatings of his heart almost ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quarter past the hour a message came from Miss Wilson, requesting Miss Wylie's attendance. The visitors were at a loss to account for the sudden distraction of the young ladies' attention which ensued. Jane almost burst into tears, and answered Josephs rudely when he innocently asked what the matter was. Agatha went away apparently unconcerned, though her hand shook as she put ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... place a guard at the door of the legislative hall and keep the members in it; where they could, he satirically remarked to a friend, have full time to make some wholesome laws for the State without distraction from outside matters. ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... falsehood. The approbation of the preceptor respects only what comes directly under his cognizance, and cannot be disguised. Even here, remembering the volatility and sprightliness, inseparable from the age, humanity will induce him not to animadvert with warmth upon the appearances of a casual distraction, but he will rather solicit the return of attention ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... as the close of January she had decided that she was well, and that to be well you must get rid of doctors. She told the great physician as much, and he left her in vast disgust. Society she would now have had for remedial distraction, but the war had made of it a dismal wreck. The Tories had been warned or sent away; the moderates hardly fared better; and the old gay set was broken up. Nevertheless it was not until far later, in July, '77, that Mr. Chew, Mr. Penn, and other as important neutrals, were ordered ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
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