"Absorbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horizon of life is enlarged; the development of the moral and sympathetic feelings chases egotistic cares, and by the same paradox that we have seen in other parts of human nature men best attain their own happiness by absorbing themselves in the pursuit of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the one desire to know truth; couple with this one demand the fully consecrated determination to follow what is distinctly perceived as truth immediately it is revealed. No other affection must be permitted to share the field with this all-absorbing love of truth for its own sake. Obey this one direction and never forget that expectation and desire are bride and bridegroom and forever inseparable, and you will soon find your hitherto darkened way grow luminous with celestial radiance, for with the heaven within, all heavens without incessantly ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... in, as it were, pushing it. It should be every one's aim to make the hoop do as much as possible with as little treatment as possible. After a very fast run it is equally interesting to see how slowly a hoop can be made to travel. To make it keep as straight a course as may be is very absorbing. Bought hoops can be strong, but to get exactly what one wants it is necessary to go to a blacksmith. A hoop standing as high as its owner, through which he can run to and fro as it rolls, is a possession which only a blacksmith or ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Many good impressions at first seem to bear no fruit in action. But examples and experience reiterate the truth till it finds a firm lodgment and begins to act as a check upon natural impulses. Many a child reads the stories in the Youth's Companion with absorbing interest but in the home circle fails noticeably to imitate the conduct he admires. But moral ideas must grow a little before they can yield fruit. The seed of example must drop into the soil of the mind under ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... commit murder; neither could lady Macbeth have done so when she was a girl. The absurd falsity of her notions as to her rights, came from lack of love to her neighbour, and consequent insensibility to his claims. At the same time she had not keen, she had only absorbing feelings of her rights; there was nothing keen in lady Ann; neither sense nor desire, neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow, neither love nor hate. Beyond her own order, beyond indeed her own circle in that order, the universe hardly existed. An age-long process of degeneration ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Peter was when he went to his room that night, leaving Helen May dazed and exhausted after another evening spent in absorbing queer bits of information from the garrulous Johnny Calvert. She would be able to manage all right, now, Peter told her relievedly when Johnny left. She knew as much about the place as she could possibly ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... some things here, to me novelties, which our manufacturers must borrow or surpass; though I doubt whether spinning, on the whole, is effected with less labor in Great Britain than in the United States. There are many recent improvements here, but I observe none of absorbing interest. However, I have much yet to see and more to comprehend in this department. I saw one loom weaving Lace of a width which seemed at least three yards; a Pump that would throw very nearly water enough to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and quietly, I have spent many delightful hours, studying the beautiful views, the trees, and fine landscape effects of that very interesting section of the Hudson River, and this happened in the days when I seemed to need every minute for the absorbing demands of business. So I fear after I got well started, I was not what might be called ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... working the soil in order to keep it in an open condition is of great importance, because, to use for the second or third time the words of Sir John Lawes, "it is the physical condition of the soil, its permeability to roots, its capacity for absorbing and radiating heat, and for absorbing and retaining water, that is more important than its strictly speaking chemical condition." In other words, a moderately fertile soil, if maintained in fine physical condition, will give better results than a rich ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... equipage, and is the spring of the monstrous extravagance that characterizes our city life. For I suppose there is no place on the earth where people have run into such gorgeous nonsense as here—turning home into a Parisian toy-shop, absorbing the price of a good farm in the ornaments of a parlor, and hanging up a judge's salary in a single chandelier. Not that I accept the standard of absolute necessity, or agree with those who cry out—"Have nothing but what is absolutely useful!" For, if ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... successful perhaps for itself, though even more absorbing technically, is the volume containing the unfinished fragment of another HENRY JAMES novel, to be called The Sense of the Past (COLLINS). Here especially it is the preliminary study that furnishes the chief interest; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... appearances, of course, as though I were leaving of my own accord, and he were simply seeing me to the door out of politeness. His house impressed me much; it is like a burial-ground, he seems to like it, which is, however, quite natural. Such a full life as he leads is so overflowing with absorbing interests that he has little need of assistance ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of gold so absorbing a passion? Gold the only thing you can find to admire? The possession of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... thumbs laid flat and pressed down over the knuckles of my forefingers. This, I am aware, gives the thumbs a flattened look. One of our principal pro-slavery students delights to laugh at me to my face. Perhaps I am wrong in connecting everything with this all-absorbing theme, but, truly, my thoughts all run in that direction. Mother and you were accustomed to send me on errands when I was little, and you placed your money in my right hand and mother hers in my left, because, on my return to our house, your room was on the right hand of the entry. So I used to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... could tell whether he would be true to the policy of his predecessor in resisting the ultra demands of the South, or repeat the perfidy of John Tyler by flagrantly turning his back on his past life. For the time, however, the national bereavement seemed too absorbing for any political speculations. The funeral pageant, which took place on the 13th, was very imposing. The funeral car was a long- coupled running gear, with wheels carved from solid blocks of wood. Over this was raised ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... lucky dog. Here you are with nice Dutch people, in the social swim, absorbing German to beat the band. All I see is chambermaids who shout at me some kind of devilish dialect that a fellow can't understand. And my chambermaid and I are just at present at outs. I told her this morning she was the tallest woman I ever saw. A little of her went such a long ways. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... feelings. He is without the pubertal expansion which fills out the mind with new personal and altruistic impulses and transforms it with emotion that is often dazzling and sometimes distorting; and he has not yet absorbed, or even gained the power of absorbing, all those beliefs, opinions, and mental attitudes which the race has slowly acquired and transmitted as the traditional outcome ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was more eloquent than words; but Waldo was not yet wholly content, finding an absorbing interest in ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... and depositing his bedding in the best-sheltered bunk in the forecastle; after which he returned to Number 19 Paradise Street, where he spent the few hours of freedom remaining to him in assisting his friend the Doctor, and absorbing further knowledge from him. Finally, as the clocks in the immediate neighbourhood were striking the hour of eight in the evening, Dick stepped over the rail of the Concordia and formally reported himself to the chief ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... about Aunt Isabelle. But she lost her lover, and she couldn't love again. And if she had had an absorbing occupation, she would have been saved so much ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... of watching the half-hearted simpletons who imagine they can rise to the top by thinking more about themselves than they do about the business. You, Mr. Gissing, have won my heart. You see storekeeping as I do—a fine art, an absorbing passion, a beautiful, thrilling sport. It is an art as lovely and subtle as the theatre, with the same skill in wooing and ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... feeling of incessant longing. It reveals its presence constantly; sometimes in an undefinable feeling of profound desire, satisfied with no earthly object, yet but vaguely directed to the eternal or divine; sometimes in a profound and absorbing religiosity. This longing exists in an inchoate state; it is a love yet to be developed. From this mystic root springs much that is intellectually great, even the love of scientific certainty. Philosophy may, indeed, almost be termed the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... every now and then, when Aunt Charlotte thought he was strong enough, a visitor would be admitted. Roger St Aubyn, now back from Italy, often dropped in to sit with him, and these were golden hours to Austin, who listened delightedly to his friend's absorbing descriptions of the beautiful places he had been to and the wonderful old legends that were attached to them. Then nothing would content him but that Lubin must come up occasionally and tell him how the garden was looking, and what he thought of the prospects for next summer, and answer ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... into the deserted street, walking unsteadily, and hardly conscious of anything beyond my one absorbing sorrow. I reached the house at last, and in answer to my summons a servant opened the door. No, the ladies had not retired; ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... rampant enthusiasm. King is always intensely in love with whatever interests him. His enthusiasms are not so much on the surface for many people, as underneath for causes—and for a few men. Gifted with an uncommon capacity for absorbing impressions and collecting data for research, he has made himself a sort of pathological study to other people. In mastering economics he has himself been enthralled by ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Tibetans, has remarked that it is curious how little impression the civilization and customs of the Chinese have produced on the Tibetans. Elsewhere, one of the principal characteristics of Chinese expansion is its power of absorbing other races, but with the Tibetans exactly the reverse takes place. The Chinese become Tibetanized and the children of a Chinaman married to a Tibetan woman are usually brought up ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... time, exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, already famous, to make it so; and ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... was not prepared for the storm of indignant emotion his words excited. True, she was his slave; her bones, and sinews had been purchased by his gold, yet she had the heart of a true woman, and hers was a passion too deep and absorbing to admit of partnership, and her spirit was too pure to form a ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... changed the whole outlook of his life. The old days, the old thoughts, the old unexpressed feelings and hazy ambitions had gone—swept away in one wave of absorbing passion. There was neither future nor past to him now. He lived in the thought of this woman's delightful presence, and beyond that he could ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... a hansom for several years, was compelled by force of circumstances to learn late in life to drive a taxi-cab or perish. He was not a man who, as a rule, took any absorbing interest in the events of the day, with the occasional exception, perhaps, of an exciting murder case; but he was always a close ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... alone in the library. Never did a villain propose a scheme to a beautiful girl at a more favorable moment. Half the afternoon and a little while after dinner she had been absorbing "Treasure Island," and now came Owen asking her if she would like to meet a reformed pirate and go on ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... be sent out to join them, and from time to time other detachments, as the Colony was prepared to receive them. Further locations could then be chosen, and more country broken up, and before a very long period has passed the Colony would be capable of receiving and absorbing a continuous stream of emigration ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... absorbing torpor by my poor horse, who was busy licking my ears. The faithful animal suspected something was wrong, for usually at such a time I would sing Spanish ditties or some Indian war-songs. Sunset was also the time when I brushed and patted him. The intelligent brute ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... began inauspiciously. Sir Archibald received them with stiff courtesy. He hated to be pursued to his country home with business matters. Besides, at this particular moment he was deeply engrossed in the inspection of his pigs, for which animals he cherished what might almost be called an absorbing affection. Mr. Rae, who was proceeding with diplomatic caution and skill to approach the matter in hand by way of Sir Archibald's Wiltshires, was somewhat brusquely interrupted by the Captain, who, in the firm conviction that he knew much better than did the lawyer how to deal with a man of his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... only man I ever liked. You took him, and you appear to be in rude health, so there is no chance for me. I must do something, Teddy, something definite. I can't potter round the house, all my days. The mother is housekeeper; I must have something more absorbing than dusting and salads and amateur photography to fill up ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... profession and creed. Under a rough exterior the lawyer, doctor, minister, the rude western frontiersman and the staid and sober farmer, worked side by side. There was no distinction of dress among that restless, surging, throbbing throng of humanity, drawn thither by the all-absorbing motive—the glittering dust that lay hidden beneath the gravel and sands of the streams and along the ravines. The bond of sympathy, however, among the miners was close, and as warm hearts beat beneath the flannel shirts as ever throbbed in the ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... walking, tormented him at intervals so that literary composition was impossible, sent him on pilgrimages to curative springs, and on journeys undertaken for distraction and amusement, in which all work except that of seeing and absorbing material had to be postponed. He was subject to this recurring invalidism all his life, and we must regard a good part of the work he did as a pure triumph of determination over physical discouragement. This year the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... she had threaded several needles with the silks required, and she embroidered in stitches varying in length, according to the natural position and movement of the petals, and notwithstanding the extreme delicacy and absorbing nature of this work, the recollections of the previous day, which she lived over again in thought and in silence, now came to her lips, and crowded so closely upon each other that she no longer tried to keep them back. So she talked of their setting ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days, when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity, and other kindred mysteries of nature, seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart, might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... Absorbing them. 'Tis Love that beckons us From low desires, from restlessness and sin, To heights that else we had not reached; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... saw; only, everything being white with snow, of course makes the night lighter than it does here, where the trees and the houses, and other dark objects, help along the blackness and make it more gloomy,—absorbing the light, you see, while the snow ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... not for any length of time. Second, that the entrances are kept open and clear of dead bees and are guarded with four to the inch wire screen against mice. Third, that the moisture generated by the bees does not accumulate on the walls and covers of the hives. This is most essential. Moisture absorbing material should be used in place of a wooden cover, for instance flax board or gunnysacks, or a super filled with shavings over a queen excluder. The bees must have free passage over the top of the frames. We wintered the bees at University Farm without loss by using nothing else but ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... the surface of things. For more than twenty years our political controversies have all been colored by the triumph of the Mexican Centralists in 1835-6; and but for that triumph, it is altogether likely that our territory would not have been increased, and that the Slavery question, instead of absorbing the American mind, would have held but a subordinate place in our party debates. It may, perhaps, be deemed worthy of especial mention, that the action of the Centralists of Mexico, destined to affect us so sensibly, was initiated at the same time that the modern phase of the Slavery question was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... general interest as religion; it takes precedence of all other subjects just because all other subjects are implied in it. Religion is man's response to the call of the universe; it is the soul turning towards its source and goal. How could it fail to be of absorbing interest? What is wanted is a message charged with spiritual power, "Where there is no vision the people perish." Mere dogmatic assertions will not do. The word of God is to be known from the fact that it illuminates life and appeals to the deepest ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... album filled with opera programmes. The date of the brief, precisely penned label on the black cover was 1883-84; it was the first of a number of such thick, recording volumes he had gathered; and the operas, the casts, were of absorbing interest. At once a memento of the heroic period of American music and of his first manhood, the faded crudely embellished strips of paper, bearing names, lyric tenors and sopranos of limpid, bird-like song long ago lost ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... us, quivering, half sobbing. Never until then had I realized how great, how absorbing was that love of his for Ruth. And the woman saw it, too, even though dimly; envisioned it humanly. For, under the shock of human passion, that which I thought then as utterly unknown to her as ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... is to be ensnared into absorbing something useful, it must be hidden somehow among the flowers. A treatise on religion must be disguised as a love story in which a young clergyman, sworn into holy orders, falls in love with an actress. The facts of history are imparted by ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... unpleasant flavor to a good deal of romantic poetry, both French and English. There are traces of disappointment and disillusion, but they are accepted without a murmur as inevitable incidents of a great, absorbing experience. All this means, of course, that there is no tragic depth, and little analytic subtlety, in these poems. They are the work of a young man enamoured of his youth, enthusiastically grateful for the gift of life, and entirely at his ease within ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... completely boiled, lift up the strainer and rest it across the top of the kettle, that the fish may drain, and then, if you cannot send it to table immediately, cover it with a soft napkin or flannel several folds double, to keep it firm by absorbing the moisture. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... sat expectant. The snuff of the candles grew longer and longer. Even the energetic Richard, who had opposed the Scripture single-handed, forgot his duty in the absorbing interest of the moment. Every ear was listening for the footsteps of the returning weaver, bringing the Bible of the parish-clergyman into the half-unhallowed precincts of a conventicle. At a slight motion of one of the doors, an ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic, and incoherence strike him at every turn. He finds it humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... or opera—in short, there were none of the things which form the usual means of relaxation and amusement to-day; and so, as a matter of course, yielding to a most human instinct, the tender passion became an all-absorbing topic, and served without exception as the inspiration for poetic endeavor. Love they could know and feel, and of it could they sing with understanding, because they felt it to be real and personal, and subjectively true at least. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... skits in the new Latin and other works of classical scholarship, being also well known as the ardent supporter of Reuchlin in his dispute with the Church, and as the friend and correspondent of the central Humanist figure of the time, Erasmus, he watched with absorbing interest the movement which Luther had inaugurated. Six months after the nailing of the theses at Wittenberg, he writes enthusiastically to a friend respecting the growing ferment in ecclesiastical matters, evidently regarding the new movement as a Kilkenny-cat ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... saw that if he accepted, Del Ferice was receiving the work of a whole year and more without allowing the smallest profit to the workers, besides absorbing the profits of a previous successfully executed contract, and besides taking it for granted that the existing mortgages only just covered the value of the buildings. If, as was probable, Del Ferice had means of either selling or ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... gate of the Worth home and had paused as people sometimes will when engaged in conversation of absorbing interest. Before Abe could answer Texas, Barbara, who sat on the porch, called laughingly: "What's the matter with you men? Are you hungry again? Why don't ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... vicious trait, was a real innocently devilish young fellow, who was quite convinced that he was a sophisticated town boy. And I wasn't a town boy at all. Louis was handsome, and graceful, and filled with love for the girls. With him it was an exciting and all-absorbing pursuit. I didn't know anything about girls. I had been too busy being a man. This was an entirely new phase of existence which had escaped me. And when I saw Louis say good-bye to me, raise his hat to a girl of his acquaintance, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... is that Columbus's absorbing interest in the unknown, mysterious west dates from his returning to Lisbon to live. Not only did he talk earnestly with men who had interests in the Atlantic isles, he studied all the available geographical works. Before the time came ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... everything expresses at once its Everlasting Yea and its Everlasting No. The negative character of the world is the very vehicle of its progress. Life and activity mean the triumph of the positive over the negative, a triumph which results from absorbing and assimilating it. The myth of the Phoenix typifies the life of reason "eternally preparing for itself," as Hegel says, "a funeral pile, and consuming itself upon it; but so that from its ashes it produces the new, renovated, fresh life." That the power ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Baron, "I'd engage to take this city as it is, and the office of Pope, and run the whole Roman Catholic Church, till it knocked out all opposition by the simple and natural process of absorbing all opponents. We want a republic here in Rome. We want freedom, Sir. Where is the Church making its greatest triumphs to-day? In the States, Sir. If the Catholic Church made itself free and liberal and go-ahead; if it kept up with the times; if it was imbued with the spirit of progress, and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... for the task. Educated at Cambridge, where he had won a double first; naturally studious, a great traveller, endowed with a singularly happy knack of investing the driest subject with quite an absorbing interest, and a perfect master in the art of instructing, he superintended Bob's studies so effectively that the lad's progress was little short of marvellous. Not content with the two hours of daily tuition which had originally ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... not our purpose, however, to take leave of Dick Prescott and our other young friends. There was too much yet ahead of them—absorbing happenings that merit being recorded in other volumes. We shall meet Dick, Dave, Greg, Tom and all of the chums once more in the next volume, which is published under the title: "The Grammar School Boys Snowbound; Or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports." Here we shall ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... general body of guests had been taking little notice of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance. The matter being settled, they were about to stand up when an interruption came in the shape of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... This absorbing life had gone on for two months. It was the beginning of February, and already nature was assuming a new appearance under the influence of spring. One evening, three people—two gentlemen and a lady—stepped out of a carriage at the villa ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... sprung from the earth. There was much running and confusion on the hillside. On the mountain-road, Mr. Jack Hamlin had reined up his horse, and was standing upright on the seat of his buggy. And the two objects of this absorbing attention ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... occupied man, with varied business to transact, and at the mercy of his almost excessive conscientiousness, he held himself to a considerable extent aloof from current politics, though he never lost his absorbing ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... story is a good one, the historical data accurate, and the ways and manners of the period are cleverly presented.... The love plot is absorbing, and will be found by many readers even more fascinating than the faithful reproduction of the manners and customs of the time.... It is quite safe to say that this book vies in excellence with some of the historical romances which have caused more general comment. ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... master's house. Towards noon of the second day the screaming of the wind abated; the ship lay not so perilously over, and it began to be clear to me that we were past the height of the tempest. As I hope for mercy, I was singly disappointed. In the selfishness of that vile, absorbing passion of hatred, I forgot the case of our innocent shipmates, and thought but of myself and my enemy. For myself, I was already old; I had never been young, I was not formed for the world's pleasures, I had few affections; it mattered not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flowers and replaced the pot gently on the ground; then, retiring slowly to the solitary house, she returned after a while at the same slow pace, and, throwing some crumbs to the fish, began to saunter slowly about the garden-paths, inattentive to every thing but her own absorbing thoughts. At length she reached a spot where a gigantic catalpa-tree overarched the garden and bent its branches almost to the earth. A table and a couple of chairs stood beneath the fresh and fragrant ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... urgent, restless, and often terribly painful; this was tranquil, sure, utterly certain, and passive. The immediate fruit of it was that she regarded all human creatures with a lively interest, an interest too absorbing to allow of hatred or even active dislike. Her love for Martin was now like a strong current in her soul washing away all sense of irritation and anger. She regarded people from a new angle. What were they all about? ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the whole business that was not odious was that in six hours Jeffreys had twenty-five shillings in his pocket; and to him twenty-five shillings meant a clear week and more in which to devote himself to the now all-absorbing task ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Loch Awe in future pages of this book, I omit all description of it here. Many of the days spent there in 1854 were rainy, and I sat alone writing my poem in a little bedroom on the ground-floor of the inn at Cladich. Of all literary work versification is the most absorbing, and if it is good for nothing else, it has at least the merit of getting one well ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... power of properly digesting and absorbing the foodstuffs is so greatly diminished that the alimentary canal is about as useless as a soft rubber tube. Millions on millions of these glands, lacteals and follicles in the stomach and small intestines, are destroyed like the rootlets of ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle restored the fort to the French, millions have been spent strengthening its walls, adding to the armaments; but Intendant Bigot has had charge of the funds, and Intendant Bigot has a sponge-like quality of absorbing all funds that flow through his hands. Cannon have been added, but there are not enough balls to go round. The walls have been repaired, but with false filling (sand in place of mortar), so that the first shatter of artillery ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no difficulties ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... came charging down the sidewalk and bounced through the doors into the saloon. The crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to see. ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... with her nephew was, that Richard made no allusion to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days afterward he appeared to have an absorbing business on his hands: but what it was Adrian did not then learn, and his admiration of Mrs. Doria's genius for management rose to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the door startled you," Garvey went on, evidently reading something of his guest's feelings in his face. "You probably had not suspected it. It leads into my little laboratory. Chemistry is an absorbing study to me, and I spend most of my time there." Mr. Garvey moved up to the armchair on the opposite side of the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... where he would see her; for always lurking ready to obtrude before other thoughts about him was the impression that he was very much interested in her. But to-day she was resolved not to repeat her folly of yesterday, as if she were anxious to say anything to him. Indeed, the hunt would be too absorbing. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... toils of the day,—his wife possibly, but certainly his children, have retired,—and he lays his aching head upon his pillow to catch some few hours of rest, and with the morning light to go through essentially the same busy routine, the same absorbing care, the same ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... veneration I have ever met with, an openness of her mind upward, as if she felt that the eternal eye was on her and reading her thoughts. The sense of her responsibility was so serious that I think that only the absorbing activity of her daily life, and the way in which every moment was occupied with positive duties, prevented her from falling into religious insanity. Her life was a constant prayer, a wrestling with ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Maris Stella—whilst masses of people responded from the shore; the hearts of all were with them. There was high festival at Rome from Ascension Day to Whitsuntide. All thoughts of politics were dismissed; the grand religious celebration absorbing all attention. As often as Pius IX. appeared in public, he was honored with an ovation. On one occasion, in particular, there was a great demonstration by the clergy and the artillerymen of the French army, on ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... discouragement he even thought of suicide, but by the help of a friend he found work, and with it courage. In a letter written about this time he tells of his ambitions: "I did once want to be a lawyer, but that ambition has long since died out before the all-absorbing desire to be a worthy singer of the songs of God and nature. To be able to interpret my own people through song and story, and to prove to the many that we are ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of a party on its overland pilgrimage, and the birth and growth of the absorbing love of two strong men ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... saw a German prisoner who was except for the intervals when battle kept the food waiting at the rear away from his mouth, though some who were under-sized and ill-proportioned looked incapable of absorbing nutrition. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... to its interpretation and administration. The spirit of compromise, so far as relates to the clashing views or conflicting interests of different States or sections of the Union, pervades the Constitution in every part, and especially is this the case in reference to the now all-absorbing ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... Ghastly the spectacle! And happy those Whom Death had taken swiftly! Linda's mother Was one of these—a smile upon her lips, But her breast marred—peacefully she had passed. Percival's wound was mortal, but he strove, Amid the jar of sense, to fix his mind On one absorbing thought—a thought for Linda: For she, though stunned, they told him, would survive, Motherless, though—soon to be fatherless! And something—ah! what was it?—must be done, Done, too, at once. "O gentlemen, come here! Paper and pen and ink! Quick, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... was whether his visionary habits and absorbing experiments would permit him to remember my arrival at all, and I was accordingly relieved to hear from the solitary porter that the "professor" had sent a "veeckle" to meet me, and that I was thus free to send my bag and walk the four miles to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... started with a certain gaiety. Geoffrey chose to remember only that they were together through a hard adventure, and that it was his part to smooth her way. The bond of difficulties to overcome united them. They felt the intimacy of a single absorbing interest. They had nothing to think of but accomplishing their task,—of that and of each other. As far as they could see were snow and black trunks of trees. They scarcely remembered that any one but ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... commend its important truths to public attention. Perhaps no people existing are in greater need of a heedful regard to the lessons of this work than the over-fed, over-worked, and over-anxious people of the United States. The pursuit of wealth, honor, and power, the absorbing and health-sacrificing devotion to advancement, impels our people from the moment they first enter the school-house until they are snatched from the scene of their over-wrought strugglings. At the school, the child is treated as a man. The fresh air, the blue ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... awakenings that night—once at Batavia, where a merry wedding party with horns and cow bells will follow the lucky bride and groom into your car, and once at Schenectady, where the Pullman car shock-absorbing tests are held. The next morning, tired but unhappy, you will ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... that in the infancy of an organism only a part of the food goes to maintain life, the larger part goes for growth; when the organism becomes larger, the absorbing surfaces, growing proportionally to the square, the food is spent to build the mass of the volume of the body and is spent proportionally to the cube. Suppose our organism has grown to a size twice as large, its absorbing capacity ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Also [Jervis speaks] she is getting interested in that confounded young Hallock, too good-looking and fascinating and erratic; I never did like politicians. We must deflect her mind with some uplifting and absorbing occupation until the danger is past. Ha! I have it! We will put her in charge of the John Grier Home." Oh, I can hear him as clearly as if I were there! On the occasion of my last visit in your delectable household Jervis and I had a very solemn conversation in regard to (1) marriage, (2) the ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... When you have once come into sympathy with this world of the wild—which holds our cultivated, artificial world in the hollow of its hand and gives it life—new joy, good, wholesome, heartfelt joy, will well up within you. New and absorbing interests will claim your attention. You will breathe deeper, stand straighter. The small, petty things of life will lose their seeming importance and great things will look larger and infinitely more worth while. You will know that the woods, the fields, the streams and great waters ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... very likely a much better story than this one, only it will never be known. I can merely state that it was very nearly as long, and that the last two or three paragraphs of it were the least exciting and absorbing. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... tribal basis, in substituting the parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; (2) in introducing the orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries as counter influences to the Celtic Church; (3) in absorbing the Culdees or Columban clergy into the Roman system, by first converting them from secular into regular canons, and afterwards by merging them in the latter order.[1] King David especially founded bishoprics and ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... power; to cope with him, and with the same weapons. But prompt as was her thought and bright as was its expression, her heart beat in tumult; and, with all her apparent serenity, her agitated soul was a prey of absorbing passion. She could not contend with that intelligent, yet inscrutable, eye; with that manner so full of interest and respect, and yet so tranquil. Besides, they were not on equal terms. Here was a girl contending with a man learned ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... a time of halting, of transition for me. For six years—even while writing my story of Ulysses Grant I had been absorbing the mountain west in the growing desire to put it into fiction, and now with a burden of Klondike material to be disposed of, I was subconsciously at work upon a story of the plains and the Rocky Mountain foothills. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Brother Walworth. Not so with Brother Hecker, who was expected to make two years of philosophy and meantime to increase his stock of Latin. But his faculties had been subjected to spiritual experiences of so absorbing a nature that he found study impossible. And when Brother Walworth was in due course ordained priest, in August, 1848, his companion was stuck fast where he had begun. It need not be said that so earnest a soul made every effort to study, but all was in ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Indians and their still greater herds - buffaloes - have been crowded out by the latter. At Ogallala—which but a few years ago was par excellence the cow-boys' rallying point - "homesteads," "timber claims," and "pre-emption" now form the all-absorbing topic. "The Platte's 'petered' since the hoosiers have begun to settle it up," deprecatingly reflects a bronzed cow-boy at the hotel supper-table; and, from his standpoint, he is correct. Passing the next night in the dug-out of a homesteader, in the forks of the North ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... economic and social reforms that are generally popular among the masses of people but that are anathema to religious and other conservative elements. Adjusting to the monetary and other economic policies of an integrated Europe, reducing unemployment, and absorbing widespread social changes will pose challenges to Spain ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... she was terribly worn, and her step indicated much weakness. Nor had the signs of restless trouble diminished as these tide-marks indicated ebbing strength. There was the same dry fierce fire in her eyes; the same forceful compression of her lips; the same evidences of brooding over some one absorbing thought or feeling. She seemed to me, and to Dr Duncan as well, to be dying of resentment. Would nobody do anything for her? I thought. Would not her father help her? He had got more gentle now; whence ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... underlying theories, just as it is possible to enjoy Spenser's sensuous imagery without troubling about his allegorical meaning. The secret of Godwin's power seems to be that he himself was so completely fascinated by the intricate structure of his story that he succeeds in absorbing the attention of his readers. He bestowed infinite pains on the composition of Caleb Williams, and conceived the lofty hope that it "would constitute an epoch in the mind of every reader."[76] A friend to whom he submitted ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... in the Llanos of Venezuela; namely the action of the small grasses which impoverish the soil; the total absence of trees and brushwood; the sandy winds, the heat of which is increased by contact with a surface absorbing the rays of the sun during twelve hours, and unshaded except by the stalks of the aristides, chanchuses, and paspalums. The progress observable on the vegetation of large trees and the cultivation of dicotyledonous ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... removal of the Assembly to Paris, the all-absorbing questions related to finance. The State was bankrupt. It was difficult to raise money for the most pressing exigencies. Money must be had, or there would be universal anarchy and despair. How could it be raised? The credit of the country was gone, and all means of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... the stern Proconsul's brief demand In clear profession. Rapt as in a dream, Scarce conscious of my turn, nor how I spake, I watched with wondering eyes the delicate face And figure of Perpetua; for her We that were youngest of our company Loved with a sacred and absorbing love, A passion that our martyr's brotherly vow Had purified and made divine. She stood In dreamy contemplation, slightly bowed, A glowing stillness that was near a smile Upon her soft closed lips. Her turn had come, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... green leaves of cabbages are sometimes used to line a brass or copper kettle in which pickles are made in the belief that the vinegar extracts the coloring substance (chlorophyl) in the leaves, and the cucumbers absorbing this acquire a rich green color. Be not deceived by this transparent cheat, O simple housewife! the coloring matter comes almost wholly from the copper or brass behind those leaves; and, instead of an innocent vegetable ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... became Counts of Combray, the first citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only ones among its citizens who did not reside in it—Comtes de Combray, possessing Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles, absorbing it in their personalities, and illustrating, no doubt, in themselves that strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to Combray; proprietors of the town, though not of any particular house there; dwelling, presumably, out of doors, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... speaking, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she was comforting me—I, who deserved nothing but the reproach of her silence! How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of my own thoughts, I cannot tell. I was first conscious that she was kissing me, and then my eyes seemed to wake on a sudden to their sense of outward things, and I knew that I was looking mechanically straight before me at the prospect ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... whom you twice had the pleasure and rare honor of dining. And by implication, you always give us a sort of lavender-water description of the very excellent persons you met there, and what they were kind enough to say of America, and how they complimented you, and made you the centre and all-absorbing object of attraction-in a word, a truly wonderful person. And you will not fail, now that it is become fashionable, to extol with fulsome breath the greatness of every European despot it hath been your good fortune to get a bow from. And you are just vain enough ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... experience, the size of a liquid rheostat for absorbing a given amount of energy cannot be estimated, the dimensions may be calculated approximately ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... absorbing, was the retrospect of his love, his sorrow, and her own unhappy lot, that it blotted out of his mind, for a time, the very youth whose features and complexion had ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Kinchinjunga and Everest, and all the other majestic heights; seen, too, in all their phases of cloud and mist, of perfectly clear blue sky, and of sunrise and sunset effects. It was indeed a most satisfying and absorbing twenty-four hours' visit, as I had also time, under the guidance of an official friend, to visit the picturesque weekly market or bazaar, where natives from Sikkim, Nepal, Butan and Tibet may be seen in all their dirt and strangeness. Also the ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Now (bating the honeymoon), I do not agree with his lordship. A man in love may be inclined to play the Mark Antony; but a married man, "come what will, he has been blessed." Once fairly into action, it then is of little consequence whether a man is a bachelor, or married, or in love; the all-absorbing occupation of killing your fellow-creatures makes you for the time forget whether you are ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... struggles, the absorbing purpose of his life was attained. India-rubber was introduced under his patents, and soon proved to have all the value he had, in his wildest moments, claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... this was by no means true. As I look back now I know that often he must have tried to be kind, that in the jar and worry of his own absorbing troubled life he must have often turned to me and tried to make himself my friend. But children pass hard judgments. And if my father was friendly at times it did no good. For he was a man—big and strong—and I was a small boy ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... and the sensation disturbed him, for the Mayor of Falaise very seldom had occasion to feel ashamed, either of his thoughts or of his actions. How could he have allowed his attention to stray from the subject which should just now be absorbing ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his schemes, which are his one weakness. To women, save when they can further the good of his cause, he is obdurate; in business, strong, energetic, and powerful. He is shown to us as the man with a master mind and one absorbing delusion, and as such is a pathetic figure. No one can dispute the prodigality and liveliness of the author's imagination; his plot teems ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... 1893, I had been to Old Calabar, and its Governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on the absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift, and the importance of the collection of fresh-water fishes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly asked me if I would join her, and make my time fit hers for starting on my second ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of knowing that their intimacy was legal. At it was, he must console himself with the thought that, married or not, they were indissolubly bound: he knew now better than before, that no other woman would ever exist for him; and surely, in the case of an all-absorbing passion such as this, the overstepping of conventional boundaries would not be counted too heavily against them: laws and conventions existed only for the weak and vacillating loves of the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... years of age, of a lively turn, pleasant countenance, dark color, and ordinary size. In unburdening his mind to the Committee the all-absorbing theme related to the manner in which he had been treated as a slave, and the character of those who had oppressed him. He stated that he had been the victim of a man or party, named Johnson, in whose family John had been a witness to some of the most high-handed phases of barbarism; said ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... flesh is flesh: that which is born of the spirit is spirit." As the body of the child is the derivative of a germ elaborated in the body of the parent, so the soul of the child is the derivative of a developing impulse of power imparted from the soul of the parent. And as the body is sustained by absorbing nutrition from matter, so the soul is sustained by assimilating the spiritual substances of the invisible kingdom. The most ethereal elements must combine to nourish that consummate plant whose blossom is man's mind. This representation is not materialism; for spirit belongs to a different sphere ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... we had a fellowship and a bond, his fascinating quetzals and Toltecs. Yet I never heard any more about them. There was another subject though, quite homely, seeing where we both lived, and equally absorbing for us both. He knew our local history, as far as our ships and house-flags were concerned, from John Company's fleet to the Macquarie. He knew, by reputation, many of our contemporary master mariners. He knew, and how he had learned it was as great a wonder as though he spoke ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... desperate earnest himself, he must have believed in the absolute value of conventional signs. As to the grossness of the trap into which he fell, the explanation must be that two sentiments of such absorbing magnitude cannot exist simultaneously in one heart. The danger of that other and unconscious comedian robbed him of his vision, of his perspicacity, of his judgment. Indeed, it did at first rob him of his self-possession. But he regained ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... incidents to please the lad who loves action and adventure. In the Rockspur stories the description of their Baseball and Football Games and other contests with rival clubs and teams make very exciting and absorbing reading; and few boys with warm blood in their veins, having once begun the perusal of one of these books, will willingly lay it ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... denial of the assertion that real soul-absorbing earnestness in religion is dying out. We sometimes mock at the Herculean labors of men like Owen, and Baxter, and Calvin, and Edwards. But though these men were perhaps more or less legalistic and at times a little narrow, yet one thing is sure, they made religion the business of life, ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... no longer be restrained. They overran her trembling lids, and streamed down her cheeks. The little murmurs of soothing sympathy were redoubled, though Graham walked off quickly to the window and stood looking out with a stern, fixed gaze, as if the landscape had suddenly become of absorbing interest. But Ruth's tears were not wrung from her by suffering. They were tears of penitence and honest shame. How dear and kind every one was! How cruelly she had misjudged the world when she had called it inconsiderate. And the course of conduct which ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... of it." What a rending away of heart and life it seemed to let go the object of this absorbing, satisfying love! Now she was to lose, where the love had been bestowed; and she felt as if death itself ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventure. The scene is laid in San Francisco on board The Argus and in Panama. A romantic search for the lost pirate gold. An absorbing love-story runs through ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was forcing the ancient AEgean peoples to migrate and seek new homes for themselves. Landing in Northern Syria, the sea-peoples quickly made themselves masters of the fragments of the once formidable Hittite confederacy, and, absorbing in their alliance the Hittites, who may indeed have been of their own kin, they moved southwards along the sea-coast, their fleet of war-galleys keeping pace with the advance of the land army. They established a central camp and place of arms in the land of Amor, ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... years has been an earnest student of American hieroglyphs. From his lifelong studies in linguistics in connection with his research in "the motifs of civilizations and cultures," he comes well-equipped to take up the difficult and all-absorbing study of American hieroglyphic writing. Mr. Gates has materially advanced this study by his reproduction of the glyphs in type. These type-forms he has used first in his reproduction of the Codex Perez, and now in this ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... before the wedding. My sister came in a white dress and wore gloves. During the wedding she cried quietly from joy and tenderness. Her expression was motherly and infinitely kind. She was intoxicated with our happiness, and smiled as though she were absorbing a sweet delirium, and looking at her during our wedding, I realized that for her there was nothing in the world higher than love, earthly love, and that she was dreaming of it secretly, timidly, but continually and passionately. She embraced and kissed Masha, and, not knowing ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... minutes I should see Monica, perhaps be as near to her as at the fonda of the Escurial. That was the thought most absorbing; yet my spirit was on its knees before this ancient ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in that of familiar scenery. The infinitude of surrounding blackness, filled as it were with points of light more or less brilliant, when once its effects had been scrutinised, and when nothing more remained to be noted, afforded certainly a more agreeable, but scarcely a more interesting or absorbing, outlook than the dead grey circle of sea, the dead grey hemisphere of cloud, which form the prospect from the deck of a packet in mid-Atlantic; while of change without or incident in the vessel herself there was, of course, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Salaminian state trireme arrived with momentous news from Athens. We have seen what a panic of superstitious fear had been caused among the Athenians by the mutilation of the Hermae. Arrested for the moment by the all-absorbing interest of the Sicilian expedition, the excitement broke out with renewed violence after the departure of the fleet. The enemies of Alcibiades saw that the time was now ripe for bringing up against him the charge of violating the mysteries, and pressing for a judgment. A formal indictment ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... and butter an' things fer the prisoners." It was nine o'clock before he could make up his mind to venture back to the calaboose with his basket. He spent the intervening hours in telling Rosalie and Bonner about the shocking incident at the jail and in absorbing advice from the clear-headed young ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... ask how are the thoughts of the multitude so marshalled as to make the unit of Public Opinion. As we already remarked, the thinking power of the ordinary man does not go far, wide, nor deep. His facility of absorbing ideas is far greater than his power of valuating them. He generally accepts as real value any thing that bears the stamp of current opinion. His belief in the value and weight of number is without recall; his absolute trust in what Bryce calls "the fatalism of multitude" is ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... that," said Meg, listening respectfully to the little lecture, for the best of women will hold forth upon the all absorbing subject of house keeping. "Do you know I like this room most of all in my baby house," added Meg, a minute after, as they went upstairs and she looked ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... through the rapids. I reached the shore in safety, walked back to camp, had a good breakfast, made all the more appetizing by my swim and the consequent danger, and in half an hour the ride up the trail and my companions were absorbing all my attention. To all of them, save one, this recital of my morning's adventure will ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... theological publications, and I will admit that I felt somewhat aggrieved personally when, in answer to my inquiry, I was told that there was no "New England Primer" in the collection. But this feeling was soon dissipated by the absorbing interest I took in De Foe's masterpiece, a work unparalleled ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... raw and uncomfortable, and Gregory resolved to make his easy-chair by the parlor fire the point from which he would watch the development of this domestic drama. He had no vulgar, prying curiosity, but an absorbing interest in the chief actor; and was compelled to admit that the being whom he had come to regard as faultless was growing human faster than ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... He had wasted his heart over these contemptible counterfeits. To add to his collection, catalogue it, describe it, correspond about it with the semi-imbecile Russian prince, his only rival collector, had once ranked with his history of wall-papers as the serious and absorbing pursuit of his life. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... much, and he writes with absorbing pains. When he called his new book Sketches and Studies in Italy (Smith, Elder, & Co.), had he forgotten a previous title of his, Sketches in Italy and Greece? In any case there is a wide difference between the two volumes; ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... way, if hard necessity did not compel us to do the disagreeable work for which we are fitted, we should all live for ourselves; we should all be mere human sponges, absorbing personal gratification—the progress of the human ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... this very absorbing and she and Chrystie had questions to ask. Fong's entrance for the tray prevented Lorry from joining in. As the Chinaman leaned down to take it, she whispered to him to open a window, the room was hot. Her eye, touching Mr. Mayer, had noticed that ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... which food-materials are split up and prepared for assimilation by the body, and the method adopted in breaking up and neutralizing the toxins of disease-germs. It is now known that poisons are formed in the process of digesting and absorbing the simplest and most wholesome foods; and the liver uses the skill which it has gained in dealing with these "natural poisons" in disposing ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... suitable for moist interstices of rock-work. It should be planted in a slanting position, so that the roots, while absorbing plenty of moisture, will not rot through being continually in stagnant water. Peat soil suits it best. It may be increased by division in spring. If grown from seed it takes two years before flowers are produced. During the height of summer it is ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... thrilling situation after another with due sense of all the dramatic force that is to be got out of it. His description of the last moments of the old pirate is one of the most effective pieces of writing he has put to his credit. SIR HENRY MORGAN—BUCCANEER is an absorbing story." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... women," Kennon murmured. "It does no good. It doesn't convince the woman. She's still fearful, jealous, and suspicious—always belittling her ability to hold what she has, always alert for competition, clinging, holding, absorbing—when she should be working ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... people to be seen, but there were not often boys as young as himself who were not attended by older companions. Quiet and orderly as he was, he often found himself stared at. The game he had created for himself was as simple as it was absorbing. It was to try how much he could remember and clearly describe to his father when they sat together at night and talked of what he had seen. These night talks filled his happiest hours. He never felt lonely then, and when his father sat and watched him with a certain curious ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pressing of this great wrong upon the hearts of an inoffensive, patient and aspiring people tends to their moral undoing, not only by the evil passions engendered, but also, as has been pointed out, by the withdrawing of so much of the attention of the race from internal development to the absorbing, exacting and, in some respects, narrowing task of battling ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Frequently even now the incidents of that night revisit me in dreams, and I awake with a start and cry of terror. In addition to the mental torture I endured, I was suffering under an agonizing thirst, caused by the fever of my blood, and the pressure of the absorbing gag, which still remained in my mouth. It was wonderful I did not lose my senses. At last the game was over; the Swiss won, and sprang to his feet with the roar of a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... resumed the doctor; "the snow is a bad conductor of heat; it reflects instead of absorbing, and ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... days all mankind goes mad. Their excitement is so great that they would scarcely know it did they forego their dinner. And this, with men, proves an absorbing interest in the matter. Anything placed above dinner, in their ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... attracted great crowds on both sidewalk and street before the dealer's window. The crowd had been drawn by the display of a number of different washing machines grouped around a central machine which was absorbing the "limelight." It had a swinging wringer and the wringer was revolving at so rapid a rate it became plain that any woman who stepped in the way of that particular type of wringer was doomed to a severe blow if not a fall. The idea of the dealer in using such ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks
... the fourth day of August, which is a day when memory grows bitter and reflective if we are not careful. The August sunshine lies rich and yellow on the fields, and almost perceptibly the pale green of the wheat is absorbing the golden hue of the air. The painted cup has faded from rosy pink to a dull, ashy color, and the few wild roses which are still to be seen in the shaded places have paled to a pastel shade. The purple and yellow ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... compositions still glow and burn with the fire he breathed into them; Liszt the diplomat, courtier, man of the world—always a conqueror! How difficult to tell, in a few pages, the story of a life so complex and absorbing! ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... the various religions, the author finds in each some peculiar manifestation of the universal religious sentiment. In Southern Asia he clearly sees nature almost absorbing the individual and hence a pantheistic vagueness and vastness in which man does not realize a complete sense of personality. But in the North and West the same Tudo-European race comes to a self-conscious individuality and there is the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... enough, Spaight appeared. Toole, who had been detained by business in another quarter, had ridden into the town from Leixlip, and was now dismounted and talking with Major O'Neill upon the absorbing topic. These cronies saw Spaight at the turnpike, and as he showed his ticket, he talked with the man. Of course, the news was come. The turnpike-man knew it by this time; and off scampered Toole, and the major followed close at his heels, at double-quick. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... happy to find, while these sheets were passing through the press, that the Birmingham Corporation have introduced a Bill for absorbing the petty commissionership of the suburbs, which, once distant villages, now form part of the borough; and that they seek for power to compel efficient drainage and ample supply of water. To do all this will be expensive, but not extravagant; ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... excellent authority that Napoleon's mother read Roman history with absorbing interest during the months ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... down to ask about you and convey all sorts of kind messages. Especially did he bid me assure you that he had not spoken to your father about the little account, and that he is in no hurry for the money. Indeed, the approaching marriage of his daughter is at present absorbing all his attention. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... school, unconsciously throwing into bolder relief the apparent dullness of his younger brother. George, however, was as active mentally as the elder. The one was studying men, the other books. George was absorbing impressions of the things around him: of the quaint old Norfolk town, its "clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch"; of that exquisite old gentlewoman Lady Fenn, {9b} as ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... desire was to do what he liked, she really did try to help him "get some fun out of them." Every night at dinner she smiled laboriously when he teased the teacher, and she listened to the elderly woman in mourning, whose clever talk was so absorbing to Maurice that sometimes he didn't hear his wife speaking to him! Yes; Eleanor tried. Yet, in less than a month Maurice found himself beside a boarder of his own sex, instead of Mrs. Davis, and saw that the school-teacher was too far down the table for jokes. When he asked why their seats had ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... tempest thick and deep; And first the mountain-tops are cover'd o'er, Then the green fields, and then the sandy shore; Bent with the weight, the nodding woods are seen, And one bright waste hides all the works of men: The circling seas, alone absorbing all, Drink the dissolving fleeces as they fall: So from each side increased the stony rain, And the white ruin ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... days' temptation, no table did He spread for Himself, no booth did He rear for his unpillowed head. Twice do we read of Him shedding tears—on neither occasion were they for Himself. The approach of His cross and passion, instead of absorbing Him in His own approaching suffering, seemed only to elicit new and more gracious promises to His people. When His enemies came to apprehend Him, His only stipulation was for His disciples' release—"Let these go their way." In the very act of departure, with all the boundless glories of eternity ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... question is the absorbing topic. Every one seems to admit that there is room for vast improvement in the land laws, that there has been glaring injustice in the past. They acknowledge that rents are too high to be paid, and leave anything behind to support the farmer's family in any semblance of comfort. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... kept till his blessed departure from this world." (Lebensbilder, 694.) Dr. H. E. Jacobs sketches Muhlenberg's character as follows: "Depth of religious conviction, extraordinary inwardness of character, apostolic zeal for the spiritual welfare of individuals, absorbing devotion to his calling and all its details, were among his most marked characteristics. These were combined with an intuitive penetration and extended width of view, a statesmanlike grasp of every situation in which he was placed, an almost prophetic ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... had been a work of absorbing interest to him if not to his friends. He was entirely obsessed by the whole matter of Spiritism, and his book, following the style of a celebrated work of a similar nature in England, was even now in ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... will be spared Mr. Worthington's feelings after Cynthia left him, although they were intense enough, and absorbing and far-reaching enough. He sat down on a chair and buried his head in his hands. His impulse had been to leave the house and return again on the morrow, but he remembered that he had been asked to stay for supper, and that such a proceeding would cause comment. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
