"Distract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which manifest it. If he is sculpturing a group like the Laocoon, he must strike upon the supreme moment, that in which the whole tragedy reveals itself, and he must pass over those insignificant details of position and movement which serve only to distract our attention and weaken our emotions by dividing them. If he is writing a drama, he must not attempt to give us the complete biography of his character; he must depict only those situations which stand in direct subordination to the grand climax or denoument. As a final result, therefore. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... evening and Clare sat at a table in the patio, trying to read. The light was bad, for buzzing insects hovered about the lamp, but the house had not cooled down yet and she wanted to distract her troubled thoughts. Footsteps and voices rose from the street outside, where the citizens were passing on their way to the plaza, but the sounds were faint and muffled by the high walls. The house had been built in times when women were jealously guarded ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... tune was done and the scattering applause had died down, he reached over and grabbed Mr. Amasa Beard by the knee. Mr. Beard did not immediately respond, being at that moment behind logworks facing a rebel charge; he felt vaguely that some one was trying to distract his attention, and in some lobe of his brain was registered the fact that that particular knee had gout in it. Jethro increased the pressure, and then Mr. Beard abandoned his logworks and swung around with a snort ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... temperament of the sufferer. Madame de Nailles, who was a very keen observer, especially where her own interests were concerned, lent herself with the best possible grace to everything that might amuse and distract Jacqueline, of whom she had by this time grown afraid. Not that she now dreaded her as a rival. The attitude of coldness and reserve that the young girl had adopted in her intercourse with Marien, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... might have been anticipated, and as many had predicted. Not caring to involve his whole army in the rough Chaplin and Benson hills, he sent detachments toward Frankfort and Lawrenceburg, to guard against any movement on Louisville, and to distract Bragg's attention from his (Buell's) main design, and make him divide his army. In this latter intention he perfectly succeeded. The bulk of his army marched through Bardstown and Springfield to Perryville, to get in Bragg's rear and upon his line of retreat. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Thou shalt please to restore her to her former health, give her grace to be ever mindful of that mercy, and to keep those good resolutions she now makes in her sickness, so that no length of time nor prosperity may entice her to forget them. Let no thought of her misfortunes distract her mind, and prevent the means toward her recovery, or disturb her in her preparations for a better life. We beseech thee also, O Lord, of Thy infinite goodness, to remember the good actions of this ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... Dresden chocolate-pot uncheerfully. This breakfast gift had reached her with an ominous regularity on Mondays and Thursdays for a month, and the time had come when something must be done about it. But she did not permit unpleasant thoughts, if unpleasant they really were, to distract her from the casual delights of retrospection and the pleasures of her repast, which she finished with a thoroughness that spoke more eloquently of the wholesomeness of her appetite even than the real excellence of the cooking. Upon Titine, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... high character of the composition, will baffle and mislead you; while, at the same time, the incessant tingling of the little silver bells suspended from the corners of scarlet velvet bags, which are handed along the pews (at the end of a stick), during the whole of the sermon, will distract and irritate you. It is thus they collect alms for the poor. Yet even to one ignorant of the language, there is a fullness and vigour in the style and manner of delivery that would almost persuade you that you had understood, and felt convinced of the truth of what ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... numbers. By twelve o'clock scarcely one left of all those joyous youths, those jolly sires and grandsires, those happy children, matched in size with their ponies, as the elders were in their different mounts, remains to distract the eye from the occupants of the two rows of penny chairs and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... had the luck to escape the gallows by some sleight-of-hand trick or other,—that, upon my breaking off, poor Harry stood like one motionless, although all our brethren in captivity made as much tumult as they could, to distract the attention of the soldiers. And run he did at last; but he did not know the ground, and either from confusion, or because he judged the descent altogether perpendicular, he fled up the hill to the left, instead of going down at once, and so was easily pursued ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... thought of going out into the bleak darkness. It seemed more terrible now that he was with his friends than when he was outside and alone. He kept on saying to himself that there were plenty more who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to distract his mind by talking, but in the middle of his words a spatter of rain against the window ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Doctours & Clerkes curious, What moneth you of bookes to have such number, Since diuers doctrines through way contrarious, Doth man's minde distract and sore encomber. Alas blinde men awake, out of your slumber; And if ye will needes your bookes multiplye, With diligence endeuor you ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... morning two rockets glared redly to the sky, and were immediately responded to by answering signals, which were observed from the ramparts. The solitary sentinel on St. John's Bastion reported an armed body of men approaching. It was a feint to distract attention from the point where Montgomery was ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... nothing to distract his attention, he might have thought too much about his handsome partner, and then gone home and dreamed about her, which is always dangerous, and waked up thinking of her still, and then begun to be deeply interested in her studies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... which to relieve Pemberton at Vicksburg, and he became urgent for both Rosecrans and Burnside to advance. [Footnote: Id., p. 337.] He thought it probable that raids would be attempted by the enemy to distract attention from his real object, and pointed out concentration and advance as the best way to protect the rear as well as to reach the enfeebled adversary. Burnside hastened in good faith his preparations for movement. He was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... taking the animal out of harness. This failing, spread clean litter beneath the belly or turn the patient out on the dung heap. Some seek to establish sympathetic action by pouring water from one vessel into another with dribbling noise. Others soothe and distract the attention by slow whistling. Friction of the abdomen with wisps of straw may succeed, or it may be rubbed with ammonia and oil. These failing, an injection of 2 ounces of laudanum or of an infusion of 1 ounce of tobacco in water may be tried. In the mare the neck of the bladder ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... preserving this light, and exercising it with temper and moderation, I trust I cannot offend the noble proposer, for whom no man professes or feels more respect and regard than I do. A want of concurrence in everything which can be proposed will in no sort weaken the energy or distract the efforts of men of upright intentions upon those points in which they are agreed. Assemblies that are met, and with a resolution to be all of a mind, are assemblies that can have no opinion at all of their own. The first proposer of any measure must be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... girl had so many things to distract her attention that she wondered how grown-up people could be so tranquil with all their knowledges and their cares. She began to realise the great difference in tastes and characteristics, though she would not have quite comprehended that long word. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... own easy-going fashion, Mr. Pembroke sought to distract her. She put on a hat, and they walked about, the various scenes recalling incidents of holidays he had spent at Highlawns. And after a while Honora was thankful that chance had sent her in this hour to him rather than to Mrs. Kame. For the sight, that morning of this lady in her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... understood that and would have taken the proper measures to remove all traces. But the itching salve served two purposes. It was misleading, because obviously a trap upon reflection, and so it would distract attention from the impregnated fibers, my real scheme. Then it was the best device of all I could think of, for it set up a local irritation of the sort most calculated to make a person clean his finger nails. The average ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... of frozen age Distract my soul;—despatch thy ling'ring tale; Say, did a voice from heav'n restrain the tyrant? Did interposing angels ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Starts reddens foams and screams and mutters loud, Like a fell fiend, her oracles of God. The dark enigma, by the pontiff scroll'd In broken phrase, and close in parchment roll'd, From his proud pulpit to the suppliant hurl'd, Shall rive an empire and distract the world. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... put forth, shoot forth, disgorge, distract, exude, radiate, throw off, disperse, eject, give up, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... she "liked to do everything herself"), my father generally fell asleep. I whiled away the time by playing with Rubens under the table, Aunt Maria "superintended" the music in a way that must have made any less stolid performer nervous, and Leo was apt to try and distract Polly's attention by grimaces and pantomime of a far from respectful nature behind ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sightless whirring of their wheels, Confounded with the recklessness and strife, Distract with fears of what may next ensue, Some break rude exit from the house of life, And plunge into a silence out of view— Whence not a cry, no wafture once reveals What door they have ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... arrangement of the minutest details, as in the conception of the grandest combinations. Though he resolved to take the mass of his army, forty thousand strong, across the pass of the Great St. Bernard, yet to distract the attention of the Austrians, he arranged also to send small divisions across the passes of Saint Gothard, Little St. Bernard, and Mount Cenis. He would thus accumulate suddenly, and to the utter amazement of the enemy, a body of sixty-five thousand men upon the plain of Italy. ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... as they style themselves, raised some time ago against the simple proposal of the Oxford University Commission, that well-endowed professors should deliver some lectures on their own special subjects? Such a practice, they maintained, would utterly distract the mind from all original investigation of the sources. Such certainly was not the case with the Bollandists, who yet could make time carefully—far more carefully than most modern historians—to investigate the sources ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Teach us to estimate what all must suffer; 85 Let us prize death as the best gift of nature — As a safe inn, where weary travellers, When they have journeyed through a world of cares, May put off life and be at rest for ever. Groans, weeping friends, indeed, and gloomy sables, May oft distract us with their sad solemnity: 91 The preparation is the executioner. Death, when unmasked, shows me a friendly face, And is a terror only at a distance; For as the line of life conducts me on 95 To Death's great court, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Frankenstein's education, the story of Felix and Sofie, the description of the tour through England before the creation of the second monster is attempted, are all connected with the main theme by very frail links and serve to distract our attention in an irritating fashion from what really interests us. In the novel of mystery a tantalising delay may be singularly effective. In a novel which depends chiefly for its effect on sheer horror, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... with an accumulation of force abundantly adequate to the end in view, was his policy all the days of Nelson. The Mediterranean with its varied interests was to him at this time one of several means, by which he hoped to distract British counsels and to dissever British strength; but it was no part of his design to provoke Great Britain to measures which would convert her alarm for the Mediterranean peninsulas into open war with them, or in them, compelling France either to recede from thence, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... basis they rest. And I do this the more willingly, as I observe that already the hastier sort of critics have begun, not to review my friend's book, but to howl over it in a manner which must tend greatly to distract the public mind. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... are fully discovered, yet that will not serve sufficiently to convict them, but they must be tortured and kept from sleep two or three nights, to distract them, and make them say any thing; which is a way to tame a wilde Colt, ...
— The Discovery of Witches • Matthew Hopkins
... poet. Newton wanted to drive Mrs. Unwin out of his house, but here at least Cowper rebelled and showed his very just annoyance, Newton actually urged Cowper to abandon the task of translating Homer, a labour undertaken to distract his poor sick mind from thinking of itself, because such work, not being of a religious character, partook of the nature of sin. It is no wonder that such a rule of life had not infrequently the most distressing consequences. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... them "that feathers made no wounds, and that a Roman spear would pierce a painted shield;" and to lessen the effect which the oath taken by the Samnites had upon the minds of the Romans, he said that such an oath must rather distract than strengthen those bound by it, since they had to fear, at once, their enemies, their comrades, and their Gods. In the battle which ensued, the Samnites were routed, any firmness lent them by religion or by the oath they had sworn, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... that the picture might have been painted any time these last six years," Herman said. "But Olga has been nervous about the ball we are going to have to-night, and I thought it best to bring her to-day to distract her. You know this ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... disclosed the discord prevailing in the cabinet on Irish affairs, and, though O'Connell was defeated on a motion against the union by a crushing majority of 523 to 38, the disturbed state of Ireland continued to distract the ministerial councils. The ingenious devices of Stanley and Littleton for solving the insoluble Irish tithe question had proved almost abortive; the government officials employed to collect tithe were almost as powerless to do so as the old tithe-proctors, and a new proposal to convert tithe ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... her knees when she chose to let it down in a flood of splendor. Her deep gray eyes contained wells of womanly wisdom. Her skin, fair as a lily of Artois, had borrowed from the sun five or six faint freckles, just to prove the purity of her blood and distract the eye with a variety of charms. The Merovingian Princess, the long-haired daughter of kings, as she was fondly styled by the nuns, queened it wherever she went by right divine of youth, wit, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to distract her attention, so as to keep his guests until the next day, but he did not succeed, for she never joked when there was business to be done, and as soon as they had had their coffee she ordered her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... old is renewed we cannot tell, and we need not ask. Enough that there shall be a universe in perfect harmony with the completely renewed nature, that we shall find a home where all things will serve and help and gladden and further us, where the outward will no more distract and clog the spirit. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... served to distract Mary V's mind from her mother's lack of feeling. She obediently turned out the lights,—all the lights, since they meant to kill Johnny in cold blood!—and wept anew upon the darkened porch, while swarms of mosquitoes hummed ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... exuberant or of the woful sort. There is a wonderful calming power in realising our possession of God as our portion—not stagnating, but quieting. I am quite sure that the troubles of our lives, and the gladnesses of our lives, which often distract, would be far less operative in disturbing, if we felt more that God was ours and that we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... disfranchisement of the blacks of the South and a world-wide attempt to restrict democratic development to white races and to distract them with race hatred against the darker races. This program, however, although it undoubtedly helped raise the scale of white labor, in much greater proportion put wealth and power in the hands of the great ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and avoiding the question, said, "I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... herself in her solitude at Grenoble, that these politicians, at least, owed her divorce, Vaudrey, not knowing what to do after a weary day of troubled rest, mechanically entered the Opera House to distract his eyes ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... minutes, or half minutes, or any other sub-division previously stipulated, during the whole course of the experiment. This he did without mistake, notwithstanding the exertions of those about him to distract his attention, and clapped his hands at the conclusion of the time fixed. His own account of it is thus given:—"I have acquired, by imitation, labour, and patience, a movement which neither thoughts, nor labour, nor any thing can stop: it is similar to that of a pendulum, which at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... their adventure, for the mind of an ape lacks the power of long-sustained concentration. To set out upon a long journey, with a definite destination in view, is one thing, to remember that purpose and keep it uppermost in one's mind continually is quite another. There are so many things to distract one's ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... never have cause to exercise your talents at my expense; so that you tease yourself and me to no purpose. Come, Sophy, let us walk home again."—"Good God! madam," cried the lover, with great emotion, "why will you distract me with such barbarous indifference? Stay, dear Emilia!—I conjure you on my knees to stay and hear me. By all that is sacred, I was not to blame. You must have been imposed upon by some villain who envied my good fortune, and took some treacherous ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... clearly, decisively, and without thanks. Concerning the proposed policies, domestic and foreign, the President said as little as was called for; he actually did not even refer to the scheme for inaugurating gratuitously a war with a large part of Europe, in order for a while to distract attention from slavery. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... when she showed her hand, and, strange enough, she chose to do it one afternoon when we were driving in the Bois with a thousand fine gowns and faces to distract ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... where the water-jets gleamed out of the blackness like rods of twisted crystal. He entered the narrow street, or rather alley, leading to the bridge. In the state of blank misery he was in his eye seized upon the smallest objects as if to distract his mind, and he observed—as he might not have done had he been happy—that in the lighted upper room of the corner house they had trained growing ivy ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... you got with your "Nibelungen"? It will be a great joy to me to grasp your creation through your immediate aid. For heaven's sake, let nothing distract you from this, and continue to weld your wings with ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of fact that renders this study an imperative need. There are other questions of interest—of very great interest—concerning alchemy: questions, for instance, as to the scope and validity of its doctrines; but we ought not to allow their fascination and promise to distract our attention from the fundamental problem, whose solution is essential to ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... soreness," Pao-yue rejoined, "are of no consequence; but if you go on sleeping you'll be feeling very ill; so I'll try and distract you, and when we've dispelled this lassitude, you'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... as a living sacrifice on behalf of her enslaved sisters everywhere. Yet the innate feeling of the man, that 'tis his place to protect and guard the woman, even from her own higher and purer self, intervened to distract him. He couldn't bear to feel he might be instrumental in bringing upon his pure Herminia the tortures that must be in store for her; he couldn't bear to think his name might be coupled with hers in shameful ways, too base for ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... seems," he said, "that that fair-haired daughter of the Greeks, Madonna Elena, the slim, the rosy-fingered disturber of the repose of cities, hath appeared to distract this our city of Padua. Me at least she hath distraught. Fair friends, sister and brother poets, you shall understand that henceforth I devote myself to this lady and her praise. More, I vow a vow, and call upon you to register it in the Golden Book of the Amorous Gests ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... us the order, sire, and we shall pursue them even to their places of security." French military composition, even in the time of the first Napoleon, was never of the highest order of merit, and the third Napoleon, whose policy it was to distract the attention of his people from reflecting on the questionable means by which he had attained his position, never lost an opportunity of earning popularity with any class of his subjects, particularly with the army. He suffered this quintessence of bombastic absurdity ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... which sometimes take place in the army, when portions of our own forces, through misapprehension, turn their arms against each other in the face of the enemy. If we shall not actually take each other's lives, we shall weaken and distract the country by our dissensions and mutual denunciations. Ambition on both sides—on the part of those in power seeking to retain it and using their authority for that end, and on the part of their opponents resisting perhaps beyond the bounds ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... writing-table. She resolutely took pen and paper, but the least thing seemed to distract her attention—the coronet on the note-paper cost her five minutes of far-off reflection. She took up the pen ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... find he has begun at the wrong end. If practice be the whole he is taught, practice must also be the whole he will ever know: if he be uninstructed in the elements and first principles upon which the rule of practice is founded, the least variation from established precedents will totally distract and bewilder him: ita lex scripta est[o] is the utmost his knowlege will arrive at; he must never aspire to form, and seldom expect to comprehend, any arguments drawn a priori, from the spirit of the laws and the natural foundations ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... impotently. These unsought allies were making a difficult situation a thousand times worse. A more acute observer than young Mr Martyn, he noted the tight lines about his mother's mouth and knew them for the danger-signal they were. Endeavoring to distract her with light conversation, he selected a subject which was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... poet and had boundless confidence in his own ability. To the artist nature the present is everything; just for to-day he resolved that he would live as he had always lived; so he travelled first class to London and bought all the books and papers that could distract him on the way: "Give me the luxuries," he used to say, "and anyone ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... epilogue Mr. Vane had nothing to distract him from the congregation but a sanguinary sermon in five heads, so his eyes roved over the pews, and presently he became aware of a familiar face watching him closely. The gentleman to whom it belonged finding himself recognized left his seat, and a minute later Sir Charles Pomander ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... heavy guns. These were to anchor in a close north-and-south line along the west face of the works, at about nine hundred yards distance. They were to be supported by forty gunboats and as many bomb vessels, besides the efforts of the ships-of-the-line to cover the attack and distract the garrison. Twelve thousand French troops were brought to reinforce the Spaniards in the grand assault, which was to be made when the bombardment had sufficiently injured and demoralized the defenders. At this time the latter numbered ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... will cover his passage of the bridge. General Longstreet will support him. General Magruder with General Huger and the reserve artillery will be left before Richmond. They will so demonstrate as to distract General McClellan's attention from the city and from his right and General Porter. General Stuart will take position on your line of march from Ashland, and General D. H. Hill ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need, which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Fredericksburg, looking at the fortified heights where they had received so bloody a repulse at the beginning of the winter. Hooker decided to distract the attention of the Confederates by letting a small portion of his force, under General Sedgwick, attack Fredericksburg, while he himself took the bulk of the army across the river to the right hand so as to crush Lee by an assault on his flank. All went well at the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... chimerical dreams serve to distract Balzac's thoughts from the realities, or did he believe that he possessed some occult means of dominating society? Perhaps it was something of both. His material situation had become worse. Werdet succumbed under the weight of his publications, dragging down his favourite author in his ruin. Balzac ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... continue to distract the several parties into which the Cherokees are unhappily divided. The efforts of the Government to adjust the difficulties between them have heretofore proved unsuccessful, and there remains no probability that this desirable object can be accomplished without the aid of further legislation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... first battle, and his flight to Hell: Yet, not rejoicing in his speed, though bold Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast, Begins his dire attempt; which nigh the birth Now rolling boils in his tumultuous breast, And like a devilish engine back recoils Upon himself; horrour and doubt distract His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir The Hell within him; for within him Hell He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step, no more than from himself, can fly By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair, That slumbered; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... branch of medicine—but that it must be recollected that until to-day the patient had been in delirium and... and that no doubt the presence of his family would have a favourable effect on his recovery and distract his mind, "if only all fresh shocks can be avoided," he added significantly. Then he got up, took leave with an impressive and affable bow, while blessings, warm gratitude, and entreaties were showered upon him, and Avdotya Romanovna spontaneously offered ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... usually open. I now felt tenfold anxiety concerning my tragedy. The bond I had given at six months would soon become due; failure would send me to prison, perhaps for life; it would disgrace me, would distract my family, would cut short my hopes of fame, and the grand progress which I sometimes fondly imagined I should make. Every way it would be fatal! I trembled at its possibility. Success, which had so lately appeared certain, seemed to become more and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... that the Apaches would be sure to spend some few minutes in firing, partly to distract their enemies and partly to give them the cover of abundant smoke for their approach before they made their final rush; and taking off his feather head-gear, he secured it with a couple of stones so near the top of the rock which ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... possible; but such are devoted more or less to a variety of plants, and the departments are not all gathered beneath one roof. I confess, for my own part, a hatred of references. They interrupt the writer, and they distract the reader. At the place I have chosen to illustrate our theme, one has but to cross a corridor from any of the working quarters to reach the showroom. We may start upon our critical survey from the very dwelling-house. Pundits ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... aggravating discontent, inflaming the fierce, and arguing with the timid. His less exalted station allowed him to mix more familiarly with the various Ionian officers than would have become the high-born Cimon, and the dignified repute of Aristides. Seeking to distract his mind from the haunting thought of Cleonice, he flung himself with the ardour of his Greek temperament into the social pleasures, which took a zest from the design that he carried into them all. In the banquets, in the sports, he was ever seeking to increase the enemies of his rival, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... women are splendid, so quiet and strong, As with resolute purpose they hurry along— Excepting the flappers, who chatter as shrilly As parrots let loose to distract Piccadilly. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... "it burns my tongue. Besides I may some day require it as a novelty to distract me—so ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Juve's friend: it lent an air of vagueness, of confusion, to Butler-Vinson's surroundings. The vagaries of the steamer would further distract what thoughts he was capable of. Still, they were on an English boat, and should the corporal grasp what was happening and refuse to disembark, Juve would be in a fix. Butler-Vinson must be kept in ignorance of the truth till they were on ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... crude immensity which left all life infinitesimal. The barren of it suggested the body of Nature gnawed to the bone, picked clean of the fair flesh with which it is her wont to distract the eyes and senses of man. There lay a frowning, rock-bound chasm at their feet, and deep down in the heart of it a broad, sluggish stream. The two youthful figures were gazing out across the gaping lips at the far-off, distant hills rising up in defence of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... To distract him Karoline sings a song. But after all he is but mad north-north-west, and though he would study the singer's conceits 'as a new philosophy,' he also thinks to pay ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... bosom of her dress was shining a five-pointed star, made of eleven diamonds. Swithin looked at the star. He had a pretty taste in stones; no question could have been more sympathetically devised to distract ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lined. When the tempest has ceased to rage, and when the last dripping mariner has been safely landed we can, if we wish, with a peaceful conscience dissolve our partnership and renew the discussion of the minor differences, which divide, distract and weaken the human race, ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... was established in my recovery, to inform me that, while he forgave my intrusion on a privacy he had already begged me not to break, he must desire that there should be no recurrence of attentions to his daughter, which might distract a heart destined either for the service of a free Catholic in regenerated Ireland, or for that of Heaven in ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... a prisoner, imprisoned not only by that placid sea, but by his hatred for that horrible old man. He pressed his hands to his aching head. He would like to kill him. But he pulled himself together. He must do something to distract his mind, and since he could not read he thought he would set his private papers in order. It was a job which he had long meant to do and which he had constantly put off. He unlocked the drawer of his desk and ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... nature.' Speaking with reference to the pursuits of men of literary and artistic genius, it is written: 'Almost any worldly state in which a man can be placed is a hinderance to him, if he have other than mere worldly things to do. Poverty, wealth, many duties, or many affairs, distract and confuse him.' One sentence more is all that can be added here; and if it seems to be suggested by an aphorism of Bacon, it is equal to it in pith and penetration:—'Every felicity, as well as wife and children, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... bad taste to distract your companion's interest from the performance, even if you find it ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... here. The fact is, Frank, I think I must send you. It will do you good, my dear boy, and tend to distract your mind from a subject ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... occasion," said he. "When the oars are taken in we always begin to rejoice. And why not? Death is near—it is almost certain. Why should we do anything to distract our minds and mar our joy? For oh, dear friend, the glorious time has come when we can give up life—life, with all its toils, its burdens, its endless bitternesses, its perpetual evils. Now we shall have no more suffering from vexatious ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... might have severely reproved them for tolerating the false apostles. He commends them as does a father a timid child, and yet, while commending them he censures both them and their false teachers. He handles them as tenderly as if he held a raw egg in his hand, in order not to distract or terrify them. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvas furiously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me, they crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits—I couldn't distract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard passages between. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up with some lying paint. And how he saw through ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... excellent precept of Pythagoras, "Choose the best kind of life, custom will make it easy." So too it is wise and profitable to say here, "Choose the best and pleasantest city, time will make it your country, and a country that will not always distract you and trouble you and give you various orders such as, 'Contribute so much money, Go on an embassy to Rome, Entertain the prefect, Perform public duties.'" If a person in his senses and not altogether ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... in securing quietness, attention, and docility. There was almost a painful earnestness in the old-fashioned faces which pored over the school-books; even such a rare event as the entrance of a foreigner failed to distract these childish students. The younger pupils were taught chiefly by object lessons, and the older were exercised in reading geographical and historical books aloud, a very high key being adopted, and a most disagreeable ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... fearfully. In a few minutes we were across the Harlem and running northward along the uninteresting streets beyond. At this moment, it occurred to me that Godfrey was behaving singularly as though he were hastening to keep an appointment; but I judged it best not to distract his attention from the street before us, and restrained the question which rose ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... and affairs, that you suppose our dissensions owing to French intrigues—we want no foreign causes; but in so precarious a letter as this I cannot enter into farther explanations; indeed the French need not be at any trouble to distract or weaken ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... not, up to this point, had any experience on trips, and there is always a sense of adventure in starting out over unknown country with only a roller map to guide one and the gauges and controls, which need constant attention, to distract one from the reading of the chart. Then, too, it is the first time that the student has flown free and at a great height over the earth, and his sense of exultation at navigating at will the boundless sky causes him to imagine he is a real pilot. True it is that ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... their enemy. Then surely there could be no complaint at the disaster that would overtake him. He was clearly to blame. So why let the contemplation of it distract her? ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... began to read and study as well as paint. But so absorbed was I in my struggle with Fenella Stanley and Romany superstitions, that the only subject which could distract me from memory was that of hereditary influence—prepotency of transmission in relation to races. Though Sinfi could neither read nor write, she loved to sit by my side and, caressing Pharaoh, to watch me as I read or wrote. To her there evidently seemed something ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... easy as when one follows a plow up a furrow and down a furrow. You are quite alone, and there is nothing to distract you but the crows hopping about picking up worms. The thoughts seemed to come to the man as readily as if some one had whispered them into his ear. Only on rare occasions had he been able to think as quickly and clearly as on that day, and the thought of it gladdened and encouraged him. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... of the original was the object, with one. This, like his posture, nearly recumbent, was deliberately adopted. "I find," he said, "that the reflective part of my brain works best when I have as little either bodily or purely intellectual to distract me as possible. And it is the reflective part," he says, "that I always preferred to cultivate, and that latterly I have devoted my whole attention to. It is through the reflective part that one gets the highest influence over people. Training the reflective function is the training ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... factors of his habits, actually attending to one thing while seemingly attending to another; at the same time his eyes and his gestures and his 'patter' misdirect the attention to what is apparently the essential field of operation, but really only a blind to distract attention away from the true scene of action. The conjurer directs your attention to what he does not do; he does not do what he pretends to do; and to what he actually does, he is careful neither to appear to direct his own attention nor to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... bloodshed were protracted. Again foreign armies invaded Bohemia, and internal dissension continued to distract the nation. Those who remained faithful to the gospel were subjected ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not to distract the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances. It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods punctuated with a rhythmic wail from all sides of the hall; but as soon as I saw that it did not distract my hearers, I simply raised my voice, and, with a little added vehemence, fairly rivaled the babies. Commenting on this trial, to one of the theatrical performers, he replied: "It is bad enough for you, but alas! imagine me in a tender death scene, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... intellectual and moral difficulties on religious matters, and should make herself ill over these unsubstantial troubles. Surely it was a woman's business to attend to her husband's comforts and to see after her children, and not to break her heart over misery here and hell hereafter, and distract her brain with questions that had puzzled the greatest thinkers and still remained unsolved! And, truly, women or men who get themselves concerned about the universe at large, would do well not to plunge hastily into marriage, for they do not run smoothly in the double-harness of that honourable ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... No Hedwig again, to distract Nikky's mind. The lesson went on; trot, canter, low jumps. And then what Nikky called "stunts," an American word which ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... myself down on the floor beside my children, and pressed them to my heart, while inwardly I thanked God that they were asleep, unconscious of danger, and unable by their cries to distract our attention from adopting any plan which might offer to effect ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... years, up to 1861, there was little to distract the attention of the pioneers. My time was occupied during that period in assisting on the farm during summer and attending the district school during the winter. The loop holes in the wall of the old school house for the rifles had been boarded up, and the larger boys ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... yielded frequently, perhaps too frequently, to the desire to make the reader live among the men and things of the fifteenth century. And in order not to distract him suddenly from them, I have avoided suggesting any comparison with other periods, although ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... voice; but having so determinately carried her point in the morning, she did not choose to abandon her position and appear among the listeners, though sorely tempted to do so. She wandered into several side tents in hope of finding something to distract her attention; but she only ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... the Battalion remained for nearly seven months. The sector had been held by the New Zealanders, and was one of the quietest on the whole British front, but orders were now given to liven things up in order to keep as many enemy troops opposite the sector as possible, and distract their attention from the impending operations at Messines on the left. This object was achieved by considerable activity, patrols, and artillery bombardments. The extent of the front held entailed a good deal of exertion ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... porticos, where the men exercised themselves in the winter. I am disgusted by the modern taste of architecture, though I am no judge of the art. The churches and palaces of these days are crowded with pretty ornaments, which distract the eye, and by breaking the design into a variety of little parts, destroy the effect of the whole. Every door and window has its separate ornaments, its moulding, frize, cornice, and tympanum; then ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and twisted by toil, bent double by week-long work in the cramped coal galleries or half-blinded with years spent in front of white-hot fluid metal, these men still gilded their harsh and hopeless lives by their devotion to sport. It was their one relief, the only thing which could distract their minds from sordid surroundings, and give them an interest beyond the blackened circle which enclosed them. Literature, art, science, all these things were beyond their horizon; but the race, the football match, the cricket, the fight, these were things which they could ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... caper, and freaks will distract attention, and the clowns will break the rhythm of the whole with their buffooneries—but the solidity of the procession as a whole: the impressiveness of things that pass and pass and pass, and keep on and keep on and keep ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... he was alone with her he managed to distract her attention from her flowers and to make her listen to Marsden's message. He set the case before her plainly. Without exaggeration and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... well-defended passage that no one thought Drake would dare go in. But he did. Frobisher had failed to catch a pilot. But Drake did the trick without one, to the utter dismay of the Spaniards. After some more very clever manoeuvres, to distract the enemy's attention from the real point of attack, Carleill and the soldiers landed under cover of the dark and came upon the town where they were least expected, by wading waist-deep through the water just out of sight of the Spanish gunners. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... maximum of life and lightness in the stubborn vehicle of stone. Nor do all the riches of the choir—those multitudes of singing angels, those Ascensions and Assumptions, and innumerable basreliefs of gleaming marble moulded into softest wax by mastery of art—distract our eyes from the single round medallion, not larger than a common plate, inscribed by him upon the front of the high altar. Perhaps, if one who loved Amadeo were bidden to point out his masterpiece, he would lead the way at once to this. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... buzz of Babel and the heavy scents and the clatter and the tumult and the glare of light; otherwise I should have chosen a discreeter hostelry where the footfalls of the waiting-men were noiseless and the walls in quiet shadow, where there was nothing but the mellow talk of friends to distract the mind from the consideration of exquisite flavours. But in these palaces of clashing splendour, the stunned brain fails to receive impressions from the glossopharyngeal nerve, and one eats unthinkingly like a dog. But this matters little ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Christian Methodist. For he was so wrought up and excited by havin' so much on his hands to do, and the onexpectedness of it, that he couldn't help actin' jest as he did act. I don't believe he could. And then Steve Yerden is enough to distract a ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... legislation had for ages defrauded them. With eyes steadily fixed upon the goal she has in view, neither the jeers nor ridicule of the crowds without, nor the jealous asides of those claiming to be workers in the same cause, have had power to distract her attention or make her turn from her labor to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and met a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was talking volubly—as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of the intimacy of ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... or some other distinctive mark of favor from his mistress. The procession closed with a numerous troop of chulos, or banderilleros, a set of young men lightly and fancifully apparelled, whose business is to distract the attention of the bull from a fallen cavalier, and to harass the animal with the banderillas. In this splendid troop we perceived some traces of the ancient spirit of chivalry, although, strange to say, the favorite sport of the fine cavaliers of the land is now confined to the lowest ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... believes nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary: none persuades him to itself. He would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an atheist, and wholly an atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none: indeed the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. He is at most a confused and wild Christian, not specialized by any form, but capable of all. He uses the land's religion, because ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Mr. Hallowell senior, "there will be nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself every minute you will be imbibing ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... richly-carved altar-piece is now placed within it, and a few chairs. It is a quiet secluded room, having no communication with any other. The top of the walls and turrets of the old town, and a small patch of sky, may be seen by an upward glance at the window; but there is no feature to distract the denizen of the apartment: it is a place for concentration of mind, and such must have been Duerer's habits, as the enormous amount of his works show. Leaving this room and proceeding farther, we reach the quaintly constructed kitchen, with its enormous fire-place half filling the ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor's ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... go, and you'd better run as far as you can out behind the barn, so 't your noise won't distract your aunt Mirandy. I see Susan Simpson and the twins and Emma Jane Perkins ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be of good," said the nun. "It is not natural, and it is not true that the prayer can distract the will from the performance of a good deed." She shook her head more energetically than usual. "And it is not good either that you should be called a witch, you who have ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... with the greatest possible care, and in our opinion the small gold ones can only be worn by a perfect gentleman; for whilst they perform their required office, they do not distract the attention from the quality and whiteness of your linen. Some that we have seen were evidently intended for cabinet pictures, rifle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... into the vulgar idiom, "you make me sweat with your stupid pride. Is it that that you call friendship? Go away now. How do you wish that I should succeed with this cake while you station yourself there to distract me?" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... wave, and actually overhauls the high seas till she finds him, and there the first time he opens his eyes is that sweet, quaint piece of innocence leaning over him. He is shut up with her for ten days or so; she is as graceful as a sylph, and has a tender sort of baby face that's enough to distract a man, and I don't see how he could possibly leave that vessel without being in love with her, unless some other woman had already got hold of his heart. No, even if St. George did not know himself that he cared for her, he ought to have been allowed time to find it out before ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... about now almost as well as before, and we go away to-morrow, as I said. But I will try and get one, at least, of the joys I came to find here, and really write to you from this place, as I meant to do. 'I'—you know it is my wife that I write for, though you entangle and distract either of us by the reverberations (so to speak) of pleasures over and above the pleasure you give us. I intend to say, that you praise that poem, and mix it up with praise of her very self, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... not have given him credit, he took up one of the larger oysters and sent it skimming along the surface, in the way boys are accustomed to make "ducks and drakes" with pieces of slate on a calm day by the sea-side. I immediately followed his example, hoping thus to distract the attention of ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... snout over at me and uttering plaintive remarks in East Indian to me. Gents,' he says, 'you can see for yourselves, a thing like that, occurring right at the beginning of a funeral procession, is calculated to distract popular attention away from the main attraction. Under the circumstances I wouldn't blame no corpse on earth for feeling jealous—let alone a popular and prominent corpse like this here one was, a party that had been a district leader at Tammany ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... emotions obtained yet more powerful dominion; again did remorse distract him, and there were moments of darkness, when his spirit questioned the justice of the Creator. Why was not his crime visited on his own head? Why did the guiltless and unstained fall thus around him, and he remain unharmed? and it needed all the eloquence of Nigel, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... not; and day by day the sea receded farther and farther from the mountain's base. Where she once had spread her fair surface appeared fertile plains and verdant groves all peopled with living things, whose voices the air brought to the mountain's ears in the hope that they might distract the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... of Mr. Avenel's toilet was not completed with correspondent despatch. On his bed, and on his chairs, and on his sofa, and on his drawers, lay trousers and vests and cravats enough to distract the choice of a Stoic. And first one pair of trousers was tried on, and then another—and one waistcoat, and then a second, and then a third. Gradually that chef-d'oeuvre of civilization—a man dressed—grew into development and form; and, finally, Mr. Richard Avenel ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to distract him from his terrible task, and held my breath, when I could, so that I might lie quieter in his arms. Thus he went on for a time that seemed without end, and yet was really but a minute or two; and by degrees I felt the wind, that we could scarce ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner |
