"Distracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was to be raised to the throne of England and Scotland. When we take into consideration that Melville, who set himself to oppose this influence, had spent ten years at Geneva and among the Huguenots, we see plainly how the struggles which distracted the continent threatened to invade ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the critic. But however that may be, it is beyond dispute that the man who actually was the greatest poet of that time might easily have taken the very highest rank as a scientist had not the muse distracted his attention. Indeed, despite these distractions, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe achieved successes in the field of pure science that would insure permanent recognition for his name had he never written a stanza ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Oh! Oh, lieber Herr Je!" One near would have heard her sob, in too distracted agitation to heed the motorneer of the passing street-car who stared after her at the risk of his car, or the tousled heads behind a few curtains. She did not stop until she almost fell against the door of the yellow house. Her frantic knocking was answered by a young woman in a light and ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... enough minded to take revenge on Thorfinn,' said Thorir, 'and this man is ready enough of tidings, and no need have we to drag the words out of him.' So they all went up to the farm, but the women were distracted with fear, thinking that Grettir had played false. He, however, induced the berserkers to lay aside their arms, and when evening was come, brought them beer in abundance, and entertained them with tales and merry jests. After a while he proposed to lead them to Thorfinn's treasure ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... even as a stockholder, the best-natured man in the state of Nevada could not have worked the Paymaster at a profit. For that reason alone he had been fully justified in letting her freeze herself out; and if Virginia had taken his advice—but then, the poor girl had been distracted. She had been worn out and discouraged, hag-ridden by her mother and facing a trip to the city; and she had sold out for what she could get. She was a good girl, a brave girl, and a sweet and lovely one too; and it was foolish to blame her for anything. The thing ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... once, look at the crunched it is! But what d'ye think now? Poor Christian Killip's baby is dead for all. Died in the middle of the rejoicings. Aw, dear, yes, and the band going by playing 'The Conquering Hero' the very minute. Poor thing! she was distracted, and no wonder. I ran round to put a sight on the poor soul, and——why, what's going wrong with the lamp, at all? Is that yourself on the stool, Kirry? Pete, is it? ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... harm would come of it. Unhappily she was mistaken; that night she was taken very ill—worse than before. I fetched the doctor; he shook his head and said he wouldn't answer for what might happen. Faithful Nancy was half distracted. Poor mother got worse and worse. At last one day she beckoned with her pale hand to Mary and me to come ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... of soft steps somewhere near distracted Duane's attention, reminded him of her peril, and now, what counted more with him, made clear the probability of being discovered ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... that a speedy peace may constitute us a happy and independent nation: when the husband shall again be restored to his amiable consort, to wipe her sorrowing tear, the son to the embraces of his mourning parents, and the lover to the tender, disconsolate, and half-distracted object ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... either Oedipus and of the Antigone, there is no play which more directly pierces to the very heart of humanity. And it is a superficial judgement which complains that here at all events our sympathies are distracted between the two chief persons, Deanira and Heracles. To one passion of his, to one fond mistake of hers, the ruin of them both is due. Her love has made their fates inseparable. And the spectator, in sharing Hyllus' grief, is afflicted for them both at once. We may well recognize ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... afraid Jacinth's attention that morning was rather distracted. She sat glancing at her aunt's profile, cold and almost hard, as she was accustomed to see it, but with just now the addition of some irritable lines about the forehead which were ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... set about the process of dying, I may be thinking of you, O fair lost lady! and again I may not be thinking of you. Who can say? A fly, for instance, may have lighted upon my nose and his tickling may have distracted my ultimate thoughts. Meanwhile, I love you consumedly, and you do not care a snap of your fingers ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... who told Bertram that the baby was very sick, and that Billy wanted him. Bertram went home at once to find a distracted, white-faced Billy, and a twisted, pain-racked little creature, who it was almost impossible to believe was the happy, laughing baby boy he had left ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... continuance,—and you most certainly wish to have for yourself, as well as for Rafel, the secret of love and the power of love's continuance. None of these secrets can be disclosed to worldlings— by which term I mean those who allow themselves to be moved from their determination, and distracted by a thousand ephemeral matters. I do not say you are such an one,—but you, like all who live in the world, have your friends and acquaintances—people who are ready to laugh at you and make mock of your highest ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... travel'd in the Desert Saw Majnun where he was sitting All alone like a Magician Tracing Letters in the Sand. "Oh distracted Lover! writing What the Sword-wind of the Desert Undecyphers soon as written, So that none who travels after Shall be able to interpret!"— Majnun answer'd, "I am writing 'Laili'—were it only 'Laili,' Yet a Book of Love and Passion; And ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... quarrel, but to jibe and sneer at her, and to make her wait on him day and night, as if she were a paid nurse from a hospital. While this was going on, and after Sir John had been quite given up by the doctors, news came from India of Master Charles's death. Well, her ladyship went nigh distracted; but as for the baronet, it was said, though I won't vouch for the truth of it, that he only laughed when the news was told him, and said that if he was plagued as much with corns in the next world ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... information he does not ask. Is it a calamity that has overtaken the house? One could hardly gather from a glance at Mr. Loretz. Evidently the stout little man has been moved by some powerful surprise: his eyes are full of agitation; his dress betokens it; he has been driven to and fro, distracted, within the hour. When he sees Leonhard his excitement exhibits itself in a new form: he lifts the trombone to his lips, and taking another key he sounds again; it is a note of solemn triumph, so prolonged that it would seem as if the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... grant me reformation. Grant that I may be no longer distracted with doubts, and harassed with vain terrors. Grant that I may no longer linger in perplexity, nor waste in idleness that life which Thou hast given and preserved. Grant that I may serve Thee in firm faith and diligent endeavour, and that I may discharge the duties ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... to his son, "I was sot agin this young feeler when I first saw him on account o' hasty jedgments. Never you be led astray by hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I'm sorry for him, because he's clear distracted in his upper works. He ain't responsible fer the names he's give me, nor fer his other statements—nor fer jumpin' overboard, which I'm abaout ha'af convinced he did. You be gentle with him, Dan, 'r I'll give you twice what I've give him. Them ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... contributed exceedingly. The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonish'd, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirr'd to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seene but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods—such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... mother didn't expect you to-day, for she has gone in town and won't be back before five o'clock," said Arthur, unpleasantly conscious of his crutches, his dressing-gown and his distracted-looking hair. ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... more; he called the second boy a blockhead, though really I cannot see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the last minute, had been sitting apparently on hot plates, with his right arm waving up and down like a distracted semaphore signal. He would have had to say it the next second, whether the Professor had asked him or not; he was red in the face, holding ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... new opera was produced that evening the —— Theatre orchestra was unexpectedly minus two of its second violins, for Schaaf, half-distracted, was wandering the cold streets in search of ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... needful that hospitality be shown. There is a word in the record, however, which tells us that Martha was not altogether serene as she went about her work. "Martha was cumbered about much serving." A marginal reading gives, "was distracted." ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... circles, a curious custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pele Mele, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and quarrels for precedence between courtiers and diplomatists of contending pretensions. Under this rule no rank was recognized, each person being allowed at banquet, fete, or other public ceremony only such place as he had been ingenious ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the tortured lover received was an indignant flash from the hitherto dove-like eyes of Juliet Whitmore. She reined back her horse, and turned her face proudly away from the imploring gaze of the distracted Anthony. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... up a whole acre of boiling, luminous foam, to pour, hissing and roaring, far out from under her lee bow and flash glancing past in a bewildering swirl of buzzing, gleaming froth, while the din of the wild gale raved aloft, and its furious buffeting almost distracted one's senses, the gallant little barque thus fighting for her life would have presented an exhilarating spectacle to any one; while a seaman's appreciative heart would have thrilled with exultation at her bearing in the strife. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... all—that he has been openly dragged to prison through the streets," and the gatherer of news and sensations kept an eye on each of his victims as he made this statement. A cabalistic sign in his note-book indicated the visible wincing of the enraged and half-distracted manufacturer, whose system was like an engine off the track, hissing and helpless; and a few other equally obscure marks suggested to the initiated the lady's words as ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... foolish if I told you what I was thinking about. Never mind, it has gone wherever thoughts go. I will tell you what I am thinking about now, which is—that it is about time we got out of this place. My uncle and Bessie must be half distracted." ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... then. Belknap asked me for permission to try his chance long ago—before I came west to Laramie. I assigned him to bring her through to me. He was distracted at his failure to do so. He has been out with parties all the summer, searching for you both, and has not been back at Laramie more than ten days. Oh, we all knew why you did not come back to the settlements. When we came in he guessed all that you know. He knew that all the world would ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... a distracted ministry, a doubtful Assembly, and an irritated country. His ministers he thought lacking in pluck, and far too willing to appeal to selfish and sordid motives in possible supporters.[6] He was irritated by what seemed to him the petty and inconsistent ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... word of it, although the respectable minister was gratified by the attention his discourse had received from the Senator from Illinois, an attention all the more praiseworthy because of the engrossing public cares which must at that moment have distracted the Senator's mind. In this last idea, the minister was right. Mr. Ratcliffe's mind was greatly distracted by public cares, and one of his strongest reasons for going to church at all was that he might get an hour or two of ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to the lot of most boys. Conway was certainly a cloud. Within school-bounds he seldom ventured to be aggressive; but whenever we met about town he never failed to brush against me, or pull my cap over my eyes, or drive me distracted by inquiring after my family in New Orleans, always alluding to them as highly ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... movements. In the degree that power became secularized, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish people lived less and less for the earth, and became more and more absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating in their midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds abreast of their age were, however, better informed. The tender and clear-sighted Virgil seems to answer, as by a secret echo, to the second Isaiah. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the office of an attorney making a specialty of handling damage suits, thence home by train with the seven members of his family party, all uninjured as to their limbs and members but in a highly distracted state nervously. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... his kiss. And very soon, a flushed, distracted-looking youth could have been seen—as they say—leaping from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fact the exact converses of each other. For the divine, earth is an illusion, heaven a reality; for the positivist, earth is a reality, and heaven an illusion. The former in his retirement studied intensely the world that he thought real, and he could do this the better for being not distracted by the other. The positivists imitate the divine in neglecting what they think is an illusion; but they do not attempt to imitate him in studying what they think is the reality. The consequence is, as I ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... democracy of a very turbulent character—the questions of public policy being debated and decided in assemblies of the people, where it would seem that there was very little of parliamentary law to regulate the proceedings; and now the dangers which threatened them on the approach of the Romans distracted their councils more than ever, and produced, in fact, universal disorder and ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Harry that he was a desperate and hardened villain who was sure to end at the gallows, and that he was to go immediately back to his home again. He told our embryo pirate that his family had nigh gone distracted because of his wicked and ungrateful conduct. Nor could our hero move him from his inflexible purpose. "What," says our Harry, "and will you not then let me wait until our prize is divided ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... of Peru from the effects of her late disastrous conflict with Chile, and with the restoration of civil authority in that distracted country, it is hoped that pending war claims of our citizens ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... one distracted. His landlady in good earnest thought he had gone crazy, and was only reassured when he revealed to her what had happened. Mary Bowes was to be his wife! They must wait for a year and a half; Mary could not leave her ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... was the first word he had spoken, and a true word it was. Swarming bees had settled in the road, and we had driven unaware into the midst of them. The horses were distracted, and made blindly for the gate, though they seemed much more likely to run into the posts than to get through the gate, I thought. The boy seemed to think this, too, for he shot backward, turned a somersault in the air, and disappeared ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... enemy were so crippled that they retired toward Charleston. Cornwallis, refusing to follow Greene into South Carolina, had already gone north into Virginia, and though a fierce partisan warfare still distracted the country, this engagement closed the long and fiercely fought contest at ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of uncertain derivation, and may possibly be simply intended to intensify the idea of sorrow; but more probably it adds another element, which Bishop Lightfoot describes as 'the confused, restless, half-distracted state which is produced by physical derangement or mental distress.' A storm of agitation and bewilderment broke His calm, and forced from His patient lips, little wont to speak of His own emotions, or to seek for sympathy, the unutterably pathetic cry, 'My soul ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... regard to the objects for which the war should be prosecuted, and the means, as well, by which it could be prosecuted. Consider, also, that this work was done by a man called to the head of an administration that had no predecessor, to the management of the affairs of a government distracted by civil war, its navy scattered, its treasury bankrupted, its foreign relations disturbed by a traditional and almost universal hostility to republican institutions, and all while he was threatened constantly by an adverse public judgment in that section of the country ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... are however very amusing at times, and as a proof of it, I strolled the other morning to a Circulating Library, for the express purpose of lounging away an hour in digesting the politics and news of the day; but the curious scenes to which I was witness during this short period, so distracted my attention, that, despite of the grave subjects on which I was meditating, I could not resist lending an attentive ear to all that passed around me. There was something of originality in the countenance of the Master of the Library which struck me ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... more chance saved him. Just as the drunken man was about to speak an awkward couple of dancers bumped into him and made him drop his glass. He turned furiously and let loose a flood of insults. His attention was distracted; he forgot Christophe. Christophe waited for a few minutes longer; then seeing that his enemy had no thought of going on with his remarks he got up, slowly took his hat and walked leisurely towards the door. He did not take his eyes off the bench where ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate with a lady who lives behind a sash- window in a corner, and who appears to have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out—as if you had been staying there a year. You become distracted to get away, and the other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you—but suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party who took the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last brought and paid, at the rate ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... power," concerning which occasion the soldier diarist observes,—"Several sorts of Busnesses was Going on, Som a Exercising, Som a Hearing Preaching." The attention of Parson Moody's listeners was, in fact, distracted by shouts of command and the awkward drill of squads of homespun soldiers ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... worst effect is that, as those who listen to a ballad have their attention distracted from its subject and can think of nothing but the tune, so an over-rhythmical passage does not affect the hearer by the meaning of its words, but merely by their cadence, so that sometimes, knowing where ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... keep our eyes upon the stars? We think of the local preacher spending his week in the market or behind the counter, in office or mine or factory or in the field wrestling with Nature for the bread that perisheth. We think of the minister often worried, almost distracted, by "the care of the churches," by the crabbed foolishness and miserable jealousies of contentious men and women. We must remember that for many a preacher life is not a May Day festival, but a question and ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... and caused me unspeakable misery, I may say horror. My mother became worse, and I was not allowed to enter her apartment, lest by my frantic exclamations of grief I might aggravate her disorder. I rested neither day nor night, but roamed about the house like one distracted. Suddenly I found myself doing that which even at the time struck me as being highly singular; I found myself touching particular objects that were near me, and to which my fingers seemed to be attracted by an irresistible ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that I should be able to creep within shot. What a moment of interest! It is still vivid in the memory, with all its doubts and fears and wildly-beating hopes. The crane seemed preparing to fly. Death! I felt nearly distracted with apprehension. The interest and excitement became intense. I crept from tree to tree, and whenever I thought I was observed, stood motionless. My eye-balls became dry and hard with incessant gazing. I feared to wink ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Maximilian, an able man and a liberal-minded prince, can change nothing in the destiny of the United States, or of Mexico herself; no imperial government can be permanent beside the American Republic, no longer liable, since the abolition of slavery, to be distracted by sectional dissensions. The States that seceded will soon, in some way, be restored to their rights and franchises in the Union, forming not the least patriotic portion of the American people; the negro question will be settled, or settle itself, as is most likely, by the melting away of the negro ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... blacksmith, awake and singing with the lark and busy all day long at the loom and the anvil, till the grateful night soothed them into well-earned slumber. This, they were told, was better than the distracted sleep of princes. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... my impressions of those times, I sometimes think that my sympathy with you was not wholly unselfish, but that I felt that, if I had ever written anything which has a chance of a prolonged existence, I should wish it to be read, not by any distracted and impotent communities of British race, but by America, one and indivisible. And, gentlemen, this is not unnatural, for amid all the divisions or distractions of your history, your literature has ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... This, The Real Story of That, the League of Nations, the riots in Berlin, in Dublin, Milan, Paris, London, Chicago; secret treaties, pacts, betrayals, Kolchak—an incomprehensible muddle of newspaper headlines shrieked from morning to morning and said nothing. The distracted mob become privy for the moment to the vast biological disorder eternally existent under its nose, snorted, yelped, and shook indignant sawdust out ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Editor Westbrook impressively, "did you ever pick up the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and despair as they ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... would have relented. But she could not be tender. It was her profession to be a Juno. Though she knew that when he was gone from her her heart would be breaking, she would not bring herself down to use a woman's softness. She could not say that she had been wrong, wrong because distracted by her misery, wrong because he was away from her, wrong because disturbed in her spirits by the depth of the love she felt for him; she could not confess this, and then, taking his hand, promise him that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... love, that's just what I know nothing about. If they'd let me receive them in my own way, I'd do it well enough; but that abominable Mrs. Taddi-what's her name-has quite addled my brains and driven me distracted with trying to get me to understand ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... sunshine came slanting through the tiny panes of glass at the window, and touched with impartial grace the youthful figure of distracted mien, the worsted tidies on the haircloth sofa, and the neat alpaca occupant of the stuffed "rocker." Again the sewing was forgotten, and Miss Becky's glittering spectacles were fixed upon the tragic queen. As ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... dressingroom and ran in disordered attire into the study, where she beheld her husband lying dead and bloody upon the floor, and Julia standing at the entrance of the panelled chamber, with the light of madness and murder in her eyes. Not long she stood there, however, for, seeing Lady Sarah enter, the distracted girl threw down the empty weapon, and flinging herself upon her mother, grasped her throat with all the might of her frenzied being. Up and down the room they wrestled together, two desperate women, one bent upon murder, the other ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Vice by the hands, and danced a trio with them. For music, a naked savage played upon an oaten pipe, a European philosopher scraped the fiddle, while an Asiatic beat the drum; and although these contradictory tones would have distracted an harmonious ear, yet the dancers did not once lose the step,—so well had they learnt their parts. When the maiden gave Vice her hand, she coquetted and languished significantly before him; but when she gave it to Virtue, she moved along with the modest gait of a matron. After the dance, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... had discovered how often she looked out into the street she thought she had found out the reason of her pupil's distracted attention and only waited the return of her brother, the architect, in order to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... none of my book, some malicious Presbyterian hath wrote it, who are my mortal enemies; I disown it.' The Committee looked upon one another like distracted men, not imagining what I presently did; for I presently pulled out of my pocket six books, and said, 'These I own, the others are counterfeits, published purposely to ruin me.' The Committee were now more vexed than before: not one word was spoke a good while; at last, ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... pity for him. In the long historical drama of Bothwell, which has twenty-one scenes in its two acts, we have spirited portraits of the fierce nobles who surrounded Mary Stuart during her brief and distracted reign. The love passages are pauses in a course of violent action, the assassination of Rizzio, the murder of Darnley are not overcoloured melodramatically, and the scenes in and about the Kirk of Field are darkened with the shadow of Darnley's imminent fate. But Darnley's dream, presaging his coming ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... was that during all this time I had said nothing of that which was nearest my heart, the need for guarding the Emperor. As a fact, I had tried to speak of it both to Soult and to Lobau, but their minds were so overwhelmed with the disaster and so distracted by the pressing needs of the moment that it was impossible to make them understand how urgent was my message. Besides, during this long flight we had always had numbers of French fugitives beside us on the road, and, however demoralised they might be, ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... city, where our friends expected to find distracted, or at least abstracted intellect, they were very pleasingly disappointed at discovering they were associated with reasonable and intelligent beings; although some of them, fatigued by their exertions during the election, were so strongly attacked by Somnus, that notwithstanding ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... did not hear the rest of the sentence, my attention being distracted by the passing of the conductor and a new traveller. When silence was restored, I again heard the lawyer's voice. The conversation had passed from a special case ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... around her crying. Her slow distracted gaze traveled from Glaud Burge to Jean le Prince, from Renot Babinet to Francois Bastarack, from Ambroise Tibedeaux along the line of stanch faces to Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance—with the horrible platform of death growing behind it—looked, as it did when he ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... comedy of "The Pilgrim," it was agreed that Dryden, or, as one account says, his son Charles,[44] should have the profits of a third night on condition of adding to the piece a Secular Masque, adapted to the supposed termination of the seventeenth century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers; and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Masque contains a beautiful and spirited delineation of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles II., in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are supposed to have respectively ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... it to please Artheris!" Julia said. The girl was fairly aglow to-night, palpitating and thrilling with youth and the joy of life. Everything distracted her—everything amused her—yet now and then she found a quiet moment in which to take out her little memories of the afternoon, and to review them ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... essay its power—with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the capricious waywardness of a child—was amusing herself, during her husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme. d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life, and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the course of this flirtation, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... her recitation, passion overcame her and she was distraught for love and wept copious tears, rain-like streaming down. This burnt the Prince's heart and he in turn became troubled and distracted for love of her. So he drew nearer to her and kissed her hands and wept with sore weeping and they ceased not from lover-reproaches and converse and versifying, until the call to mid-afternoon prayer (nor was there aught between them other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... refreshment to Anthony: the nervous stress of the life of the seminary priest in England, full of apprehension and suspense, crowned, as it had been in his case, by the fierce excitement of the last days of his liberty—all this had strained and distracted his soul, and the peace of the prison life, with the certainty that no efforts of his own could help him now, quieted and strengthened him for the ordeal he foresaw. At this time, too, he used to spend two or three hours a day in meditation, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... returned from the pursuit, found his followers in this distracted state. With the ready talent of one accustomed to encounter exigences, he proposed, that one hundred of the freshest men should be drawn out for duty—that a small number of those who had hitherto acted as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... clapping her hands. "How silly of me not to have thought of it; but I was so distracted. Won't it make them sit up? And of course we could do it easily, though it would be rather dreadful, wouldn't it? I shall have it copied out the minute I get home and sent off to-night. By the way" (a little anxiously) "there aren't any split infinitives ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... the city received a new body of inhabitants selected from Sicilians well disposed towards Rome; the old glorious Akragas was no more. After the whole of Sicily was thus subdued, the Romans exerted themselves to restore some sort of tranquillity and order to the distracted island. The pack of banditti that haunted the interior were driven together en masse and conveyed to Italy, that from their head-quarters at Rhegium they might burn and destroy in the territories of Hannibal's allies. The government did ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... weight by breaking up the feudal system of property; that the power of the Crown became then supreme and absolute, till the bold encroachments of the Commons subverted the fabric altogether; that the alternate ascendency of prerogative and privilege distracted the period which followed the Restoration; and that lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court- influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne, which every succeeding year increases. So that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of the city as we are north. If to-morrow is a good day I promised we would run out with them on the ten-fifteen. I suspect they need us badly. Wayne looks like a man distracted. The great trouble, I fancy, is going to be that Judith Dearborn Carey is still too much of a Dearborn to be able to make a home out of anything. And Carey can't ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... friend being engaged with her domestic affairs, which every lady was at that period in a measure compelled to superintend, she had thrown herself (still in her morning dishabille) on a couch with a book in her hand, but with a mind wholly distracted from the subject of its pages. After continuing some time thus, a prey to nervous anxiety, as much the result of Elmsley's long absence as of her former fears, the sound of the fifes and drums fell startlingly, she knew not wherefore, upon her ear and drew her to the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... on the first morning, at seven o'clock, he felt quite distracted; his eyes were dazed, his head ached with all the noise and riot. Retail dealers were already prowling about the auction pavilion; clerks were arriving with their ledgers, and consigners' agents, with leather bags slung over their shoulders, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... resources of the nation in lumber, minerals and oil; the tariff, the financial obligations of the government, the reform of the civil service, and a host of lesser matters. The animosities aroused by the war, however, and the insistent nature of the reconstruction question almost completely distracted attention from most of these problems. Only upon the tariff, finance and the civil service did the public interest focus long enough ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... dying condition, and was watching at her bedside. He did not intend to write again, but Emma's letters were so persistent that, despite his resolution, he did despatch two other notes, each more hasty and illegible and more distracted in tenor than the previous one. In fact the last ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... villanies and wiles of her determined foes: And, having thus adventured, thus endured, Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured. Much have I fear'd, but am no more afraid, When some chaste beauty, by some wretch betray'd, Is drawn away with such distracted speed, That she anticipates a dreadful deed: Not so do I—Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around; Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel; With not a single note ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... fallen into the hands of a man, who never could associate with, or even approve, any of the parties or factions, that have differently distracted, it might be said disgraced, these kingdoms; because he has as yet known none, whose motives or rules of action were truth and the public good alone; of one, who judges, that perjured magistrates of all denominations, and their most exalted minions, may be exposed, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... not one could divine, [p 16] Tho' they ponder'd, and ponder'd, at every line: And all only serving to puzzle them more, SIR ARGUS continued as wise as before. Distracted, he knew not well whither to go, This last disappointment afflicted him so; But at length, on reflection, thought only one fowl Cou'd have sense to inform him, and that was the OWL. To her he resolv'd, then, a visit to make, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... minutes have waxed in numbers to the proportions of an unmanageable mob; and the policeman, knowing this, set about dispersing them with perhaps greater discretion than consideration. They wavered and fell back, grumbling discontentedly; and Maitland, his anxiety temporarily distracted by the noise they made, looked round to find his erstwhile cabby at his elbow. Of whom the sight was inspiration. Ever thoughtful, never unmindful of her whose influence held him in this coil, he laid an arresting hand ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... poniard, not being pleased with its glittering! He did so very readily, begging my pardon for not having done it on my first appearance, saying he did not know what he did, and indeed he had the countenance and gesture of a man distracted. I did not endeavour a defence; that seemed to me impossible; but represented to him, as well as I could, the crime of a murder, which, if he could justify before men, was still a crying sin before God; ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... tea, and presently the Bishop, who looked much exhausted, roused himself. He had that afternoon attended two death-beds—one the death-bed of a friend, and the other that of the last vestige of peace, expiring amid the clamor of a distracted Low Church parish and High Church parson, who could only meet each other after the fashion of cymbals. For the moment even his courageous ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... struggling infancy of our own existence must ever be remembered with gratitude, I have patiently and anxiously waited the progress of events. Our own civil conflict is too recent for us not to consider the difficulties which surround a government distracted by a dynastic rebellion at home at the same time that it has to cope with a separate insurrection in a distant colony. But whatever causes may have produced the situation which so grievously affects our interests, it exists, with all its attendant evils operating ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... members of the Legislature the year after, the County of Madison was distracted by the animosity and strife of an Austin Dabney and an Anti-Austin Dabney party. Many of the people were highly incensed that a mulatto negro should receive a gift of the land which belonged to the freemen of Georgia. Dabney soon after ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... work—it is outside my sphere; but I should be unjust to the reader did I not give him some information (not from the controversial standpoint) on a subject which will obtrude itself in any discussion on the merits of the conflict which has twice distracted Spain and may divide the country again. It is unfortunately indisputable that religion was poked into the quarrel. The struggle was described in El Cuartel Real as a religious war; the theological allegiance ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... little sore at any season came upon her, would shower out lively tendernesses and all cajoleries possible to the tongue of woman. Yet the irritation of action narrowed Laura more than it did Vittoria; fevered her and distracted her sympathies. Being herself a plaything at the time, she could easily play a part for others. Vittoria had not grown, probably never would grow, to be so plastic off the stage. She was stringing her hand to strike a blow as men strike, and women when they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... asked for a ticket to London! The ironic, sympathetic glance of the porter, who took charge of her trunk! And then the thunder of the incoming train! Her renewed dismay when she found that it was very full, and her distracted plunge into a compartment with six people already in it! And the abrupt reopening of the carriage- door and that curt inquisition from an inspector: "Where for, please? Where for? Where for?" Until her turn was reached: "Where for, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... very small things with very great, one may say that the English aristocratic schools can claim something of the same sort of success and solid splendor as the French democratic politics. At least they can claim the same sort of superiority over the distracted and fumbling attempts of modern England to establish democratic education. Such success as has attended the public schoolboy throughout the Empire, a success exaggerated indeed by himself, but still positive and a fact of a certain indisputable shape and size, has been ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... hard to find within the civilized world a more miserable and distracted country than Scotland at the date of our history, and the West Country was worst of all. The Covenanters, who were never averse to fighting, had turned upon Claverhouse and his dragoons when they came to disperse a field-meeting at Drumclog, and had soundly beaten the King's Horse. Then, gathering ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... become a clergyman, and it was only his father's opposition that made him abandon the idea. Never thereafter did he cease to take the warmest and most constant interest in all the ecclesiastical controversies that distracted the Established Church. He was turned out of his seat for Oxford University by the country clergy, who form the bulk of the voters. He incurred the bitter displeasure of four fifths of the Anglican communion by disestablishing the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland, and from 1868 to the ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... exclaimed James, 'or you will drive me distracted with your folly. One grain of sense, and even you would have stopped it; but neither you nor he could miss a chance of his figuring in that masquerade dress! Look at the sun, exactly like a red-hot oven! We shall have him come ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... myself; and then I started off on the run towards the woods, and old Miss Bobbet, and Miss Gowdey, and Sister Minkley, and Deacon Dobbins' wife, all rushed after me. Oh, the agony of them 2 or 3 minutes, my mind so distracted with forebodin's, and the perspiration a pourin' down. But, all of a sudden, on the edge of the woods we found him. Miss Gowdey weighed 100 pounds less than me; had got a little ahead of me. He sat backed up against a tree in a awful cramped ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... filled, responsive to the emotion about her. "I'm just about distracted," she cried. "I love everybody and everything so, I can't stand it! I want to kiss you both and I can't make up my mind which to kiss first—and it's that way about everything! It's all so good I don't know what to begin on." She brought their faces together and achieved ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... held, the navy was put in order and war was in sight. Cautious diplomatic negotiations delayed hostilities, however, and subsequently exhaustion caused the restoration of peace between Spain and her distracted colony. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... wandering nervously round the store, alternately taking his hat down from the peg, as if minded to make a second trip to the bank, and replacing it as he realised that patience was his part. He looked older and more worn than ordinarily, and seemed distinctly pleased to be distracted by ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... still within the walls could not restrain the people, or did not try. If there was any government, it lacked a head or could not command attention. The stubborn instinct of self-preservation was king. Distracted throngs surged out at one gate, to separate and waver and hesitate, and finally to fight for a speedy entrance at another. On one side soldiers were apparently ordering people down from the wall, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... whence thou tookest me, Such as I was, ere thine or other's thrall. — Alas! how vain the hope! that thou shouldst be Ever to pity moved by suppliant call, Who sport, yea feed and live, in streams that rise From the distracted lover's ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... been a distracted man, ever since the news was brought him; and we knew not what ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... stiffely vp: Remember thee?[1] [Sidenote: swiftly vp] I, thou poore Ghost, while memory holds a seate [Sidenote: whiles] In this distracted Globe[2]: Remember thee? Yea, from the Table of my Memory,[3] Ile wipe away all triuiall fond Records, All sawes[4] of Bookes, all formes, all presures past, That youth and obseruation coppied there; And thy ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... association of certain worthy persons inquisitive in Natural Philosophy, who met together, first in London, for the investigation of what was called the new or experimental philosophy, and afterwards several of the more influential of the members, about 1648 or 1649, finding London too much distracted by civil commotions, commenced holding their meetings in Oxford." Among those who removed to Oxford were, "first, Dr Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr Goddard, whereupon our company divided. Those at London (and ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... "His distracted mother sits by me; I would entreat you to extend your kindness towards her, but I fear she will soon require no earthly aid. Still, soothe her last moments with a promise to protect the orphan, and may God bless you ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... The mother was the first one to discover it. When the fact dawned upon her consciousness that her beautiful, not quite eighteen-year-old Edith was pregnant she promptly fell in a faint and it took Edith and the maid quite some time to restore her to consciousness. She became distracted. She floundered about pitifully, not knowing what to do, what decision to reach. She tried to conceal the matter from the father, but he saw that there was something wrong and it didn't take him long to worm the truth out of her. As ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... the widow could not agree, but an adjournment to a box in the meantime was accepted as a compromise. Even there, however, the feminine warfare was continued, to the final triumph of Mrs. Tibbs, who, being prevailed upon to sing, not only distracted the nerves of her listeners, but prolonged her melody to such an extent that the widow was robbed of a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... According to his own account he was concealed in a cave in the Apennines, where he associated with some of the wilder members of the sect of the Fraticelli and probably imbibed some of their tenets. Rome relapsed into anarchy, and men's minds were distracted from politics by the ravages of the black death. The great jubilee held in Rome in 1350 became a kind of thanksgiving service of those ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... any rate, the exhibition fails, because the showman cannot furnish brains to his commentary. The man who can read "Sordello" is little helped by these headings, and the man who cannot is soon distracted by continual disappointment. We think he will end by reading only the headings. And they doubtless are the best for him. Otherwise, under the cerebral struggle to perceive how the prose interprets the poetry, he might become the idiot that Douglas ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... for a while like a man distracted. He heaped himself with all manner of superfluous reproaches, for having (as he said) first brought the Rose into disgrace, and then driven her into the arms of the Spaniard; while St. Leger, who was a sensible man enough, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... himself quiet, Attend to his diet, And carefully nurse his digestion. But when he is madly in love, It's certain to tell on his singing - You can't do chromatics With proper emphatics When anguish your bosom is wringing! When distracted with worries in plenty, And his pulse is a hundred and twenty, And his fluttering bosom the slave of mistrust is, A tenor can't do himself justice. Now observe - (SINGS A HIGH NOTE) - You see, I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... thar's nothing he's seed or heerd that he don' talk about. He's been a-goin' on about you," he added, abruptly. The girl's hands gave a nervous twitch. "Oh, he don't say nothin' ag'in' ye. I reckon he tuk a fancy to ye. Mam was plumb distracted, not knowin' whar he had seed ye. She thought it was like his other talk, 'n' I never let on-a-knowin' how mam was." A flush rose like a flame from the girl's throat to her hair. "But hit's this," Rome went on ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... proclaimed, within twenty-four hours after their arrival on the coast of Virginia, and not before. The council were then to proceed to the choice of a president, who was to have two votes. To this unaccountable concealment have those dissensions been attributed, which distracted the colonists on their passage, and which afterwards impeded the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Spain, and on the twenty-ninth day after the death of his brother. At Rome the grief occasioned by their death was not more intense than that which was felt throughout Spain. The sorrow of the citizens, however, was partly distracted by the loss of the armies, the alienation of the province, and the public disaster, while in Spain they mourned and regretted the generals themselves, Cneius, however, the more, because he had been longer in command of them, had first engaged ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... into the corner and tried to talk to Mlle. Helouin about poetry and art, but at last, upset and distracted, I arose and walked out of the room. Mlle. de Porhoet ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Asiatic paid no attention to the questions of the Khan, or the reproaches of the Khansha: no person, no object distracted his attention from Seltanetta—nothing could arouse him from his deep despair. They could hardly lead him by force from the sick chamber; he clung to the threshold, he wept bitterly, at one moment praying for the life of Seltanetta, at another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... suffered her not to recede; and Cecilia, though half distracted by the scenes of horror and perplexity in which she was perpetually engaged, ordered her servant to acquaint Mrs Delvile she was again compelled to defer ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay) |
