"Obliviousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shadowy and distant, like ante-natal dreams. It would be hypocrisy not to confess this frankly, regardless of the impression against me it may make on the reader's mind. Yet I had a real affection for my father. In spite of his extraordinary obliviousness of my very existence till the last year of his life, I was strongly attached to him, and his death made me see nothing but his virtues; yet my soul was so filled with my passion for Winifred as to have but little room for sorrow. As to my mother, her attachment to my father knew no bounds, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... in drowsy bewilderment, passed his hand once or twice over the coarse stubble on his face, and again committed himself helplessly to the sweet obliviousness of slumber. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... suited to a water-chute), carrying a black ostrich-feather fan such as she had seen Sarah Bernhardt pythoning about with in "La Dame aux Camelias." This hour she had dedicated to Mr. Philip, and he knew it. She was thinking of him with an intentness which was associated with an entire obliviousness of his personal presence, just as a church circle might pray fervently for some missionary without attempting to visualise his face; and though he missed this quaint meaning of her abstraction, he was well content to watch it and nurse his private ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Lord Scatterbrain all of a sudden was voted "vastly amusing—a little eccentric, perhaps, but so droll—in fact, so witty!" This was all very delightful for Andy —so delightful that he quite forgot Bridget rhua. But that lady did not leave him long in his happy obliviousness. One day, while Dick was absent, and Andy rocking on a chair before the fire, twirling the massive gold chain of his gold watch round his forefinger, and uncoiling it again, his repose was suddenly disturbed ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... nation is passing. Of course, one ought not to wish it otherwise. Not, indeed, "sweet," but eminently salutary, are these "uses of adversity," for they prevent us from forgetting, even if we were inclined to such base obliviousness, the grim realities of the strife in which we are engaged. And yet, and in spite of all this, beauty retains its sway over "the common heart of man." Even war cannot destroy, though it may temporarily obscure, the beauty of Nature; and the beauty of Art is only waiting for the opportunity of Peace ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... receive a black mark in consequence. No, for ten delicious days there was to be no such thing as hurry. Bob lay very still luxuriating in the thought. Then he glanced at Van, who was still immovable, his arm beneath his cheek. His friend's obliviousness to the world was irresistible. Bob raised himself carefully; caught up his pillow; took accurate aim; and let ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... he avoided the house. But when he next saw her she had a charming smile of greeting and an air of entire obliviousness of his past blunder. She said she was better. She had taken his advice and was giving herself some relaxation from business. She had been riding again—oh, so far! Alone?—of course; she was always alone—else what ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "bars," and rendered rest or sleep impossible. At last, when the gnats seemed disposed to retire, two Germans came along, and, seeing our fire, commenced stumbling about our boards. To be roused at two o'clock a.m., when one is just sinking into obliviousness after four hours of useless struggle with unseen enemies, is provoking enough, but to be roused under such circumstances ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... position to correct the difficulty. 4. To purposely annoy another person verbally. 5. To evangelize. See {flame}. 6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. 'Rave' differs slightly from {flame} in that 'rave' implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat more strongly that the tone or content is offensive ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... would unite the people by maintaining the Constitution, not, as the Radicals argued, by the flagitious policy of freeing the slaves. It should be added that he was really concerned at the corruption which was becoming rife, for which war contracts gave some scope, and which, with a critic's obliviousness to the limitations of a human force, he thought the most heavily-burdened Administration of its time could easily have put down. With a little imagination it is easy to understand the difficult position of the orthodox Democrats, who two years before had voted against restricting the extension ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... as if from an editorial pen. The article shows conclusively how little Hawthorne had been affected, how completely he stood out of the national spirit, being as mere an observer of what was going on as at any time in his life and expressing his own view from time to time with entire obliviousness, as in the passages on Lincoln and on John Brown, of everything except his own impression. The judgment he passes on John Brown illustrates, too, better than pages of comment, his mental attitude in politics, its ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Mr. Iff were bargaining for the same accommodations, Staff endeavoured to assume an attitude of distinguished obliviousness to the entire proceeding; and would have succeeded but for the immediate and impatient action ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... be brought to have as much faith in American women as the women have in themselves. And why should they not have faith; the farm has already tested them out, and they have not been found wanting. In face of this fine accomplishment the minds of some men still entertain doubt, or worse, obliviousness, to the possible contribution of ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... perceiving Ishmael's utter obliviousness of her own kindly presence and his perfect devotion to the thankless Claudia, Bee felt a pang, she went and buried herself with domestic duties, or played with the children in the nursery, or what was better still, if it happened ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... AB's and BC's he would for a while forget his disappointment almost as completely as he did the wet-winged winds that had been flapping and wheeling about the house ever since the thaw set in. His obliviousness could not, however, ensure him against the effects of cold shower-baths, and before long his geometrical drawing was done to the accompaniment of a hollow-sounding cough, which made Dan remember a time some years ago when Nicholas had been so seriously ill with pleurisy ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... driver and merciful to his beast, his eagerness to reach Patesville increased gradually until it became necessary to exercise some self-restraint in order not to urge his faithful mare beyond her powers; and soon he could no longer pretend obliviousness of the fact that some attraction stronger than the whole amount of Duncan McSwayne's note was urging him irresistibly toward his destination. The old town beyond the distant river, his heart told him clamorously, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... venture to carry their faith into life and action. In the American civil war, in the Franco-Prussian, the South African, the Balkan, the Russo-Japanese, small bands of Quakers revealed the same spirit of service and the same obliviousness to danger which have marked the larger groups that have manned the ambulance units and the war-victims' relief and reconstruction work of this world war. In this present crisis they have gone wherever they could go,—to Belgium, to France, to Russia, ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... You kill me with pleasure—this beats anything I ever imagined. Oh, heavens, my very life will be drawn out of me: you make me spend so, it thrills all up my spine to my brain. Ah, oh, I'm done!" as she collapsed into a state of momentary obliviousness. ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... station to be shorn; and the only being with whom they have any intercourse, is the man who brings them their weekly supply of rations. When "old hands," they in general pass their lives in a lethargic existence; having no apparent thought of past, present, or future; but breathe on in a dreamy obliviousness, until at the expiration of perhaps one or two years, their wages having accumulated to an amount somewhat considerable, they leave their employment to proceed to the nearest public-house and plunge into a course of drinking. After the endurance ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... prompt and complete withdrawal. If he had struck a false note, he knew that she would have turned frigid in an instant. But he could not help feeling that some barrier which had existed between them had been magically removed. Her apparent obliviousness to all that under the circumstances might have troubled her was a subtle compliment to himself, and soon he, too, forgot that there was anything in the world beyond their present relation to ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... with that curious obliviousness of the important parts of his companion's remarks,—"then in common civility I ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... quantity of dust and smoke and cinders to be swallowed and endured, the damage to eyes of those who would beguile the mind into that forgetfulness of self; so painfully reminded of both the strait-jacket and the old-time, cruel stocks. Then the utter obliviousness to all hygienic law in the packing of a score or more of people, like so many herrings in a box, into sleeping cars, over-heated and worse ventilated, and not—if measured by the rules of any common sense—more than sufficient for a fourth of the number ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill |
