"Absorbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... story is that of hypnotic suggestion.... The absorbing drama grows in interest with every page, the sense of impending tragedy is always with us. It is well and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... travel down again in the same train empty. When I realised that he had been at this work for months and expected to be at it for years I understood why he looked depressed. Train commanding must be a horrible business, only one degree better than draft conducting. To a man engaged in it a really absorbing kind of patience ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... Spaight appeared. Toole, who had been detained by business in another quarter, had ridden into the town from Leixlip, and was now dismounted and talking with Major O'Neill upon the absorbing topic. These cronies saw Spaight at the turnpike, and as he showed his ticket, he talked with the man. Of course, the news was come. The turnpike-man knew it by this time; and off scampered Toole, and the major followed close at his heels, at ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... till now the full presence of the emotion which had unconsciously grown up in her for this lonely and severe man, who, in her tradition, was vengeance and irreligion personified. He seemed to absorb her whole nature, and, absorbing, to ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... extensive provinces joined together in a union of equal privileges and powers, which has since gone by the name of the Government of the United States of North America. This is the great republic to which I just now alluded, that is gradually absorbing the minor Southern States into its—union, and threatens at no very distant date to spread the English language and the English race over the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... herds farther west,. even as the Indians and their still greater herds - buffaloes - have been crowded out by the latter. At Ogallala—which but a few years ago was par excellence the cow-boys' rallying point - "homesteads," "timber claims," and "pre-emption" now form the all-absorbing topic. "The Platte's 'petered' since the hoosiers have begun to settle it up," deprecatingly reflects a bronzed cow-boy at the hotel supper-table; and, from his standpoint, he is correct. Passing the next night in the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... he but known, it was his own absorbing jealousy of Veath that precluded the recognition of a like sentiment directed against him, even surpassing in intensity its owner's lust ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... to witness only the commencement of this prosperity, nor can it be doubted, that his close application, and unremitting efforts to forward the work shortened his life materially. His deep and absorbing interest in it, prevented the precautionary measures and relaxations, which in all probability would have prolonged his life for years. His associates in the board saw the danger and urged him to earlier and more decided measures ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... to write to you before and thank you for your Christmas cheque, but life in the McBride household is very absorbing, and I don't seem able to find two consecutive minutes to ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... bore for Rachel has been through all time the symbol of constancy. Seven years he served for her, and so great was his love, so pure his delight in her presence that the time seemed but as a day. Had this simple, absorbing affection not been interfered with by Laban, how different would have been the tranquil life of Jacob and Rachel, developing undisturbed by the inevitable jealousies and vexations connected with the double marriage. Still this love was the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... salt water. It was between three and four feet in length, and only recently, perhaps a few days, dead. It had very probably come up the river during a flood, for the water-hole in which the creature had been detained, had no connection with the tiny stream, which hardly resisted the absorbing power of the sands. Another question was, what could have been the cause of its death? as the water seemed well tenanted with small fish. We supposed that it had pursued its prey into shallow water, and had leaped on the dry land, in its efforts ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... happen in this volume, starting with the running over of a hamper of good things lying in the road. A precious heirloom is missing, and how it was traced up is told with absorbing interest. Mrs. Penrose's books are as safe as they are interesting and should be on the bookshelf of ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... the Icelanders to their homes is almost inconceivable. I have never seen any thing like it. The most favored nations of the earth can not furnish examples of such intense and all-absorbing love of home and country. I traveled with a native of Reykjavik some weeks after my visit to Thingvalla, and had an opportunity of judging what his impressions were of other countries. He was a very intelligent man, well ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Cardinal Manning regarded station, or dignity, or even power, as treasures to be valued in themselves would be ridiculously to misconceive the man. He had two supreme and absorbing objects in life—if, indeed, they may not be more properly spoken of as one—the glory of God and the salvation of men. These were, in his intellect and conscience, identified with the victory of the Roman Church. To these all else ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Minnie, which was even much more in detail than I have narrated to the reader, did prevent my going to sleep for a long while. Women, as the reader may have seen, never once troubled my thoughts! I had fed upon one sole and absorbing idea, that of being acknowledged by Captain Delmar; this was, and had been, the source and spring of every action, and was the only and daily object of reverie; it was my ambition, and ambition in any ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... controlled into indifference, seemed endowed with unnatural vitality, reproducing the history of his past life in rapid and exhausting tumult. All its scenes rose before him—Brentham, and Vauxe, and, Muriel—and closing with one absorbing spot, which, for a long time, it avoided, and in which all merged and ended—Belmont. Then came that anguish of the heart, which none can feel but those who in the youth of life have lost some one infinitely fascinating and dear, and the wild query why ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... porch, and her ambitious brothers were telling Phil in detail their all-absorbing designs against the peace of the coyote tribe, and asking his advice. Mrs. Reid came to sit with them a-while, and again the talk followed around the narrow circle of their lives, until Kitty felt that she could bear no more. Then Mrs. Reid, more merciful ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... thought of self-support, but I would have chosen some artistic or beautiful work if I could. I had no especial aptitude for teaching, and no absorbing wish to be a teacher, but it seemed to me that I might succeed if I tried. What I did like about it was that one must know something first. I must acquire knowledge before I could impart it, and that was just what I wanted. I could be a student, wherever I was ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... did, they seized tumblers and ranged up to the counter, forming a most striking panorama of dejected faces. 'I love and reverence these men,' said my companion, modestly suggesting that I must do myself the honor of paying for their medicine, 'since they were extremely useful in absorbing the refuse liquor made at our distilleries, and keeping up the respectability of the party to which they belong. Indeed, they are not the base fabric of the vision you might take them for; they are all pensioned members of the Empire Club, a very disorderly ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Overpowered with these absorbing and transcendent introspections, he approached his now odious home upon Pig and Sow Point by way of the old meeting-house. There of a sudden he came upon his patron, Captain Obadiah, superintending the burial of the last of three victims of his ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... the library. Never did a villain propose a scheme to a beautiful girl at a more favorable moment. Half the afternoon and a little while after dinner she had been absorbing "Treasure Island," and now came Owen asking her if she would like to meet a reformed pirate and go on a thrilling ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... pathetically in her ears; and a great light, the light that Raphael had shown her, seemed to blend mystically with the once meaningless sounds. Yea, all things were from Him who created light and darkness, good and evil; she felt her cares falling from her, her soul absorbing itself in the sense of a Divine Love, awful, profound, immeasurable, underlying and transcending all things, incomprehensibly satisfying the soul and justifying and explaining the universe. The infinite fret and fume of life seemed like the petulance ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... persuading, so much a part of herself, that no one could be with her without recognising their power over her life. She was interested in everything about her, without a particle of cant, full of playful humor and bright fancies; but the love of Christ was the absorbing interest of her life—almost a passion, it might be called, so fervent and rapturous was her devotion to Him, so great her longing for communion with Him and for a more complete conformity ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... shall know. He guarantees that Cook labels and other telltale marks shall be removed from everything, though time is short and there is much to do. He will be the power behind the tents, and I will be in them, absorbing all the credit. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... with the freest possible development. In the present case I might easily have devised a stage and a series of events for Malmaison, which would have brought his mysterious affection into somewhat more prominent and picturesque relief. But that affection is itself so absorbing a problem, that the fashion of its statement becomes of comparatively small import; and I may add that the setting furnished by nature happens on this occasion to answer all practical purposes tolerably well. Moreover, I am not altogether ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth sanctify and sustain ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... shall we start?" cried Mollie, coming back to the all-absorbing topic at hand. "Goodness, I'd like to throw a few clothes in a suitcase and start right away—quick—this ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... and he were simply seeing me to the door out of politeness. His house impressed me much; it is like a burial-ground, he seems to like it, which is, however, quite natural. Such a full life as he leads is so overflowing with absorbing interests that he has little need of assistance from ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rheumatism, and I was almost beside myself with toothache. From the moment of the collision to the present hour no ache, pain, sweat, or tremor has troubled me in the slightest degree, and instead of being, as I expected, and indeed intended, in bed drinking tinct. aurantii, or absorbing through my pores oil of horse-chestnut, I am conscientiously bound to be at my office bodily sound. Don't print my name and address, or the Midland Company may come down upon ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... interests run this country? The one great political demand, underlying all others, giving meaning to all others, is this: The special interests must get out of politics. The old-style leaders, seeking to switch public attention away from this one absorbing and overwhelming issue are pitifully ridiculous and out of date. To try to divert the march of an aroused public conscience from this righteous inevitable conflict by means of obsolete political catchwords is like trying to dam the ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... her mind under the garb of her quaint, jocular speech, which meant much or little, as one might take it. She had just returned from one of her social pilgrimages, during which she had heard nothing but the absorbing subject of gossip. She had been questioned and cross-questioned, entreated by many, as Sally had done, to do something (for all had great faith in her powers), and warned by a few not to meddle with what did not concern her. Thus she had come back that morning, annoyed, discomposed, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... pleasure of being loved and worshipped, and in part by worldly ambition. Surer sign would God have sent her had he intended she should give herself to Gartley! Would God have her give herself to one who would render it impossible for her to make life more abundant to others? Marriage might be the absorbing duty of some women, but was it necessarily hers? Certainly not with such a man? Might not the duties of some callings be incompatible with marriage? Did not the providence of the world ordain that not a few should go ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman, who goes to the woods in the still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have acquired new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... changed the whole outlook of his life. The old days, the old thoughts, the old unexpressed feelings and hazy ambitions had gone—swept away in one wave of absorbing passion. There was neither future nor past to him now. He lived in the thought of this woman's delightful presence, and beyond that ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... be that he found the subject too absorbing to allow of his giving much attention to old Father Antic the Law. At any rate, he was never called to the Bar, and posterity cannot be too thankful that his great mind was not lost in 'the abyss of legal eminence' which has received ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... effected, there was another not less powerful obstacle to his return. His affairs, under his own inspection, were so prosperous, and his gains so considerable, that, in the words of the old ballad, "He set his heart to gather gold"; and to this absorbing passion he sacrificed his domestic happiness. The death of his wife, about four years after his departure, undoubtedly contributed to give him a sort of dread of returning, which it required a strong effort to overcome. The welfare of his only child he knew would be ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... testimony was simple, direct, and dignified, and is well worth reading by all who wish to hear the plain truth. It was his first appearance in any city save Richmond since the war, and being at a time of such political excitement, his visit was an occasion of absorbing interest to the crowds then ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the Baron, "I'd engage to take this city as it is, and the office of Pope, and run the whole Roman Catholic Church, till it knocked out all opposition by the simple and natural process of absorbing all opponents. We want a republic here in Rome. We want freedom, Sir. Where is the Church making its greatest triumphs to-day? In the States, Sir. If the Catholic Church made itself free and liberal and go-ahead; if it kept up with the times; if it was imbued with the spirit of progress, and pitched ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... and to remember that it has responsibilities, and that it owes a helping hand to others that honestly struggle for such benefits. Especially is this the case with the American people, made up as they are from all races, and absorbing yearly as they do so much of the best blood of all. America has thriven and grown strong upon the misfortunes of Europe. Our toast specially refers to the political exiles of Europe, but the truth ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the child. He returned to his old ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... and Shakespeares, the universe has not grown in its countless centuries. It has not been getting higher and wider over us since the human race began. It is not a larger universe. It is lived in by larger men, more all-absorbing, all-identifying, and selfish men. It is a universe in which a human being is duly born, given place with such a self as he happens to have, and he is expected to grow up to it. Barring a certain amount of wear and tear and a few minor rearrangements on the outside, it ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... or after death in some patients, especially in the parts which were exposed to pressure, is owing to the fine terminations of the veins having been mechanically compressed so as to prevent their absorbing the blood from the capillaries, or to their inactivity from disease. The blood when extravasated undergoes a chemical change before it is sufficiently fluid to be taken up by the lymphatic absorbents, and in that process changes its colour ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... descent, and it may also have been that from which the theory of caste distinctions was derived. Though the sacrificial food of each caste is the same, yet its members may have held themselves to be partaking of a different sacrificial feast and absorbing a different life; just as the sacrificial feasts and the gods of the different Greek and Latin city-states were held to be distinct and hostile, and a citizen of one state could not join in the sacrificial feast of another, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... man Peter was when he went to his room that night, leaving Helen May dazed and exhausted after another evening spent in absorbing queer bits of information from the garrulous Johnny Calvert. She would be able to manage all right, now, Peter told her relievedly when Johnny left. She knew as much about the place as she could possibly know ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... as the most splendid pictures of American life ever written. Either one of the ten nouvellettes contained in this volume, is of itself fully worth the price of the whole book. The Philadelphia Daily Sun says, in its editorial columns, that it shows all the grace, vigor, and absorbing interest of her previous works, and places Mrs. Southworth in the front rank of living novelists; and that indescribable charm pervades all her works, which can only emanate from a female mind. Though America has produced many examples of high intellect in her sex, none are destined ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... not lay the foundation of a habit of early rising in me, but I nevertheless advise people always to get up at half-past four, if they wish to receive the most vivid impressions, and to take the most absorbing interest in every thing in the world. It was with a feeling absolutely novel that I looked about me that morning, and there was a breezy freshness and clearness in my perceptions altogether delightful, and I fraternized so cordially with Nature that I do not think, if I had sat down immediately ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned as we are with matters that deeply affect our livelihood today and our vision of the future, each of these domestic problems is dwarfed by, and often even created by, this question that involves ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... impression on her irritable temperament. Meanwhile Raleigh, engaged in a dozen different enterprises, and eager to post hither and thither over land and sea, was probably not ill disposed to see his royal mistress diverted from a too-absorbing attention to himself. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... towel; but the towel was none the less an article of necessary furniture in the house of the Norman's grandson. It has often been the case in the history of the world, that the real victory has rested with the vanquished: but it has always been brought about by the one race mixing with and absorbing the other. Where that does not take place, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... yards of slack wire." His drawings, particularly those illustrating aeronautical scenes and incidents, were spirited and faithful. He tried his hand at verse-making among the rest. The following brief outburst, written after all the old loves had given place to that which became the absorbing passion of his life, and printed on his letter-heads and admission-cards, sufficiently illustrates the manner and matter of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... went and sat beside Alfred with a basin of thick gruel and a great wooden spoon. He shovelled the gruel down his charge's throat mighty superciliously from the very first; and presently, falling into some favourite and absorbing train of thought, he fixed his eye on vacancy, and handed the spoonfuls over his left shoulder with such rapidity and recklessness that it was more like sowing than feeding. Alfred cried out "Quarter! I can't eat so fast as that, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... colloids, a colloid, when tasted, probably never reaches those nerves. Again, "it has been observed that vegetable gum is not digested in the stomach; the coats of that organ dialyse the soluble food, absorbing crystalloids, and rejecting all colloids." One of the mysterious processes accompanying digestion, the secretion of free muriatic acid by the coats of the stomach, obtains a probable hypothetical explanation through the same law. Finally, much light is thrown upon the observed phenomena of osmose ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... began, at thirty-four, absorbing, painstaking literary work. She studied the best models of composition. She said to a friend, years after, "Have you ever tested the advantages of an analytical reading of some writer of finished style? There is a little book called Out-Door Papers, by Wentworth Higginson, that is one of the ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... theories were right, that revolving cross would tap and draw into its vanes radio-energetic waves of force, much as the whirling armature of a dynamo draws into its coils electro-magnetic waves of force. For the blackened sides of the vanes, absorbing more radiation than the bright sides, would cause the molecules to rebound from the warmer surfaces with greater velocity, setting up an alternate pressure and bringing the rays to a focus on the cathode, where they would ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... But no: this charming programme is wantonly rejected: not the finest orchestras, not the prettiest fetes, not the newest chansonettes sung by Judie and Jeanne Granier themselves, can turn the players for a moment from the pursuit of their one absorbing passion. Play goes on at the Casino of Monte Carlo the livelong day, the only relaxation from the couleur gagnante or tiers et tout being when the gamblers step across the way to take a shot at the pigeons or a bet on the birds; for they must bet on something, if it is but on the number ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... truth, constant or frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom; and it is, indeed, to the acquiring of this [habit of] questioning with absorbing eagerness that the famous philosopher, Aristotle, the most clear sighted of all, urges the studious when he says: "It is perhaps difficult to speak confidently in matters of this sort unless they have often been investigated. Indeed, to doubt in special ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... altered in their wording, through seven years of tentative effort; and it is possible that he succeeded in retaining the original feeling—the poem is certainly artistic. But the feeling conveyed by Grey is commonplace enough, anyway; whilst that transmitted by Poe is wholly unique, and intensely absorbing—indeed, a startling revelation. I have always felt that Byron, Milton, Shakespeare, found within their souls their poetry, and that the linguistic expression of it came to them as naturally as did ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... manner of her reception at their hands. If there was not precisely that warmth of greeting which she felt in her own heart, she found at least a kindly interest in her return and a friendly curiosity as to her past. To her, her return to her birthplace was naturally an event of absorbing interest. To the other inhabitants of the village it was no more than an episode, but nobody being distinctly cold or careless, Rachel was not allowed to see the difference between ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... should have found such safe and absorbing occupation in the opposite direction to Monte Carlo was an abiding satisfaction to her, and she did not analyze the charms of the place as regarded her son. She had seen him amused by other young ladies, as he certainly was now by that Miss White, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dissatisfaction at my failure to "get results" in an important case. A few weeks on the force had changed many a preconceived notion of police life. It had gradually become evident, for instance, that the profession of detective is adventurous, absorbing, heart-stopping chiefly between the covers of popular fiction; that real detective work, like almost any other vocation, is made up largely of the little unimportant every-day details, with only a rare assignment bulking above the mass. As "the Captain" said, it was just ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... engaged in the pursuit with the hopes of raising himself from his present obscurity, and resuming the rank and dignity to which his birth entitled him; but, as usual, it ended in absorbing every thought, and becoming the business of his existence. He was at length aroused from this mental abstraction, by the calamities of his household. A malignant fever swept off his wife and all his children, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... a family of young children,—an office which leaves no privacy and no leisure. Her bed was always shared with some little one; her territories were exposed to the constant inroads of little pattering feet; and all the various sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made absorbing drafts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... who despising, or happily ignorant of, the sophistications of theories, and the proprieties of composition, indicated by perfect similarity of action and gesture on the one hand, and by the infinite and truthful variation of expression on the other, the most sublime strength because the most absorbing unity, of multitudinous passion that ever human heart conceived. Hence, in the cloister of St. Mark's, the intense, fixed, statue-like silence of ineffable adoration upon the spirits in prison at the feet of Christ, side by side, the hands lifted, and the knees ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... more to say than this. In a boyish way, and all unrealizing, he loved the child with a sort of love that would one day flower out as an absorbing passion. For the present, however, important as she was to him, she was nevertheless distinctly secondary to the Perdu itself with its nameless spell. If Celia was not there, and if he did not care to fish, the boy still longed for the Perdu, and ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sitting on the matter finds that the public will not put up with more than a ten per cent. proportion of educational film in the course of an evening's entertainment. Now, the film as a means of transcribing actual life is admittedly of absorbing interest and great educational value; but, owing to this false start, we cannot get it swallowed in more than extremely small doses as a food and stimulant, while it is being gulped down to the dregs as a drug or irritant. Of the film's claim to the word art I am frankly ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... doubtless accentuated his repugnance to the English, at that time still their traditional enemy. The combination of Irish and French prepossession could scarcely have resulted otherwise; and thus was evolved an atmosphere in which I was brought up, not only passively absorbing, but to a certain degree actively impressed with love for France and the Southern section of the United States, while learning to look askance upon England and abolitionists. The experiences of life, together with subsequent reading and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... woman's club in the country chose from its members those who by artistic instinct or education, and the possession of practical ability, were fitted to lead in the work, and made of them a committee on home industries, the reports from it would soon become a matter of absorbing interest to the club, and the productions made under the protection, so to speak, of the club, would have an advantage that any commercial business would consider invaluable. Neither would the advantage be limited by the interest of a single club. ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... such absorbing occupation to tide her over these empty days of waiting; and sometimes—especially late in the afternoon, when her household duties were done, the children safely at play—she found it beyond her power to stitch quietly at her embroidery. Letting ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... darkness had settled over Ragtown and the night's revel was on, there entered the Palace Dance Hall a figure that brought gamblers from their absorbing games, stopped the dizzying whirl of the dancers, and caused glasses that were halfway to eager lips to pause ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... the family soon dispersed; and although Ruth's departure was for days the all-absorbing topic of conversation, it was generally referred to in a cheery way, and not in what ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... time in conveying his belongings to the ship and depositing his bedding in the best-sheltered bunk in the forecastle; after which he returned to Number 19 Paradise Street, where he spent the few hours of freedom remaining to him in assisting his friend the Doctor, and absorbing further knowledge from him. Finally, as the clocks in the immediate neighbourhood were striking the hour of eight in the evening, Dick stepped over the rail of the Concordia and formally reported himself to the chief mate, thereafter repairing to the forecastle and making his preparations for ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... meek complaint went to my heart, notwithstanding my growing dread of any conversation between us on this all-absorbing but equally peace-destroying topic. Reassuringly pressing her hand, I was startled to find a small piece of paper ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... a seat in Congress were omitted from the list, whether Republican or Democrat, for Frank was popular with both parties and expected help from both. Over three hundred cards had been issued for the party, which was the absorbing topic of conversation in the whole town, and which brought white kids and white muslins into great requisition, while swallow-tails and non swallow-tails were discussed in the privacy of households, and discarded or decided upon ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... poem of Malayan Literature is the Epic of Bidasari. It has all the absorbing fascination of a fairy tale. We are led into the dreamy atmosphere of haunted palace and beauteous plaisance: we glide in the picturesque imaginings of the oriental poet from the charm of all that is languorously ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... one absorbing thought of the moment; yet there were clauses in the brief preliminaries of peace more fraught with insidious danger than the abandonment of Venice. If the rest of Italy became one and free, it needed no prophet to tell that not the might of twenty Austrias ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... into personnel administration and drill instructor schools without friction or incident, and reservist training and local intramural sports had already peacefully introduced integration to the base. Noble wanted to integrate black recruits as they arrived, absorbing them in the white training platoons then being processed. He also wanted to use selected black ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Prussian Commander-in-Chief and his Chief Staff Officer, during the highly successful campaign of 1870-71, did not come within sound of the guns until five pitched battles had been fought by their subordinate commanders. Outside the fog of battle, with its absorbing interests and distractions, the commander can retain his sense of proportion[1] and can decide where and when he will make his final effort. News of the battle reaches him from his immediate subordinates, and from the accounts of successes and failures he is able to judge the weaknesses and strength ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... where the sun of his glory set; and his name must at length repose in the silence, if not in the darkness of night. In this busy and evanescent scene, other spirits of the age are rapidly snatched away, claiming our undivided sympathies and regrets, until in turn they yield to some newer and more absorbing grief. Another name is now added to the list of the mighty departed,—a name whose influence upon the hopes and fears, the fates and fortunes of our countrymen, has rivalled, and perhaps eclipsed, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... made up of the white blood corpuscles or leukocytes and of connective tissue cells which separate themselves from the neighboring tissues. All these wandering cells possess the faculty of absorbing and digesting microbes. They contain certain proteolytic or protein-splitting ferments, by means of which they decompose and digest poisons and hostile microorganisms. On account of their activity as germ destroyers, these cells have been called germ killers ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... foot-board frequently for the reason that makes bearded men suck peppermints in church. Against his better judgment he took several peeps at Tommy, whom he had lately suspected of writing his letters in school or at least of gloating over them on that back bench. To-day he was sure of it. However absorbing Euclid may be, even the forty-seventh of the first book does not make you chuckle and wag your head; you can bring a substantive in Virgil back to the verb that has lost it without looking as if you would ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... truth of what I say is confirmed by the frequent fact that the work of art which gives us this full and vivid pleasure (actually refreshing! for here, at last, is refreshment!) is either fragmentary or by no means first-rate. We have remained arid, hard, incapable of absorbing, while whole Joachim quartets flowed and rippled all round, but never into, us; and then, some other time, our soul seems to have drunk up (every fibre blissfully steeping) a few bars of a sonata (it was ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... words of startling clearness, the poor woman, pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was accomplished! Between them and their father's honor she must no longer hesitate. The necessity ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... back to his absorbing amusement of bulrush-plaiting, and Mrs Wade went up to the stile which led to the way over the fields towards Colchester. As she came near, sheltered by the hedge, ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... days was of absorbing interest. Hare had liberty; there was little work for him to do save to care for Silvermane. He tried to hunt foxes in the caves and clefts; he rode up and down the broad space under the walls; he sought the open desert only to be driven ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... The absorbing desire of my life had been to some day graduate from some institution of learning, but I found myself at eighteen years of age far from the goal of my ambition. I became alarmed. I realized what it would mean to grow to manhood in ignorance; I also knew that there were seven children younger ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... have a tranquil night, I determined to pass that time in preparing for the last great change. I had no will to make—little to leave, indeed, after my vessel was gone: for the debt due to John Wallingford would go far towards absorbing all my property. When his $40,000 were paid, under a forced sale, little, indeed, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the two lawyers are wholly tedious; the rest of the survey is absorbing. Not a point which can be urged on any side is omitted, as that side presents itself; yet in the event, as I have said, one overmastering effect stands forth—the utter loveliness and purity of Pompilia. "She is the heroine," says Mr. Arthur Symons,[126:1] "as neither Guido nor Caponsacchi ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... followed were feebly and faintly uttered, and broken by long pauses; but, from them, Nicholas learnt, for the first time, that the dying boy, with all the ardour of a nature concentrated on one absorbing, hopeless, secret passion, loved ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... rebuff the God in him—the creator. She yielded, but she could not express the deeper reason for her emotion. As he was so oblivious, she could not bring herself to tell him why in particular she shrank from sitting as Danae. He had not thought of the meaning of the myth in connection with her all-absorbing hope. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the oils are standing in "open packages," escaping into the air and absorbing moisture, etc., necessitating quick use or confinement in air ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... How much more interesting science has become especially, if I were to mention only one name, through the genius of Darwin! Renan has characterized this as a most amusing century; I should rather have described it as most interesting: presenting us as it does with an endless vista of absorbing problems; with infinite opportunities; with more interest and less danger than surrounded our less ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... reckon with this ever-present censure of laughter, this fear of finding ourselves, our city, our section, out of touch with the prevalent tone and temper of the country as a whole. It is one of the forfeits we are bound to pay when we play the great absorbing game of democracy. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the greatest novels ever written, is the sequel to Alexander Dumas' world-renowned chef-d'oeuvre, "The Count of Monte-Cristo," taking up the fascinating narrative where the latter ends and continuing it with marvellous power and absorbing interest. Every word tells, and the number of unusually stirring incidents is legion, while the plot is phenomenal in its strength, merit and ingeniousness. The superb book deals with the exciting career of Edmond Dantes, who first figures as the Count of Monte-Cristo, and then as ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... usually falls on the eldest son of the late sovereign's greatest favourite, provided there exists no particular reason for setting him aside. There seem to be no rank nor privileges annexed to any branches of the royal family; the king, in his own person, absorbing the undivided respect of the people. Those of his relations whom his majesty may deign to patronise, will, of course, be more noticed by their fellow-slaves; but are all alike the slaves of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Alymer's part at all, but she was convinced Lorraine's absorbing devotion to him was not reciprocated in like manner. If Lorraine learnt this as soon as she recovered, what did the future hold for her again but more vain dreams, and bitter hopes that ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... from too liberal draughts of his own imagination. In extenuation, the claims of genius might be urged, for a genius he unquestionably was in that he created something out of nothing. Out of an abnormal childhood, a lonely boyhood, and a failure-haunted manhood, he had managed to achieve an absorbing career. Each successive enterprise had loomed upon his horizon big with possibilities, and before it sank to oblivion, another scheme, portentous, significant, had filled its place. Life was a succession ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... river. While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing, Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain, that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself, that he was the eternal itself. And while Siddhartha stopped thinking of himself and his wound, this ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... comfortably in her fauteuil looking with good-natured complacency upon the little group beside her. Amelie, sitting on a stool, reclined her head against the bosom of her aunt, whose arm embraced her closely and lovingly as she listened with absorbing interest to an animated conversation between her aunt ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... population, that all its citizens might be able to participate in person in its government and defence; that it was based on fundamental class distinctions separating sharply the citizen from the non-citizen, and the slave from the free; that its end and purpose was that all-absorbing corporate activity in which the citizen found the highest expression of himself; and that to that end the inferior classes were regarded as mere means—a point of view which finds its completest expression in the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... an absorbing story of the continuous adventures of a motor car in the hands of Nat Trevor and his friends. It does seemingly impossible "stunts," and yet everything happens ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... necessity of a quiet life, if inclination and liking had been the arbiters in the choice. Nor was this inactivity the result of defective animal spirits either, for sometimes his mirth and boyish frolic were unbounded; but it seemed to proceed from an over-activity of the inward life, absorbing, and in some measure checking, the outward manifestation. He had so much to do in his own hidden kingdom, that he had not time to take his place in the polity and strife of the commonwealth around him. Hence, while other ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... great love comes into her life, making her think of him as "just a boy," he suffers all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! She has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may happen to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may pass through the world, loving faithfully, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices. He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... their number to call the Emperor's attention to their presence. Since then, it is whispered, it has become the special function of an adjutant, when the occasion demands it, diplomatically and gently to withdraw the imperial causeur from too absorbing conversation. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the little pilgrim forgot the long walk he had taken—forgot Riverdale, his mother, Squire Lee, and Annie, for the time, in the absorbing interest of the exciting scene. The Common beat Riverdale Common all hollow; he had never seen anything like it before. But when the wagon reached Washington Street, the measure of ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... Schneider; and he clamoured furiously for an answer. The other would not answer directly, but he told them a little parable. He saw a tree, sending down its roots into the ground, spreading everywhere, each tiny rootlet constructed for the purpose of absorbing water. And on the top of the ground was a man with a supply of water, which he poured out; he poured and poured without stint, and the water seeped down toward the rootlets, and every rootlet was reaching ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... a holy and absorbing employment for his mind, in tending his unhappy sister, who, under his judicious care, recovered, sooner than Ada had expected, from the effect of her wound, though she saw, too truly, that her words were verified, and that the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... think that I bear within me the desire and the sentiment of poetry, though I enjoy not its faculty of expression; and that that desire and that sentiment, denied legitimate egress, centre and shrink into one absorbing passion,—which is the want of love. Where am I to satisfy this want? I look round these great circles of gayety which we term the world; I send forth my heart as a wanderer over their regions and recesses, and it returns, sated and palled and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to domestic comforts,—the love of wife, children, and friends,—nor yet to the absorbing duties of a profession, that Balder looked for a shield against inward trouble. Hope held him no more than fear; his happiness must consist in freedom from both. He thought only of the Gnulemah of to-day,—unique, beautiful, untamed, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... glancing quickly from one speaker to another. Through the open door-way in the cool interior Miss Loomis could be seen bending over the boys as they fidgeted at their books. Neither felt like studying this day of days, for absorbing news, and lots of it, had come. To begin with, a general court-martial had been ordered to meet at Omaha for the trial of Captain Devers, Eleventh Cavalry, and officers of high rank and distinction were to be his judges. With Atherton as president of the court there could be no "monkey business," ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... number of men, whose loyalty or patriotism has not been even doubted, and, who, consequently, have never been marked "dangerous" by a colonial Justice of the Peace. Mr. Guthrie conceived that Canada was capable of absorbing about 50,000 of the poor of England, Ireland, and Scotland, annually; that a land tax was preferable to taxes on trade and manufactures, especially in a new country; that there should be three description of roads—provincial, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... best thing in the book. He distinguishes clearly and fairly between the Manichaean ideal that underlies so much of Eastern Monasticism and the ideal of self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the Christian form. But he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider the absorbing problem of this Catholic asceticism, for the excellent reason that not being an outsider he does not find ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... she sat was moored a flat-bottomed barge which evidently served as dwelling place for a very happy little family. One end of the barge had been turned into a kind of garden, there was even a vine-covered arbour, under which two tiny children were now playing some absorbing game. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... aggressive, and which stood out, when anything happened to ruffle him, like the ram of a battle-ship. In his patrolman days, which had been passed mainly on the East side, this jaw of his had acquired a reputation from Park Row to Fourteenth Street. No gang-fight, however absorbing, could retain the undivided attention of the young blood of the Bowery when Mr. McEachern's jaw hove in sight with the rest of his massive person in close attendance. He was a man who knew no fear, and he had gone through disorderly ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... says, "they stain cloths in a wonderful manner. They take them in their original state, quite white, and imbue them, not with a dye, but with certain drugs which have the power of absorbing and taking colour. When this is done, there is still no appearance of change in the cloths; but so soon as they are dipped into a bath of the pigment, which has been prepared for the purpose, they are taken out properly coloured. The singular thing is, that though the bath contains ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... more efficient agency in absorbing the unemployed was found in the developement of manufactures. The linen trade was as yet of small value, and that of silk-weaving was only just introduced. But the woollen manufacture was fast becoming an important element in the national wealth. England no longer ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... taking in its charm by merely turning over the pages, or even, as I say, in carrying it about. The literary essence, which is uncommonly subtle, has various modes of acting on us; and this particular manner of absorbing a book's spirit stands to the material operation called reading, much in the same way that smell, the act of breathing invisible volatile particles, stands to the more obvious wholesale ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... not tarry over the painful, touching scene oft-told, and felt sooner or later in every home. Like snow disappearing under the sunshine, the life of Madeleine was fast melting away. At length, as if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory. In the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... soon leave off thinking of his appetite; for when his heart is occupied, his palate will give him little concern. When he is a man, a thousand impulsive feelings will divert his mind from gluttony to vanity; for this last passion alone takes advantage of all others, and ends by absorbing them all. I have sometimes watched closely those who are especially fond of dainties; who, as soon as they awoke, were thinking of what they should eat during the day, and could describe a dinner with more minuteness than Polybius uses in describing a battle; and I have always ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... placid gravity, on trivial topics, keeping serious ones for a better privacy, though all other guests had eaten and gone. Only Shotwell, unaware of their presence, lingered over his pie and discussed Garnet's affair with the head waitress, an American lady. He read to her on the all-absorbing theme, from the Pulaski City Clarion; whose editor, while mingling solemn reprobations with amazed regrets, admitted that a sin less dark than David's had been confessed from the depths of David's repentance. In return she would have read ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... watched its fall. Away rolled the storm as quickly as it had come, with a sound like the passing of the artillery of an embattled host; then a grey rain set in, blotting the outlines of everything, like an endless absorbing grief, dulling the edge and temper of a life. Through it Jess, scared and wet to the skin, managed to climb up the natural steps, now made almost impassable by the prevailing gloom and the rush of water from the table-top of the mountain, and on across ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... may, indeed, read of a Cato once in three thousand years, who was in the habit of quitting all other business in order to be present when the nurse washed and rubbed his child. But our passion for gain, in the present age, is so much more absorbing and soul-destroying than the passion for military glory, that we cannot expect many Catos. Oh no. All, or nearly all, must devolve on the mother. The father has no time to attend to his children! What belongs to the mother, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott |
