"Distract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after breakfast, in her little round hat, and, putting her hand upon my shoulder, asks me in the most musical of voices whether I have finished with my paper, and am ready for a walk, I feel ashamed that I have allowed myself to distract my attention even for ten minutes from her charming self, to read stupid leading articles and wretched police cases. But men are utterly without sentiment. Reading the Times in the honeymoon! I wonder how the delightful creatures can give us two minutes' thought. Carrie, however, seems to live ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... Sonya returning from the yard chilled and frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to her cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... your windows, always take care to have them well up, when they are not being used. A little piece slipping down, and flapping with every draught, will distract a patient. ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... editions, in good bindings, and an excellent very choice selection of subjects and authors. There were books in various languages of which Faith could make nothing—but sighs; in her own mother tongue there were varieties of learning and literature enough to distract her. All however that the owner could know of other hands about his books, was that there was ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to them; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of what we ought to think and feel, follow your own reflections, and let the words neither offend you nor distract you. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... sickening sense of the dreadful reality of the horrors, which it was evident from these mute memorials of man's cruelty to his fellow had been endured, quite oppressed me, and I wished I had never visited the spot. I felt myself so much harrowed by this sad scene, that I endeavoured to distract my attention; but what was my astonishment when my eye fell upon the print of a human naked foot, and beside it the distinct mark of the pointed heel of the Affgh[a]n boot!—I hope my reader will give me credit ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... was buried in deepest silence. The company which rendered every scene pleasant was gone, never to return: his sheep, his goats, nay, even the poultry, were often fed from his hand: every thing served to distract. As for my children, they were by kind friends kept for some time out of my sight; for not only to view them fatherless distressed me, but their thoughtless mirth ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... quarter of an hour the posse was in motion. Flatray watched it disappear in the dust of the road without a smile. He had sent them out merely to distract the attention of the public and to get rid of as many as possible of the crowd. For he was quite as well aware as the leader of the posse that this search in the Galiuros was a wild-goose chase. Somewhere within three hundred yards of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... suffer; 85 Let us prize death as the best gift of nature — As a safe inn, where weary travellers, When they have journeyed through a world of cares, May put off life and be at rest for ever. Groans, weeping friends, indeed, and gloomy sables, May oft distract us with their sad solemnity: 91 The preparation is the executioner. Death, when unmasked, shows me a friendly face, And is a terror only at a distance; For as the line of life conducts me on 95 To Death's great court, the prospect seems more fair. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... day, however, has its end. All these vexations served at least to distract our friend's mind from the morning's discovery; and when at length, the last gun fired, he dropped into a boat to be pulled for shore, he was too far exhausted physically—having found scarcely a moment for bite or sup—to load his mind any more than did Walton's ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... separating report from truth. If Johnson then lamented that so little had ever been said about Butler, I might with more reason be led to complain that so much has been said about himself; for numberless informers but distract or cloud information, as glasses which multiply will for the most part be found also to obscure. Of a life, too, which for the last twenty years was passed in the very front of literature, every leader of a literary company, whether officer or subaltern, naturally becomes either author or critic, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... my dear, I think you hard better not break in upon the pious meditations of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker in his private study. A monk's cell and a minister's library are hardly the places for young ladies. They distract the attention of these good men from their devotions and their sermons. If you think you must go, you had better take Mrs. Hopkins with you. She likes religious conversation, and it will do her good too, and save a great deal of time for the minister, conversing with two at once. She ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the teacher. My reply usually is, "None: write your notes out carefully and fully; strive to understand them thoroughly; come to me for the explanation of anything you cannot understand; and I would rather you did not distract your mind by reading." A properly composed course of lectures ought to contain fully as much matter as a student can assimilate in the time occupied by its delivery; and the teacher should always recollect that his business is to feed, and not to cram ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Doctours & Clerkes curious, What moneth you of bookes to have such number, Since diuers doctrines through way contrarious, Doth man's minde distract and sore encomber. Alas blinde men awake, out of your slumber; And if ye will needes your bookes multiplye, With diligence endeuor ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... accidents of the road, an ambulance dashing up to lift his bruised hopes tenderly and take them off somewhere for sanitary treatment, or even some childish sympathy of theirs commissioned to run up and offer him a nosegay to distract him in his walk toward old disappointments and old cares. He only knew they were welcome visitants in his mind. Sometimes the mind seemed to him a clean-swept place, the shades down and no fire lighted, and these young creatures, in their heavenly implication of doing everything for ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... can he do the same now? On Monday, I am going with John in the yacht for a cruise amongst the Danish islands," said Mrs. Hardy, "do you think he would like to go with us? It would allow of his being better acquainted with us, and would distract his thoughts from dwelling on your ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... feel that to die is to be transferred suddenly, and with violence, into strange scenes, which must overwhelm and distract the senses. It seems to them that it must be like being whirled instantly into a distant, unknown city, and waking up amidst the confusion and strangeness of that place. We cannot believe that such is the experience of dying Christians. It would rather ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... should never be so gorgeous as to distract the mind from the picture. "Frames are to protect the picture and relate it ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... her distress. She ought not to go to him. Full well she knew that her presence might distract him from an all-important task. So she sat forlornly on the fore-hatch, waiting there until he might leave his post, reviewing all the bizarre procession of events since she climbed an elm-tree in the garden of Linden House on a Sunday afternoon now so remote that it seemed to be ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... inferior. She let him understand in the presence of others that he was stupid, and helped him with his work so that he had to think how much stronger she was. She evidently wished to take away from him all rights as master of the house. Sometimes she pretended to be very lively, to distract him and to prevent him from brooding. He had not done anything to carry out his plan, but she did not believe that he ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... that it was no use to wait any longer. Pearl was determined not to take his eyes off the skipper. Dory fussed a moment with the sheets, trying in this manner to distract the attention of the villain. Finally he let go the jib-sheet, and it ran out. With the key in his hand, he rushed forward, as if to secure the rope, but really ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... of what had occurred before that battle were none too clear. But, yes, he had wished Taggi and Togi present at that moment to distract the enraged beast. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... of the adoration she excited. If a swarm of school-boys can not enter a country church without turning all their eyes toward one pew, is it not possible that, when a girl comes in and seats herself in that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even Dr. Peewee may not entirely distract her mind, however he may rivet her eyes? As she takes her last glance at the Sunday toilet in her sunny dressing-room at home, and half turns to be sure that the collar is smooth, and that the golden curl nestles precisely as it should under ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... our natural condition indispensably require. We have every one of us a work to accomplish, wherein our eternal interests are at stake; a work to which we are naturally indisposed. We live in a world abounding with objects which distract our attention and divert our endeavours; and a deadly enemy is ever at hand to seduce and beguile us. If we persevere indeed, success is certain; but our efforts must know no remission. There is a call ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... this possibility made her hate me. The agony of her little one's departure, the fear of some dire discovery, the consciousness of guilt near enough of vicinage almost to seem her own, combined to nearly distract her mind, and it seemed like a joyful relief when I departed. The sudden release from that constant pressure of fear (she knew I could do nothing against them without money, credit, or friends) made her ill for a time, quite ill, she said. She knew not what was done ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... sharp weapons of political conspiracy. They must be permitted, therefore, to rave themselves out. And this they will do the sooner from their very number. There are too many prophets; they spoil the trade; the Mesmerizers disturb and distract each other's efforts; the fixed idea that is in them will not fix any where else. Those who, in the natural order of things, should be dupes, aspire to be leaders, and the leaders are at a dead struggle for some novelty wherewith to attract followers. We have, for instance, M. Pierre Leroux, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... hastily exclaimed, hoping by this trite commonplace to distract attention from the blush, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... were hovering near the poor old woman. The fact that Ted was contentedly munching a red apple told that he had already made his hawk-like descent on the stand of the market woman, and was now seeking to distract her attention so that his companion might also swoop down to seize a prize, when they would go off, laughing uproarously, as though they ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... nothing to distract him, Gus really did work. His standing in the Fifth sensibly increased. Merishall did not make elaborate jokes on his Latin, and Corker not once let fall the warning eye-glass preparatory to savaging him for his Greek, formerly ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... driving except Farnsworth, Patty would have felt frightened. But she knew his skill, and too, she knew that he never let excitement or enthusiasm run away with his judgment. So she sat as still as she could, striving to catch her breath in the face of the wind; and refraining from speech, lest she distract Bill's ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... though the damage has been much exaggerated, received some injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance through the Salarian gate, they fired the adjacent houses to guide their march, and to distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust [105] remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... he was simply indifferent to all in it except the humours. These would be wonderful. Harriet, worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss Abbott; Gino, worked by a cheque—what better entertainment could he desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour. He might be a puppet's puppet, but he knew exactly ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... light-hearted. Regnard, Moliere, Johnson, Gray, Burns, were all more or less given to it. Mendelssohn and Bayle were often so afflicted with it, that they were obliged to have recourse to toys, and to count the slates on the roof of the houses opposite, in order to distract their attention. Johnson says, that oftentimes he would have given a limb to raise ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... stand; once or twice in sound of the speaker's voice; but having so determinately carried her point in the morning, she did not choose to abandon her position and appear among the listeners, though sorely tempted to do so. She wandered into several side tents in hope of finding something to distract her attention; but she only found that ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... preponderance, and the weakness of its rival,—two-thirds of the power of Austria are now in arms against Austria itself, while a formidable confederacy, already formed in Transylvania, would, by a hostile attack, further distract even the weak remnant of its power. Could inducements such as these fail to awaken his ambition, or such hopes to animate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... not thought, of course, of going down to dinner; she had, instead, sent Victor word simply that she begged to be excused from joining him for that meal. Then, unable longer to endure Chou Nu's efforts to comfort or distract her, Sofia had stepped out of her street frock and into a negligee and, dismissing the maid, returned to the chaise-longue upon which, in vain hope of being able to cry out the wretchedness of her heart, she had thrown herself on first gaining the sanctuary ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary: none persuades him to itself. He would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an atheist, and wholly an atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none: indeed the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. He is at most a confused and wild Christian, not specialized by any form, but capable of all. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... my idiosyncrasies. I prefer a square, non-illegal style of business such as we are carrying on now. When I take money I want to leave some tangible object in the other fellow's hands for him to gaze at and to distract his attention from my spoor, even if it's only a Komical Kuss Trick Finger Ring for Squirting Perfume in a Friend's Eye. But if you've got a fresh idea, Andy,' says I, 'let's have a look at it. I'm not so wedded to petty graft that I would refuse something ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need, which others confessed, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Luis, and how sad! I am pained to think that it is, perhaps, through my fault, or partly so at least, that your father has caused you to spend a disagreeable day in these solitudes, taking you away from a solitude more congenial, where there would be nothing to distract your attention from your ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Kriehuber, and Simon Lowy, who will soon be back in Vienna. I shall be glad if you will give them in any case, whether now or later. If you want to give me a pleasure you will go and see my uncle Eduard Liszt, and try to distract him ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... understand. The dim religious light and sonorous sounds do not waken me to a keener sense of the call of God to be up and doing. They just make me sleepy. Besides being difficult as a rule to hear, there is too much around to distract my attention. I don't think Westminster Abbey helps me personally to attend to the service. On the contrary, I think it makes me think of the building. I used somehow to imagine that service in the open air was necessarily associated ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... to get the colt into a stable, barn, or other building sufficiently large for the early operations, and secluded from those sights and sounds so common in a farm-yard, which would be likely to distract his attention. In training a colt the squeaking of a litter of pigs has lost me the work of three hours. An outfield, empty barn, or bullock-shed, is better than any place near ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... I want, it is removing hindrances. I don't want to see anything to draw off my attention. I don't want a cornice, or an angle, or anything but a containing curve. I want diffused light and no single luminous centre to fix my eye, and so distract my mind from its one object of contemplation. The metaphysics of attention have hardly been sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object for a long time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's well-known story of the monks of Mount Athos and their contemplative ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a favorite of Josephine's; so Rose hoped he would help to distract her attention from those sorrows which a lapse of years ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... decry itself and extol its forbears Art is greater than Life Art that does not distract them without causing them to think Beauty! An awkward word—a perpetual begging of the question Certainty Death may be the end of man, or Death may be nothing Everything is worth the doing well Freedom from the dull tedium ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... on a divan in front of him, Baya would drone him monotonous tunes with a guitar in her fist; or else, to distract her lord and master, favour him with the Bee Dance, holding a hand-glass up, in which she reflected her white teeth and the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... to the dealer, or distract him by noise or gesture, while the cards are being dealt, such player, and not the dealer, shall refund, as provided by Rule 14, the ante or straddle of any player to whom a foul hand ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... body all alone. There was no bitterness in the feeling, however, because there was no one neglecting her whose duty it was to keep her heart up; but it threatened to grow upon her all the same, and in order to distract herself she went downstairs to choose a bouquet. She had several sent her for every occasion, and they were always arranged on a table in the hall so that she might take the one that pleased her best as she went out. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... what's wanted," said the Major, "to ensure the success of the day. A musical composition of yours, O'Grady, played by our own town band, will be quite likely to distract the Lord-Lieutenant's attention from the fact that here's no statue here for ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... watching for you, Monsieur. Madame had to come in, to avoid suspicion. If you can get back to the terrace by the way you came down, I will go again and distract the attention ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of so much travelling should make her ill, she was downcast and miserable when at length she reached the castle. She made excursions into the country round about, when sufficiently recovered, but found nothing to amuse or distract her. On all sides wide barren spaces met her eye, melancholy rather than pleasant to ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... man and a courteous. He was so full of pretty ways and dainty devices for to distract my mind, I never thought of counting. Nor yet did he keep score. Needs therefore must I hold him quit ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... ended, long before the time when I should have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the way he looks up and sighs, I conclude that my effort to distract him has simply increased his longing. The proverb is right. "You can't reason with a lover." [Aloud.] Well, she told me to tell you that she would have to come here this evening. I suppose she isn't satisfied with the necklace and is coming ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... "These doings in my house distract me. I met a fine gentleman, when I inquired who He was—why, he came to Clarinda. I met A footman too, and he came to Clarinda. My wife had the character of a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... side, a conclusion is certainly necessary both for the sake of clearness and emphasis, and because an unfinished argument is not a unit. If there are several contestants on each side, the fact that the opposing speakers intervene and distract the attention of the audience makes it even more necessary that each debater end his argument with a formal conclusion, and by means of it bind his work ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... nice management. I had done it the last time—it seemed impossible she should not come again after our interview; and for the next I had speedily ripened a fresh plan. A prisoner, if he has one great disability for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage: there is nothing to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love and preparing its manifestations. I had been then some days upon a piece of carving—no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion Rampant. This I proceeded to finish with what skill I was possessed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have they left me? the mist which obscures my sight allows me to distinguish nothing; the objects which surround me seem all confused; a thousand wild distorted images distract my ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... be patient with nothing to do," sighed the child, pressing her nose flatter and flatter against the glass as she looked up and down the dreary, deserted street, vainly hoping for something to distract ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and affairs, that you suppose our dissensions owing to French intrigues—we want no foreign causes; but in so precarious a letter as this I cannot enter into farther explanations; indeed the French need not be at any trouble to distract or weaken our councils! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Intellects. These Men need not be concerned with you for the whole Sentence; but if they can say a quaint thing, or bring in a Word which sounds like any one Word you have spoken to them they can turn the Discourse, or distract you so that you cannot go on, and by consequence if they cannot be as witty as you are, they can hinder your being any wittier than they are. Thus if you talk of a Candle, he can deal with you; and if you ask him to help you to some Bread, a Punster should ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... century ago, especially in Great Britain and the United States, but also in other countries, the method of allaying discontent was to distract public attention from politics altogether by stimulating the chase after private wealth. But as private wealth is more and more difficult to attain, this policy is rapidly replaced by the very opposite tactics, to keep the people absorbed in the political chase after the material ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Ethel took up the other half of the paper to try and distract her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... for the prosecution of the war was calculated to divide the forces and distract the attention of Ottocar. He himself was to penetrate into Bohemia, while his son was to invade Austria, and Meinhard of Tyrol to make a diversion on the side of Styria. To oppose this threatened invasion, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... with joy o'er the cheering prospect. She kissed and fondled Louise and even teased her. Reading or chatting to the blind girl, sewing her frocks or performing a thousand and one kindly services, her sole thought was to distract and enliven the prisoned soul behind ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... the cloth removed and every one began to walk around the room. To me it seemed like a dream, for, of all the decorations, soon nothing remained but the crystal fountain. When there was no further spectacle to distract me, then my understanding began to work and various considerations touching this business came into my mind. First, I pondered upon the outrageous excess and great expense incurred in a brief space by these banquets, for this fashion of progressive entertainments, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Forebodings! wretched, heart-rending forebodings distract my mind. I may no longer have a wife; and yet my impatient restlessness addresses her a letter. To-morrow will be three weeks since our separation, and not yet one line. Gracious God! for what am ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... epithet. I use it here. The Dixville Notch is, briefly, picturesque,—a fine gorge between a crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice,—a pass easily defensible, except at the season when raspberries would distract sentinels. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Nature's Quakers and hold communion with the silent worshippers through whom the Spirit speaks. His outdoor religion is in the Salvation Army class, and he can't warm up enough to admire a potted geranium unless he hears a bass drum or a hand organ to distract him on the side. If the sweet air and comforting silence of the country were to fall upon New York, the town would probably drop to even lower levels from the shock. The country boy, who has been used to concentrating on the wood-pile, runs the country; or, if it happens ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Manfred; "these blockheads distract me. Out of my sight, Diego! and thou, Jaquez, tell me in one word, art thou sober? art thou raving? thou wast wont to have some sense: has the other sot frightened himself and thee too? Speak; what is it ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... they were coming down with intent to assault. So the Sub-Lieutenant fired the rest of the torpedoes, which at least started off correctly from the shell-shaken tubes, and must have crossed the enemy's line. When torpedoes turn up among a squadron, they upset the steering and distract the attention of all concerned. Then the destroyer judged it time to take stock of her injuries. Among other minor defects she could ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... present social order. Do not let the wit or perversity of the adversary or, what is often a far worse influence, the zeal and overstatement of the headlong advocate, do not let the manifest personal deficiencies of this spokesman or that, distract you from the living heart in Socialism, its broad generosity of conception, its immense claim in kinship and direction upon ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... gain, as holding of ostleries, taking of ocker beside conscience and good lawes, and bearing worldly offices in noblemen and gentlements houses, marchandise, and such like, buying of victuals, and keeping to the dearth, and all such worldly occupations, as may distract them from their charge, and may be slanderous to the pastorall calling, be admonished and brought to the acknowledging of their sins, and if they continue therein, to ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... when she heard that Prince Muishkin, the last of his and her line, had arrived in beggar's guise, a wretched idiot, a recipient of charity—all of which details the general gave out for greater effect! He was anxious to steal her interest at the first swoop, so as to distract her thoughts ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... be quite away even from my villa, and I find it delightful to sit there, especially during the Saturnalia, when all the rest of the house rings with the merry riot and shouts of the festival-makers; for then I do not interfere with their amusements, and they do not distract me from ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... my fan was as much to distract your attention as anything else, and at the same time to identify myself to Mr. Rankin, whom I had never met. You knew him, of ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... the other day, overwhelmed by the sufferings of my poor body, I began to re-read my treaty of Combourgeoisie with your city, to distract the ennui of my malady, when the countess' little dog who had been gamboling about me dragged off, while I was not looking, the ribbon and seal, which greatly annoyed me. I send you back the paper, therefore, asking ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson's Church, with no more cause than old Parson Kendall's stuttering through the prayer for the King's Majesty—and this long before the late trouble had come to distract our country. She walked our fields beside us, but in company with those who walked them no longer; when she looked towards Lantine 'twas with an angry affection. In the household she filled her dead mother's place, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... gestures characteristic of stage magicians] 1. /v./ To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic. 2. /n./ The act of handwaving. "Boy, what ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... voice out of the dust, for being in a weak and low condition; moving from one place to another, for translation from one office, dignity, or dominion, to another; great earthquakes, and the shaking of heaven and earth, for the shaking of kingdoms, so as to distract or overthrow them; the creating a new heaven and earth, and the passing away of an old one, or the beginning and end of the world, for the rise and ruin of the body politic ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... which are evident. The shady road, the fragrant air, the glimpses of the broad river glittering in the morning sun, and the purple cliff opposite, are indeed a dream of beauty. He more than half wishes there was no business to distract ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... has begun at the wrong end. If practice be the whole he is taught, practice must also be the whole he will ever know: if he be uninstructed in the elements and first principles upon which the rule of practice is founded, the least variation from established precedents will totally distract and bewilder him: ita lex scripta est[o] is the utmost his knowlege will arrive at; he must never aspire to form, and seldom expect to comprehend, any arguments drawn a priori, from the spirit of the laws and the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... weaver. "The Dragon won't be spoon-fed. Its life depends on its getting its proper, natural nourishment. So that won't do. As for having it here—that's an impossibility. Much you would attend to the spindles when the Dragon was bellowing. Besides, it would distract the other girls. So you see, this won't do. And there are other reasons. I couldn't receive you without your husband's consent. But the Dragon remains as the insuperable difficulty. Fiddle-de-dee, Matabel! Don't ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... towns at the same time. The plan now resolved on was to divide the army into four parts; and while two of them, consisting of Canadians under Major Livingston, and a small party under Major Brown, were to distract the attention of the garrison by making two feints against the upper town of St. Johns and Cape Diamond, the other two, led, the one by Montgomery in person, and the other by Arnold, were to make real attacks on opposite sides of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Sinclair's regiment had not kept with Monkhoven, it being thought better that they should march by different routes so as to distract the attention of the Norwegians, who were bitterly hostile. The Sinclairs were attacked several times, but beat off their assailants; when passing, however, through the tremendous gorge of Kringellen, the peasantry of the whole ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... his habit at times to come to matins at St. Albans, and then to return to his hermit's cell and pass the time in prayer and self-scourgings. Strange to say, though the devils could not disturb the holy man at his prayers, the nightingales of Northaw woods did distract him, and he therefore prayed that God would keep these little birds away, lest he should take too much delight in their sweet songs; whereupon no more nightingales sang in those woods, and it is recorded that long after his time no nightingale dared ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... beyond that the room where sat the sergeant-major and his clerks. The windows, snow-battered and frost-bitten, gave abundant light from the skies, but none on the surroundings—the view being limited to scratch-hole surveys. There was nothing to distract attention from what might be going on within, and all eyes were on the two burly captains who entered at 8.30, fur-capped, fur-gloved, in huge overcoats and arctics. The wind had begun, even earlier than usual, to whine and stir as ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... back into the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her meditations. Truly matters had gone very crookedly. Maryon Rooke had been the first cause of all the trouble. Then she herself had intervened to distract Nan's thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to her. And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to another woman, had fallen in love with Nan, while the latter was philandering desperately with a totally ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... chocolate-pot uncheerfully. This breakfast gift had reached her with an ominous regularity on Mondays and Thursdays for a month, and the time had come when something must be done about it. But she did not permit unpleasant thoughts, if unpleasant they really were, to distract her from the casual delights of retrospection and the pleasures of her repast, which she finished with a thoroughness that spoke more eloquently of the wholesomeness of her appetite even than the real excellence of the cooking. Upon Titine, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... generally very precise and exact in his habits. He has no one but himself to look after, nothing to distract his attention from his own affairs; and Mr. Dodgson was the most precise and exact of old bachelors. He made a precis of every letter he wrote or received from the 1st of January, 1861, to the 8th of the same month, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... indeed In an unlucky hour, and received little heed. A half-languid glance was the most that he lent at That time to these homilies. Primum dementat Quem Deus vult perdere. Alfred in fact Was behaving just then in a way to distract Job's self had Job known him. The more you'd have thought The Duke's court to Matilda his eye would have caught, The more did his aspect grow listless to hers, And the more did it beam to Lucile de Nevers. And Matilda, the less she found love in the look ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... because the mind, not knowing how to occupy itself, and not finding in its own resources the thoughts that elevate and nourish it, is obliged, in order to avoid lonesomeness, to dwell upon images which at least distract and weaken it, and not unfrequently disturb the peace of ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... take care of that in short order. Tom was a big, black, bobtailed cat eleven years old who had lived with Ed since he was a kitten. Not having any feline companionship to distract him, his only interest was hunting mice. Generally he killed a lot more than he could eat, racking the surplus in neat piles beside the trail, on the doorstep, or on a slab in the cellar. He was the best ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... it was done. That wretched little doctor was in the plot. Somehow or other he had communicated with the President; probably he knew of the door. Then, I fancied, they must have worked something in this way. The doctor comes in to distract the sentries, while his Excellency moves the bed. Finding that they took a look every five minutes, he told the President. Then he went and got Johnny Carr ready. Returning, he takes the President's place on the ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... endless disputes between the religious and secular clergy[10] at this period tended to distract the attention of both from their spiritual work, and to give rise to considerable disorder and discontent. On the one side, men like the Paris professor, John Poilly and Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... deprive the enemy dukes of their British titles, for which he has been clamouring these two years, would shortly be introduced. But for the rest Mr. BONAR LAW was not inclined at this crisis in our fate to encourage the raising of questions, most of them acutely controversial, which would distract attention from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, and swerved in his flight in order to distract the other's aim. And still the shot did not come. With each jump of the horse, the woods sprang nearer. They were only two hundred yards away and still ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... too, come from God? Is it not God who is holding the man's eyes waking? Is it not God who is making him search out his own heart, and commune with his spirit? I believe that so it is. If any one says, 'It is all caused by the darkness and silence. You have nothing to distract your attention as you have by day, and therefore the mind becomes unwholesomely excited, and feeds upon itself,' I answer, then they are good things, now and then, this darkness and this silence, if they do prevent ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... on the head," said his uncle. "Whoppington holds up all the rest of the country. There is the Government that makes everything go. There's no business there to speak of; no manufacturing, no agriculture in the country round—nothing to distract your attention but the power of the Administration that lies behind all the rest. Just think what this country would be without Whoppington! Just imagine the capital city sinking into the ground and what would we all do? Even here at Slowburgh what ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... an extra twenty-five peseta note, and I gave it. Afterwards, having no other personal affairs to distract my attention, I wandered through the streets of Granada and into the chill cathedral before going up to make acquaintance with the Carmen de ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... change; they changed essentially with the collapse of the Confederacy. There was no more organized armed resistance to the national government, to distract which loyal State governments in the South might have been efficacious. But there was an effort of persons lately in rebellion to get possession of the reconstructed Southern State governments for the purpose, in part, of using their power to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and the warmest corner for sleep. When he had acquired a nut, a kernel of corn, or a piece of fruit, he sat him down and examined it thoroughly and conscientiously and then, conscientiously and thoroughly, he devoured it. No extraneous interest could distract his attention; not for a moment. That he had sounded the seriousness of life is proved by the fact that he had observed and understood the flighty character of Funny Face. When Funny Face acquired a titbit, Darwin took up a hump-backed position near at hand, his bright ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the slightest opportunity, eating filthily, sleeping in the dirt, in stuffiness, with fleas, stinks, smells, moral filth, and so on... And it's obvious that all our nice talk is only carried on to distract ourselves and others. Tell me, where are those creches we hear so much of? and where are those reading-rooms? People only write novels about them; they don't really exist. Only dirt, vulgarity, and Asiatic ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... put an end to his life. Pitti goes on to relate the frenzy of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused all the old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for the Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici endeavored to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... protracted. Again foreign armies invaded Bohemia, and internal dissension continued to distract the nation. Those who remained faithful to the gospel were subjected to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... and something in his throat that groaned and groaned. It was absorbing. White figures hovered about him, he saw the hairy forearms of a man in shirt sleeves, lights glared and went out, strange smells entered at his nose and circulated through his whole body, but nothing could distract his attention from ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... all the more zeal. He read many books, some of which seemed beyond a boy's ken, but he got something from each of them. His power of concentration already surprised his family. If he was absorbed in a chapter, nothing which went on outside of him, either noise or interruption, could distract his attention. His passion for natural his tory increased. At the age of ten, he opened in one of the rooms of his home "The Roosevelt Museum of Natural History." Later, he devoted himself more particularly to birds, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... really are enough to distract any one. Don't you see the impropriety of it? Don't you see that this will get all over the place? People will say that a Middleton girl dressed so unsuitably, so loudly, that—Oh, don't you ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... a law class for women, in which fifteen matriculated. Mrs. Lockwood had been denied admission the previous year to the law class of Columbia College for the reason, as given by the trustees, "that it would distract the attention of the young men." About this time a young colored woman, Charlotte Ray of New York, was graduated from the law class of Howard University and admitted to the bar with the class. Of the fifteen women who entered the National University only two completed the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the many events that served to distract Philip de Chamondrin's mind from his disappointment and delay his marriage to Antoinette de Mirandol. Anxious as the Marquis was to hasten this union, he shared the general apprehension too strongly to urge his son to marry at such a time. The ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... endeavors,—to forget the body. The truth of the matter is that the flesh and blood in their highest song toward which we should strive are so occupied with praising God that they completely lack self-consciousness, and do not distract the intellect or the will. God is with them in naked purity. It is His simplest and dearest starry music. He demands that our life should be a programme of infinite proportions. And yet I wonder if a saint ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... which he is alone indebted for his fame; but neither fame nor profit was the immediate result; and the author of the Ode on the Passions had little reason to expect, from its reception by the public, that it was destined to live as long as the passions themselves animate or distract the world. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... abhors lengthiness; like the Drama, it must be kept doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... very hard to distract her attention, so as to keep his guests until the next day, but he did not succeed, for she never joked when there was business to be done, and as soon as they had had their coffee she ordered her girls to make haste ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... seems," he said, "that that fair-haired daughter of the Greeks, Madonna Elena, the slim, the rosy-fingered disturber of the repose of cities, hath appeared to distract this our city of Padua. Me at least she hath distraught. Fair friends, sister and brother poets, you shall understand that henceforth I devote myself to this lady and her praise. More, I vow a vow, and call upon you to register it in the Golden Book of the Amorous Gests of Padua, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the animal out of harness. This failing, spread clean litter beneath the belly or turn the patient out on the dung heap. Some seek to establish sympathetic action by pouring water from one vessel into another with dribbling noise. Others soothe and distract the attention by slow whistling. Friction of the abdomen with wisps of straw may succeed, or it may be rubbed with ammonia and oil. These failing, an injection of 2 ounces of laudanum or of an infusion of 1 ounce of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... been known to come. Slowly the sun swept across the huge arch of the heavens, and as the shadows shifted from the black rocks which jutted upward from above his cell, so did the hermit regulate his terms of prayer and meditation. There was nothing on earth to draw his eye, or to distract his mind, for the grassy plain below was as void from month to month as the heaven above. So the long hours passed, until the red rim slipped down on the further side, and the day ended in the same pearl-grey shimmer with which it had begun. Once two ravens circled for some days round the lonely ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... miraculous recovery. But now bottles and boxes had vanished, and her last trust was gone. One instinct only inspired her now—to be near Jeanne, never leave her, gaze at her unceasingly. The doctor, wishing to distract her attention from the terrible sight, strove, by assigning some little duties to her, to keep her at a distance. But she ever and ever returned, drawn to the bedside by the physical craving to see. She waited, standing erect, her arms hanging ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... upon the details of Wilfrid's first affection, Beatrice had found one point which never lost its power to distract her; it was the thought of all the correspondence that must have passed between him and Emily. What had become of those letters? Had they been mutually returned? It was impossible to discover. Not even ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... thought is receiving articulate birth on the tongue. Its purpose is to make the words grow large, as it were; to expand and emphasise their meaning; hence the wisdom of the advice—"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action." If the action distract the listeners' attention from the word its ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... thee take Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!" At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice, He strove again to raise his drooping head And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain, And on her trembling bosom sunk away. Now other fears distract his weeping friends: But short their grief! for soon his life return'd, And, with return of life, return'd their ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... him three times to rise, to the immense merriment of the cardinals; and that he had a daughter, Novella, so accomplished in law as to be able to read her father's lectures in his absence, and so beautiful, that she had to read behind a curtain lest her face should distract the attention of the students. He is said to have died at Bologna of the plague in 1348, and an epitaph in the church of the Dominicans in which he was buried, calling him Rabbi Doctorum, Lux, Censor, Normaque Morum, testifies to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the initiate infinite and distant vistas, he determined to give the finishing touches to the decorations of his home. He would procure precious hot-house flowers and thus permit himself a material occupation which might distract him, calm his nerves and rest his brain. He also hoped that the sight of their strange and splendid nuances would in some degree atone for the fanciful and genuine colors of style which he was for the time to lose from his ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... served to distract Mary V's mind from her mother's lack of feeling. She obediently turned out the lights,—all the lights, since they meant to kill Johnny in cold blood!—and wept anew upon the darkened porch, while swarms of mosquitoes hummed just without the screen, sending a slim scout through now and then ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... one thing while seemingly attending to another; at the same time his eyes and his gestures and his 'patter' misdirect the attention to what is apparently the essential field of operation, but really only a blind to distract attention away from the true scene of action. The conjurer directs your attention to what he does not do; he does not do what he pretends to do; and to what he actually does, he is careful neither to appear to direct his own attention nor to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... and copy out for me forty times the compound verb, 'I cough without necessity to distract the attention of my comrade ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... that you retained for that wretch one particle of the love of which he was never worthy, I would die before I would distract you by telling you what I feel. No! were your husband the master of your heart, I might perhaps love you; but ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Pol was relating an interesting story, so as to distract her attention; but, while talking, he listened with ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... stroke of fate. I felt that the thing one ought to aim at doing was to look experience steadily in the face, whether sweet or bitter, to interrogate it firmly, to grasp its significance. If one cowers away from it, if one tries to distract and beguile the soul, to forget the grief in feverish activity, well, one may succeed in dulling the pain as by some drug or anodyne; but the lesson of life is thereby deferred. Why should one so faint-heartedly ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Barton nothing; she knew but one set of tricks—if they failed she repeated them: she was guided by the indubitableness of instinct rather than by the more wandering light that is reason. Mr. Barton, who it was feared might talk of painting, and so distract the attention from more serious matters, was left in Galway, and amid eight or nine men collected here, there, and everywhere out of the hotels and barrack-rooms, the three ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... shall not cause any suspicion, Bert," said Harry, presently, "you go and get the Midget and stroll forward. I do not need your help any more than to distract attention from ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... got on to cricket," breathed Hal. "He does know a little about that, and may possibly talk sense for ten minutes. Come along, Lorraine, and don't address Baby at present, for fear you distract him from his game and start him off struggling to be clever again. As it is Sunday night, perhaps Dick would like to read us his latest effusions in the way of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... recalling, it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... in their direction, and the vision that meets me, as my eyes focus, distresses my soul. Their senses are like an imperfect mirror, magnifying all that is bad in one another, and distorting anything still partially good when that exists. All those things that might at least distract them are hollow, their misery being the inevitable result of the condition of mind to which they became accustomed on earth and which brought them to Cassandra. But let us turn to something brighter. "Though the solar system may seem complex, the sun is but a star among the millions ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... blind fear of patents and "monopolies" was turned aggressively against the Bell Company. A few Senators and legitimate capitalists were lifted up as the figureheads of the crusade. And a loud hue-and-cry was raised in the newspapers against "high rates and monopoly" to distract the minds of the people from the real issue of legitimate business versus ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the colonel grunted, tracing the black thread with his eye. "As long as there is plenty of flimflam to distract the viewer." ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... betrothal—though I cared not a whit what happened to Walter Butler, it is true, yet fell sick o' worry when you and Rosamund Barry went a-sailing—not that I feared you'd drown, either. O Carus, Carus, you distract me, you worry me; you tell me nothing, nothing, and I never knew what you were about there in New York when you were not with me!—doubtless a-courting every petticoat on Hanover Square, for all ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... cannon were massed under General Ducrot in the Bois de Vincennes and in the adjacent villages. About 15,000 men, under General Vinoy, were behind the southern line of redoubts close by the village of Villejuif. Troops were also placed near St. Denis and in the peninsula of Genevilliers to distract the attention of the enemy. It was arranged that early in the morning General Vinoy should push forward in the direction of L'Hay and Choisy, and then, when the Prussian reserves had been attracted to the south by this demonstration, Ducrot should throw bridges over the Marne and endeavour ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... but little relief from the waters—they could not minister to a mind diseased—and she had not the joyous, careless mind of her predecessor and grandmother; nor are we told that she attempted to compose amusing histories to distract her thought, nor ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... this. It was not one of your stupid practices at the net, with two burly professionals bumping down balls at your body and telling you to "Come out to them, Sir." It was a quiet practice in my rooms after breakfast, with no moving object to distract my attention and spoil my stroke. The bat comes up well. It is light, and yet there is plenty of wood in it. Its drives along the carpet were excellent; its cuts and leg glides all that could be wished. I was a little disappointed with its half-arm hook, which dislodged a teacup and gave what ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... it was a standing rule that he was not to be disturbed. The study was a cosy room on the ground floor, built out at the back, and so removed from all noise of passing to and fro. It had no outlook to distract the attention, and no man was ever less addicted to day-dreaming. To work whilst he worked and play whilst he played was the golden rule which enabled Reeve for over fifty years to get through as much hard work as a successful lawyer, to do as much hard writing as a successful novelist, to hunt, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... had not been chosen as general agent of an antislavery society, but President of the United States, to perform certain functions exactly defined by law. Whatever were his wishes, it was no less duty than policy to mark out for himself a line of action that would not further distract the country, by raising before their time questions which plainly would soon enough compel attention, and for which every day was making ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... how, when he sat alone, ill and dull and irritable, Ram Dass had tried to distract him by describing the passers by, and there was one child who passed oftener than any one else; he had begun to be interested in her—partly perhaps because he was thinking a great deal of a little ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her. "I could do nothing," she said. "When we drove up to the gate she jumped out and declared that I must come on home. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn't yield. Two old women were in the house and she said that they were company enough; she wanted to think and they would not distract her thoughts. I told her that if she would agree to let me stay I would not say a word, but she shook her head. 'You shall hear from me to-morrow,' were her words, 'but you must leave me to myself to-night. It is of no use to urge me.' I saw that it wasn't, and I drove ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... brusquerie of her two remarks to the man had struck her own ear unpleasantly: they were neither polished nor courteous. Why was she so silly as to let this nobody, who had nothing whatever to do with her, so annoy and distract her at his pleasure? Above all, by what trick of his look had he made her feel, the moment his eyes fell upon her, that his apology had not settled the Beach episode, exactly, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... proprietary of the country, and to put in such an army as may be able to make head to the enemy. These two things being so contrary to her Majesty's disposition—the one, for that it breedeth a doubt of a perpetual war, the other, for that it requireth an increase of charges—do marvellously distract her, and make her repent that ever she entered into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have fortunately had so much to distract your thoughts that you have not had time to dwell upon your loss. Moreover, you have needed all your strength and your energy for your search for your sister, and right sure am I that your father, who was as sensible as he ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... listen to what was going on. The bedroom door was half an inch open, and through the slit he could catch a glimpse of the clean-shaven face of the doctor, looking wearier and more anxious than before. Then he rushed downstairs like a lunatic, and running to the door he tried to distract his thoughts by watching what; was going on in the street. The shops were all shut, and some rollicking boon companions came shouting along from the public-house. He stayed at the door until the stragglers had thinned down, and then came back to his seat by ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all."[76] The senses and the memory, which collect and store up facts, must be assisted; there must be a ministration of the senses and another of the memory. For not only are instances required, but these must be arranged in such a manner as not to distract or confuse the mind, i.e. tables and arrangements of instances must be constructed. In the preliminary collection the greatest care must be taken that the mind be absolutely free from preconceived ideas; nature is only to be conquered by obedience; man must ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... is one of the great experiences of life, and he who practises it has acquired an infinitely valuable possession. People fly to crowds for happinesss not knowing that all the happiness they find there they must take with them. Thus they divert and distract that within them which creates power and joy, until by flying always away from themselves, seeking satisfaction from without rather than from within, they become infinitely boresome to themselves, so that they can scarcely bear a ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... operations there were wholly secondary, and that Trichinopoli was still the all-important point. The fall of that place would more than neutralize Clive's successes at Arcot; and he, therefore, did not suffer Clive's operations to distract his attention here. Strong reinforcements and a battering train were sent forward to the besiegers; and, by repeated messages, he endeavoured to impress upon Law and Chunda Sahib the necessity of pressing forward ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... even religion, with her, was a mere graceful sham, a kind of theatrical effect used to tone down her natural hypocrisy. My own thoughts began to harass and weary me. I took up a volume of philosophic essays and began to read, in an endeavor to distract my mind from dwelling on the one perpetual theme. The day wore on slowly enough; and I was glad when the evening closed in, and when Vincenzo, remarking that the night was chilly, kindled a pleasant wood-fire in my room, and lighted the lamps. A little while before ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... anxious about the morrow. Do to-day's duty, fight to-day's temptation; and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them. Enough for you that your Saviour for whom you fight is just and merciful; for he rewardeth every man according to his work. Enough ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... still more. The secret? Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvas furiously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me, they crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits—I couldn't distract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard passages between. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up with some lying paint. And how ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... she could not tell whether it was pain or rebellion or despair, crossed Mrs. Bell's face, and Silvia hesitated and then went on rather hurriedly, as if, knowing she had struck a false note, she sought to distract the other woman's thought from it. "I am trying to demonstrate the glorious mission that belongs to woman when she fills her predestined sphere of economic independence and ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... swayed by passion—by hope, fear, exultation, or grief—but only and always by reason. Learn therefore to obey reason and reason only. Do not permit yourself to be drawn from the true path by fear of threats, even of death, nor by grief, even for your dearest friends. Such feelings warp your reason, distract your judgment, and deflect you from the right course. When passion—feeling—comes in conflict with reason, you must drive feeling away. Your reason may not always be right; nevertheless it is the best guide you have, and you ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... crusade. At Acre he very nearly fell a victim to a fanatic belonging to a body which counted assassination a religious duty. His wife, Eleanor of Castile, who was tenderly attached to him, had to be led out of his tent, lest her bitter grief should distract him during an operation which the surgeons held to be necessary. In 1272 Henry III. died, and his son, though in a distant land, was quietly accepted ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... afternoons, and Bluebell was thrown on nursery and school-room for companionship—insipid pabulum to the vanity of a young lady in her first glimpse of conquest, and who believed she had stricken down a quarry worthy of her bow. Having nothing to distract her, she considered the problem exhaustively from morning till night, and, if she were not in love with him before, she had got him into her head now, if not into her heart. His being so much with Cecil did not strike her as any clue to the mystery. They were relations, of course, or nearly ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... a little jealous to see lavished on a dog caresses, such as had been given to him only once. He tried to distract Beth's attention. ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... military position on the Atlantic coast of the United States; and although the two could not communicate by land, they did support each other as naval stations in a war essentially dependent upon maritime power. Philadelphia served no purpose but to divide and distract British enterprise. Absolutely dependent for maintenance upon the sea, the forces in it and in New York could not cooeperate; they could not even unite except by sea. When Clinton relieved Howe as commander-in-chief, though less than a hundred ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... mind back with some effort from the consideration of the greater issues to fix it on the smaller ones. In its way Drusilla's interference was a welcome diversion, since the point she raised was important enough to distract Olivia's attention from decisions too ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... not only to distract ourselves, but also with the laudable intention of endowing the Selenite smoking ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... in the Nile, something inside was asking, "Has Anthony fallen in love with Monny Gilder?" "What scrapes has that blessed girl got into?" "Has anything happened to worry Biddy?" Even that nameless but incomparable tomb on the hill of Kom esh-Shukafa could not distract my thoughts from the sealed envelopes; and three very modern handwritings came obstinately between my eyes and the matchless wall-paintings—paintings as fresh in their underground hiding-place as if finished yesterday instead of in days when it was ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson |
