"Diverting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... caciques of Bogota were protected from desecration by diverting the course of a river and making the grave in its bed, and then letting the stream return to its natural course. Alaric, the leader of the Goths, was secretly buried in the same way. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... first. My good old creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr Goldsmith, author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children. That gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as you ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... a kind of mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy of order; in its efforts to discover the best place for everything, it ends by diverting everything from its right function and locality, and making everything as inopportune as itself. It was a mistake to cut off all the lights this evening, on some pretext or the other. The rooms of the old mansion are not packed with bales of cotton, but with men who have ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... pair, finding them infinitely diverting; and was only brought back to his immediate duty by the insistence of the small ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... spend their whole lives on the water, while many who are employed during the day on land sleep in boats on the various rivers. This condition of things corresponds in some degree to that described by Captain Marryat in that fine old story "Jacob Faithful," in the early chapters of which we get diverting glimpses of life on board a Thames lighterman. But the river population of China is still more absolutely aquatic in manner of life than the Thames barge-folk. The boats in which this class of the population live ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... the power of depth, for which we have yet no appropriated term, with sensibility. How great the distance is in all, and that the lowest degrees are adopted as the exponent terms, not for their own sakes, but merely because they may be used with less hazard of diverting the attention from the kind by peculiar properties arising out of the degree, is evident from the third instance, unless the theorist can be supposed insane enough to apply sensation in good earnest ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... when Thorsteinn was diverting himself she happened to pass along the street near the dungeon and heard singing so sweet that she declared she had never heard the like. She was walking with several retainers, and told them to go in and find out who it was that had such a magnificent voice. They called out and asked ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... said to depend on the amount of consciousness which we are giving to the fact of its transition. Thus, when the mind is unoccupied and suffering from ennui, we feel time to move sluggishly. On the other hand, interesting employment, by diverting the thoughts from time, makes it appear to move at a more rapid pace. This fact is shown in the common expressions which we employ, such as "to kill time," and the German Langweile. Similarly, it is said that when we are eagerly anticipating an event, as the arrival of a ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... am speaking, continue the review at intervals, without producing any pause in my discourse! How many other sensations are experienced by me during this period, without so much as interrupting, that is, without materially diverting, the train of my ideas! My eye successively remarks a thousand objects that present themselves. My mind wanders to the different parts of my body, and receives a sensation from the chair on which ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Schmidt, President of the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works, offered to sell to the City of San Francisco certain rights to the water of Lake Tahoe, the dam at the outlet, contract for a deed to two and a half acres of land on which the outlet dam was constructed, a diverting dam in the Truckee River, a patent to the land (forty acres) on which this land stood, and the maps and surveys for a complete line conveying the water of Lake Tahoe to the city of the Golden Gate. He offered to construct this line, including a tunnel ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... young creatures in short skirts—Gertrudes and Adeles of that particular stratum, or Katies and Maggies, if preferred. Johnny sat there happy enough: an early example of the young business warrior diverting himself after the fray. Years afterward the scene came back to me when I met with a showy painting in the resonant new lobby of one of the greater hotels. It showed a terrace overlooking some placid Greek sea; the happy warrior standing ungirt and uncasqued, with ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... digest the recommendations. However, the concept of Rapid Dominance requires stepping to a new level of getting inside the opposition's decision loop. Rapid Dominance at the ultimate level would enable stopping, diverting, or changing the decision process and decision executing machinery/systems either preemptively or reactively in time to ensure core ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... Turkish generalship and organization were negligible quantities, but Germany could supply those defects, and Turkish bravery and man-power could be used as a valuable means of distracting Russia's attention and diverting forces from the Polish and Galician fronts. This had been the main purpose of the campaign in the Caucasus which Turkey waged in the winter. They began by seizing Tabriz in the province of Azerbaijan, which though nominally Persian had been for some time occupied partly by Russian ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... hostess. "But girls, what shall we do about scouting this summer?" she asked, diverting suddenly to a more serious question. "You see, there is no troop here, and it is such an opportunity for good scouting, with all the wilds of the ocean and cliffs, as a background. I feel perhaps, ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... under Buell, wrest from the South the possession of Tennessee and Alabama—as a base for attack upon Georgia and cutting through to the seaboard; and to push the army under Grant down through Mississippi to the Gulf. These movements would not only weaken the Confederacy, by diverting so many men, ill to be spared, to watch the various columns; but would, moreover, wrest from it the great grain-producing and cattle-grazing sections from which the armies were mainly fed. Simultaneously ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... indignity to their master, to dispute a right of which he had hitherto been in peaceable possession; and that their instructions imported, they should break off the conference unless the Dutch would acknowledge England's claim to Greenland. What was still more diverting (continued Grotius) they added, that they had not then their titles, but would shew them to Caron, the Dutch Agent in England, and, they flattered themselves, on seeing them, he would yield the point. They like better (adds ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... looked at Bessie, who blushed furiously, but said nothing, realizing that silence was the best means of diverting her father's attention from the subject, and preventing his ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... happened, rich in letters to-day. The bi-weekly packet from Deadham—addressed in Mary Fisher's careful copy-book hand—arrived at luncheon time, and contained, among much of apparently lesser interest, a diverting chronicle of Tom Verity's impressions and experiences during the first six weeks of his Indian sojourn. The young man's gaily self-confident humour had survived his transplantation. He wrote in high feather, quite unabashed by the novelty of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to sit up all night as long as the gin was handy, an excellent trait in a navigator. About his neck he wore a felt bag containing ten or a dozen assorted marbles with which he furnished his vacant socket according to his fancy, and the effect of his frequent changes was both unusual and diverting. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... virtue is treated but as a subject of romance. If Virginia had been virtuous, she would never have forsaken her mother and me. I do nothing but think of her, and she has forgotten me. I am wretched, and she is diverting herself. The thought distracts me; I cannot bear myself! Would to Heaven that war were declared in India! I would go there ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... his heart was happy in the happiness of those he loved, wherever he found an intellectual society to animate the mind, diverting and amusing him without imposing the chains of etiquette, we vainly seek the faintest trace of melancholy. But two great griefs soon befell him at Pisa, for sorrow never made long truces with Byron. Truly might we say that fate ceased not from making him pay for the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... dress. I looked at her, she raised her face as if by the same impulse which had made me raise mine; and gazing at me without saying a word, she burst into tears. "Why do you weep?" I asked with anxious emotion, but in a low tone for fear of disturbing or diverting the course of her silent thoughts. "From happiness," she answered. Her lips smiled, while big tears rolled down her cheeks in shining drops, like the dew of spring. "Yes, from happiness," she resumed. "This day, this hour, this sky, this spot, this peace, this silence, this ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... whether it will pay, depends on the value of the land before drainage, the cost of the operation, and the value of the land when completed. And the cost of the operation includes always, not only the money and labor expended in it, but also the loss to other land of the owner, by diverting from it the capital which would otherwise be applied to it. Where labor and capital are limited so closely as they are in all our new States, it is a question not only how can they be profitably applied, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... he sat down by the side of the old man; and his lady, with a degree of reverence which had something in it almost diverting, followed ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... town of Middleburg. It lay about half-way between the St. Johns and the Atlantic, Gulf and West India Company's Railroad, extending from Fernandina to Cedar Keys, on the Gulf of Mexico, intended as part of a quick route to Havana. The building of this railroad, by diverting from it the trade and transportation of a considerable region of country, had utterly ruined Middleburg, and it was as lone and deserted as Pompeii under the ashes of Vesuvius. Hardly a family was to be ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... "It is his name that is all I know." He had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation, a distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words. "Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... spurious sanctification, is still doing its work of deception. Under various forms it exhibits the same spirit as in the days of Luther, diverting minds from the Scriptures, and leading men to follow their own feelings and impressions rather than to yield obedience to the law of God. This is one of Satan's most successful devices to cast reproach ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... this melancholy reflection, the Frenchman submitted gracefully to the compulsory delay. He made himself amiable and merry, and even diverting, and enchanted the ladies with his good humor. Before the end of the day he was friends with everybody. At his request, the famous document was brought out. He studied it carefully and minutely for a long time, and finally declared his ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... obviously calculated to cast a most unfavourable and even sinister light on the moral character of the new Shakespeare; whose possibly suspicious readiness to attack the vices of others with a view to diverting attention from his own was signally exemplified in the well-known fact that, even while putting on a feint of respect and tenderness for his memory, he had exposed the profligate haunts and habits of Christopher Marlowe under the transparent pseudonym ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... They support us, and we have undertaken to teach them. It is only under this pretence that we have excused ourselves from work. But what have we taught them, and what are we now teaching them? They have waited for years—for tens, for hundreds of years. And we keep on diverting our minds with chatter, and we instruct each other, and we console ourselves, and we have utterly forgotten them. We have so entirely forgotten them, that others have undertaken to instruct them, and we have not even perceived it. We have spoken ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... resting at a spot within the immediate neighbourhood, a person of illustrious name and ancestry, who would doubtless be gratified to witness the diverting actions of which this one has recently been a spectator. As the reward of a tael cannot be unwelcome to a person of your inferior appearance and unpresentable garments, take up your box without delay, and follow the one who ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... thought John Armstrong, "that Mr. Duncan is interested in diverting suspicion from some quarter. He is willing that these men should incur suspicion, though it is clear he has none ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... great surprise was, that so small a pistol could kill so big a man. These are the words of that venerable biographer, whose trade had not taught him by experience, that an inch was as good as an ell. "He," (Francis Gordon) "got a shot in his head out of a pocket-pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such a furious, mad, brisk man, which notwithstanding ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rigor, and thus destroy all its effects. For example, a mother was in the habit, when her little boy ran beyond his prescribed play-ground, of putting him into solitary confinement. On such occasions, she was very careful to have some amusing book or diverting plaything in a conspicuous part of the room, and not unfrequently a piece of gingerbread was given to solace the runaway. The mother thought it very strange her little boy should so often transgress, when he knew what to expect from such ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... possible; still there was no other task upon which Leslie could employ himself—and he felt that it was imperative to do something, if only to while the time away and interest his companion, thus diverting her thoughts and preventing her from dwelling too much upon the horrors of their present situation. He therefore set manfully to work and, shaping a course by the run of the sea, proceeded to propel the raft to windward, resting his hand upon its after end and striking ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "A most diverting extravaganza, rather in the style of Jules Verne.... The apology of the translator for the lack of verisimilitude in the last scene is entirely unnecessary; otherwise she has done her work with credit, while ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... general prosperity is visible in the public countenance. The means employed by the British cabinet to undermine it have recoiled on themselves; have given to our national faculties a more rapid development, and, draining or diverting the precious metals from British circulation and British vaults, have poured them into those of the United States. It is a propitious consideration that an unavoidable war should have found this seasonable facility for the contributions required ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... was crowded to suffocation by the eager multitude, who had come from far and near, for the purpose of being present at this unusual judicial investigation. Many were actuated only by the promptings of idle curiosity, and regarded the trial somewhat in the light of a diverting exhibition, for which no admission fee was charged; others, from a stern sense of justice, came to view a trial in which crime was to be punished, and the law in all its majesty was to be invoked for the protection of the honor of society, ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... materials which Mr. Conduitt had preserved is the record of Newton's saying, "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... the Premier, he replied: 'Oh, his extraordinary readiness at seeing the humorous side of anything, his almost boyish love of fun. He seems to have a power of dismissing the weight of public affairs, of diverting himself with the playfulness of youth.' Sir George was living in Park Place, St. James's, and on returning from Windsor the Premier drove him there. His rooms were at Number 7, and here the street ended in a sharp incline, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... Newton felt this when, after his sublime discoveries in science had been accomplished, he said, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem only like a boy playing upon the seashore, and diverting myself by now and then finding a choice pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary; while the great ocean of truth lies all ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... up or down, or to any portion of the frightful aspect around, I fixed my eye entirely on each individual step before me, as if there had been no other object in the world besides. To encourage me by diverting my attention, the Arabs chanted their monotonous songs, mainly in their own language, interspersed with expressions about buckshish, "Englese good to Arabs," and making signs to me every now and then how near we were getting to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... parti-coloured throng of gentry, lacqueys, chapmen, hucksters, and tall personages in parsons' gowns who stalked through the crowd with an air of mastery, a string of parasites at their heels. And all these people seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters, watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing doles to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by slippery-looking fellows in black—the whole with such an air of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... ancient and modern art. Six weeks were borrowed for my tour of Naples, the most populous of cities, relative to its size, whose luxurious inhabitants seem to dwell on the confines of paradise and hell-fire. I was presented to the boy-king by our new envoy, Sir William Hamilton, who, wisely diverting his correspondence from the Secretary of State to the Royal Society and British Museum, has elucidated a country of such inestimable value to the naturalist and antiquarian. On my return, I fondly embraced, for the last time, the miracles of Rome.... In my pilgrimage from Rome to Loretto ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... her poem upon his patient ears, while he lay flat upon the grass looking up to the sky; Emily and Jane had promised to join them there in process of time, and the four younger ones were, as usual, diverting themselves among the farm buildings ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a larger number of persons in diverting the attention of the free Negroes from the West Indies, the colonizationists took higher ground. They asserted that the interests of the millions of white men in this country were then at stake, and even if it would be better for the three million Negroes of the country gradually to ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... of prize-fighting down there, or baseball on a large scale, or amusement places like Coney Island, or amateur athletic contests, or picnics like those held by the more truculent Irish fraternal organizations, or any other such wholesale devices for shocking and diverting the proletariat would undoubtedly cause a great decline in lynching. The art is practised, in the overwhelming main, in remote and God-forsaken regions, in which the only rival entertainment is offered by one-sided political campaigns, third-rate chautauquas and Methodist ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... he thought how admirably his scheme had worked out. He had hinted at Kenneth being heavily short in this street, which at once explained a motive for Kenneth diverting the stones to his own use. Yes, he had triumphed over them all—except one. Helen Traynor, so far, had foiled him in everything, and the more she resisted and insulted him, the more determined he was to drag her at ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... for the most part such a stranger to man, that we are but little aware of its peculiarities. We know indeed that the hare is good to hunt and good to eat; but in all other respects poor Puss is a neglected subject. In the year 1774, being much indisposed, both in mind and body, incapable of diverting myself either with company or books, and yet in a condition that made some diversion necessary, I was glad of anything that would engage my attention without fatiguing it. The children of a neighbour of mine had a leveret given them for ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... deceived as I to deceive, she never questioned my lie, but led me on to some fresh feat, some brook or fence to leap, or inaccessible flower or berry to bring her. Already I got out of difficulties by changing the subject, by evading the challenge and diverting her to some other object, play or plan to which she as readily listened. How proud, how important and superior I felt and with what trust the little siren permitted it. Among all my apprenticeships this to Launa Probana was that which taught me ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... little, and always lightly, eating little, never walking except of necessity; little in company, when he would have eaten more and been, by the power of social relish, made likelier to get the full good out of his food; never diverting his mind by any change but that of one book or subject for another; and every time that any strong affliction came on him, as when made twice a widower, or at his daughter's death, or from such an outrage upon his entire nature and feelings as the Libel, then his delicate ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... leather backs from the factories and would set the teeth in the backs while sitting around the open fire in the evening. They did this work, too, while visiting—spending an afternoon; and it was an unconscious and diverting work like knitting; scholars set wool-cards while studying, and schoolmistresses while teaching. This method of manufacture was superseded fifteen years later by a machine invented by Amos Whittemore, which held, cut, and pierced the leather, drew the wire from ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... led to another, so one blow was usually the prelude to a thrashing. Johnnie saw that he must stop the thing right there; must have instant help in diverting Barber. Taking a quick, deep breath, he sounded his call for aid—a loud, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... lasted a while Clennam thought it a good season for diverting his attention from the main surprise, by relating its details. Slowly, therefore, and in a quiet tone of voice, he explained them as best he could, and enlarged on the nature ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... arouse fears or passions. Fiery romances were prohibited, and histories of turmoil and war, with theology and its mournful revelations, and medicine, which revived the bitter story of my organism. My library was stocked with dreamy and diverting compositions—old Walton, the pensive angler; the vagaries of ancient Burton, and the placid essayists of the Addisonian day. Of poets I had Cowper and Wordsworth, who loved quiet life and were the chroniclers of domestic men and manners. Pictures of shadowy studios and calm lakes, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... did not appear to take any great interest in it, she asked him if he did not admire great poets. "Oh, yes; just as I admire great bilboquet players," said he, in that tone of his, which rendered everything he said diverting. "I have written some verses, however," said he, "and I will repeat them to you; they are upon a certain M. Rodot, an Intendant of the Marine, who was very fond of abusing medicine and medical men. I made these verses to revenge AEsculapius ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... but not broken, recovered somewhat. After all there had been one or two gleams of real jokes, and a catchiness in certain airs; and the spark possessed temperament in profusion. It was possible that the next act might be diverting. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... live to others. A ghost-show used to come yearly to Thrums on the merry Muckle Friday, in which the illusion was contrived by hanging a glass between the onlookers and the stage. I cannot deny that the comings and goings of the ghost were highly diverting, yet the farmer of T'nowhead only laughed because he had paid his money at the hole in the door like the rest of us. T'nowhead sat at the end of a form where he saw round the glass and so saw no ghost. I fear my public may be in the same ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... advisable to send fathers of St. Francis to Japon this year, for the fathers do not desire money. The Japanese are tractable in disposition, and they greatly desired the fathers. The father said it would be advisable for him to continue diverting them for four years, when the fortresses in Manila would be completed; and then ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... in the garden where the queen was diverting herself with her damsels, and coming to the fountain where he had beheld the innocent maidens at their sport, he could no longer restrain the passion that raged within his breast. Seating himself beside the fountain, he called Florinda to him to draw forth a thorn which had pierced his hand. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... not; and if they did had they power to take the ring or not?" Answered she, "Know, that when they left me, they anointed their feet with the juice; and, walking over the water, fared on from sea to sea, diverting themselves with the wonders of the deep, nor ceased they faring till they had traversed the Seven Seas and came in sight of a mountain, soaring high in air, whose stones were emeralds and whose dust was musk; and in it was a stream of running water. When they made it they rejoiced, saying each ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... (published by Sir H. Nichols, in 1827), are many entries concerning this Domingo, most of which relate to payments of money that he had won from the king at cards and dice. He was evidently, as Sir Harris Nichols observes, one of King Henry's "diverting vagabonds," and seems to have accompanied his majesty wherever he went, for we find that he was with him at Calais in 1532. In all these entries he is only mentioned as Domingo; his surname, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... of the trail, and for some time they lay hidden within bow-shot of him, discussing in the lowest of whispers how they should pass him. The timely approach of the procession, with Rene at its head, had, by diverting his attention for a few moments, offered an opportunity too good to be neglected. They had seized it, slipped past the unsuspecting guard, and thus safely accomplished the first stage of ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... joyance grew on him and he bestowed robes of honour on the damsels and gave and bestowed, challenging this girl and kissing that and toying with a third, plying one with wine and morselling another with meat, till nightfall. All this while the Commander of the Faithful was diverting himself with watching him and laughing, and when night fell he bade one of the slave-girls drop a piece of Bhang in the cup and give it to Abu al-Hasan to drink. So she did his bidding and gave him the cup, which no sooner had he drunk than his head forewent his feet.[FN45] Therewith the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... told that they will find printed in the Report of the Leyborne-Popham Papers (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1899, p. 204) a Narrative of the Restoration, by Mr. John Collins, the Chief Butler of the Inner Temple, proving in great and highly diverting detail how this remarkable event was really the work not so much of Monk as ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Charming had been more unreasonable than usual, the king entered the countess's house with an anxious air, and seating himself before the card-table, began to play a game of Patience. It was his way of diverting his thoughts and forgetting for a few hours the cares of royalty. Scarcely had he ranged sixteen cards in a square when he ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... centuries derived importance merely {p.002} from the fact that by those ways alone the European world found access to the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The application of steam to ocean navigation, and the opening of the Suez Canal, have greatly modified conditions, by diverting travel from the two Capes to the Canal and to the Straits of Magellan. It is only within a very few years that South Africa, thus diminished in consequence as a station upon a leading commercial highway, has received compensation by the discovery ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... assemble together, and commence drumming and singing, halloing and yelling; and continue their boisterous lamentations for about 48 hours, day and night, relieving each other as they require. This they do, because they imagine it is diverting to the person deceased. They bury the body at a particular place back of their houses, and use mats for a coffin. After the ceremony of interment is performed, they plant two cocoanut trees, one at the head and the other at the feet of the buried person. But if the trees ever bear fruit, ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... narrow passage, but this was not all. What was that sound of crashing rocks? They soon discovered. Huge blocks of granite had rolled down from above, diverting the course of the water, which now tumbled down on the highway like a sheet of foam. And what was this behind them? Another great sheet of water coming on. The flood was pursuing them. The two men began to run. Suddenly the Marquis stumbled and fell. The water swept ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... and opened the salon door. The room was littered with the illustrated journals, but she was not diverting herself with any of them—she was sitting before a copy of La Joconde, striving to reproduce on her own face the enigma of the smile: I had discovered an actress who never ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... so much by the evils they inflicted on the people, as by the corruption which they spread among the defenders of the throne. They paralysed the nobility by the fatal gangrene of individual selfishness; they prostrated thought by diverting it almost entirely to wicked and licentious purposes. Intellect, instead of being the guardian of order, the protector of religion, the supporter of morality, became their most fatal enemy; for its powers—and they were gigantic in that age—were all devoted to the spread of infidelity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... reason of severance from his people and family and said to him, 'Come, let us go forth a-hunting.' But he refused to go with him; so the elder brother went forth to the chase, whilst the younger abode in the pavilion aforesaid. As he was diverting himself by looking out upon the garden from the window of the palace, behold, he saw his brother's wife and with her ten black slaves and as many slave-girls. Each slave laid hold of a damsel [and swived her] and another slave [came forth and] did the like with the queen; and when they ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the element of custom and continuity. It was an old cherry-briar; systematically smoked by Father in spite of all wiles and temptations to Woodbines and gaspers; an old companion possibly connected with various romantic or diverting events in Father's life. It is perhaps a relic as well as a trinket. But because it is not a true tool, because it gives the man no grip on the creative energies of society, it is, with all the rest of ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... taken to mean that the living original of Falstaff was as richly humorous, as inexhaustibly diverting as the dramatic counterfeit who is now a citizen and chief personage in that world of literature which outlasts all the fleeting shows of the so-called real world. It seems to me to be possible for a good reader ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... equally petty, formal, dull, and corrupt. Accident, indeed, decided, and not I; but I have seen no reason to regret my visit. The spectacle of this small society macerating in its own abuses was not perhaps instructive, but I have found it exceedingly diverting. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... servitors? I have removed from their minds certain superficial qualities of thought. The four men in white were, a few years ago, highly skilled surgeons, three of them brain specialists and noted for exceptional intellects and bold, pioneering thinking. I needed them and took them, diverting them from their natural state, in which they would have resisted me and refused my commands. Certain complicated adjustments on their brains—and now their brains are mine, all their separate ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... crowd, and more than once bits of green, and handfuls of sweets were tossed into my lap; while laughter, and gay badinage greeted us from every side. Cassion took this rather grimly, and gave stern word to the soldier escort, but I found it all diverting enough, and had hard work to retain my dignity, and not join in the merriment. It was darker at the foot of the hill, yet the crowd did not diminish, although they stood in ankle deep mud, and seemed less vivacious. Now and then I heard some ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... caution, and never left in any degree to the discretion of the patient. The cure, however, depends chiefly on regulating the state of the mind, or interrupting the attention of the patient; and diverting it, if possible, to other objects than his ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... is with the stomach empty. It is true that food puts one to sleep at first, by diverting blood from the head; but it disturbs sleep later. Water, unless it induces bladder-action during the night, or even fruit, may be taken without injury before retiring. If one goes to bed with an empty stomach, he can ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... amused myself with surveying the different countenances of the groups within immediate reach of my observation, and which to me was by no means the least diverting part of the scene; but on few of them could I discover any other impression than that of curiosity: I then took my station in the garden of the Tuileries, on the terrace next the river. Hence was a view of the Temple of Commerce ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... New Generation, was the earliest and in some ways the best of the trilogy. It is still highly diverting as a novel, and, as we see to-day, was charged with potent ideas and searching criticism. It was far more real and effective as a romance than anything Disraeli had previously written. There are scenes and characters in the story which will live in English literature. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... didn't leave her. I would have." Miss Pringle attempting to delude herself with the idea that she was a mettlesome, high-spirited person who would stand no nonsense, was immensely diverting to Nora. To hide an irrepressible smile, she went over to a bowl of roses which stood on one of the little tables and pretended to busy herself with ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... passed and the noble masses with heroic grimaces fall to devouring ipecac, to the confusion of all free-born stomachs. In fact this species of ballot flagellatism, this diverting pastime of hitting itself on the head with a stuffed club has gradually elevated the body politic to the enviable position occupied by the all-powerful king of Fernando Po. This mysterious being ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... fellow "Gyppy," as the Governor called him, who had mastered the art of scaling colonial pillars and raiding the second story chambers of the homes of honest citizens, seemed to Archie hardly less heroic. "Gyppy" recounted his adventures with a kind of sullen humor that Archie found highly diverting. He sheepishly confessed that the net reward of a fortnight of diligent labor in his specialty was only three hundred dollars. The Governor was very stern with "Gyppy," advising him to abandon porch-climbing as a hazardous and unprofitable vocation. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... a wonder how so heavy a book, written upon a subject in appearance so little instructive or diverting, should survive to three editions, and consequently find a better reception than is usual with such bulky spiritless volumes; and this, in an age that pretendeth so soon to be nauseated with what is tedious and dull. To which I can only return, that, as burning a book ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... broke upon us a little interruption, so diverting, so utterly like the whole quaint tininess of Kings Port, that I should tell it to you, even if it did not bear directly upon the matter which was beginning so actively to concern me—the love ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... life of such stirring adventure that few days passed without some more or less serious mishap, reckless of life, unheedful alike of time and eternity, they made the smallest trifles and the biggest tragedies the subjects of chaff and badinage till the next diverting occurrence. But to the Cross Canon outfit Mat Barlow's love for Netty Nevins was so obviously a downright worship, an all-absorbing, dominating cult, that, in a way, and all unknown to her, she became the nearest thing to a religion ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... had finished with his final military examination and was at last free from ever having to serve. He made a diverting story of it and had hastened to the Villa to recount the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... says to a mob, "There is the Bank of England, why shouldn't you have some of that money?" he says something which is at least as honest and intelligible as the figure 4. When a writer in the Times remarks, "We must raise the economic efficiency of the masses without diverting anything from those classes which represent the national prosperity and refinement," then his equation cancels out; in a literal and logical sense his remark amounts ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where the Devil has captured ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... an artist arose who was destined to work a complete revolution in the style and manner of English caricature. This artist was John Doyle,—the celebrated H. B. He it was that discovered that pictures might be made mildly diverting without actual coarseness or exaggeration; and when this fact was accepted, the art of caricaturing underwent a complete transition, and assumed a new form. The "Sketches" of H. B. owe their chief attraction to the excellence of their designer as a portrait ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... whether instructing Squire Montague about the investment of capital in Missouri, the improvement of Columbus River, the project he and some gentlemen in New York had for making a shorter Pacific connection with the Mississippi than the present one; or diverting Mrs. Montague with his experience in cooking in camp; or drawing for Miss Alice an amusing picture of the social contrasts of New England and the border where he had been. Harry was a very entertaining ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... more to the point is, that at the age of eight he was able not only to read, but to take delight in Pope's translation of Homer. He used to go about declaiming certain couplets with an air of intense earnestness highly diverting to ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... less than ten minutes. As luck would have it, this was just the hour when the mummers, guise dancers and darkey-parties were dressing up for their Christmas rounds; and the appearance presented by the crowd in the deepening dusk would, in less serious circumstances, have been extremely diverting. Two of the firemen wore large moustaches of burnt cork beneath their helmets, and another (who was cast to play the Turkish Knight) had found no time to remove the bright blue dye he had been applying to his face. The ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... short time before the fatal accident which deprived France of peace, and our family of its chief glory. I was then about four or five years of age, when the King, placing me on his knee, entered familiarly into chat with me. There were, in the same room, playing and diverting themselves, the Prince de Joinville, since the great and unfortunate Duc de Guise, and the Marquis de Beaupreau, son of the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, who died in his fourteenth year, and by whose death his country lost a youth ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... first, irksome to me, such complete seclusion having rendered me almost unsociable, add to which, the disagreeable termination of my correspondence with Julian. Still, the little conversation I was enabled to carry on, partly by signs, with my new fellow-prisoners, was of advantage by diverting my attention. I breathed not a word respecting my correspondence with Julian; it was a point of honour between us, and in bringing it forward here, I was fully aware that in the immense number of unhappy men with which these prisons were thronged, it would be impossible ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... fathers, following their usual practice of associating emblems of heathen with those of Christian worship, in the hope of gradually diverting the reverence to the latter without giving to the former a ruder shock than could be endured, had suspended a small cross on the oak, hoping eventually to carve the tree itself into a sacred emblem; it was to this that the woman was pointing ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... resented this, for he suddenly began to run and kick, scattering fresh meat along the road, to the merriment of the crowd. But the boy turned actor, and made it appear that it was at his wish the mule had given this diverting performance. He clung to the back of his plunging and braying mount like a circus rider, singing a Brave Heart song, and finally brought up amid the laughter and cheers of his companions. Far from admitting defeat, he boasted of his horsemanship and declared ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... complain of his opinionated book I am amused to find one who fairly exhausted himself in praise, not to say flattery, of this same Salvini. It is very diverting to the mere looker-on, when the world first proclaims some man a god, bowing down and worshipping him, and then anathematizes him if he ventures to proclaim his own godship. I have my quarrel with ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... are put forward, of why a deficit was turned into a surplus. I am told that it is all due to diverting the freight of the Ford industries. If we had diverted all of our business to this road, that would not explain why we manage at so much lower an operating cost than before. We are routing as much as we can of our own business over the road, but only because we there get the best service. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... moreover, engaged in endeavors to have the monopoly, in the purchase of this article, in this country, suppressed. My hopes on that subject are not desperate, but neither are they flattering. I consider it as the most effectual means of procuring the full value of our produce, of diverting our demands for manufactures from Great Britain to this country, to a certain amount, and of thus producing some equilibrium in our commerce, which at present lies all in the British scale. It would cement an union with our friends, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson |
