"Preoccupation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too active to stay quietly at the house of Mr. Huysman. Only their host, Tayoga and he were present at their supper that evening, and, as the man was rather silent, the lads respected his preoccupation, believing that he was concerned with the great affairs in which he was having a part. After supper Tayoga left for the camp on the flats to see an Onondaga runner who had arrived that day, and Mr. Huysman, still immersed ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... In his preoccupation he forgot that the supper hour was passing, but at last started hastily for his room. As he rapidly turned a sharp corner he nearly ran into two ladies who were coming from an opposite direction, and looking up saw Mrs. Mayhew and the flushed, resentful ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... perception in other directions; and when he attacked a subject, expecting results he had the faculty of keeping his mind alert, so that results different from those which he expected should not escape him through preoccupation. ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... scarcely gone when the last Oxford post arrived, and a letter was brought up for Falloden. It was addressed in his father's hand-writing. He opened it mechanically; and in his preoccupation, he read it several times before he grasped ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Beau-regard, laughing. "Well, it's even possible that in their furious preoccupation they let the schooner come close without spying her. Ah, Captain, you can hardly imagine— you, fresh from a civilized country, where folks must keep up appearances, while they prey upon one another—how this lust of gold brutalizes ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... pondered this letter so long and seriously that his wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... moving Bannister had joined his friend upon the slab beneath the fall; but no sooner had this happened than, abandoning the horses to their own devices, Arima crept cautiously forward until he reached Escombe's heap of clothing, and, availing himself of the preoccupation of the bathers, took the jewel in his hand and examined it with the most rapt attention and care. For a space of nearly five minutes he continued his examination, after which he slowly and thoughtfully made his way back to the horses, which were too busily ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... vengeance," said Perkins. "We've had more vacancies in this house to do our cooking and our laundering and our house-work generally than two able-bodied men could shake sticks at. It seems to me that the domestic servant of to-day is fonder of preoccupation than of occupation." ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... d'Esgrignon's mind, something like a shudder ran through him when he remembered that he still owed sixty thousand francs, to say nothing of bills to come for another ten thousand. He went back melancholy enough. His friends remarked his ill-disguised preoccupation, and spoke of it among ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... youthful and princely prelate became the strangest and most beautiful thing in that strange and beautiful place. After the execution of the Pazzi conspirators, Botticelli is employed to paint their portraits. This preoccupation with serious thoughts and sad images might easily have resulted, as it did, for instance, in the gloomy villages of the Rhine, or in the overcrowded parts of medieval Paris, as it still does in many a village ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... he were to live no longer—had abandoned all care of his possessions, as of himself, wherefore the most part of the houses were become common good and strangers used them, whenas they happened upon them, like as the very owner might have done; and with all this bestial preoccupation, they still shunned the sick to the best ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the old Dresden china equipage pleased me, forced itself upon my notice in spite of the deep preoccupation ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... vision of lovely dark eyes and rippling brown hair with just a hint of red in it, danced before him. Chiniquy, taking advantage of his master's preoccupation, wandered aimlessly against a barbed wire, taking very good care not to get too close to it himself. Jim came to himself just in time to save his leg from a prod ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... tell was not calculated to encourage Jumping Frog in his high-handed policy. His face fell considerably, and Pepin, taking advantage of his preoccupation, walked off with Antoine ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... diffusion of the attention towards obsessions or preoccupations;" and he gives as an example the reply of a patient "I think of my illness or such vicissitude by which it was brought about." Indeed, in one place, Professor Dejerine goes so far as to permit himself to say that the hypochondriac preoccupation itself constitutes originally a purely intellectual conception, a propos of which, but secondarily to it the patient really may work up an emotion, but which is really NOT OF EMOTIONAL ORIGIN, a position first taken and long insisted upon by ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... "the white man's charter of freedom," had become Lincoln's shibboleth. Various utterances and written fragments of the summer of 1854, reveal the intensity of his preoccupation. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... considered immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings. The arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continence probably also explains the mental inequality of the sexes. Thus Freud believes that the intellectual inferiority of so many women ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... you may ask, do I dwell on all this? It is because these are the true Advent voices for us, coming as they do to rouse us out of narrow preoccupation, to open our eyes to the sinfulness of sin, to make us feel that the self-centred, isolated, self-seeking life is a life of a low type, and to stir us with social and ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... appeared only half-convinced, for I saw upon her brow a heavy, thoughtful expression, similar to that I had noticed when sitting opposite her at dinner. The reason of her constant preoccupation was that she feared that her sister might give me ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the myths, say the myths of Daphne, really solar? That is precisely what we hesitate to accept. In the same way Mannhardt's preoccupation with vegetable myths has tended, I think, to make many of his followers ascribe vegetable origins to myths and gods, where the real origin is perhaps for ever lost. The corn-spirit starts up in most unexpected places. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... drew pictures of the material advantages of the consular rule, less to convert the countess than to detect in her eyes some expression which might enlighten him as to her projects. Gothard's frequent disappearances, the long rides of his mistress, and her evident preoccupation, which, for the last few days, had appeared in her face, together with other little signs not to be hidden in the silence and tranquillity of such a life, had roused the fears of these submissive royalists. Still, as no event happened, and perfect quiet ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... has been the motive of my conduct and the sole preoccupation of my life. To avenge my husband, to avenge my ruined son, to avenge myself for all the harm that he has done me: I had no other dream, no other object in life. That is what I wanted: to see that man crushed, reduced to poverty, to tears—as though he still knew how to cry!—sobbing ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... preoccupation was inability to work and little interest in recreation, and as the long weeks wore away I grew morose, morbid, and hypochondriacal. The pride which kept me from sharing my secret with my friend also held me at my post and nerved me to endure the torment in the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... His preoccupation was such that, though he now slept on the other side of the house, he mechanically went to the room that he and his wife had occupied when he first became a tenant of Old-Grove Place, which since his differences ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... length in the smoking-room, up many weary stairs, he hit upon a gentleman of somewhat portly build and dressed with conspicuous plainness. He was smoking a cigar and reading the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW; his face was singularly free from all sign of preoccupation or fatigue; and there was something in his air which seemed to invite confidence and to expect submission. The more the young clergyman scrutinised his features, the more he was convinced that he had fallen on one capable of giving ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meant to secure custom; they were forced to choose for themselves between the patronage of the Liberals on the one hand or the Royalists on the other. And Love, moreover, had come to David's heart, and with his scientific preoccupation and finer nature he had not room for the dogged greed of which our successful man of business is made; it choked the keen money-getting instinct which would have led him to study the differences between the Paris trade and the business of a provincial ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Richard Baxter, "to think of what kind these visitants are. Do good spirits dwell then so near us, or are they sent on such messages?" The question, indeed, poseth most of us, but we cannot leave the inquiry alone. M. Larigot, realising this preoccupation, has in the course of his investigations, during many years, arrived at the conclusion that there is an Art of the Supernatural, apart from the difficult science of psychical research, worth cultivating for its own sake. So he has gone to Glanvil and Arise Evans and the credulous ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... unemotional; but that grief—there's no reason why she should go through life under that additional burden! She is exquisite, young, sure of many happy years with some one else, if she is cured of this preoccupation with that fellow who is gone. Shall I ask permission to try to do ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... ashamed of my preoccupation, and flung the bit of metal into the grass, poked my ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... do not set me down as one who girds at your preoccupation, up here, with bodily games; for, indeed, I hold 'gymnastic' to be necessary as 'music' (using both words in the Greek sense) for the training of such youths as we desire to send forth from Cambridge. But I plead that they ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were, to her preoccupation. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... before the picture herself when they went in to look at it, but she did not turn round on hearing them. She had Tod in her arms yet, but she seemed to have forgotten his very existence in her preoccupation. And it was scarcely to be wondered at. The picture was only a head,—Mollie's own fresh, drowsy-eyed face standing out in contrast under some folds of dark drapery thrown over the brown hair like a monk's cowl, two or three autumn-tinted oak leaves clinging to a straying tress,—but ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this on a hundred occasions and in countless ways; but more by her actions, her present wretchedness, than by speech. It was perfectly clear to Linda that nothing else mattered. She was even beginning, in a vague way, to think of it in connection with herself; but still most of her preoccupation was in her mother. She decided gravely that a great deal, yet, could be done. For instance, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as long as he could, for though he rarely needed anybody else to speak, this afternoon he was annoyed by his companion's preoccupation. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... indifference with which Roscommon had served his customers was gone. The towel was no longer used after its perfunctory fashion; the counter remained unwiped; the disks of countless glasses marked its surface, and indicated other preoccupation on the part of the proprietor. The keen grey eyes of the claimant of the "Red-Rock Rancho" were always on the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... effects of lines and colors and tones upon the human organism are set forth with mathematical precision. He need not trouble himself overmuch at the outset with definitions of Beauty. The chief thing is to become aware of the long and intimate preoccupation of men with beautiful objects and to remember that any inquiry into the nature and laws of poetry will surely lead him into a deeper curiosity as to the nature and manifestations of aesthetic ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... watching the child's preoccupation for a moment, in a tone of half exasperated amusement). Well, but you're the quiet one, surely! (Mary looks up at him with a shy smile, her eyes still full of dreams.) Glory be to God, I'd not know ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... an unhappy heart with placid brow and gracious demeanor; but such a conception matched strangely her glowing youth and spirit. What had she to do with Care? What concern had Black Care, whose gaunt shape in sable shrouds had lurked at his shoulder all the evening, despite his rigid preoccupation, with a being as charmingly flushed with budding womanhood as ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... have told him (perhaps he did) that the artist, wherever he goes, sometimes hardly aware of his preoccupation, is always selecting subjects to paint, and brooding over the method of treatment; that one day Rembrandt noted with amusement a man in the street shaking his fist at the skull-capped head of an older man bobbing angrily from a window. Rembrandt ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... Despite his preoccupation with his errand, which was to find if there were other signs of the continued activity of the strange forces that had lowered the tower through the Fourth Dimension into the dim and unrecorded years of aboriginal ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... reorganization of the army. There was also a reference to the new law for a return to three years' service which France was introducing to improve the efficiency of her peace establishment. But it was obvious that Russia was the main preoccupation. Germany had forced the pace both in the aggrandizement of her military strength and in the methods of her diplomatic intercourse. Suddenly she found herself on the brink of an abyss. She had gone too far; she had provoked into ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... of 1831-32; and without examining too closely the real present condition of affairs, men hoped, rather than intelligently expected, that the parallel would continue to the end. Some sort of compromise of the nature of that of 1850 was the prevailing preoccupation ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... a stinging shower of lime-dust. An Englishman in the next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had flung a scoopful of confetti in her undefended face! It is generally Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do these things at Carnival times. The national love ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... little more freedom. For indeed, the danger of such prose as his is that it is apt to become somewhat laborious. Here and there, one is tempted to say of Mr. Pater that he is 'a seeker after something in language, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all.' The continual preoccupation with phrase and epithet has its drawbacks as well as its virtues. And yet, when all is said, what wonderful prose it is, with its subtle preferences, its fastidious purity, its rejection of what is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... For, in the person of this none too welcome intruder, he saw a very different man from the one upon whom he had just turned his back with so little ceremony; and there appeared to be no good reason for the change. He had not noted in his preoccupation, how George, at sight of his stooping figure, had made a sudden significant movement, and if he had, the pulling of a necktie straight, would have meant nothing to him. But to Sweetwater it meant every thing, and it was in the tone of one fully at ease with ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... made him forget his food and neglect his person, to such a degree that when he was occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe, or have his body anointed, he used to trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the oil on his body, being in a state of entire preoccupation, and, in the truest sense, divinely possessed with his love and delight in science. His discoveries were numerous and admirable; and he is said to have requested his friends and relations that when he was ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... close quarters there was no room to fence for openings. Instantly the two beasts locked in deadly embrace, each seeking the other's throat. Pan-at-lee watched, taking no advantage of the opportunity to escape which their preoccupation gave her. She watched and waited, for into her savage little brain had come the resolve to pin her faith to this strange creature who had unlocked her heart with those four words—"I am Om-at's friend!" And so she waited, with drawn ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... exceedingly busy; and to make things worse, I had received from Jamrach's (without an order—but I had to keep the thing) a dead hyena which had been affected with osteitis deformans. It was a fine specimen and was useful as serving to explain my great preoccupation; but it added to my labors and made ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... back of their minds which bears the stamp of truth. It is confirmed by their strange and picturesque hymnology, in which the passionate desire to be "free," though generally apparently invoked in connection with a future life, is none the less indicative of their temper, and in their preoccupation with those parts of the Old Testament—the history of the Exodus, for instance—which appeared applicable to their own condition. Yet it is clear that they had but the vaguest idea of what "freedom" implied. Of what "citizenship" ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... gusty breeze dropped and it began to rain. He ignored the rain. But December rain has a strange, horrid quality of chilly persistence. It is capable of conquering the most obstinate and serious mental preoccupation, and it conquered Priam's. It forced him to admit that his tortured soul had a fleshly garment and that the fleshly garment was soaked to the marrow. And his soul gradually yielded before the attack of the rain, and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the waist by a black silk sash, showed his well-knit figure. There were touches of gray in his hair and wrinkles round his eyes, but in spite of this he had a look of careless youth. Clare, however, thought she noticed a hint of preoccupation that she knew ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... a man of notable attributes and shocking manners—is as easily lost in Paris as anywhere; it is a city of many shadows. At the end of some weeks, during which his work had suffered from his new preoccupation, Rufin saw himself baffled. His man had vanished effectually, carrying with him to his obscurity the great picture. It was the memory of that consummate thing that held Rufin to his task of finding the author; he pictured it to himself, housed in some ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... in showing a torpid face lighted now by a speciously amiable expression. The carpets had dulled his steps and the preoccupation of the two sisters had kept them from noticing the noise of his carriage-wheels on entering the court-yard. The countess, in whom the habits of social life and the freedom in which her husband had left her had developed both wit ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... order to strike into a land rich in the comforts of life; but in such a land they were sure to find a crowded population, of which every arm was raised in unrelenting hostility, with all the advantages of local knowledge, and with constant preoccupation of all the defensible positions, mountain passes, or bridges. Sometimes, again, wearied out with this mode of suffering, they took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land with few or no inhabitants. But in such a land they were ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... should feel as if my country had spoken through the voice of my officer. I should feel proud and honored to be able to serve my country by obeying its commands. No thought of self—no vulgar preoccupation with my own petty vanity could touch my mind at such a moment. To me my officer would not be a mere man: he would be for the moment—whatever his personal frailties—the ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... and melancholy stranger went past with a look of deep preoccupation, but he could not escape Caroline's gratitude; she had opened her window and affected to be digging in the square window-box buried in snow, a pretext of which the clumsy ingenuity plainly told her benefactor that she had been resolved ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... nullity of the second and third Consuls; the tawdry magnificence of the costumes; the studied avoidance of any word that implied even a modicum of learning or a distant acquaintance with politics; the nervous preoccupation about Napoleon's moods and whims; the graceful manners of Josephine that rarely failed to charm away his humours, except when she herself had been outrageously slighted for some passing favourite; above all, the leaden dullness ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... about their daily affairs. Vancouver grew and prospered, and the growth of Summit sales left an increasing balance on the profit side of Thompson's ledger. Moreover the rapid and steady growth of his business kept his mind on the business. It worked out—his business preoccupation—much in the manner of the old story of fleas and dogs, to wit: a certain number of fleas is good for a dog. They keep him from brooding over the fact ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Boer War. Always a fair man, he had his doubts about the war and was a little too vocal about it for the tastes of some of his readers. During the First World War he served in Egypt as a Major in a Remount Unit, training horses for the war. This fit one of his main interests in life — horses —a preoccupation which is very evident in his poems, and even in his choice of pseudonym ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... swelling pride Mehetabel felt a pang of separation as the bulky package was carried out of the house. As the days went on she felt absolutely lost without her work. For years it had been her one preoccupation, and she could not bear even to look at the little stand, now quite bare of the litter of scraps which had lain on it so long. One of the neighbors, who took the long journey to the fair, reported that the quilt ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the jewels? In all business affairs, Delia was the merest child. She had been brought up in the midst of large expenditure, of which she had been quite unconscious. All preoccupation with money had seemed to her mean and pettifogging. Have it!—and spend it on what you want. But wants must be governed by ideas—by ethical standards. To waste money on personal luxury, on eating, drinking, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... six o'clock in the evening that the carriages containing the grand duke and his family passed through the Porta San Gallo, from which proceeds the road to Bologna, and thence to Vienna. The main preoccupation of the people at that moment was to assure themselves by the evidence of their own senses that the duke and dukelings were really gone. An immense crowd of people assembled round the gate and lined the road immediately outside it. Along the living line ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... but, standing up, he stared at him intently. Garay shrank away and disappeared in the further ranges of the camp. Robert somehow was not afraid. The man would not make such a trial again at so great a risk, and his mind turned back to its preoccupation, the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... my work?" Brenton interrupted banally, for, in his secret heart, he was painfully aware that it was not the church alone which kept him so preoccupied that his preoccupation had come to be an occupation on its ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... obvious perception came upon me with such force, and brought me such emotion, that I dare say for a little while I sat vacantly staring at her, with an air of preoccupation. Anyhow, all at once she laughed, and cried out, 'Well, when you get back...?' and, 'Perhaps,' she questioned, 'perhaps you think it polite to go off wool-gathering like that?' Whereupon I recovered myself with a start, and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... without means of defence. The child's presence deprived Germinie of all hope of repose. Mere girl as she was, she wounded her every minute in the day by her presence, her touch, her caresses, everything in her amorous body that spoke of love. Her preoccupation with Jupillon, the work that kept them constantly together, the provincial wonderment that she constantly exhibited, the half-confidences she allowed to come to her lips when the young man had gone, her gayety, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought of Clara became a preoccupation, and with the love which at length he recognised there blended a sense of fate fulfilling itself. His enthusiasms, his purposes, never defined as education would have defined them, were dissipated into utter vagueness. He lost his guiding interests, and found himself returning to those of boyhood. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... I went to the city together. He was very busy looking over papers, and noticing his preoccupation I did not attempt to engage ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... well judge what sort of men they had been in life. Here was a slight smooth-faced blond-haired boy, who must have been dearly beloved by the women of his family. Here again a serious, kindly, middle-aged man whose face bore a curious expression of preoccupation. I caught myself thinking, "I should like to have known him." We found one who in his dying agony had evidently taken from his pocket a letter which now lay a sodden mass in his dead hand. We could not resist that mute ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... adheres.' But here the interpreter goes astray under the preoccupation of the times: 'heret significat hereticum et infidelem; hence "It is not good to take the children's bread and cast it unto dogs, that ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... death, or the loss of all that makes honourable life, as the ultimate sanction behind the process, that is the present preoccupation of this nation in arms. Even the football games I saw going on in the course of our drive to Albert were all part of this training. They are no mere amusement, though they are amusement. They are part of the system by which men are persuaded—not driven—to submit themselves ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trifling that one could not be sure whether it was a moustache or whether he had been too busy to think of shaving. Janet received all these facts into her brain, and then carelessly let them all slip out again, in her preoccupation with his eyes. She said they were sad eyes. The mouth, too, was somewhat sad (she thought), but there was a drawing down of the corners of it that seemed to make gentle fun of its sadness. Janet, perhaps out of her good-nature, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... brethren at home, and fan the embers of patriotism which long residence in the Tsardom had not quenched. Little by little, the political fruits of these apostolic labours began to show themselves: the colonists, whose main preoccupation had been to occupy the most fertile soil in the district, began to take over the approaches to Russia's strategic plans, and to display an absorbing interest in Russian politics. Several Zemstvos fell into their hands, and were practically controlled by them, and ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to carry the gas under pressure need not exceed an inch and a half in diameter to supply 5,000 lamps of 2,000 candle power each. The only reason why this burner has not been further perfected and placed upon the market is because of the continual preoccupation of Prof. Lowe in other lines of invention, and the amount of attention required by his large business interests. Besides, the field for its usefulness has been limited, as cheap fuel gas has only just begun to be generally introduced. Now, however, that extensive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... uncertain at what time the wasting disease, of which he died, first settled upon him; but he seems to have been always somewhat sickly of body, and with just that at times depressing, at times exciting, malady which tells most upon the whole organisation. That preoccupation with death, which in early life led him to write his Biathanatos, with its elaborate apology for suicide, and at the end of his life to prepare so spectacularly for the act of dying, was but one symptom of a morbid state of body ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... In our own society decency as to dress, words, gestures, etc., is a constant preoccupation. That is not the case with naked savages or half-naked barbarians. The savages put on ornament to be admired and to exert attraction or produce effect. The same effect is won by words, gestures, dress, etc. Our aesthetic ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... throwing her shawl over her shoulders. Every time she was given a commission the strong desire seized her to accomplish it promptly and well, and she was unable to think of anything but the task before her. Now, lowering her brows with an air of preoccupation, she asked zealously: ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... disconnection, withdrawal; inattention, absent-mindedness, preoccupation, musing; defiliation; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... on Monday morning, and to interchange a few words with any of his congregation whom he might happen to meet. This pastoral perambulation not only added importance to him, and made him a figure in Cowfold, but, coming always on Monday, served to give people some notion of a preoccupation during the other days of the week which was forbidden, for mental reasons, on the day after Sunday. On this particular Monday Mr. Broad was passing Mr. Allen's shop, and seeing father and son there, went in. Mr. Allen himself was at a ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... are not conspirators; it is incredible that they should recommend a measure fraught with ruin to England. But the matter is intelligible enough. Mr. Gladstone's weakness, no less than his strength, has always lain in his temporary but exclusive preoccupation with some one dominant idea. The one notion which possesses his mind—to judge from his public conduct and speeches—is that at any cost Home Rule, that is, an Irish Executive and an Irish Parliament, must be conceded to Ireland. Enthusiasm, pride, ambition, all the motives, good and bad, which can ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... an indication of his intense preoccupation of mind that he seemed unaware of Lucy's long trips down into the sage. But Bostil had observed them long before Holley and other riders had ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Harrington was less curious about his wife's journal than seemed natural to his tempters, lay in his own preoccupation at the time. One of his youthful vices had grown strong, and rooted itself amid the selfishness of his heart; all other sins had so cooled down and hardened in his nature, that with most men they might have passed for virtues, the evil ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... The first time it came into my hands I took such special notice of it as might be expected. Upon one corner of the lid I detected a peculiar device scratched slightly upon it, most probably with the sharp point of a steel pen, in such a moment of preoccupation of mind as causes most of us to draw odd lines and caricatured faces upon any piece of paper which may lie under our hand. It was the old revolutionary device of a heart with a dagger piercing it; and I wondered whether it could be the Premier, or one ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... harassing preoccupation with problems which no amount of thought will solve drives many thousands to early graves. Anger exhausts itself in a few minutes, fatigue in a few hours, and real overwork with a week's rest, but worry grows ever ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... even Pougeot, in spite of his preoccupation, began to realize that there was something peculiar about this night promenade, for as they reached a crossroad, M. Paul ordered the chauffeur to turn into it and go ahead as fast as he pleased. The chauffeur hesitated, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... room, she looked as still and rigid as if she had been metamorphosed into a statue. This eagerness of attention, shared as it was, although not to the same extent perhaps, by the rest of Gerald's auditory, was only remarkable in Miss Montgomerie, in as much as she was one of too much mental preoccupation to feel or betray interest in any thing, and it might have been the risk encountered by her lover, and the share he had borne in the mysterious occurrence, that now caused her to lapse from her wonted inaccessibility to impressions ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... to pursue her inquiries further, but the dinner was finished and Mr. Wayland had asked for his favorite cigars, so she rose and Boyd accompanied her, leaving the others to smoke. But, strangely enough, Marsh remained in such a state of preoccupation, even after their departure, that Mr. Wayland's attempts at conversation elicited only the vaguest ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... shaped themselves, and to whom life, in whatever form it came, must henceforth take their mould. As she reached this point in her analysis, it occurred to her that his shrinking from the subject might well imply not indifference, but a deeper preoccupation: a preoccupation for some reason suppressed and almost disavowed, yet sustaining the more intensely its painful hidden life. From this inference it was but a leap of thought to the next—that the cause of the change must be sought outside of himself, in some external ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... repeated as a final encouragement, because he had sensed her preoccupation and had misread it for worry over the picture. "You go ahead and shoot, and don't bother about me. Make it real. Shoot as close as you like. If you pink me a little I won't care,—if you'll promise to be my nurse. I ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... attained equal mastery at thirty-five: indeed he himself has told us that not until he had passed the age at which Mozart died did he compose with that complete spontaneity of musical expression which can only be attained by winning entire freedom from all preoccupation with the difficulties of technical processes. But when that time came, he was not only a consummate musician, like Mozart, but a dramatic poet and a critical and philosophical essayist, exercising a considerable influence on his century. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... a stern face sayest: "Hasten ye: and desist not! How to do not to be able to succeed in it, and how to do to succeed in it?"(462) No! I stop not, for I arrive; let thy preoccupation ...
— Egyptian Literature
... morning or two, and then the practice stopped, for the police watched the doors throughout the whole night. This preoccupation of the police was taken advantage of to raid again old Hairyfithill's potato field, and also to pay a visit to the bing for coal, and a very profitable time was thus spent by the strikers, even though the blacklegs were at their ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Henry unslung his gun," Lefever went on without respecting Jeffries's preoccupation. "As it is, those fellows have cleaned up every dollar loose in Sleepy Cat, and then some. Money? They could start a ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... result it will be seen that the single preoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity philanthropically, and the perfecting of firearms considered as instruments of civilisation. It was a company of Exterminating Angels, at bottom the best ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... his hold upon his affairs in Wall Street and suddenly awakens to the fact that he has been betrayed by Mowbray Langdon, one of Roebuck's trusted lieutenants, who, knowing that Blacklock is deeply involved in a short interest in Textile Trust stock, has taken advantage of the latter's preoccupation with Miss Ellersly to boom the price of the stock. With ruin staring him in the face, Blacklock takes energetic measures ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... something must be deducted; we are in wonder-land, and among supernatural or magical conditions. But the forging of the shield and the wonderful house of Alcinous are no merely incongruous episodes in Homer, but the consummation of what is always characteristic of him, a constant preoccupation, namely, with every form of lovely craftsmanship, resting on all things, as he says, like the shining of the sun. We seem to pass, in reading him, through the treasures of some royal collection; ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... among leaves made tender by decay, the splash of startled fish in the shadows, commingled and blended to the accompaniment of that subdued aerial buzz by which Nature manifests the more secret of her functions and art—that ineffable minstrelsy to which her silent battalions keep step. Preoccupation, the whirl of my own temperate thoughts, scared silence, while as soon as the mental machine was stilled, the very trees became vocal. Thus have I caught fleet silences as they passed in chase ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... had met and recognized many of his business acquaintances hurrying thither,—some to save their own property, or to assist the imperfectly equipped volunteer fire department in their unselfish labors. It was probably Mr. Farendell's peculiar preoccupation on that particular night which had prevented his joining ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... your pages with it, or what?" asked Muishkin, still rather absently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered with flora, fauna, and grotesques. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... her to thrill with a sense of the high company she did somehow keep. She was with the absent through her ladyship and with her ladyship through the absent. The only pang—but it didn't matter—was the proof in the admirable face, in the sightless preoccupation of its possessor, that the latter hadn't a notion of her. Her folly had gone to the point of half believing that the other party to the affair must sometimes mention in Eaton Square the extraordinary little person ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... his heart were bestowed on few; for in early life they had never been cultivated, but they were singularly warm, pure, and constant; characterized not by the ardour of passion, but by the constant preoccupation of real affection. He had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attached, early in life; and with his father, a man of coarse feelings and boisterous manners, he had few sentiments in common. Always feeble in constitution, he was unequal to the sports of the field, and to the drinking ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... so much with preoccupation, perhaps, as with indifference. She thought it rather a nice name, but she did not know what she ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... She was secretly bound to another, on whose career she had staked all her happiness. Having thus other interests she evinced to-day the ease of one who hazards nothing, and there was no sign of that preoccupation with housewifely contingencies which so often makes the hostess hardly recognizable as the charming woman who graced a friend's home the day before. In marrying Swithin Lady Constantine had played her card,—recklessly, impulsively, ruinously, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... his attitude was so intensely alert and his manner so mysterious that, despite her desperate preoccupation, Lady Holme found herself distracted for a moment. Her mind was detached from herself, and fixed upon this hidden boat and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... centre of Europe by skilful diplomatic means of sowing dissension amongst its neighbours. Thus Bismarck discouraged colonial extensions. He thought they might weaken Germany. On the other hand, he encouraged French colonial policy, because he thought it would divert the French from their preoccupation with the idea of revanche. He played, more or less successfully, with England, sometimes tempting her with plausible suggestions that she should join the Teutonic Empires on the Continent, sometimes thwarting her aims by sowing ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... failing her, and as she looked at the man standing near her she saw that he was scarcely listening. Some intense preoccupation made him take in but vaguely what she was saying. She saw that he was deeply moved in some way, and the consciousness that this was so gave her a sense of alarm. She felt her own will weakening, and she knew that somehow she must ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... just been opened, was, in fact, that of the Comte de Guiche. But it was not alone with the hope of catching a glimpse of Madame through her curtains that he seated himself by the open window, for his preoccupation of mind had at that time a different origin. He had just received, as we have already stated, the courier who had been dispatched to him by Bragelonne, the latter having written to De Guiche a letter which had made the deepest impression ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue, her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence. She scarcely ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... nice to be as happy as they are," Mollie said, with a little sigh, and with a start Betty came out of her preoccupation. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... however, be said that this may all be true, but that in all this we have after all only an example of the preoccupation of the Middle Ages with conduct and religion. I must, therefore, ask you to consider the character and development of the intellectual movement of the Middle Ages. And here, fortunately, we can find ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of interstellar niceness, for this new patron consisted of no less than Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, escaped in a white "sailor suit" from the Manor during a period of severe maternal and tutorial preoccupation. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... your products of the highest English refinement?" said Mrs. Tallboys, whom in his preoccupation he ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge |
