"Preoccupied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jed Muggs that morning for the damage caused by Teddy. Jed had named an excessive price, but Mr. Rushton had been in no mood to haggle and had paid him what he asked. But it was not this that kept him silent and preoccupied. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... the day, the four in the tonneau, were in that humor of subdued yet vibrant excitement which is apt to attend the conclusion of a long, hard drive over country roads. Maitland, on the other hand, (judging him by his preoccupied pose), was already weary of, if not bored by, the hare-brained enterprise which, initiated on the spur of an idle moment and directly due to a thoughtless remark of his own, had brought him a hundred miles ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... could have conceived either tale.... It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale ejusdem generis to 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Peter Wilkins.' I once projected such a thing, but the difficulty of the preoccupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La Motte Fouque might effect something; but I should fear that neither he nor any other German could entirely understand what may be called the desert island feeling. I would ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... door, to accuse him as a perjured villain. Even the exquisite church tower, which has the semblance of holding aloft a carved goblet of old silver, did not appeal to him as it would if he had not been preoccupied. And instead of laughing at the crowds of children who clattered after us, waking the clean and quiet streets with the ring of sabots, he let them get upon his nerves. The girls were amused, however, and said that the little pestering voices babbling broken English without sense or sequence, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the town's greater banks; and the stairway was at the disposal not only of the bank's clientele, but at that of sixteen tiers of tenants. However, it represented some advanced architect's ideal of grandeur, and it served to make the bank's president seem haughty when in truth he was only preoccupied. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Gracieuse, whose coming preoccupied Ramuntcho, was late. But, to distract his mind for a moment, a "convoy" advanced slowly; a convoy, that is a parade of parents and nearest neighbors of one who had died during the week, the men still draped in the long ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... preoccupied with these thoughts, she caught sight of a crowd of married women and waiting-maids enter from the back room, pressing round a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... might aid, Quigg became aware of a fast-gathering crowd that whooped and fought and eddied at a corner of Broadway and the crosstown street that he was traversing. Hurrying to the spot he beheld a young man of an exceedingly melancholy and preoccupied demeanor engaged in the pastime of casting silver money from his pockets in the middle of the street. With each motion of the generous one's hand the crowd huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy. Traffic ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the usually sleepy and dignified New York offices of the Southern and Transcontinental Railroad Company in lower Broadway. The supercilious, well-groomed clerks who, on ordinary days, are far too preoccupied with their own personal affairs to betray the slightest interest in anything not immediately concerning them, now condescended to bestir themselves and, gathered in little groups, conversed in subdued, eager tones. The slim, nervous fingers of half a dozen haughty stenographers, representing as ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... kept her gaze steadily on the carpet, and had any one looked at her, the sadness of her countenance must have been remarked. But the young people were occupied with each other, and James Harrington sat, like herself, preoccupied and listening. As Lina broke into another and lighter air, the two looked up, and their eyes met. The blush on Mabel's cheek spread and glowed over her brow and temples. She arose, and went ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... out of the room together, and drank their beer at a neighboring garden. They were both rather silent and preoccupied. As they parted, Offitt said, "I've got a scheme on hand for raising the wind, I want to talk to you about. Be at my room to-night between nine and ten, and wait till I come, if I am out. Don't fail." Sam stared a little, but promised, asking ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his office, yet if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive preoccupied conceits of the king's inward intention, which although with time, the trier of all truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet, interim patitur justus, and prejudged conceits will, in the meantime, breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder.' Poor James of the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... did not do justice to this splendid beginning: Nature had recollected that she was not in Italy; and the young lady's lineaments, though not so inconsistent as to make her plain, would have been accepted rather as pleasing than as correct. The preoccupied expression which, like images on the retina, remained with her for a moment after the state that caused it had ceased, now changed into a reserved, half-proud, and slightly indignant look, in which the blood diffused itself quickly across ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... about to reply when the preacher grasped his arm and by a sign enjoined silence. He did so not a moment too soon. Preoccupied by the story, narrator and listener had paid no heed to what was passing in the lane, and the voices of men speaking close at hand took them by surprise. From the first words which reached them, it was clear that ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... and preoccupied as her admirers had never seen her, and presently, hearing Jane's and Neckart's steps on the path, she rose hastily and bade them good-night. They each shook hands with her, that being one of the sacred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... have seen something, I know," said the girl, "and something father is puzzled about. He would not have come and gone without a kiss." Already Mrs. Stannard had noted his fond custom, had marked its omission now when, ever since luncheon, he had been away, and she, too, divined that he was preoccupied, even perplexed. But once already she had too quickly spoken her thoughts, and there must be no more of that. In three minutes the little party came forth again, Willett with them now, and, field-glasses in hand, away ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature that are transpiring about us are like written words that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or the writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key. A female oriole was one day observed very much preoccupied under a shed where the refuse from the horse stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn fowls, scolding them sharply when they came too near her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just beyond. The bird, not finding ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... George Trent had appeared as much changed toward her as his half-sister had, so that Roger need have had no new fears for him. George had never ceased to be courteous, but there was a subtle difference in his manner, in his way of looking at her. He appeared preoccupied; he no longer sought her out. And this alteration had only come about since the day when they had visited the ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... so often lately, his manner was so vague, he seemed at once so happy and so preoccupied, so excited, so pleased, so worried, and yet so unnaturally good-tempered, that Edith had begun to suspect he ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... and goes to the door and back, evidently much preoccupied. SASHA sits down in her former place. IVANOFF silently shakes hands with ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... day both Hugh Mainwaring and a number of his guests seemed rather preoccupied, and the meal passed in unusual silence. Mrs. LaGrange exerted herself to be particularly entertaining to Mr. Whitney, but he, though courteously responding to her overtures, made no effort to continue the conversation. Even the genial Mr. Thornton was in so abstracted a mood that his ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... were you thinking about?" Armine continued, earnestly. "I noticed how preoccupied you were even when you ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Armenia's leaders remain preoccupied by Armenia's nine-year old conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Although a cease-fire has been in effect since May 1994, the sides have not made substantial progress toward a peaceful resolution. President TER-PETROSSIAN's ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Schumann's "Sehnsucht," that she was singing; it was the first that had come to her mind at Graham's bidding, and, still preoccupied, she began it almost without thought of the words and sentiment; but she had not sung two lines, when some hidden emotion made itself felt in her face with a quite irresistible enthusiasm and pathos. These were ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... degree of tranquillity; neither wrapped in its illusions, nor full of indignation at its discovered hollowness. At two-and-twenty, even if the heart is not burning with fever heat of some kind—some enthusiastic passion or misanthropical disgust—the head at least is preoccupied with some engrossing idea, which so besets the man, that he can see nothing clearly in the world around him. At this age he has a philosophy, a metaphysical system, which he really believes in, (a species ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Ethel in a trembling voice. She began to be alarmed. She felt sure that this man was insane. She had never heard such incoherency in her life. And she was alone with him. She stole a timid look, and saw his long, sallow face, on which there was now a preoccupied expression, and the look did not ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... became self-possessed, even animated; and, Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive. She was waiting, desiring, the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... exertions for inculcating religion generally, that is, on men of all conditions and ages, they may be assumed as giving special encouragement to those for impressing it on young minds, before they can be preoccupied and hardened by the depravities of the world. There is plainly the more hope for the efficacy of those exertions the less there is to frustrate them. But besides, the authority itself, which has assured a measure of success to religious instruction as administered generally, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... and perhaps Monny Gilder. Always interested in "Mrs. Jones," from first sight, when he had laughingly said that the "little sprite of a woman" would be almost too alluring if surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue, Anthony was now frankly preoccupied with her affairs. He was not even annoyed that, unaided by me, her quick mind had grasped the secret of his identity. "It was like her to spring on to it by instinct," he said, smiling that thoughtful smile of his, which was more than ever ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and we'll drink to a jolly night," cried Haldane, and all complied with wonderful zest and unanimity. The host, however, was too excited and preoccupied to note that while Mr. Van Wink and Mr. Ketchem were always ready to have their glasses filled, they never drained them very low; and thus it happened that he and the slightly superior gentleman who made free drinks one ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... beautiful life," answered the priest, with simple indifference. "But I never have thought of it with regret, because I have been preoccupied with other ideas than those of social pleasures, though ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... of the S.S. Vesta, they were rare phenomena. Ordinarily, if I heard from him thrice a year I had to consider that he was indulging in an orgy of correspondence. But what with Doria and Adrian and Liosha, and what with Barbara and myself being so intimately mixed up in the matters which preoccupied his mind, the voyage of the Vesta covered a period of abnormal epistolary activity. Instead of a wife, our amateur sailor found a post office at every port. He wrote reams. He had the journalist's trick of instantaneous composition. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... gave absent answers during the meal Clytie seemed to be preoccupied also. Little Mary, who sat by him, tucked her hand ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... into furious profanity; for there, in the empty court-room, stood young Trudgian and his wife, covered, indeed, with white dust, but blissfully wrapt in their own marvellous escape; and young Trudgian for the moment was wholly preoccupied in probing with two fingers for a piece of plaster which had somehow found its way down his Selina's back between the nape of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Arts "drove on," without noticing this interruption. "I tried to 'lead up' to the hearse," he said, "in conversation with the young ladies of the castle. I endeavoured to assume the languid and preoccupied air of the guest who, in ghost-stories, has had a bad night with the family spectre. I drew the conversation to the topic of apparitions, and even to warnings of death. I knew that every family worthy of the name has its omen: the Oxenhams a ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... person had seen, but had not uttered a word on seeing Manasseh advancing through the shades; one person only had forecast the exact succession of all that was coming; me she saw embarrassed and my hands preoccupied—Pierpoint and Ratcliffe useless by position—and the gleam of the dog's eye directed her to his aim. The crow-bar was leaning against the shattered wall. This she had silently seized. One blow knocked up the sword; a second laid the villain prostrate. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... irresolutely as one hesitates whose mind is too preoccupied to direct his steps. Then his eye caught the gleam of light from the printing office across the street next to the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... inventiveness, the love of adventure, the pride of dominance that we have now; but there was then a great interest in things of the mind as well, a lively taste for ideas, a love of beautiful things and thoughts. The Puritan uprising knocked all that on the head, but Puritanism was at least preoccupied with moral ideas, and developed an excitement about sin which was at all events a sign of intellectual ferment. And then we did indeed decline into a comfortable sort of security, into a stale classical tradition, with pompous and ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the church as institution. As institution, the church faces the temptation of being more concerned about itself than about God and His purposes for His people. As we saw in Mr. Churchill's remarks, in Chapter I, the church can become so preoccupied with itself that it loses its sense of responsibility for its mission to the world. We saw also that the relationship between the church and the world is intended to be close, for the world is the sphere of God's action, and the church is the means of ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... strangely drawn towards Crossthwaite, carefully as he seemed to avoid me, except to give me business directions in the workroom. He alone had shown me any kindness; and he, too, alone was untainted with the sin around him. Silent, moody, and preoccupied, he was yet the king of the room. His opinion was always asked, and listened to. His eye always cowed the ribald and the blasphemer; his songs, when he rarely broke out into merriment, were always rapturously applauded. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... through all those days and years when they were with us,—presences familiar and accustomed, moving round us with so soft a tread that we scarce regarded them, nor laid on them detaining hands, nor lifted our preoccupied and ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... surprise the flippancy passed unnoticed, at any rate, verbally. As a rule the headmaster preferred that quotations from back numbers of Punch should be kept out of the prefects' English Essays. And he generally said as much. But today he seemed strangely preoccupied. A split infinitive in paragraph five, which at other times would have made him sit up in his chair stiff with horror, elicited no remark. The same immunity was accorded to the insertion (inspired by Clowes, as usual) of a popular catch phrase in the last few ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... do," said Calvert. "I hate the very sight of a wasp-waisted, self-sufficient Prussian subaltern. They're everywhere. Imperial arrogance seems to pervade even their beer gardens." His voice trailed off into silence again, as in a preoccupied manner his finger wandered over the map. It stopped suddenly as he leaned closer to study the pink plot on which it rested. "Krovitch; Krovitch!" he muttered, "now where the devil have I heard of Krovitch? Russian province it seems ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... was Olaf. "Ja! I told you the Shining Devil's mistress was all evil. Ja! Now I begin again that tale I started when he came"—he glanced toward the preoccupied Rador. "And tell him not what I say should he ask. For I trust none here in Trolldom, save the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... world wonders after the beast," (xiii. 3,) and the gross senses of the multitude are preoccupied with that object; here is another presented more worthy of our contemplation. Often has the Lord Jesus appeared in vision to John while viewing the grand panorama passing before him in Patmos. Here he appears as the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... hands in his pockets. I felt as if within a few moments I had, morally speaking, taken several steps nearer to him. He looked weary, just as he faced me then, looked preoccupied and as if there were something one might do for him. I was terribly conscious of the limits of my young ability, but I wondered what such a service might be, feeling at bottom nevertheless that the only thing ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... attention to him. They seemed preoccupied and not too friendly with each other, Bud thought. Their general air of gloom he could of course lay to the weather and the fact that they had been traveling for about fourteen hours without any rest; ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the piano, and played two-steps, and rag-time music, so infectiously, that Simpson literally tripped as he cleared the table; and Nurse Rosemary, sitting pale and preoccupied, with a pile of letters before her, had hard work to keep ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... system of conference committees whereby agreement might be effected upon occasion between the two houses, reserving the eventual right of the Commons, after a third rejection by the Lords, to enact a measure into law alone. Preoccupied, however, with projects of general legislation, the Government postponed and eventually abandoned the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... correspondence was kept up between them, compensating for their seeing each other rarely. The project of marriage, more tenaciously pursued by Balzac than by his Eve, was yet no hindrance to his fleeting fancies for other women. These interim amours have a good deal preoccupied his various biographers, partly because of the undoubted use he made of them in his novels, and partly also because of the trouble he gave himself to establish among circles outside his own immediate entourage the legend of his being a sort of Sir Galahad, leading a perfectly ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... indomitable energy, he had all the qualities needed to ensure success in the aim on which his mind was perpetually bent without ever being diverted from it. Passionately eager for his projects, he was insensible to the ills which must result from them. One matter alone preoccupied him, the destruction of all liberty. The papacy divined his character and created ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... glossopharyngeal nerve, and one eats unthinkingly like a dog. But this matters little to Carlotta. Perhaps when I was nineteen it mattered little to me. And to-night, also, it mattered little, for my mind was preoccupied and a dinner with Lucullus would have ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... appetite, albeit the poulet was done to a turn. Jeanne made no remark on this, as she removed the almost untasted meal, nor on the quite as unusual fact, that the wine carafe was already half emptied, and her master himself restless, dreamy, and preoccupied. Concluding, however, from these symptoms, that a fierce struggle between generosity and avarice was going on in M. Derville's breast, she quietly determined on bringing an auxiliary to the aid of generosity, that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... his usually rather florid face pale with intense sorrow or worry, his manner preoccupied. She burst out: "Have you seen the Red Placard ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... rake, and dried in the evaporator you bring me ten cents a pound; to the folks needing a tonic you are worth a small fortune. No doubt you cost that by the time you reach them; but I fear I can't gather you just now. My head is a little preoccupied these days. What with the cabbage, and now you, and many of the bushes and trees making signs, with a new cabin to build and furnish, with a girl to find and win, I'm what you might call busy. I've covered my book shelf. I positively don't dare look Emerson or Maeterlinck in the face. One consolation! ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... friends of pen-and-ink is their unchangeableness. We go to them when we want them. We know where to seek them; we know what to expect from them. They are never preoccupied; they are always 'at home;' they never turn their backs nor walk away as people do in real life, nor let their houses and leave the neighbourhood, and disappear for weeks together; they are never taken up with ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... had been very much preoccupied for two or three days. She found her more than once busy at her desk, with a manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... made for acceptance of the invitation and adequate representation in the Exposition. The question arising out of the Belgian annexation of the Independent State of the Congo, which has so long and earnestly preoccupied the attention of this Government and enlisted the sympathy of our best citizens, is still open, but in a more hopeful stage. This Government was among the foremost in the great work of uplifting the uncivilized ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... emptied it when filling his pouch that morning; and being much preoccupied had not even noticed how little was left. Evidently, during his absence, a hotel servant had helped himself to the remaining handful, and a clear ten days must elapse before the arrival of a fresh consignment ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... first time that Clare had ever met her, but he was too preoccupied to observe more than that she was still a handsome woman, in the garb of a respectable widow. He was obliged to explain that he was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and he did it awkwardly enough. "I want to see her at ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... presumably enjoying his pipe before the heat of the day. His eyes furtively followed his wife as she moved about near him, sometimes passing close to his chair in search of something she had mislaid. There was colour in her cheeks; her eyes, though preoccupied, were bright; there was a lightness and buoyancy in her step which she set to a little dancing air she was humming under ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... to the Herregaard. Dinner was ready, and Hardy had to bear a running fire of criticism from Fru Jensen and her daughters. He had not, they said, observed the particular merits of many of the Danish ladies who had been present at the dance of the previous evening, but doubtless he was preoccupied. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... Dubois, it was a little scared at the liberties taken by Voltaire with the Catholic church. He was required to make excisions in order to get permission to print the poem; the author was here, there, and everywhere, in a great flutter and preoccupied with his literary, financial, and fashionable affairs. In receipt of a pension from the queen, and received as a visitor at La Source, near Orleans, by Lord Bolingbroke in his exile, every day becoming more brilliant and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had naturally impressed me strongly ever since I had come, in so strange a manner, to be an inmate of her father's house, and it was to be expected that after what had happened the night previous, I should be more than ever preoccupied with thoughts of her. From the first I had been struck with the air of serene frankness and ingenuous directness, more like that of a noble and innocent boy than any girl I had ever known, which characterized ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... gold-smiths, who make exquisite inlaid work. They do this after the manner of true artists, in that they work seemingly more by a process of thought and feeling rather than with the aid of tools. For they sit on the ground with a bowl of water, a small charcoal fire, a strip of metal, and a deeply preoccupied look, and after a time the article is finished. The overlaying of silver by antimony is their particular craft. Owing to the orders they received, they soon began to charge prohibitive prices. At certain times it was possible to get egret feathers, and also astrachan—the skin of unborn ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... perplexed what to advise, for the principal sanctuary would, no doubt, be crowded by ruffians of the worst character; and the better lodgments which that place, a little town in itself, [the Sanctuary of Westminster was fortified] contained, be already preoccupied by the Yorkists of rank; and the smaller sanctuaries were still more liable to the same objection. Moreover, if Adam should be recognized by any of the rabble that would meet them by the way, his fate, by the summary malice of a mob, was certain. After all, the Tower would be free from ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone; always preoccupied by something else than the actual business on hand; appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails; cropping up in unexpected places along the road after vague and purposeless detours—seemingly going ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... know," murmured Amherst indifferently. As a rule he was humorously resigned to his mother's habit of deserting the general for the particular, and following some irrelevant thread of association in utter disregard of the main issue. But to-night, preoccupied with his subject, and incapable of conceiving how anyone else could be unaffected by it, he resented her indifference as a sign ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... faces upturned to the granite crags, I caught the Princess regarding me doubtfully. Her gaze passed on as if to interrogate Marc'antonio and Stephanu, who, however, paid no heed, being preoccupied. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... did not accompany the treasure-seekers on the following day, but when he saw them returning empty-handed toward noon, he hastened forward to meet them—his usual preoccupied indifference entirely vanished, and in its place a ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... however, took its place. Mr. Carr having finished his coffee one morning, lingered a moment over his perfunctory paternal embraces, with the awkwardness of a preoccupied man endeavoring by the assumption of a lighter interest ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... your pardon, adjutant," said he, with a preoccupied look, "but in your report I observe that your regiment contains forty-three enlisted men, and nine hundred and twenty-six company cooks. This seems to me improbable, and the general cannot seem to ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... extensive park, in whose magnificent old trees monkeys were disporting themselves. The Maharajah's communication to him as to the English orders which he had received, taken in conjunction with General Ivanov's advance, entirely preoccupied him. After this he was no longer in doubt that serious military events were impending, or were even then in full swing. Quetta, in Beluchistan, lying directly on the Afghan frontier, was the gate of the line of march towards ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... hears the creaking of a rocking-chair as the voice of some one calling him bad names, it is because he is preoccupied with suspicion. We might almost call this an hallucination,[Footnote: See p. 375.] since he is projecting his own auditory images and taking them for real sensations; it is, at any rate, an extreme instance of illusion. In a milder form, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... men were strolling along Pall Mall. The Prince had lit a large cigar, and was apparently on the best of terms with himself and the world in general. Brott, on the contrary, was most unlike himself, preoccupied, and apparently ill ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... oneself accustomed to the feeling. But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life. She appears to regard it as the only calling worthy a Christian woman. I found her alone one afternoon. Her manner was preoccupied; I asked if I could be ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... I was passing through Boston Common, which lies between my home and my office, I met a gentleman lounging along The Mall. I am generally preoccupied when walking, and often thread my way through crowded streets without distinctly observing any one. But this man's face forced itself upon me, and a singular face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His hair and eyes, if I ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ardour misapplied! Hence, hence," they cry, "ye do but keep man blind! But keep him self-immersed, preoccupied, And lame the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... been edifying, but from Adam and Eve. The sentences which he passes are decisive, not only for the human pair and the serpent, but for their respective races. Painful toil shall be the lot of man; subjection and pangs that of woman.15 The serpent too (whose unique form preoccupied the early men) shall be humiliated, as a perpetual warning to man—who is henceforth his enemy—-of the danger of reasoning on and disobeying the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and Constance Channing. Roland, in much inward commotion, was striding through the cloisters on his way to find that reverend divine, when he strode up to the throng of disputants, who were far too much preoccupied with their own concerns to observe him. The first distinct voice that struck upon Roland's ear above the general hubbub, was that of ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... materialism in its purest form. Overindulgence is the fault {85} which attaches to the exclusive insistence of the isolated interest on itself; when it grows head-strong, and is like to defeat itself through being blindly preoccupied. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... in her hand, she gazed out the small chintz bordered window of the room, preoccupied. He noticed the daintiness of her profile, the placid sweetness of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... rose from the table quickly in apparently a preoccupied manner, and the conversation was thus brought to ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... of serious danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity of race among these people—this eighth and largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and obscurity to the common task. Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... lower part of the hall had in a great measure subsided, partly out of respect to the host, and partly in consequence of the alarm occasioned by the supposed supernatural visitation. Richard continued silent and preoccupied, and neither ate nor drank; but Nicholas appearing to think his courage would be best sustained by an extra allowance of clary and sack, applied himself frequently to the goblet with that view, and erelong ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... beginning of July, 1914, the Italian Government, preoccupied by the prevailing feeling in Vienna, caused to be laid before the Austro-Hungarian Government a number of suggestions advising moderation, and warning it of the impending danger of a European outbreak. The course adopted by Austria-Hungary against Serbia constituted, moreover, a direct encroachment ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Irving's heart, is evidence of the tender confidence that existed between him and this family. That this intimacy would have resulted in marriage, or an offer of marriage, if the lady's affections had not been preoccupied, the Fosters seem to have believed. In an unauthorized addition to the, "Life and Letters," inserted in the English edition without the knowledge of the American editor, with some such headings as, "History of his First Love brought to us, and returned," and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... expect she didn't," said Florence. "Mr. Dill, I was goin' to ask you somep'n—it's kind of a queer kind of question for me to ask, I guess——" She paused. However, he did not interrupt her, seeming preoccupied with gloom; whereupon Florence permitted herself a deprecatory laugh, and continued, "It might be you'd answer yes, or it might be you'd answer no; but anyway I was goin' to ask you—it's ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Maulincour will certainly cause some evil. Jules' mind is preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the floor and turned upon him with a question on the political situation, and deliberately engaged him in conversation, which Harry King entered into courteously yet reluctantly. Evidently he was preoccupied with affairs of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... we did not meet so constantly, and therefore not so familiarly as formerly. When we did meet, she was as frank and friendly as ever; but she was always preoccupied. She was studying daily with the great young maestro himself, then just rising to the full zenith of his fame, and her whole thoughts were filled with the music of the new opera he was writing, which she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... delight, as Bobby rushes after her in headlong pursuit, down the late so silent passages; and to looking complacently from one to another of the holiday faces round the table, where Barbara and I have sat, during the last noiseless month, in stillest dialogue or preoccupied silence. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... meal I have, not unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their separate stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit to a gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race, preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—hadou mageiros—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... see everything, or to listen, and it is the wonder of wonders, how much there is in this old world which we never dreamed of, how many beautiful, curious, interesting sights and sounds there are which ordinarily make no impression upon our clogged, overfed and preoccupied minds. I have also had the feeling—it may be unscientific but it is comforting—that any man might see like an Indian or smell like a hound if he gave to the senses the brains which the Indian and the hound apply to them. And ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... end of the elm-tree walk as he sprang down into the little coplanade, but he was too dreadfully preoccupied with hope and anguish, and almost despair, to observe any ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... While still preoccupied with what Mrs. Jameson terms his visions of love and poetry, he was called upon by his father, at the age of twenty-one, to marry, for political reasons, a woman whom he had never seen—Clarice Orsini. That the marriage was unexpected is attested ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... my great disappointment, they were not resumed, and the fault was mine. Late in the day a Praying Mantis was brought to me, which merited attention on account of its exceptionally small size. Preoccupied with the events of the afternoon, and absent-minded, I hastily placed the predatory insect under the same cover as the moth. It did not occur to me for a moment that this cohabitation could lead to any harm. The Mantis was so slender, and the other ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... newspapers, though they may be as poor as Job's turkey, he received a great many circulars addressed by typewriter, and the only letters he really cared for were from his wife, so that when he was very hard at work or much preoccupied the others accumulated somewhere in the workshop, and ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the Doctor blandly, "but I imagine she has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with something more important than the consideration of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Preoccupied as he was, Stephen could not be indifferent to the excursion, for Tlemcen is the shrine of gems in Arab architecture, only equalled at Granada itself. Though he was so ignorant still of eastern lore, that he ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Being thus pleasantly preoccupied, she may be supposed ignorant of her cousin's broad gaze of unreflecting admiration, and totally unprepared for his ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... comparatively recent times; and its effects are still visible in the life of the stern islanders. In his charming romance, "Colomba," M. Prosper Merimee has depicted the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in the streets; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the household, were ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... prevented Madden from working at all. He painted intermittently, between wonders, so to speak. As for Caradoc, he made no pretense to labor, but propped a broad shoulder against the supporting rope, stuck a cigarette under his white mustache and fell to regarding the waterscape in a serious, preoccupied fashion. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart. Your sad, or morose, or embittered, or preoccupied heart settles heavily into the saddle, and the poor beast, the body, breaks down the first mile. Indeed, the heaviest thing in the world is a heavy heart. Next to that, the most burdensome to the walker is a heart not in perfect sympathy ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... meet him, as he had proposed, but he had sent his outlandish American gig with his groom to fetch John. While he was at the vicarage the latter was probably too much occupied with conversation to notice that Mr. Ambrose seemed preoccupied and changed, and the vicar was to some extent recalled to his usual manner by the presence of his pupil. Mrs. Ambrose had taxed her husband with concealing something from her ever since the previous day, but the good man was obstinate ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... done. His great sin was one which he shared with all his brother-popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon which his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... of the consideration of an external object, the perceiving mind comes to it, preoccupied by the name and idea conventionally associated with that object. For example, in coming to the study of a book, we think of the author, his period, the school to which he belongs. The second stage, set forth ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people of a dissipated ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... brothers and the aunt to Julia's discomposure, and their blindness to its true cause, must be imputed to the fullness of their own minds. They were totally preoccupied. Tom was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it. Edmund, between his theatrical and his real part—between Miss Crawford's claims and his own conduct—between love and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that we forget things it would be well for us to remember." He had come in that day with a certain preoccupied grimness of expression which was not unknown to her. It was generally after one of his absences that he ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soul? A copious letter writer, Owen Sandbrook's correspondence never failed to find its way to her, though they did not stand on such terms as to write to one another; and in those letters she lived, doing her day's work with cheerful brightness, and seldom seeming preoccupied, but imagination, heart, and soul were with ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with it the year itself; full of tender hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh completed. From all sides that still afternoon you caught the quick breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal. Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had strayed down the garden and out into the pasture beyond, where, on a bit of rising ground that dominated the garden on one side and the downs with the old coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down to chew the cud of fancy. There she ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... evening progressed it became evident to me that our new captain had developed a very preoccupied mood; he fell into long fits of abstraction; and often answered very much at random such remarks as happened to be addressed to him. He appeared to be turning over some puzzling matter in his mind; and at length that matter came to the surface and ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the Hand of God with the forlorn old top-coat over his arm. The coroner had formally handed it over to him. He was evidently a close friend of the deceased, he would perhaps take charge of his wearing apparel. The architect's thoughts were too preoccupied to allow him to resent the sneer which accompanied these remarks; he went off full ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... still as content with vague or conventional representations. On this continent, especially, people fancied that all must be tame and second-hand, everything long since duly analyzed and distributed and put up in appropriate quotations, and nothing left for us poor American children but a preoccupied universe. And yet Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond and shows us that absolutely nothing in Nature has ever yet been described,—not a bird nor a berry of the woods, nor a drop of water, nor a spicula of ice, nor summer, nor winter, nor sun, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... for the trial Mr. Tutt, having been delayed by an accident in the Subway, entered the Criminal Courts Building only a moment or two before the call of the calendar. Somewhat preoccupied, he did not notice the numerous Chinamen who dawdled about the entrance or the half dozen who crowded with him into the elevator, but when Pat the elevator man called, "Second floor!—Part One to your right!—Part Two to the ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... that they might both be healed! Oh! that he might be convinced by her cure, that he might believe like her, that they might be saved together! He wished to pray, ardently, as she herself did. But in spite of himself he was preoccupied by the crowd, that limitless crowd, among which he found it so difficult to drown himself, disappear, become nothing more than a leaf in the forest, lost amidst the rustle of all the leaves. He could not prevent himself from analysing and judging it. He knew that for four days ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mind are exceedingly faint and evanescent, and that it requires the utmost painstaking to watch them properly. It would seem impossible to give the required attention to the processes of thought, and yet to think as freely as if the mind had been in no way preoccupied. The peculiarity of the experiments I am about to describe is that I have succeeded in evading this difficulty. My method consists in allowing the mind to play freely for a very brief period, until a couple or so of ideas have passed through it, and then, ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long time ago—no man can recall how far back—the Wholesale Pickpockets made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice. Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see an increase in the rewards and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... found Bathilde very uneasy; he was half an hour late, which had not happened before for ten years. The uneasiness of the young girl was doubled when she saw Buvat's sad and preoccupied air, and she wanted to know directly what it was that caused the abstracted mien of her dear friend. Buvat, who had not had time to prepare a speech, tried to put off the explanation till after dinner; but Bathilde declared that she should not go to dinner till she knew what had ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... mark on Mr. O'Connor's brow. His wife, accustomed from many years of sky searching to look for trouble there, saw the unwrinkled expanse and took heart. Her husband answered her polite morning inquiries with sufficient attention, although he was palpably preoccupied and in no mood for ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... told Peggy and me about him on the afternoon we went over to help her gather her late roses for pot-pourri. We found her strangely quiet and preoccupied. As a rule she was fond of mild fun, alert to hear East Grafton gossip, and given to sudden little trills of almost girlish laughter, which for the time being dispelled the atmosphere of gentle old-maidishness which seemed to hang about her as a garment. At such moments we did not find it hard ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was also a certain preacher, one Basilides, of more ancient date, not long after the time of our Apostles. Since he was of a shrewd disposition himself, and observed that at that time all other subjects were preoccupied, he determined to affirm that dualism which was maintained also by Scythianus. And so, since he had nothing to advance which he might call his own, he brought the sayings of others before his adversaries. And all his books contain some matters difficult and extremely harsh. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... was taken before an officer for examination. But the officer was busy and preoccupied, and the questioning was largely a matter of form. Tom was vague or dense as the case demanded, and the impatient officer curtly ordered him to be thrust in with the other prisoners and promptly proceeded to ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... her great black eyes had already taken the measure of the new wife, of the children's future, and of the chances of her own authority. Not the smallest portion of this decision originated in the fact that Christian, wholly preoccupied as she was, quitted it without taking any notice ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... them. The word passed along Main Street that Jack and William were closeted in the bank. Phil, walking downtown on an errand, with the happiness of her party still in her eyes, was not without her sense of the situation. At the breakfast-table her father, deeply preoccupied, had brought himself with an effort to review the happier events of the party. Knowing what was in his mind Phil mentioned the untoward misfortune that had cast Jack Holton of all men upon the threshold of her ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... consented to accompany them, and during the early part of the ride had seemed in hilarious spirits. Now, for the last fifteen minutes or so, he had appeared gloomy and preoccupied, but as they neared the spot where they had decided to eat their lunch, his spirits seemed to revive somewhat, and he ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... hand, nor the placid, mellow-tinted, and sky-bounded plain on the other were regarded by her. Her thoughts were still with the advocate in his office, or with her departed father in her native home below Quebec, as he and she had lived and loved each other there, nearly twenty years before. Thus preoccupied, she lent no heed to the landscape, although before her was the broad, descending sun, and behind her was the mighty Saint Lawrence basking in burnished gold; and soon another stream, a branch of the Ottawa, appeared in the distance, the two clasping ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... bid Bernardine and her father good-night, he walked along the street, little caring in which direction he went, his mind was so preoccupied with trying to solve the problem of how to make this ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of miles from ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... the cavern, he observed for the first time—what he might have observed the night before had he not been preoccupied with sudden, numerous, and powerful surprises—that the walls were hung with arms and trophies of the chase. Just opposite to him hung the skin of an enormous grisly bear, with the head and skull entire, and the mouth and teeth grinning at him in an awful manner. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... some tranquil days of which nothing broke the peaceful monotony. The children were extraordinarily tractable, perhaps because Mrs. van Cannan seemed too preoccupied to lay any injunctions upon them. True, Roddy made one of his mysterious disappearances, but it was not long before Christine, hard on his heels, discovered him emerging from an outhouse, where she later assured herself that he could ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... and entirely different subjects, and need take no more interest in the work than he would if his hand did not belong to him nor than if a spirit laid hold of and guided the pencil. Some mediums who write automatically have to be mentally quiet; they find that if the mind is preoccupied the hand will not write, although, even in such cases, it frequently happens that the amanuensis is ignorant of the communication until he ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... at the moment when a spark came from the conductor of the machine. He was struck by the novelty of the phenomenon, and immediately spoke to me about it, for I was at the moment occupied with other things and mentally preoccupied. I was at once tempted to repeat the experiment, so as to make clear whatever might be obscure in it. For this purpose I took up the scalpel and moved its point close to one or the other of the crural nerves of the frog, while at the same time one of my assistants elicited sparks ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... beginning of the trail, and started along it with a know-it-all, cheerful confidence in the little bit of wood-lore which he had acquired. Hence he now found it considerably more difficult to follow the spotted trees. His brain was excited and preoccupied; and when once in fancied security he suffered his eyes and thoughts to stray for a minute from the trail, every unfamiliar woodland sight and sound tempted them to ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... four thousand men-at-arms, eight thousand light horse, and thirty thousand foot, an ill-disciplined militia, chiefly drawn from the mountainous districts of the north, which manifested peculiar devotion to his cause; his partisans in the south being preoccupied with suppressing domestic revolt, and with incursions on the frontiers ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... The latter, though apparently preoccupied, could not fail to admire this quaint and pretty nook—just such a spot as one could sit in and dream their life away; a sort of lotus bed, where one inhaled the beguiling odors, and cast all worldly cares ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... sound as if spoken absently, as if she were preoccupied in search for a certain paper. Instead it was an eldritch note in the room, like the croak of an evil bird... He was standing near the outer door. Something of her tumult must have come to him, she thought, for his voice was strangely ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... person from whom money or its equivalent could be squeezed—the greedy old Spaniard would like to transfix him with a glance. In the rear came Captain Brand and the doctor, the former as gay as a bird—of the vulture species—and his companion grave, severe, and preoccupied. Stopping as they reached the Tiger Trap Battery, where, after Captain Brand had made a close inspection of the guns, and held sharp confabs with the men who rose to receive him, he moved away a few steps, and, resting his body against the lee side of a projecting ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of these guerilla bands kept thousands of Union troops pinned down on rear area security guard duty, and preoccupied the forces assigned to Fairfax Court House. The difficulty of their task under the circumstances that prevailed in Northern Virginia was dramatized in the famous Confederate raid on Fairfax Court House by men under the command of Col. John S. Mosby when, on the night of March 8, 1863, the Confederate ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... to obtain from his store of entomological wisdom the elementary ideas which he would find indispensable. Fabre has told us, in a moving page (4/20), with what a total lack of comprehension of "poverty in a black coat" the great scientist gazed at his poor home. Preoccupied by another problem, that of the amelioration of wines by means of heat, Pasteur asked him point-blank— him, the humble proletarian of the university caste, who drank only the cheapest wine of the country—to show him his cellar. "My ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... give you this hint—don't commit anything at all to writing, the publication of which would be annoying to us. There are many things that I would rather not know than learn at some risk. I shall write at greater length to you with a mind less preoccupied, when my boy Cicero is, as I hope he will be, in a good state of health. Pray be careful to let me know to whom I should give the letter which I shall then send you—to Caesar's letter-carriers, for him ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... been before, realizing for the first time what a botch I had made of my stay in London. In great dejection, I was picking up my hat to leave the house, when Mrs. Manners came in upon me, and insisted that I should stay for dinner. She was very white, and seemed troubled and preoccupied, and said that Mr. Manners had come back from York with a cold on his chest, but would insist upon joining the party to Vauxhall on Monday. I asked her when she was going to the baths, and suggested that the change would do her good. Indeed, she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was ever accepted with so much favour by so many intellectual persons pre-committed to, and preoccupied by, another system, as Mr. Fechter's Hamlet. I take this to have been the case (as it unquestionably was in London), not because of its picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, not because of its many ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left." This plainly implies an acknowledged right in either to occupy whatever ground he pleased that was not preoccupied by other tribes. "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan, and journeyed east; and Abraham dwelt in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Sir Robert went direct from the prison to the club room at White's. He was observed to be gloomy, preoccupied, his manner not a little perturbed. The usual light smile was completely clouded under a gravity foreign to his nature. One may guess that he was in no humour to carry coals. In a distant corner of the room he seated himself and fell to frowning at the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... such scenes, a happy example of an intimate family union. Marie Antoinette had always been fond of music, and, as we have seen before, ever since her arrival in France, had devoted fixed hours to her music-master. And now, on almost every evening which was not otherwise preoccupied, she gave little concerts in her apartments to the royal family, their principal attendants, and a few of the chief nobles of the court; being herself occasionally one of the performers, and maintaining her character as a hostess by a combined affability and dignity ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... again at the midday meal, but he ate in haste and seemed preoccupied, departing again at the earliest moment possible. Though he did not discuss the matter with her, she knew that the cruel drought would become a catastrophe if it lasted much longer. She prepared for departure ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Gentlemen of Verona, Henry VI, Part I,—are attributed to him, about this time, by Baconians. Of course my view is merely personal or "subjective." The Baconians' view is also "subjective." I regard Bacon, in 1591, and later, as intellectually preoccupied by his vast speculative aims:- what he says that he desires to do, in science, is what he DID, as far as he was able. His other desires, his personal advancement, money, a share in the conduct of affairs, he also ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... she arose and dressed herself rapidly, but all the time appeared preoccupied and ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was waiting for him at his own house with a line written in lead-pencil informing him that Rosanette was about to be confined. He had been so much preoccupied for the past few days that he had not bestowed a thought ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... first consider local society whether a province, a department, or a county. For the past ten years (1789-99), the legislator has unceasingly deformed and assaulted. On his side, he refuses to open his eyes; preoccupied with theories, he will not recognize it for what it is in reality, a society of a distinct species, different from the State, with its own peculiar aims, its limits marked out, its members prescribed, its statutes drawn up, everything formed and defined beforehand. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
