"Unobservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Madame Poulain, and suddenly Nancy—though unobservant as is youth, and especially happy youth—noticed that mine hostess looked far less well in ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... who had so well executed the work assigned him in the boarding party's plans, proved himself neither inefficient nor unobservant. He approached me now, with a salute, which probably he copied ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... once, a clever woman now, had not been unobservant of some things in Lydia's past, some things that Lydia supposed to be buried in the grave of her own heart. A kind-hearted girl, Jane had never used this knowledge. But now knowledge was power. She would use it ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... dare not, Sally, when I tell you that my life's whole happiness lies in your silence. John is unobservant and also unsuspicious. He has never had an intimate relation with you. You will have no difficulty. But you must be here,—because, dear, there is another reason," and here her voice grew very unsteady, and tears ran ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the question cannot fail to have occurred to the most unobservant reader, why the history of the Family of Bethany and the Resurrection of Lazarus, in themselves so replete with interest and instruction—the latter, moreover, forming, as it did, so notable a crisis in the Saviour's life—should have been recorded only by the Evangelist John. ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... The unobservant visitor wondered how Hugo made it pay. The observant visitor did not fail to note that there were more than a hundred cash-desks in the place, and that all the cashiers had the air of being overworked. Once the entire army of cashiers, driven to defensive ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... analogous to the custom of breaking bread and swearing alliance on it, a practice still observed by the inhabitants of some remote regions of the Caucasus. I must again solemnly express my conviction that we are standing on a slumbering VOLCANO; the thoughtless and unobservant may suppose not; probably because in the present tee-total state of society they see nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the outside Mr. Peacock, still struggling with a cigar,—it could scarcely be the same,—and his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the luggage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and apparently unobservant both of me ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at her husband, defying him. He rose from the table with a sigh, and walked out of the room. There was war between them, or at best an armed neutrality. He looked back, and saw that he had been blind to the things he should have seen, dull and unobservant where he should have had sense ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... inspired, there lurked about him an air of repose indicative of confidence in self and the full knowledge of his powers. Sensitive to a degree, keen and alive at all times, the strength of his personality, suggestive of his mastery over men, impressed the most unobservant. Yet owing to his poise and self-control those about him did not realize wholly his power until such moments when justice was violated. Then the latent force within him asserted itself and he became as inexorable as a law of nature in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the anatomist: it works on the dead. Unite sympathy to observation, and the dead Spring to life." It is thus to the shy, in their moments of tremor, that we should endeavor to be calmly unsympathetic; not cruel, but indifferent, unobservant. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... side was not unobservant; and when the second supply of milk had been drunk, she looked down at the round-headed man, and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and, as a rule, unobservant; they go on in the old way until the horse flinches in action or stands "pointing" in dumb appeal to his owner, telling with mute but touching eloquence of his tight-ironed, feverish foot, the dead frog, and the insidious disease, soon to destroy the free action ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... read again, but gave it up and glanced nervously up and down the little porch. Jane Gladys noted this with surprise, for he was usually quiet and unobservant, "like th' toad in th' garden, what squats under a bush all day an' fergits he's alive till a fly lights on his nose," as she expressed it to the ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... covered over with boughs and brambles, and nothing left in the vale to attract a passing and unobservant eye, he gave the signal to resume the march, and with Roland and Captain Ralph, stole from the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... unobservant of all rules of angling, in her indiscriminate enthusiasm, and "took to the water" whether the wind blew, the sun shone, or the rain fell; fishing—under the most propitious or unpropitious circumstances—was not, indeed, necessarily, catching ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... at length that the damsel was comely withal; and, his heart yearned towards her. The reverend gentleman, however, had not been unobservant of the charms of other maidens with whom he had been brought in contact, so, it may be presumed that his heart had "yearned" in vain for them; or, peradventure, these had not played with him so dexterously, when once hooked, as did the fair Bessie—who had not ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... each individual is leading the beatified existence of an epicurean god. The world without—its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, evil and good—all are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Unobservant even of what passes in its immediate vicinity, its whole soul is concentrated in itself; yet not sluggishly and apathetically, for its body is throbbing with life and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... captured. Toussaint listened, ran to the door, and quickly returning, put the blue pack from the shelf into his pocket, leaving in exchange one of his own. He hesitated about altering the position of the cards on the shelf, but Kelley and Loomis were unobservant young men, and the half-breed placed the pink cards on top of his blue ones. The little yellow curtain again hung innocently over the shelves, and Toussaint, pouring himself a drink of whiskey, faced round, and for the first time saw the window that had been behind his ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... of scenes like these, who laid them up deeply in her heart. Mrs. Williams was not unobservant of the gradual but steady falling off in Eric's character, and the first thing she noticed was the blunting of his home affections. When they first came to Roslyn, the boy used constantly to join his father and mother in their ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... great inland deep, the Mississippi, he conceived the ambition and the ideal of learning to know and to master that mysterious water. His dream, in time, was realized; he not only became a pilot, but—which is infinitely more significant—he changed from a callow, indolent, unobservant lad, with undeveloped faculties, to a man, a master of the river, with a knowledge which, in its accuracy and minuteness, was, for its ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... amply content. His absorption in other things rendered him somewhat unobservant of certain niceties in expression just now. He sprang up, and went to his wife. With his hands on her shoulders, he declared his satisfaction with the situation as it appeared to him ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... in recognizing about a score of diverse sounds, each of which indicates a particular turn of their mind. Almost all of these different notes have slight variations of expression which fit particular situations. Thus the crow of these birds, which may seem to the unobservant a very unvaried sound, discloses to those who have lovingly studied them at least half a dozen distinct modifications. In the fledgling male who just begins to feel the spirit of his kind, and who goes through his performance in the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Nor is Post-master Drouet unobservant, all this while; but steps out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level sunlight; prying into several things. When a man's faculties, at the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much. That Lady in slouched gypsy-hat, though sitting back in the Carriage, does ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... fling down the conquered body of the brute, tossing its horns in vain towards the skies. Thence backwards he retraced his steps 'midst great laud, guiding his errant footsteps by means of a tenuous thread, lest when outcoming from tortuous labyrinthines his efforts be frustrated by unobservant wandering. But why, turned aside from my first story, should I recount more, how the daughter fleeing her father's face, her sister's embrace, and e'en her mother's, who despairingly bemoaned her lost daughter, preferred to all these the sweet love of Theseus; or ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... first time she looked at him. "Mr. Holland," she said, "you must think me singularly unobservant. Do you suppose I don't see that you dislike my brother. You refused the pencil—you did refuse it plainly enough—because Billy had given it to me. I will not offer it to you again. I know that Billy sometimes does rub people up the wrong way, but I should think any ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... dissenting word from the Bench, the prisoner was committed to stand his trial at the ensuing assizes. Mosk made no defence; he did not even offer a remark; but, accepting his fate with sullen apathy, sunk into a lethargic, unobservant state, out of which nothing and no person could arouse him. His brain appeared to have been stunned by the suddenness of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Macarius; Romoaldo here: And here my brethren, who their steps refrain'd Within the cloisters, and held firm their heart." I answ'ring, thus; "Thy gentle words and kind, And this the cheerful semblance, I behold Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, Have rais'd assurance in me, wakening it Full-blossom'd in my bosom, as a rose Before the sun, when the consummate flower Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee Therefore entreat I, father! to declare If I may gain ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... power or wish to obstruct his flight. I thought of it with transport, and once more threw myself upon the bed, and wrapped my averted face in the carpet. He would probably pass this door, unobservant of me, and my muffled face would save me from the agonies connected with the sight ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... come—seeking relief from the melancholy and deep mystification of this death—the boy went into the street. The day was well disposed, the crowded world in an amiable mood; he perceived no menace—felt no warning of catastrophe. He wandered far, unobservant, forgetful: the real world out of mind. And it chanced that he lost his way; and he came, at last, to that loud, seething place, thronged with unquiet faces, where, even in the sunshine, sin and poverty walked abroad, unashamed.... ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... a night when she forgot her prayer, and Cummins did not notice it. He failed to notice it the next night, and the next. Plunged deep in his own gloom, he was unobservant of many other things, so that, in place of laughter and joy and merry rompings, only gloomy and oppressive shadows of things that had come and gone filled the life of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... not been unobservant of these steady encroachments upon Chinese territory, and while a military occupation of the peninsula was necessary at this time, it was viewed with uneasiness; but none was prepared for what followed. Before peace was actually concluded, Russia approached China with a proposition ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... for effect and loved to make things pretty. Clover understood this and never forgot to notice and praise, which gratified Choo Loo, who had found his bachelor employers in the old days somewhat dull and unobservant in this respect. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... Barclay and Natalie, unstrung by the events of the day, ate little and talked listlessly. Dorothy, victim to an inward excitement which was half happiness and half disappointment, chattered feverishly. Rathbawne was wrapped in his own thoughts, and his wife, innocently unobservant of emotional manifestations in any and every other, but pathetically sensitive to the slightest evidence of mental perturbation in this stern, kind man, between herself and whom existed a devotion dog-like in its silence ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... did not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter. He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... are not guarded against as some are because they bear the look or reputation of being dangerous. Many a man has taken off the outer garb of his soul and gone in his mental shirtsleeves (so to speak) from the impression on his mind that he was in the company of the confiding and the unobservant; and many a bad man has found detection and ruin in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... she made to Mrs. Graham's sense of propriety. There was an old lady who had once been Clara's governess—a gentle, mild-tongued, unobservant person, who was greatly in want of a home. Mrs. Alison was easily induced to promise the support of her presence to Lettice during the days or weeks which Lettice hoped to spend at Bute Lodge. She was a woman of unimpeachable decorum and respectability, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my accidental ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... north-west of the bridge), fell upon them as they endeavoured to cross long hedges of prickly pear, and to climb through strong wire fences. Nor were other Boer artillerymen, posted close to the railway station, unobservant of the British flanking movement. Their shells fell thick among the ranks of the detachment, while the burghers in the trenches on the south side of the river, turning their aim from the right and centre of the 9th brigade, poured their fire against those who were the more dangerous enemy, ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... dramatic change from agonising anxiety to peace and security which had been too much for Ellen—yes, that was what was the matter with her, that and the universal excitement about these Avenger murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London. Even Bunting, unobservant as he was, had come to realise that his wife took a morbid interest in these terrible happenings. And it was the more queer of her to do so that at first she refused to discuss them, and said openly that she was utterly ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... To the unobservant eye the muskrat house in the alders might have looked like a mass of drift in which the rank water-grass had taken root. But within the clumsy pile, about a foot below the centre of the dome, was a shapely, small, warm chamber, lined with the softest grasses. From one side of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ass you are!" he said. "Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... Carlyle further aggravated when he insisted on his wife accepting the invitations of his hostess. These visits, always against the grain, were rendered more irritating from a half-conscious antagonism between the chief female actors in the tragi-comedy; the one sometimes innocently unobservant of the wants of her guest, the other turning every accidental neglect into a slight, and receiving every jest as an affront. Carlyle's "Gloriana" was to the mind of his wife a "heathen goddess," while Mrs. Carlyle, with reference to her favourite dog "Nero," ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... rejoined pointedly, and Foster saw that Alice had said nothing about his recent visit. She gave him an inquiring glance, as if she wondered why he did not state his reasons for going to Newcastle, but he looked as unobservant as he could. He could not signal her, because while this might escape his host's notice he was afraid of ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... and her eyes red. She looked anything but lovely. Grant, however, was instantly so moved that he did not notice her homeliness. Also, he was one of those unobservant people who, having once formed an impression of a person, do not revise it except under compulsion; his last observation of Margaret had resulted in an impression of good looks, exceptional charm. He bent upon her a look in which understanding ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... she exclaimed, "I regret, Madame, that I can tell you nothing—nothing at all! I feel ill—very ill!" and, indeed, she had turned, even to Sylvia's young and unobservant eyes, terribly pale. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... humour seized him, Mrs. Bloomfield was struck with the kind and gentleman-like manner with which he met his young kinswoman on this trying occasion, and the affectionate tones of his voice, and the winning expression of his eye, as he addressed her. Eve herself was not unobservant of these peculiarities, nor was she slow in comprehending the reason. She perceived at once that he was acquainted with the state of things between her and Paul. As she well knew the womanly fidelity ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of use in one hour's keen observation than by reading all the books in the world, and when that sense is keenly developed it is quite extraordinary with what facility one can do things which the average unobservant man thinks utterly impossible. It most certainly teaches one to simplify everything and always to select the best and easiest way in all one undertakes, which, after all, is ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... me to anger on any ground—could he have given me an occasion for difference of any sort or to any degree—anything which could have justified a mutual falling off from the old intimacy! But William Edgerton was meekness and kindness itself. His confidence in me was of the most unobservant, suspicionless character; either that, or I succeeded better than I thought in the effort to maintain the external aspects of old friendship. He saw nothing of change in my deportment. He seemed not to see it, at least; and came as usual, or more frequently than usual, to my house, until, at length, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit once in his life: but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... ordinarily attractive type—apparently homes of prosperous people with an eye to appearances. Then quite suddenly the car, rounding a turn, came into a different region, one of cultivated wildness, of studied effects so cleverly disguised that they would seem to the unobservant only the efforts of nature at her best. A long, heavily shaded avenue of oaks, with high, untrimmed hedges of shrubbery on each side, curved enticingly before them, and all at once, Burns, looking sharply ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... of mine which fastened me to my gridiron, and I straddled my craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I never once had thought until now. Then I tightened the belt about my hollow body, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour I had been wholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was over now, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Of course I saw none. Had we indeed been off our course before the fire broke out? Had we burned to cinders ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... sleeps. At that moment Mrs. Y. should fall on her knees and rejoice. She would if she could leave young Jack or Jill; but she can't—she—never—can. That's what sent Mr. Y. to sleep. It is just as well perhaps that Mrs. Y. is unobservant. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... not perceive this. In the first flush of conquest all men are a trifle fatuous, unobservant. No woman is. Miss Quiney's arms did not suddenly go out to Ruth. Ruth noted it. She was just: she understood. But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember indelibly whatever small thing happens at this ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... some peculiar advantages in writing upon this subject. I should have been unobservant indeed, if, with such masters as I have served under, I had not learnt something, in regard to the duties of a great employer of labour, from witnessing their ever-flowing courtesy; their care for those who came within their sphere; their anxiety, as the heads of departments, ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... and many other qualities which our education had not tended to develop. It was seen that we were unpractical in our Instruction, that minds passed under the discipline of school and came out again, still slovenly, unobservant, unscientific in temper, impatient, flippant, inaccurate, tending to guess and to jump at conclusions, to generalize hastily, etc. It was observed that many unskilful hands came out of the schools, clumsy ringers, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... laid ten cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all laugh, had missed no portion of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... To both poets alike must unqualified and equal praise be given for the subtle simplicity of skill with which they make us appreciate the fatal and foreordained affinity between the ill-favored, rough-mannered, broken-down gentleman and the headstrong, unscrupulous, unobservant girl whose very abhorrence of him serves only to fling her down from her high station of haughty beauty into the very clutch of his ravenous and pitiless passion. Her cry of horror and astonishment at first perception of the price to be paid for a service she had thought to purchase ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... silent and unobservant; she knew not the dance was ended; she knew not that the music was silenced. A softer, sweeter, dearer melody sounded in her ears; she heard the echo of that voice which had spoken scornfully, despairingly, and yet love had ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... three-fold aspect corresponding to our own make-up as body, soul, and spirit. The outer form, the composition and actual structure, represents the "body" of music: that part which is visible even to the unobservant eye and audible to the indiscriminating ear. This is a matter of notes and tones quite apart from any real meaning or value. Such would be an academic exercise, or a technically correct but unconvincing ballad. It might possibly make ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... palace, and the pieces are fifteenth-century human beings, such complications are likely to occur. The Lady Lisa had more than once given evidence that she was not carved of wood or ivory. But for three years the situation had remained the same—the husband unobservant, the lady capricious and wilful. She had shown the artist more kindness than he cared to recall. That was months ago. Of late he had found scant favor in her sight.... It ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... she said, "how stupid and unobservant I was! I knew nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day. New York simply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was so happy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind and good, and glad to see me. But from the very beginning," she continued, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... had not been entirely unobservant of all that had been going on. She had had her qualms, but business must be business, and so long as Joan did not interfere with that she had not felt called upon to remonstrate with her on her growing friendliness with the protege ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... converse, being deprived by education of its natural outlets, must needs force for itself the subterranean and illicit outlet of whispering in class, either under the teacher's nose, if he happens to be unobservant or indolent, or behind his back, if he happens to be vigilant and strict. And as the child is forbidden to talk about things which are wholesome and interesting, it is but natural that in his surreptitious conversations he should ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... enable you to form an opinion for yourselves. I only obtained it yesterday, and, as it made my case quite complete, I wrote off to you immediately. It is the statement of Joseph Ridley, another cabman, and unfortunately, a rather dull, unobservant fellow, unlike Wilkins. He has not much to tell us, but what little he has is highly instructive. Here is the statement, signed by the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... seated on a grassy knoll so absorbed in some curious kind of occupation that he was totally unobservant of the presence of Gibault until he had approached to within thirty yards of him. Although his occupation was a mystery to the trapper, to one a little more conversant with the usages of civilised life, the open book on the knee, the easy flow of the pencil, and the occasional use of a piece ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... as she gazed at her parents' portraits in her bedroom, for they had both been of a florid texture and full habit; and she had now long refused sugar and the comforts of sweetmeats dear to the palate of her age and sex. And mostly was this self-denial practised for the sake of a young and unobservant friend, one Stephen Craig, who had so far evinced no unusual inclination for her, or for anything except cigars and masculine society of his ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... gentleman, a man of exquisite tastes in the fine arts, a man of strict morals in private life. His talents for business were respectable; his demeanour was kingly. But he was false, imperious, obstinate, narrow-minded, ignorant of the temper of his people, unobservant of the signs of his times. The whole principle of his government was resistance to public opinion; nor did he make any real concession to that opinion till it mattered not whether he resisted or conceded, till the nation, which had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... question; but it was her first experience with the busy world, and she wished to observe its ways, when neither relationship nor personal interest was involved. Small encouragement she would have felt to approach any that she met. Men of middle-age walked by as in dreams, cold, unobservant, listless; the younger ones, fuller of life, strode on with high heads, and flinging glances that were harder to bear than stony indifference, even. Ladies clothed in costly furs scanned the pretty face under the mourning bonnet with prying eyes, or tossed her a hasty, scornful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... The most unobservant person could not help but see birds here. I had expected to find water-fowl, for the Colorado delta is their breeding place; but I little expected to find so many land birds in the trees along the river. Instead of having a lonesome trip, every minute was filled with something ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... the enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During a war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we, therefore, be unobservant spectators of the progress of society within the last twenty years; of the silent but powerful change wrought, by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the poor slaves did not escape the general deluge. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... seen by a wise man, that escape the unobservant. When young cavaliers have a taste for mingling with the people in honorable disguise, as in the case of a certain patrician of this Republic, they are to be known by their air, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Rue St. Louis, not unobservant of the dark looks of the Honnetes Gens or the familiar nods and knowing smiles of the partisans of the Friponne whom he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... conclusion, and brushing the dank hair from his eyes, he thrust his hands into his oozing pockets, and proceeded across the square toward the Continental, wondering if there was a rear entrance. Happily the adventure absorbed all his thoughts. He was quite unobservant of the marked attention bestowed on him. Carriages filled the Strasse, and many persons moved along the walks. It was the promenade hour. The water, which still dripped from his clothes and trickled from his shoes, left a conspicuous trail ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... to the unobservant eye intent upon her tea and cakes, saw every one who came and went. Many officers were in the restaurant, but one only attracted her special notice. He was a young handsome man in the field-service ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... with a full-sized kitchen and a maid—whom we had brought on from West Salem. We even went so far as to give dinner parties to such of our friends as could be trusted to overlook our lack of plate, and to remain kindly unobservant of the fact that Dora, the baby's nurse, doubled as waitress after ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... entered; saw Notely enter with his easy, unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an air, to his ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... autumn afternoon, Armine was seen, even by the unobservant under-master, to be shivering violently, and his teeth chattering so that ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shoulder, and pulled off his remnant of felt in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay road, as ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... indeed, all that restrained her from doing so was her knowledge that Maitland would be more pained by her sacrifice than gladdened or relieved. He was so sure of clearing himself.... It was inconceivable to her that there could be men so stupid and crassly unobservant as to be able to confuse the identity of the two men for a single instant. What though they did resemble each other in form and feature? The likeness went no deeper: below the surface, and rising through it with every word and look and gesture, lay a world-wide ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... too derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run into trouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch I don't aim to pick posies too unobservant." ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... dissatisfied. Something had not worked to his liking in the complicated machinery of his plans, and he showed his vexation so palpably as soon to attract the attention of his submissive but by no means unobservant wife, who, after a while, plucked up the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... 14. Hence one moment, thus deserted. Conjugal duty is carried to a great height in the laws of Menu: "Though unobservant of approved usages, or enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered as a god by a virtuous wife." ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... in a low station, slanders his superiors. He hates those who have valour merely, and are unobservant of propriety. He hates those who are forward and determined, and, at the same time, of contracted understanding.' 2. The Master then inquired, 'Ts'ze, have you also your hatreds?' Tsze-kung replied, 'I hate those who pry out matters, and ascribe the knowledge to their wisdom. I hate ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... answer; and even the unobservant captain of river boats saw that she was moved and was sorry ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... clever woman, Comptesse, who has heretofore played the game so brilliantly, you have grown singularly unobservant. I am not a crusader, liberating captive Christian knights. I am France's servant, playing a somewhat guileful game which is as ancient as Ulysses, and subject to certain ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... squabbles. Instead, he was the Maurice of that night on the river, the "Sir Walter Raleigh" Maurice! Once in a while she was quite shy with him. "He's awfully handsome," she thought, and her eyes dreamed. "What a clod Johnny is, compared to him!" ... As for Eleanor, Edith, being as unobservant as most sixteen-year-old girls, saw only the lovely dark eyes and the beautiful brow under the ripple of soft black hair, Eleanor's sterile silences did not trouble her, and she never knew that the traces of tears meant a helpless consciousness ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... its three windows appear, and satisfied its tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went to bed, and here was his cigarette-end on the sill of the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... when lunch was over, and murmured "Amen" to grace with a fervor that would have surprised an unimaginative and unobservant person. Like all the meals in that pompous dining-room, it was a form of torture to a young thing bubbling with health and high spirits, who was not supposed to speak unless directly addressed and was obliged to hold herself in check while her grandparents ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... man trieth to put off the old astronomer with fair words," bellowed Sir Tiglath. "The thief inserteth his thumb into the tail pocket of the unobservant archbishop for purposes of research. The young man playeth merrily ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... knew of his intention was the night before he started. He had gone into the foreman's little room as usual to read his Bible and pray, and having finished, was about to slip quietly out, Johnston having apparently been quite unobservant of his ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... dreams. The skies above were leaden, with no ray of sunlight. Away behind him the smoke of the city seemed leveled like a shroud. Its distant monotone of sound became a dirge. Unmindful of the chill, he found a bench, brushed the snow from a corner and sat there for a long time, seeing nothing, unobservant of his surroundings, and thinking of all that somehow seemed left irrevocably behind. It was as if it had been ages ago! It had been ages ago since happiness had fled. There was not a laugh left in all the ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... her with a puzzled expression. Julius Savine smiled, but his sister-in-law, who had remained silent, but not unobservant, broke in: "You believe in the hereditary ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... her mind to dwell upon this phase of the affair she would surely have revealed to those about her, unobservant as they might be, that she had a secret cause for worry. She must drive it into the back of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Gawtrey, with whom Philip often observed him engaged in whispered conferences, to which he was not admitted. His eye, however, was less idle than his lips; it was not a bright eye: on the contrary, it was dull, and, to the unobservant, lifeless, of a pale blue, with a dim film over it—the eye of a vulture; but it had in it a calm, heavy, stealthy watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... instantly conclude, 'Ah! the Courtney person—the friend of Dr Rippon's youth!—and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!' Next day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you saw, argal, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! Is your conclusion clear upon the evidence? Is it inevitable? Is it necessary? Is it ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... that the only danger lay in the chance of being discovered in the deed. One day when the master had left the room to confer with some visitor at the door, he spied Annie in the act of tying her shoe. Perceiving, as he believed, at a glance, that Alec Forbes was totally unobservant, he gave her an ignominious push from behind, which threw her out on her face in the middle of the floor. But Alec did catch sight of him in the very deed, was down upon him in a moment, and, having already proved that a box on the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... knock at the door, which would surely renew the unwarrantable attempt to saddle him with the charge of the child. He listened too, as he sat after supper, holding up the newspaper in front of his unobservant eyes; and he listened most of the night as he tossed on his sleepless pillow—listened to the wind that had risen and moaned and sobbed round the house like a living thing in pain—listened to the pitiless rain that followed, pelting down on the ivy outside and on ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... my conscience to ask no return." It would only add to his unhappiness and disturb a relation which even in its incompleteness was dear to him. The human yearning to confess, to win even the sad luxury of pity beset the man. In his constant habit of introspection, he had become unobservant and had no least idea that the two young people he loved so well were nearing what ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... worried Matthew was that the difference impressed him as being something that should not exist. Anne had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the others; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in any of these respects. Then ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the unobservant man's acute flashes of vision, and Mrs. Westmore's beauty was like a blinding light abruptly turned on eyes subdued to obscurity. As he spoke, his glance passed from her face to her hair, and remained caught in its meshes. He had never seen such hair—it did not seem to grow in the usual orderly ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... that has gotten into school studies and professional habits. The failures of the city schools are less apparent because the atmosphere of urban life is itself socializing. The walk or ride to the city school is likely to make some contribution of socializing character even to the unobservant child. It is still true that the education outside of the schools, the spontaneous instruction provided by the children themselves in addition to the publicly constructed school, impresses itself most upon the childish mind. The urban school is greatly strengthened in its ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... quite frank with you, Mr. Bellward," he said: "With a superficial acquaintance, even with an intimate friend, if he's as unobservant as most people are, you'll pass muster. But I shouldn't like to guarantee anything if you were to meet, say, Mrs. Bellward, if the gentleman has got a wife, or his mother. Keep out of a strong light; don't show your profile ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... what she was, an inveterate laugher. She belonged essentially to the eighteenth century—the century of the wits. She enjoyed the spectacle of men and women making fools of themselves, and she did not hide her enjoyment under a pretence of unobservant good-nature. She observed with malice. It is tolerably certain that Miss Mitford was wrong in accepting the description of her in private life as "perpendicular, precise, taciturn, a poker of whom every one is afraid." Miss Austen, one is sure, was a lady of good-humour, as well ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Grecian nose, a strong mouth, whose upper lip had a curve of softness, a clear-cut chin with one dimple, small ears set high in the head, and a rich creamy complexion—that was what flashed upon Carmichael as he turned from the retrievers. He was a man so unobservant of women that he could not have described a woman's dress to save his life or any other person's; and now that he is married—he is a middle-aged man now and threatened with stoutness—it is his wife's reproach that he does not know when ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... his foot on the unobservant worm," murmured Shen Yi, with delicate encouragement, adding "This one casts a more definite ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... time—she alone being awake—a young woman, with black, or very dark hair, which hung loose, and with a black cloak on, standing near the middle of the floor, opposite the hearthstone, and fronting the foot of her bed. She appeared quite unobservant of the children and nurse sleeping in the room. She was very pale, and looked, the child said, both "sorry and frightened," and with something very peculiar and terrible about her eyes, which made the child conclude that she was ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... lay in the tower condemned to death for numerous offences against the stringent game-laws of the country. He awaited his end in silence, and sat moodily unobservant of the bright rays of the sun which poured into his cell through the grated window. Others, he pondered, were basking in the joyous light outside yonder in the verdant summer fields, whilst he, who even now felt the noose tighten round his neck, was plunged in semi-darkness. Well, as darkness ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... month he passed at home sufficed to enable him to tell his passion, and to obtain a half-ready, half-timid acceptance of the offer of his hand. All this time, the parents of these very youthful lovers were as profoundly ignorant of what was going on, as their children were unobservant of the height to which professional competition had carried hostilities between their respective parents. Doctors Woolston and Yardley no longer met even in consultations; or, if they did meet in the house of some patient whose ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... through which a broken vision of stars comes and goes with the evening wind, the broad earth lies hushed and hidden. Along the familiar road a new and mysterious charm is spread like a net that entangles the feet of every traveller and keeps him loitering on where he would have passed in unobservant haste by day. The great elms murmur in low, inarticulate tones, and the shadows at their feet hide themselves from the moon, moving noiselessly through all the summer night. The woods in the distance stand motionless in the wealth of their massed foliage, keeping guard over the unbroken ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... them and was glad she was there and not at the English end of the table. Down here, hemmed in by the Bergmanns with Emma's little form, her sounds, movements and warmth, her little quiet friendliness planted between herself and the English, with the apparently unobservant Minna and Elsa across the way she felt safe. She felt fairly sure those German eyes did not criticise her. Perhaps, she suggested to herself, they thought a good deal of English people in general; and then they were in the minority, only four of them; it was evidently a school for English girls ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... one silent witness of scenes like these, who laid them up deeply in her heart. Mrs Williams was not unobservant of the gradual but steady falling off in Eric's character, and the first thing she noticed was the blunting of his home affections. When they first came to Roslyn, the boy used constantly to join his father and mother in their walks; but now he went seldom or never; ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... to say, 'Bite or don't bite—it's all the same to me.' He was often mistaken for a ghost by children; and for a pollard willow by men, when, on their way home in the dusk, they saw him motionless by some rushy bank, unobservant ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... Mr. Mackellar," said she. "You have done most properly in what you too modestly call your interference. I am much to blame; you must think me indeed a very unobservant wife" (looking upon me with a strange smile), "but I shall put this right at once. The Master was always of a very thoughtless nature; but his heart is excellent; he is the soul of generosity. I shall write to him myself. You cannot think how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Many thanks for two sets of sheets of your Proceedings. I cannot understand what Agassiz is driving at. You once spoke, I think, of Professor Bowen as a very clever man. I should have thought him a singularly unobservant man from his writings. He never can have seen much of animals, or he would have seen the difference of old and wise dogs and young ones. His paper about hereditariness beats everything. Tell a breeder that he might pick out his worst INDIVIDUAL animals ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... her, and quite incapable of agreeing about the exact direction in which she was proceeding when they last saw her, these three bright exceptions to the general rule of total ignorance afforded no more real assistance to us than the mass of their unhelpful and unobservant neighbours. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... usefulness of sailors at any time and under any circumstances; but if that is the only reason for asking the Government to pay owners part of the cost of manning their ships, then they are living in a fool's paradise, and are much too credulous about public philanthropy, and very unobservant and illogical too if they imagine that national interests are entirely centred in the industry they happen to be engaged in. It would be just as reasonable for Armstrong's or Vickers' to request a subsidy for training their men because their business happens to be the manufacture of guns ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... mischief of its being learned in the midst of impure air. This is a thing which parents must look to, for the grown-up people in the school-rooms, though suffering grievously themselves from insufficient ventilation, will be unobservant of it. {118} In every system of government inspection, ventilation must occupy a ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... such questions do. The servants of Oakley fed upon it. They held secret conferences in the kitchen, and grew loud and argumentative when they knew John Arthur was safely out of hearing. They bore themselves with an air of subdued, unobservant melancholy in his presence, and waxed important, mysterious and unsatisfactory, when in converse with the towns folk—as was quite right and proper, for were they not, in the eyes of mystery hunters, objects of curiosity secondary ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... her father's intended marriage with madame came on Leam with a crushing sense of terror and despair. Unobservant youth sees little, and even what it does see it does not comprehend. Though the girl had accustomed herself by slow degrees to many works and ways which mamma had never known; though the faculties which had been, as it were, imprisoned by that close-set, hide-bound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Mr Thornton often sympathised with his wife on the amount of work she had undertaken in order to entertain the squire's guests; but, even to his unobservant eyes, it was apparent that, so far from being exhausted, she throve beneath it, and appeared brighter and younger than for years past. All work and no play has an even more depressing effect upon Jill than on Jack, and Mrs Thornton was by instinct a hospitable creature, who would ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cries Ludwig, with increasing indignation, for the first time apprised of the fact thus made known to him. Unobservant of such things generally, it had never occurred to him to reflect on what had long been patent to the jealous eyes of Cypriano. Besides, the thing seemed so absurd, even preposterous—a red-skinned ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... unobservant In what state God's other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... which is so often adduced as final proof, may prove nothing more, as is well known to those accustomed to deal with the unobservant imaginative, than that one person has told his ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... looked up at the exclamation; he never seemed to hear much of what passed around him except when his wife spoke, and then some slight movement often showed that though, silent, he was not an unobservant man. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... cry, and swam forward again with redoubled energy, continuing the cry from time to time, and raising himself occasionally to look round him. The excitement of his mind, and the intensity with which it was bent on the one great object, rendered him at first almost unobservant of the flight of time. But suddenly the thought burst upon him that fully ten minutes or a quarter of an hour had elapsed since Ailie fell overboard, and that no one who could not swim could exist for half that time in deep water. He shrieked with agony at the thought, and, ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... Frank, however, was not so unobservant (he was two years older than myself). Early one morning, before breakfast, curiosity led him to follow me, and he came upon us in Graylingham Wood as we were sitting under a tree close to the cliff, eating the wild honey we had found ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... not unobservant of this by-play that was passing around him. He easily read in the expressive looks of Tiburcio the secret of his heart, and involuntarily contrasted the manly beauty of the young man with the ordinary face and figure of the Senator. As if from this ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... with facings of stone, long since worn by wind and weather. The windows are enormous, and would appear abnormal in any other city but this. The Hotel of the Old Shooting gallery stands on the Toornoifeld and the unobservant may pass by without distinguishing it from the private houses on either side. This, indeed, is not so much a house of hasty rest for the passing traveler as it is a halting-place for that great army which is ever moving quietly on and on through the cities of the Old World—the corps diplomatique—the ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... east the grey and motionless woods, Watching the great sun's fiery slow decline, Grew deep with gold. To westward all was silver. An hour had passed above me; I had reached The loftiest level of the snow-piled fields, Clear eyed, but unobservant, noting not, That all the plain beneath me and the hills Took on a change of color splendid, gradual, Leaving no spot the same; nor that the sun Now like a fiery torrent overflamed The great line of the west. Ere yet I turned With long stride homeward, being heated With the loose swinging ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... the visitor must be warned. My bat had a certain looseness in the shoulder, so that, at any quick movement of it, it clicked. If I struck the ball well and truly in the direction of point this defect did not matter; but if the ball went past me into the hands of the wicket-keeper, an unobservant bowler would frequently say, "How's that?" And an ill-informed umpire would reply, "Out." It was my duty before the game began to take the visiting umpire on one side and give him a practical demonstration ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... in the discomfiture of others. Aside from this undefined atmosphere of heartlessness, it can not be said that there was any craft or wickedness patent on his face, for his features were good and indicative of unusual intelligence. To the unobservant, he seemed to be a lovable, useful, able man. However, we have seen what Mentu thought of him, and Mentu's estimation might have represented that of all profound thinkers. But to the latter class, most assuredly, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... their burden before the altar, leaned each against a pillar, stolid and unobservant, but ready to drop to their knees so soon as the chanting of Vespers should reach the crypt from ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... of her, his short-sighted unobservant glance concentrating itself unexpectedly on ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the Mammalia and Birds, the fauna of Ceylon has, up to the present, failed to receive that systematic attention to which its richness and variety most amply entitle it. The Singhalese themselves, habitually indolent, and singularly unobservant of nature and her operations, are at the same time restrained from the study of natural history by the tenet of their religion which forbids the taking of life under any circumstances. From the nature of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... plain buff leather, better suited to the great flat snow-shoes by her side, with which she has made her way hither across the deep snow. She speaks but little, yet her keen and watchful glances show that she is by no means unobservant of what is going on around her. See! one of the market women has stopped just in front of her, but it is only to have a good look at the glossy wrapper, white as snow, which glistens quite ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... consciously or not,—since we have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded, unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on his way home from the court-house, he had stopped at ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... height of resplendent Olympus. Zeus to his mansion return'd; and the company all of the Godheads Rose at their Father's approach from their seats, nor did any adventure Sitting his aspect to meet, but they all stood up at his coming. Thus on his throne did he seat him; but not unobservant had Hera Been, while in secret he spake with the child of the Ancient of Ocean; Now with the words of reproach she was ready, and turn'd to Kronion:— "Crafty and close! what God has been with thee ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Trudy slept long hours and did not interfere with the goings and comings of her young nieces, she was not quite so unobservant as ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... seen no reason why his daughter should not love John Bold. He has not been unobservant of her feelings, and perhaps his deepest regret at the part which he fears Bold is about to take regarding the hospital arises from the dread that he may be separated from his daughter, or that ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... hours they talked there, their voices low, save once or twice when Danton's rose. They seemed to have lost all count of time, all heed of appearances. Menard and the priest made an effort at first to appear unobservant, but later, seeing that their movements were beyond the sight of those unheeding eyes, they took to watching and speculating on the course of the conversation. The night came on, and the dark closed over them. Still the murmur of those low ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... pretty," admitted Mr. Granger. "I was struck by her appearance this afternoon in the library. I suppose there is something really out of the common in her face, for I am generally the most unobservant of men in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Christian people ought to make in the world. They should be recognised, by even unobservant eyes who know nothing of the inner secret of their lives, as plainly belonging to another order. If we seek to keep fresh in our own minds the consciousness that we do so, it will make itself manifest in all our bearing and actions. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... from her mates. And what worried Matthew was that the difference impressed him as being something that should not exist. Anne had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the other; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in any of these respects. Then in what did ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to compare two children, one of whom has had at his disposal the sixty-four colors in the conditions described above, and another who has been left to himself in poor surroundings, where gray and brown tints prevail, and who seems dull and unobservant, etc., we should find a very remarkable psychical difference. Such a difference is not, however, intrinsic; it might well be that, subjected to the same conditions as the first child, the second would recognize the sixty-four ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... penetrated into the hidden recesses of the Chinese Empire. One may be little given to philosophizing, and possess but scanty skill in putting into words the conclusions which form themselves in one's mind, but it is impossible to cross China entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the windows, thereby displaying to the unobservant air an instep large but exquisitely arched, Marcia Amherst comes slowly up to where the lazy fowl are dreaming. Almost unconsciously (because her face is full of troubled thought), or perhaps a little vengefully, she flicks the one nearest to her with the handkerchief she carries loosely ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... stupidest man in the dale, noticed the change in her, noticed the touch of colour that was so quick to mount to the ivory cheek, the novel brightness and tenderness in the deep grey eyes, the new note, the low, sweet tone of happiness in the clear voice. Her father only remained unobservant of the subtle change, but he was like a mole burrowing amongst his book and gloating secretly over the box which he concealed at the approach of footsteps, the opening of a door, and the sound of a voice in a distant part ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... society, and his women are those of a retired poet—a few real types tenderly and sincerely drawn, and a few more worked out by thinking about what he imagined they would be, not by knowing them. Browning, roving through his class and other classes of society, and observing while he seemed unobservant, drew into his inner self the lives of a number of women, saw them living and feeling in a great diversity of circumstances; and, always on the watch, seized the moment into which he thought the woman entered with the greatest intensity, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... her head was drooping a little, her feet moved reluctantly, she was no longer eager and her bag was heavy again, she had changed it from the right to the left hand, and then, unexpectedly, she quickened her pace. The naturally unobservant Charles divined a cause and, looking for it, he saw with a shock of surprise and horror the tall figure of a man at the end of the street. She was hastening ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... cried as she fingered the greasy pages, while Elsie flinched inwardly. And unobservant as the girl naturally was, she could not help noticing that Mrs. Middleton retained ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... to the apathy of it all. The frost was benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head, unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his steering hand against the gee-pole ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... the total absence of progress, if not the appearance of retrogression and decay, the loungers in the streets, and the peculiar appearance of the slaves, afford a contrast to the bustle on the opposite side of the river, which would strike the most unobservant. I was credibly informed that property of the same real value was worth 300 dollars in Kentucky and 3000 in Ohio! Free emigrants and workmen will not settle in Kentucky, where they would be brought into contact with compulsory slave-labour; ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the correct adjective to apply to the spotted forktail (Henicurus maculatus). Like the paradise flycatcher, it is a bird which cannot fail to obtrude itself upon the most unobservant person, and, once seen, it is never likely to be forgotten. I well remember the first occasion on which I saw a spotted forktail; I was walking down a Himalayan path, alongside of which a brook was flowing, when suddenly from a rock in mid-stream there arose a black-and-white ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... sweet! Who may not ever hear: To lay down at your unobservant feet, Is all the gift ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... causes of non-observation is a preconceived opinion. This it is which, in all ages, has made the whole race of mankind, and every separate section of it, for the most part unobservant of all facts, however abundant, even when passing under their own eyes, which are contradictory to any first appearance, or any received tenet. It is worth while to recall occasionally to the oblivious memory of mankind some of the striking instances in which opinions that the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the other hand, is the most unobservant creature under the sun. He rarely understands even what is going on under his nose. It is all very well to say that his superior mind is wrapt up in percentages, or absorbed in grand schemes for the regeneration of mankind. The ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... other, who had taken his seat. 'I'll let you hear from me, you know, about the Scheme and—other things. Don't wait.' He seemed curiously unobservant of these ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... was not skilful enough to win the Major's lasting favour. He was always slow to interfere in domestic matters, but he was not unobservant. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sorry for her, and he felt that she was entitled to an explanation. Indeed, since George was strangely unobservant, he thought it should have been made earlier; but the matter had appeared too delicate for him to meddle with. Now, however, when the girl's nature was strongly stirred, there was a risk that, supposing his comrade was discovered wounded or was rescued in some dramatic way, she might be driven ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... all an unobservant man. He had seen many signs which distressed him, both in Grannie's face and Alison's; he knew also that Harry had been taken from school quite a year too soon; he knew well that Alison's bread winnings were necessary ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... urged that educated believers mean by "God" not the anthropomorphic deity of the theologies, but a personal intelligence controlling things. But this is really not less anthropomorphic than the form in which the god idea meets us in the popular theologies. Its anthropomorphism is only, to unobservant minds, less apparent. The conception of an intelligent, personal being controlling nature is not fundamentally less objectionable than the frankly man-like being of the early theologies. Intelligence, as we know it (and to talk ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... result of long hours of reflection. They belonged to her nature and a quality of judgment which, even in her most extravagant romances, is never for a moment swayed from that sane impartiality described by the unobservant as ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... elves were like I have failed to gather, so vague and imperfect is his vocabulary, and so unobservant of all minor detail does he seem to have been. They were clothed in something very light and beautiful, that was neither wool, nor silk, nor leaves, nor the petals of flowers. They stood all about him as ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... own fault, and but for it he now thought he should not have been so unobservant of things about him. Could he, but for such weary nights of sleepless wandering and watching, have let his darling boy drive those young horses, filling the carriage so full of his brothers and sisters that there ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow |
