"Absorbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tyrannical. The nation is here an ideal unit founded on the race, in defiance of the modifying action of external causes, of tradition, and of existing rights. It overrules the rights and wishes of the inhabitants, absorbing their divergent interests in a fictitious unity; sacrifices their several inclinations and duties to the higher claim of nationality, and crushes all natural rights and all established liberties for the purpose ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... it had not seemed to her that she would ever fall in love or be married. It seemed so less than ever, now that she was at last actually on her way to look for Saidee. She was intensely excited, and there was room only for the one absorbing thought in mind and heart; yet she was not as anxious as most others would have been in her place. Now that Heaven had helped her so far, she was sure she would be helped to the end. It would be too bad to be true that anything dreadful should ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you the philosophy of the hour—but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France—" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know—the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself—these things the wise and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... some fairies and banshees in the moonlight for her benefit But, Alf, I'm delighted to see you so wide-awake. Shooting birds as game merely is very well, but capturing them in a way to know all about them is a sport that is always in season, and would grow more and more absorbing if you lived a ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... fair to this candidate. In Belgium if seven seats were won by a party which polled 118,453 votes, the electoral quotient would not be more than one-seventh of this total, and the election of the first candidate, instead of absorbing one-half the value of the votes, would consume only one-seventh. The election of the first two candidates would absorb two-sevenths instead of two-thirds, the election of three candidates would consume three-sevenths instead of three-fourths, and the election of four candidates would consume ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... staircase required a thorough "doing down," and she did not even wait till they had eaten their breakfast before beginning her labours. It made Bunting feel quite uncomfortable. As he sat by the fire reading his morning paper—the paper which was again of such absorbing interest—he called out, "There's no need for so much hurry, Ellen. Daisy'll be back to-day. Why don't you wait till she's come home to ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... yielded, but she could not express the deeper reason for her emotion. As he was so oblivious, she could not bring herself to tell him why in particular she shrank from sitting as Danae. He had not thought of the meaning of the myth in connection with her all-absorbing hope. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... scarcely a perceptible trace of the effects of that financial storm which swept America, England, and Central Europe with such destructive fury in 1857-8. It further appears that, despite the enormous import of gold, the subsequent export was comparatively small, and thus, such was the wonderful absorbing power of the nation under the free coinage law of 1803, that France came out of each successive financial storm with an increased stock of the precious metals, and more than once has the Bank of England been compelled to apply to France for the specie to arrest a destructive panic ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... reading the biographies of men who have lived intensely, who have realized the fulness of life, who have mingled intimately with its varied experiences, and occupied a large place in it. We see how to them life was, as it is to us, an absorbing fact,—how they have planned, and thought, and acted, as though they were to live forever; and yet we have noticed the premonitions of change, the dropping away of friends, the failing of vigor, the deepening of melancholy shadows, and the coming ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life. No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so presenting it as to make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... to think of an old Japanese nobleman I once read about, who ornamented his house with a single vase at a time, living with it, absorbing its message of beauty, and when he tired of it, replacing it with another. I wonder if he had the right way, and we, with so many objects to hang on our walls, place on our shelves, drape on our chairs, and spread on our floors, have mistaken our course ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... he would get more out of it in a small way. He never afterwards showed any inclination toward journalism, and did not become a reporter or correspondent, or start a rural daily. While he was a train-boy, enjoying every opportunity for absorbing a knowledge of human nature, and of finally becoming a passenger conductor or a locomotive engineer, something called his attention to the telegraph as a promoter of business, as a great and useful institution, and he resolved to become an "operator." This was his ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... was reminded of as I sat at table and listened to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine-man making incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... my feelings of responsibility, a man who, repelling an insult by an outrage, had resolved to stake his life upon the chance. In an instant a new era in life had opened before me; the light-headed gayety which fearlessness and youth impart was replaced by one absorbing thought,—one all-engrossing, all-pervading impression, that if I did not follow up my quarrel with Bodkin, I was dishonored and disgraced, my little knowledge of such matters not being sufficient to assure me that I was now the aggressor, and that any further steps in the affair should ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... should see Monica, perhaps be as near to her as at the fonda of the Escurial. That was the thought most absorbing; yet my spirit was on its knees before ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it would weaken. Think what it would have to be fighting all the time. Think of the case your intelligence would be making out, day after day, till it crushed you. It's impossible that you could keep yourself from docketing the evidence and arranging it and absorbing it. Think! Consider what you know are actual facts! Nutty invites you down here, knowing that you are Lord Dawlish. All you know about my attitude towards Lord Dawlish is what I told you on the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... make—there would be short work for a long time to come, with many of those schemes, upon which you have set your heart. Do not dream, if any mishap of a certain kind were to come to pass in India that you can go on with that programme of social reforms, all costing money and absorbing attention, in the spirit in which you are now ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... expiration of my furlough I promptly reported at the camp and entered on my duties as a soldier. The absorbing duty was the drill, and that was persistent, and consumed the most of the time. I knew nothing about it when I enlisted, and had never seen any except on the previous Monday afternoon. The system we then had was Hardee's Infantry Tactics. It was simple, and easily ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... was a very noble device, for the mere name of Chancery, and the high repute of the fees therein, and low repute of the lawyers, and the comfortable knowledge that the woolsack itself is the golden fleece, absorbing gold for ever, if the standard be but pure; consideration of these things staved off at once the lords of the manors, and all the little farmers, and even those whom most I feared; videlicet, the parsons. And the King's Commissioner ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... demands the removal of all obstacles which impede prayer, and the greatest of all prayers, the Church's official prayer. The chief or capital obstacles which impede or prevent a pious recitation of the Breviary are: sin, the passions, the absorbing thoughts of creatures and the ignorance of the Divine Office. And the means to remove these obstacles are to purify the conscience, science, to mortify the passions, to guard the sense and to have an intelligent knowledge of the duty and requirements ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... blue as an element in the colour of the skin, I have some doubt whether it be a "true blue" or not. It is quite as likely to arise from a partial participation in the quality of the negro skin—that of absorbing a large portion of the light without any analysis whatever. This may be ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... boneless; as boneless as sponges, and, like sponges, capable of absorbing huge quantities of a foreign substance, which distended them and gave them weight. I could see, now, why the rotund bodies sagged and flattened at the base, and why six short, stubby legs were needed to support that body. There was only tissue, unsupported ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... one of his greenish eyes, and laying the glass to one side of his reddish nose. Then, with a quick movement, he swallowed its contents and refilled it before Mr. Lavender had succeeded in absorbing more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D——- Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... been centred upon the scenes and persons immediately about me. It was my first experience within the stockaded walls of an armed government post. The scene was new to my young senses, and, in spite of the excitement that still heated my blood, I looked upon it with such absorbing interest as to be forgetful for the moment even of the fair girl who rode in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... union of equal privileges and powers, which has since gone by the name of the Government of the United States of North America. This is the great republic to which I just now alluded, that is gradually absorbing the minor Southern States into its—union, and threatens at no very distant date to spread the English language and the English race over the whole continent ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... of no intelligence,' cried Joseph. 'He lives here literally surrounded by the absorbing spectacle of life, and for all the good it does him, he might just as well be in his coffin. Think of his opportunities! The heart of any other young man would burn within him at the chance. The amount of ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... them in its unspoiled loveliness, was to that hour and place like the illuminated capital in the old missal; a ray of colour which unlocked the dark mystery of the text. When one can see the loveliness of a wild flower, and feel the absorbing charm of its sentiment, one is not far ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... wives, were standing around it, those behind thrusting their heads over the shoulders of the front ranks, the new arrivals pressing impatiently upon those who had taken the place before them and now, as though spell-bound by an absorbing spectacle, stood motionless, making no sign of moving on. Yet the whole crowded group was pervaded by a calmness, a solemn earnestness, not often found among the worshippers in church. Rudolf, whose curiosity was awakened, forced his way through the living wall ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... completely boiled, lift up the strainer and rest it across the top of the kettle, that the fish may drain, and then, if you cannot send it to table immediately, cover it with a soft napkin or flannel several folds double, to keep it firm by absorbing the moisture. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... setting away from the excessive individualism which has characterized the churches of the Great Awakening, confirm the tendency of the Christian life toward a vigorous and even absorbing external activity. The duty of the church to human society is made a part of the required curriculum of study in preparation for the ministry, in fully equipped theological seminaries. If ever it has been a just reproach of the church ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... frequently met in other than college halls, and as freely conversed,—Miss K. being of full age, and legally, as well as intellectually and morally, competent to discuss the subjects in which, it is generally supposed, young men and women feel an absorbing interest. ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... absorbing argument after a little, the two men taking opposite sides of a great governmental question just then claiming public interest. Mrs. Dingley came out and joined the group, and she and Juliet listened ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... impressive, we may safely say, than any quantity of such rant as very inferior writers could have poured out with the utmost facility on such an occasion. Yet it might possibly be mentioned that a poet of the highest order would have produced the effect by more direct means. Remorse overpowering and absorbing does not embody itself in these recondite and, one may almost say, over-ingenious fancies. Hawthorne does not give us so much the pure passion as some of its collateral effects. He is still more interested ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... But this boy has another characteristic—when he cannot understand he will not admit it. He keeps silence, and goes on absorbing the railing. Rosalind asks further: ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... this feeling has mounted to the brain of one of these great little men, after firing his heart and absorbing his senses, the poet becomes as far superior to humanity through love as he already is through the power of his imagination. A freak of intellectual heredity has given him the faculty of expressing nature by imagery, to which he gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his love ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... attentive of neighbours. Little Lady Constance Quayle was with her. The young girl had brightened notably of late. Her prettiness was enhanced by a timid and appealing playfulness. She had been seized, moreover, with one of those innocent and absorbing devotions towards Lady Calmady, that young girls often entertain towards an elder woman, following her about with a sort of dog-like fidelity, and watching her with eyes full of wistful admiration. On the present occasion the guests at the Barking dinner had been politicians of distinction—members ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... old heathen world. When one thinks," he pursued, "of the intense interest, the eager excitement which the student of history finds in the narrative of the past as unfolded in dusty records written by the hand of man, one may realize how absorbing must have been that science which professed to unveil the future, and to display to the eyes of the wise the fate of dynasties written with the finger of GOD ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... field the military operations were very trifling, the wager of battle being by common consent fought out on the sands of Ostend, and the necessities for attack and defence absorbing, the resources of each combatant. France, England, and Spain were holding a perpetual diplomatic tournament to which our eyes must presently turn, and the Sublime Realm of the Ottoman and the holy Roman Empire were in the customary ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Review: "The story is a good one, the historical data accurate, and the ways and manners of the period are cleverly presented.... The love plot is absorbing, and will be found by many readers even more fascinating than the faithful reproduction of the manners and customs of the time.... It is quite safe to say that this book vies in excellence with some of the historical romances which have caused more ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... love is an absorbing vortex of the soul, into which all other thoughts, feelings, and ideas are irresistibly impelled; with you, it is but as the stranger stream that crosses the peaceful lake, and, as it flows, wakens only the surface of the slumbering waters, communicating to them but a temporary agitation. With ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... volume of irresistible, rib-tickling fun, the Bad Boy, an incarnate but lovable imp of mischief, records his daily exploits, experiences, pranks and adventures, through all of which you follow him with an absorbing interest that never flags, stopping only when convulsions of laughter and aching sides force the mirth-swept body to take an involuntary respite from a feast of fun, ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... dominating influences, of marvels of magnetism; and although he has never given a great deal of thought to any of those matters, he thinks about them since he has felt himself dominated by this singular personage, and Adrian Baker has become, in fact, his fixed idea, his absorbing thought, his unceasing preoccupation, his constant monomania. Berta's father and the housekeeper may very well attribute to him marvellous powers, suggested by their own excited imaginations; but we must not share in those hallucinations, nor are we to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... the microscope of the mental eye. Its power may be high or low; its field of view narrow or broad. When high power is used attention is confined within very circumscribed limits, but its action is exceedingly intense and absorbing. It sees but few things, but these few are observed "through and through" ... Mental energy and activity, whether of perception or of thought, thus concentrated, act like the sun's rays concentrated ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... time in embracing each other, and she did not find it too long. This lasted fully a month. The days passed one after the other in insignificant yet absorbing occupations. She learned the value and the importance of the little things of life. She knew that people can interest themselves in the price of eggs, which cost a few centimes more or ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Walworth's novels are brilliant, scholarly and absorbing and reveal great power in the ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... junior. The carnival given by the Semper Fidelis Club in which the Alice in Wonderland Circus was enacted, the important part which Jean, the old hunter of Oakdale fame, played in one Overton girl's life, the message Emma Dean forgot to deliver, and countless other absorbing incidents served to fill their ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... westward, across the Common, the soft blackness under the stars descended even to the treetops. But the attention of Smith and Helen, gazing north on Tremont Street, was fixed on the unsteady glow of threatening, reddish light thrown up against the absorbing fabric of the air. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... commanding eminence, a wide spreading and diversified landscape is presented to view. Though hard and rugged, the picture, as seen at a distance, looks soft and smooth and its details of form and color make an absorbing study. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... little lecture to the Queen, honest and faithful though it be, to the all-absorbing subject of Gossip, the Royal Marriage—and first, and foremost, comes the Royal Wedding Cake, which weighed nearly 300lbs. It was three yards in circumference and about 14 inches deep. This was the cake itself, which, according to a contemporary ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... temples, the curvature of the brows, the chiseling of the proud nostrils and the high bridge of the nose, the molding of the mouth, the modeling of the throat, the shaping of the shoulders, the grace of the arms and the hands—all became conspicuous, absorbing. The slightest elements of physique and of personality came ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... told the Lieutenant-Governor to be deliberate. There was no need of an immediate appointment, he said. And so for a time things went on about the State-house much as usual, save that the absorbing topic was the senatorial situation, and that every one was watching the new chief executive. The retired Governor now spent part of his time in the South, and part at home. The cotton plantation was not demanding all ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... population which the Aryans overcame and absorbed. That this primitive population was tolerably numerous is evident from the fact that the Aryans, particularly of the Latin, Teutonic, and Celtic nations lost in absorbing it many vocal elements and many grammatical inflections of their speech. They gained, at the same time, the self-respect, the love of liberty, and the capacity for selfgovernment, which were unknown ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... some attention to the female nature, in its good, great, and grand manifestations, you know that for a loving wife there is no greater pleasure than that of seeing the beloved one absorbing his favorite viands. This springs from the fundamental idea upon which the affection of women is based: that of being the source of all his pleasures, big and little. Love animates everything in life, and conjugal love has a peculiar ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... had quitted his forge for the night and, seated at his domestic board, was, with a dismal presentiment of future indigestion, voraciously absorbing his favorite meal of hot saleratus biscuits swimming in butter, he had apparently forgotten his curiosity concerning Mainwaring and settled himself to a complaining chronicle of the day's mishaps. "Nat'rally, havin' an extra lot o' work on hand and no time for foolin', what does that ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... tale of old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventure. The scene is laid in San Francisco on board The Argus and in Panama. A romantic search for the lost pirate gold. An absorbing love-story ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... those illustrating aeronautical scenes and incidents, were spirited and faithful. He tried his hand at verse-making among the rest. The following brief outburst, written after all the old loves had given place to that which became the absorbing passion of his life, and printed on his letter-heads and admission-cards, sufficiently illustrates the manner and matter of his efforts in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... State gradually passed into the hands of the Consul, the labours of the secretary became heavier. His successor broke down under a lighter load, and had to receive assistance; but, perhaps borne up by the absorbing interest of the work and the great influence given by his post, Bourrienne stuck to his place, and to all appearance might, except for himself, have come down to us as the companion of Napoleon during his whole life. He had ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of sequence is to be attained only by great, although not necessarily more than empiric, knowledge of anatomy, such perhaps as the artist pure would never be inclined to work out for himself, but just such as would be of absorbing interest to those scientists by temperament and artists by profession whom we have in Pollaiuolo and, to a less extent, in Verrocchio. We remember how Giotto contrived to render tactile values. Of all ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... by the leaves of rendering soluble or digesting nitrogenous substances, and of afterwards absorbing them; thirdly, the changes which take place within the cells of the tentacles, when the glands are ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... of the American Pantorium and Pressing Club, Membership $1.00 per Month, Garments Called For and Delivered, Phone No. 41, M. Pincus, Prop. He was like a miser with a loaf; no crumb, however tiny, got away from him. To him there was more of absorbing interest in the appearance of the seventeen-year locust in Chittenden County than in a Balkan outbreak; less of interest in the failing state of health of the Czar than in the prospects for the hay crop ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... brought in contact. His sympathies were quick and real; and he felt the responsibilities of his position, and what he owed to those who belonged to him, or who were placed under his command. And last, but by no means least, there are many short expressions in the letters to show the deep and all-absorbing feeling he entertained for Religion, and how his whole life was guided by the Faith that was in him. May his memory prove to be an incentive to his young family, so early and so cruelly deprived of the care of a loving father, ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... invariably observed one rule of conduct,—namely, never to associate with those whom I cannot respect. Ignorance, want of refinement, irritability of temper, and even lack of generous impulses, I can forgive, when redeemed by candor and stern honesty of purpose; but arrogance, dissimulation, and all-absorbing selfishness I will not tolerate. In you I hoped and expected better qualities than you permit me to find, and I trust you will acquit me of intentional rudeness if I acknowledge that you have painfully ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... and to harden, must, we think, be admitted by all the thoughtful. Woman is instituted by God the guardian of the heart as man is of the mind. How many husbands, sons, and brothers, driven and driving, through life in the absorbing excitement of a professional or mercantile career, can testify to the arresting, reposeful, humanizing atmosphere of a home where the wife, mother, or sister exerts her kindly sway; and it is as necessary to the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... motion in that central portion of the kind we have found in our own system. Again, and altogether apart from these considerations, there are good reasons for supposing our Milky Way to possess a double-armed spiral structure. And the great patches of dark absorbing matter which are known to exist in the Milky Way (see Fig. 22) would give very much the mottled appearance we notice in the arms (which we see edge-on) of the nebula in Coma Berenices. The hypothesis, therefore, that ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in all directions, which belong to the creative ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... power and absorbing topic of Indian lore. Their agency is at once the groundwork of their mythology and demonology. They supply the machinery of their poetic inventions, and the belief in their multitudinous existence exerts ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... artist laid aside his chisel and mallet, and the Arabian desert knew his footsteps no more for many days after the rough-hewing of Athor's face. Instead, he mingled with the people of Memphis in quest of the expression. The pursuit became fascinating and all-absorbing. With the most deliberate calculation, he studied the faces of the betrothed and of newly wedded wives, and finding too much of content therein, he sought out the unelect for study. And with these, his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... been far, far from her own ambitions. She had asked for room to distinguish herself, to shine among her fellows, to be first and foremost, praised and applauded. Her own advancement had been the one absorbing aim in life, and to gratify it she had been willing to see others fail, and to congratulate herself in the face of their distress. Never once in all the miseries of disappointment which she had undergone had it occurred to her that the explanation of her difficulties lay in the motive underlying ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... possessive, urgent, restless, and often terribly painful; this was tranquil, sure, utterly certain, and passive. The immediate fruit of it was that she regarded all human creatures with a lively interest, an interest too absorbing to allow of hatred or even active dislike. Her love for Martin was now like a strong current in her soul washing away all sense of irritation and anger. She regarded people from a new angle. What were they all about? What were they thinking? Had they too had some experience as marvellous ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... at all parallel; and I replied hotly that that was very true, for those matters would have been to you only the comparative trifles of one short day, and would have made you only a little cross and uncomfortable; whereas to little Blue Eyes they were the all-absorbing desires of the hour, which, to a child in trouble, always looks as if it could never come to an end, and would never be followed ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of barren rock and glacial cleft, now purpling and darkening as the sun mellowed in its decline, lay the kingdom of Jugendheit; and toward this the wayfarer gazed meditatively, absorbing little or nothing of the exquisite panorama. By and by his gaze wavered, and that particular patch in the valley, brown from the beating of many iron-shod horses, caught and chained his interest for a space. It was the military ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... in all its glory, the Italians seem to have borrowed frequently from it; but not without misemploying and disfiguring whatever they so acquired. The neglect of the regular stage increased with the all-absorbing passion for the opera, and with the growing taste of the multitude for improvisatory farces with standing masks. The latter are not in themselves to be despised: they serve to fix, as it were, so many central points of the national character in the comic exhibition, by the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Nigel soon returned to the absorbing theme. His powers had much developed since he and Endymion used to wander together over Hurstley Chase. He had great eloquence, his views were startling and commanding, and his expressions forcible and picturesque. All was heightened, too, by his striking personal ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... his attachment, and she had received his note that very day with a joy which almost resembled that which a girl feels who hears from his own lips that her absent lover is faithful to her. To this mother, cut off from every tie but that of motherhood, her child was the one only absorbing interest; she had loved Maurice, but she knew now that she had loved him chiefly as the representative of Lucia's future safety and happiness. It had never occurred to her that her own strange marriage, that the race or the character ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... unwarranted by the circumstances. It was not the first time in his life that he had stepped aside from his pathway to perform an act of charity; but it certainly was the first time he had ever felt so absorbing an interest in the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... undergone a manipulation from Pope himself, under circumstances to be hereafter noticed; and recent researches have shown that a very false colouring has been put upon this as upon other passages. The nature of this strange perversion is a curious illustration of Pope's absorbing vanity. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Fondettes the near neighborhood of Nana had utterly disorganized the party. Every morning during lunch good Mme Hugon returned to the subject despite herself, told her guests the news the gardener had brought her and gave evidence of the absorbing curiosity with which notorious courtesans are able to inspire even the worthiest old ladies. Tolerant though she was, she was revolted and maddened by a vague presentiment of coming ill, which frightened her in the evenings as thoroughly as if a wild beast had escaped from a menagerie and were known ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... course scored, and the rest set to work to manufacture anything that came to hand. It was to be in the nature of an impromptu affair, but a few days' notice was given, and the girls were able to devote a Saturday to the all-absorbing problem. Ingred, home for the week-end, enlisted the help of Mother and Quenrede, and turned the bungalow almost upside down in her quest for suitable accessories. She thought of a number of characters she would have liked to impersonate, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... against the folly of neglecting real duties for the sake of imaginative pleasures; of writing for the love of fame; for the selfish excitement of emulation. You kindly allow me to write poetry for its own sake, provided I leave undone nothing which I ought to do, in order to pursue that single, absorbing, exquisite gratification. I am afraid, sir, you think me very foolish. I know the first letter I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning to end; but I am not altogether the idle dreaming being it would seem to denote. My father is a clergyman ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... began immediately, and though the hands of the clock crept on to fifteen minutes past nine, not a girl there watched them; all were intent on the absorbing ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... the three boys industriously digging worms, and so intent were they in this absorbing occupation that they did not look up ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... please, before we begin. We ladies are so unaccustomed to sitting with idle hands, even when listening to so absorbing a theme as the virtues of this truly excellent Christian wife and mother, that I thought it would be a kindness to ourselves to provide some simple work which should occupy our fingers and at the same time be in itself a worthy object ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... scale, of the Saxon colonization of England. The settled communities established by the Scotch pioneers sheltered and nursed the national spirit they brought with them. As the fringe of colonists expanded it came to cover Antrim and Down and made inroads on adjacent counties, overwhelming and absorbing the tribal organization of the native population. In 1672 Sir William Petty estimated that there were 100,000 Scots in Ulster. Thus in the north-east of Ireland there has been established a people which manifests all the qualities of a new nationality. History can explain to us how ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... I don't want you to have your work, that I demand all of you. I know a woman can't ask that,—can't have it. But if you would only give me—give the children just a little, if I could feel that we meant something to you and that this other wasn't gradually becoming everything, wasn't absorbing you more and more, killing the best part of you. It's poisoning our marriage, it's poisoning all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for information," says Bernard Perez, "is an emotional and intellectual absorbing power, as dominant as the appetite for nutrition, and equally needing to be watched ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... turned reluctantly. He was seated on the bottom step, engaged in an absorbing conversation with the minister's eldest daughter, and did not like to be interrupted; but he knew better than to ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... which a good sound Christian education must confer upon the lower classes of society. Education at the period to which I refer was then beginning to take hold of the public mind, as an essential to the well-doing of the people. This subject in later years, as is known, has become an absorbing question. Our remarks had been evoked by the neat appearance of the children of the Moorfields Schools, who had just passed near where we stood, as they entered the church. One of us remarked in reference to the Tower close by, that ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... that moment, she was not Manley's wife; she was not any man's wife; she was the girl he loved—loved with the primitive, absorbing passion of the man who lives naturally and does not borrow his morals from his next-door neighbor. His code of ethics was his own, thought out by himself. Val hated her husband, and her husband did not seem to care much for her. They were tied together legally. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the property of absorbing light; reflecting and transmitting little or no light; of the color of soot or coal; of the darkest possible hue; sable. Optically, wholly destitute of color, or absolutely dark, whether from the absence or the total absorption of light. Opposed ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... the cozy dining-room at Hillside that day was not entirely a success. At least there were not present exactly the harmony and tranquillity that are conceded to be the best sauce for one's food. The wedding, of course, was the all-absorbing topic of conversation; and Billy, between Aunt Hannah's attempts to be polite, Marie's to be sweet-tempered, Mrs. Hartwell's to be dictatorial, and her own to be pacifying as well as firm, had a hard time of it. If it had ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... Border. As full of high spirits as of high principles, he was in every way worthy the name of the gallant family whose name he bore, a Murie of Connachan, both for physical strength and scrupulous honesty; while his affection for Gabrielle Heyburn was that deep, all-absorbing devotion which makes men sacrifice themselves for the women they love. He was not very demonstrative. He never wore his heart upon his sleeve, but deep within him was that true affection which caused him to worship her as his ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... pretence did not seem natural to him. In them he seemed to be composing for stage effect something to be spoken in character by a quite different person from the sensible and genial man we knew in daily life and conversation. The career of the great Napoleon had been the study and the absorbing admiration of young American soldiers, and it was perhaps not strange that when real war came they should copy his bulletins and even his personal bearing. It was, for the moment, the bent of the people to be pleased with McClellan's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... for drying depends entirely upon the ability of its temperature to absorb or carry off a larger proportion of moisture than that apportioned by natural means. Thus, it will be seen, a cubic foot of air at 32 degrees Fahrenheit is capable of absorbing only two grains of water, while at 160 degrees, it will dispose of ninety grains. The air, therefore, should be made as dry as possible and caused to move freely, so as to remove all moisture from the surface of the wood as soon as it appears. Thus the heat effects a double purpose, not only ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... be disregarded: we must admit a set of eggs represented by m-m, or zero, females and of nm males, one of the sexes being completely replaced by the other. Conversely, it must be possible for the feminine series to be augmented from the masculine series to the extent of absorbing it entirely. It was to solve this question and some others connected with it that I undertook, for the second time, to rear the Three-horned Osmia in ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... arrangement. So many plants provide traps to catch rain, although fourteen gallons of it contain only one grain of ammonia, that we must believe there is a wise physiological reason for calling upon the leaves to assist the roots in absorbing it, A native of Western prairies, the cup-plant has now become naturalized so far east as the neighborhood ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... on a rock, or undulating in the vessel, one of the shadows which had shared his dream with looks and kisses. Otherwise, his head was perfectly clear, and his body refreshed; he was free from the slightest headache; on the contrary, he felt a certain degree of lightness, a faculty for absorbing the pure air, and enjoying the bright sunshine ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Agassizes, and Shakespeares, the universe has not grown in its countless centuries. It has not been getting higher and wider over us since the human race began. It is not a larger universe. It is lived in by larger men, more all-absorbing, all-identifying, and selfish men. It is a universe in which a human being is duly born, given place with such a self as he happens to have, and he is expected to grow up to it. Barring a certain amount of wear and tear and a few minor rearrangements ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... find the Russian home life, the peasant communities, the zemstvoe institutions, offsprings of an extremely democratic tendency, perhaps far more than any such institution of the West. Instead of the rich or noblemen absorbing the land of the peasants, we find in Russia the peasant commune succeeding tot he property of the baron. An average Russian peasant is by far more democratic and educated, irrespective of his illiteracy than an average farmer ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... They held, in fact, that the chief work of piety consisted in setting free particles of the Divine Light, imprisoned in matter by the wiles of the God of Darkness. They being the Pure, they purified matter by absorbing it into their bodies. The faithful brought them stores of fruit and vegetables, served them with real feasts, so that by eating these things they might liberate a little of the Divine Substance. Of course, they abstained from all flesh, flesh being the dwelling-place of the Dark God, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... gallant at real matters which were above gallantry. He could confide in her. Now it was new to me to consider that I could confide in any person. In my calling, one becomes such a receptacle of human confidence,—one soaks up other people's lives till one becomes a great sponge, absorptive and absorbing for ever, as sponges should. Who notices when the useful thing gets too full? That is what it is there for. Pour on—scalding hot, or freezing cold, or pure or foul—pour away. If one day it refuses to ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... behind a screen, whence he emerged arrayed, or only half arrayed, in a thick absorbing shirt and a thin pair of woollen trousers. Then the work began. The man was indefatigable. He was like the spirit of energy. He was in every place about the stage at once, leading the chorus, showing ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... tendency being towards the dissemination of diseased action, causing destruction of the parts affected. It, in fact, appears like a parasite, living by the destruction of surrounding tissues, literally absorbing them and "thriving on death." It begins with a red, livid color, slight aching and burning pains, the part swells and is elevated some like a boil, except that it does not "point," but has a broad base rising like a cone and flattened at the ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... Lieder very pleasingly, and knew most of the bass music from the Messiah by heart. He began to play a few scales on the piano, and hoped to surprise his sisters on his return to England by playing chants, but the Arabic and Hebrew studies proved too absorbing; he grudged the time, and thought the result disproportioned ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at six twenty-two p.m. By the time six-thirty boomed from the College clock-tower, Pringle was absorbing a thrilling work of fiction, and Dido, her death, and everything connected with her, had faded from his mind like a ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... that her health was restored she craved for the excitement of town life It was now more than three months since the murder, and the nine days' wonder was a thing of the past. The possibility of a war with Russia was the one absorbing topic of the hour, and the colonists were busy preparing for the attack of a possible enemy. As the Spanish Kings had drawn their treasures from Mexico and Peru, so might the White Czar lay violent ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... he had been like the young Pharisee from Tarsus. We too have divine calls in our lives, and alas! we too not seldom hide ourselves among the stuff, and try to avoid taking up some heavy duty, by absorbing our minds in material good. Few things have greater power of obscuring 'the heavenly vision,' and of rendering us unwilling to obey it, than the clinging to the things of this world, which are in their place ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made no more objection to her dancing or her flights of fancy. He fiddled for her and fed the flame of her imagination. She was the sunniest creature he had ever known; the bleak life of Lonely Farm had spurred her to greater lengths of self-defence; nothing could daunt her. She had an absorbing curiosity about life, out and beyond the Kenmore confines; and more to keep his own memory clear than to satisfy Priscilla, Farwell set himself to the task of educating the girl in ways that would have appalled Nathaniel and reduced Theodora again ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend till after the removal of the last barrier to their intimacy—then only had he let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen's idea, taking a hint from him, to liberate this animal only on the basis ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... Kate remained on the veranda of the hotel at El Portal, consoling herself, when she had retrieved Timmy, by looking at the pictures in the Illustrated London News, an old number of a fortnight or three weeks ago. She found it so interesting and absorbing, one page in particular, that when the next coach bound for the Sentinel Hotel came along, she forgot to fight for a place until it was too late to fight. There was not another stage bound for that destination until to-morrow. And to-morrow Mrs. May and Hilliard ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... who was not too sick, who had no duties, or could be spared from them, listened with the most lively interest. A colloquy upon the lonely sea between two persons, one upon one vessel and the other upon another, must always be an incident of absorbing importance. ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... was unconstitutional. The Revolution Settlement itself was based upon the overthrow of the whole of the Covenanted Reformation; and no more than the act of Queen Anne, regarding patronage, ought the sinful parts of it to be regarded. Popery exists, and Prelacy, absorbing Popery, exists. Would that the Free Presbyterian Church, by recognising the binding obligation of the covenants, National, and Solemn League and Covenant, and by adding to the binding obligations of these, engagements suited to the times, were to go forth in opposition to all evil, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... romances containing several of the old favorites in the field of historical fiction, replete with powerful romances of love and diplomacy that excel in thrilling and absorbing interest. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... marry her. Phil had all along been a disappointment to his father. He had come into the world with a lame foot and a frail frame, and the Herediths had always been noted for masculine strength and grace. Instead of growing up with a scorn for books and an absorbing love of sport, like a true Heredith, Phil had early revealed symptoms of a bookish, studious disposition, reserved and shy, with little liking for other boys or boyish games. His one hobby was ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... be trifling with a subject, to be turning it over and over as a man may turn about a crystal in his hands, watching the lights blend and flash and separate on the polished facets, he was really drawing nearer to the truth, absorbing its delicious radiance and sweetness. Those sunny mornings, spent in strolling and talking, in colonnade or garden, in that imperishable Athens, seemed to Hugh like the talk of saints in some celestial city. Saints ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... successors are ingenious. They amount to this: As Rome grew in power and culture, so Brandenburg, since the days of the Great Elector, has been expanding in spirit and in territory. That illustrious prince began by absorbing Prussia. Frederick the Great added Silesia and a slice of Poland. Wilhelm I obtained Schleswig, Holstein, Alsace, and Lorraine by war, and Saxony and Bavaria by benevolent assimilation. The present Kaiser has already acquired Belgium by the former and Austria ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... studying, for there is always so much to learn. If I have sung a role a hundred times, I always find places that can be improved; indeed I never sing a role twice exactly in the same way. So, from whatever side you consider the singer's work and career, both are of absorbing interest. ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... it threatened to drown her, she said, 'You men—' very loud, and then gave her voice a rest while the din died down that they might hear what else the irrepressible Ernestine had to say upon that absorbing topic). 'You men discovered years ago that you weren't going to get justice just by deserving it, or even by being men, so when you got tired of asking politely for the franchise, you took to smashing windows and burning down Custom Houses, and overturning ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... which could possibly destroy its existence or change its character." His own inconsistency was lightly glossed over. "For my own part, when I instructed Governor Walker in general terms, in favor of submitting the constitution to the people, I had no object in view except the all-absorbing question of slavery.... I then believed, and still believe, that under the organic act, the Kansas Convention were bound to submit this all-important question of slavery to the people. It was never, however, my opinion that independently of this act they would ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... still he did not come. She had caught up her hat and mantle with some insane intention of rushing into the wide, wild city, on a frenzied search, when two gentlemen passing by her door, talking of the all-absorbing theme, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... pursued with the same zeal at home. Herbs then played a larger part than to-day among curative agents of the village doctor, and the fact that Crabbe sought and obtained them so readily was even pleaded by his poorer patients as reason why his fees need not be calculated on any large scale. But this absorbing pursuit did far more than serve to furnish Crabbe's outfit as a healer. It was undoubtedly to the observing eye and retentive memory thus practised in the cottage gardens, and in the lanes, and ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... grew impatient and had to detach one of their number to call the Emperor's attention to their presence. Since then, it is whispered, it has become the special function of an adjutant, when the occasion demands it, diplomatically and gently to withdraw the imperial causeur from too absorbing conversation. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... one time wobbly are in various places, and even among particular persons, supposed to be at the limits of probability and proof. Es- pecially remarkable is the fact that the concept of *the proved is very various in various sciences, and it would be absorbing to establish the difference between what is called proved and what only probable in a number of given examples by the mathematician, the physicist, the chemist, the physician, the naturalist, the philologist, the historian, the philosopher, the lawyer, the theologian, etc. But this is no task ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sister's grief for her mother becomes more and more calmed, her love for M. de la Feste begins to reassume its former absorbing command of her. She thinks of him incessantly, and writes whole treatises to him by way of letters. Her blank disappointment at his announcement of his inability to pay us a visit quite so soon as he had promised, was quite tragic. I, too, am disappointed, for I wanted to see ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... came a slight change over his spirit of philosophical and artistic experiment. The season comported with his early manhood, and the witching hour and the scenery were not conducive to cold philosophy. He who prided himself on his steady pulse and a devotion to art so absorbing that it even prompted his impulses and gave character to his recreation, was led to feel, on this occasion, that his mistress was vague and shadowy, and to half wish for that companionship which the most self-reliant ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... there is a marked difference in spirit. The noise is modified because the children found other absorbing interests, though at times nature still demands voice production. During lunch time and sleeping time there is quiet, but the teacher has never asked for silence unless there was some such evident reason. There is no silence game. The difference has come from within the children. ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... profound passion is an all-absorbing self-abnegation. The fondest dream of a heart really touched, is to make for the loved one the most extraordinary ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... least I would make her see how wholly wrong and hopeless were her attempts at resuming the old relationship. As the season wore on, we fell apart—that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for I had other and more absorbing interests to attend to. When I think it over quietly in my sick-room, the season of 1884 seems a confused nightmare wherein light and shade were fantastically intermingled—my courtship of little Kitty ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... several islands. As for Clarksville, somewhat lower down, and back from the river a half mile, it is now but a cluster of dwellings on the outskirts of New Albany, a manufacturing town which is rapidly absorbing all the neighboring territory. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... produce intense excitement in the minds of the sensitive Parisians. I can call to mind no similar occurrence producing so general and so intense an effect. For several weeks, in the discussion of this one absorbing theme, even the momentous political topics of the day were forgotten. The Prefect made unusual exertions; and the powers of the whole Parisian police were, of course, tasked ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... associated with the name of the present biographer. It may be said at once that, if a life of Biffin had to be written, Captain GRAHAM was emphatically the man for the task; indeed, from the preface, with its absorbing account of the inception of the work in certain alleged convivialities between author and publishers, to the final chapter, there is not a page that is not calculated to inspire the reader with profound (and in my own case frequently uncontrollable) emotion. Nor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... take in the various adventures participated in by several bright, up-to-date girls who love outdoor life. They are clean and wholesome, free from sensationalism, absorbing from the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... a simple, kindly heart, and though he could be vexed or irritated, he rarely broke into furious anger. But first and last he desired peaceful absorption, if by any means that were possible, of these countries. We absorbing them, they absorbing us; both the gainers! And he had warm feeling of romance-love for all this that he was finding. He saw all his enterprise milk-white, rose-bright. And his pride was touched that the Indian who had seemed contented ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... rendering due homage to the gods in the manner they demanded, were of such an exactingly scrupulous and complex character that the Pharaohs and the lords of earlier times had to assign them to men specially fitted for, and appointed to, the task; now that they had assumed these absorbing functions themselves, they were obliged to delegate to others an increasingly greater proportion of their civil and military duties. Thus, while the king and his great vassals were devoutly occupying themselves in matters of worship ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and absorbing occupation—politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent and enthusiastic as in pleasure. La Patrie was his idol, his heaven, his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country. I have spoken to you of his coiffure a la Sylla; need ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and W.A. Hamor were granted a patent in the United States in 1919 on a new process for making an aromatized coffee extract. In this process, the caffeol of the coffee is volatilized and is then brought into contact with an absorbing medium such as is used in the extraction of perfumes. The absorbing medium is then treated with a solvent of the caffeol, and the solution is separated from the petrolatum. Then the coffee solution is concentrated ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... on after that for some time in silence, each one busy with her own absorbing thoughts. Then ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... States in 1833, after an absence of six years in Europe, he found that he had returned to a new country, where "everybody was everywhere," and nobody was anywhere, and where the chase for the dollar seemed to have grown more absorbing than ever before. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... twice a grunted warning came from the leader as marshy ground squelched under the soft moccasins. But that was all. Charley's whole mind was set in deep concentration. Pitfalls, which might trap, were of small enough importance. The trail was all-absorbing. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... public spirit, which became in time all-absorbing to him, thus showed itself even in his boyhood. It was not long before the purpose of his life which hitherto manifested itself unconsciously now became the conscious part of his existence; and when in ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... pushed aside the table, and stood before her, with the one wholly absorbing love of his life glowing in his face. She dared not meet the gaze that thrilled her with an exquisite happiness, and involuntarily rose. Had she not strangled the impulse, her fluttering heart would have prompted her to lean forward, rest her head against his arm, and tell ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... he was a man of no principle, heavily involved in debt, and deeply incensed at Ralph Mainwaring's success in securing for his son the American estate in which he himself had expected to share, public speculation was immediately aroused in a new direction, and "that Mainwaring affair" became the absorbing topic, not alone at the clubs and other places of masculine rendezvous, but at ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the more popular, as appealing at once to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of love; others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments inspired by natural objects. Shelley's conception of love was exalted, absorbing, allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and warmed by earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except when highly idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had cast aside ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... There were two bedrooms to correspond with the rooms downstairs. One of them was half furnished, and Birkin had evidently slept there. Hermione went round the room carefully, taking in every detail, as if absorbing the evidence of his presence, in all the inanimate things. She felt the bed and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... thankful, ma'am, that you wan't blowed up, with the rest of the poor people," said she, kindly, attempting to turn the lady's attention from her absorbing misery. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... all Israelites settled in Canaan sinks to the level of many other secondary ideas; and Christ and him crucified,—Christ risen, ascended, and reigning in glory, Christ and his kingdom, wherever its centre may be,—becomes the all-absorbing theme. In other words, such Jews I have always observed to be just what true converts among ourselves are; differing from us only in this, that they cherish that desire for the conversion of Israel, which we ought also to cherish, and of which Paul ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... for his child, and for his sister, was like a ray of sunshine which lit up his whole heart, and in the moments of greatest depression prevented desolation from completely absorbing his nature. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and Hospital Nurse are generally women with a special turn of mind, and in the former case the work of training is so absorbing that it can hardly be run concurrently with the delights of courtship. The nurse soon learns to take care of herself, and has many special opportunities of studying the lords of creation. She sees some of the noblest and most gifted of them at their work, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... barn where hostlers, exercise boys, and apprentice jockeys congregate. Tongues are loosened at such a gathering, and the carefully guarded secrets of trainers and owners are in danger, for the one absorbing topic of conversation is horse, ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... California, who for more than ten years has been an earnest student of American hieroglyphs. From his lifelong studies in linguistics in connection with his research in "the motifs of civilizations and cultures," he comes well-equipped to take up the difficult and all-absorbing study of American hieroglyphic writing. Mr. Gates has materially advanced this study by his reproduction of the glyphs in type. These type-forms he has used first in his reproduction of the Codex Perez, and now in this Commentary they are used for the first time in printing. The method used in ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... domain of the emotions it is the unexpected which generally happens, and now it was not only the unexpected but the incredible which had happened to this American diplomatist. He and Margaret Pargeter, the Englishwoman whom he had loved with an absorbing, unsatisfied passion, and an ever-increasing concentration and selfless devotion, for seven years, were about to do that which each had sworn, together and separately, should never come to pass,—that is, they ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... o'clock I was in my berth, listening to the rain pattering on the deck, the trickling noise of which conveyed to my mind, as I lay in my warm bed, an absorbing feeling of comfort, which can only be conceived by those who have a roof to shelter their heads from the pitiless storm. I remained awake for some hours; and, beside the falling of the rain, and the sharp bubbling sound of its big ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to the adventure which put an end to my dreams by launching me into realities of a still more absorbing nature. I was not very well one day, and even Mrs. Vandyke acknowledged that it would not do for me to take the long-planned drive to Tuxedo. So, as I would not let any one else miss this pleasure on my account, I had been left alone in the house, and, not ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... round it rolls, and will turn up nothing, I have a glimpse of freedom, of becoming a gentleman at large, but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspense. Guess what an absorbing state I feel it. I am not conscious of the existence of friends, present or absent. The East India directors alone can be that thing to me. I have just learned that nothing will be decided this week. Why ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... right the services which should only be accepted, if accepted at all, as the offering of love and gratitude, and even reach a degree of domineering selfishness in which they refuse to believe that their children have any adult rights of their own, absorbing and drying up that physical and spiritual life-blood of their offspring which it is the parents' part in Nature to feed. If the children are willing there is nothing to mitigate this process; if they are unwilling the result ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... killed; he is near Lilian; seeing her every day; but he is her friend, rather than her lover, now; she talks with him of her child, and he feels how utterly hopeless his own passion is in the presence of an all-absorbing mother's love. It is discovered that the child is living peacefully among kind guardians in a French convent; and Routledge determines to cross the ocean with the necessary evidence and bring the little one back to its mother. He breaks the news to Lilian tenderly ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... wealthiest and therefore the most prominent citizen of the town, and she was also as intellectual as the early eighties and the twenty-one thousand inhabitants of Dinwiddie permitted a woman to be. Her friendship for Virginia had been one of those swift and absorbing emotions which come to women in their school-days. The stronger of the two, she dominated the other, as she dominated every person or situation in life, not by charm, but by the force of an energetic and capable mind. Though her dress matched Virginia's in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... day another gossip, whose acquaintance he had made during his levee-building venture, loitered up to talk over the absorbing sensation, and, sitting down on the door-step of the shack, grew suddenly attentive to ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen's club across the Park, watching eagerly the "shocking," "shameless" women at the gates of the White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating! This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were American women before their very eyes daring to shock them into having to think about liberty. And what was ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens |
