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More "Inattention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not really paying attention to the child. We hear ourselves saying, "Look here, you pay attention to me." We say it in desperation because we know that our angry command will not accomplish the desired result. The inattention that we receive from one another discourages us personally and blocks the possibility of the ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... is a part of reverie, or studium inane, described in Sect. XIX. In this malady the patients have only the general appearance of being asleep in respect to their inattention to the stimulus of external objects, but, like the epilepsies above described, it consists in voluntary exertions to relieve pain. The muscles are subservient to the will, as appears by the patient's walking about, and sometimes ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... situation in such cases—be it said to the shame of the inferior population of Caneville—too often excited derision and laughter, instead of aid and consolation. Once, indeed, he was seriously hurt by the wilful inattention of his guide; for, tottering along as usual, one fine morning with his staff in one hand, the string attached to the dog's collar in the other, and his head with the sightless eyes raised sadly in the air, whilst he uttered his ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... lattice which looked towards the chapel, Laurence stood and waited. At first he kept quite still and listened with pleasure to the distant singing of the boys. He could even hear Precentor Renouf occasionally stop and rebuke them for inattention or singing out ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... one very important consideration in connexion with glueing operations that must not at any time be lost sight of—that of atmospheric temperature. Much trouble may be brought about by inattention to this help or obstruction, for it will act both ways according to circumstances. In the glueing of important parts in the construction of pianofortes, the operators are careful to have the temperature of the surrounding ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... dinner. Although she was quicker than usual in her efforts to entertain their guest, the meal was hurried and uncomfortable. When in repose McNally's face was clouded, and the occasional spells of interest into which he somewhat studiously aroused himself could not conceal his general inattention. Her father, too, was preoccupied, and was so abrupt in his conversation as to leave small trace of the easy lightness of manner ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... sat down on the sofa in the familiar boudoir. She made the Bishop sit on one side and Lucien on the other, then she began to speak. But Lucien, to the joy and surprise of his old love, honored her with inattention; her words fell unheeded on his ears; he sat like Pasta in Tancredi, with the words O patria! upon her lips, the music of the great cavatina Dell Rizzo might have passed into his face. Indeed, Coralie's pupil had ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... human race. [60] Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and decay: the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by inundations, tempests, and earthquakes: and the monks, who had occupied ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... in the latter case we see merely a few of the personal accommodations of the savage, his neglect of which occasions him but very slight and temporary inconvenience; whereas in the former it is the very sustenance of his life which is concerned, his inattention to which might expose him to all the miseries of famine. The same care and neatness in the management of their fields has been remarked as characteristics of the North American Indians; and both they and the New Zealanders celebrate the seasons of planting ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... before a shorter than himself. True, it was case of a duke; but she had not known such dealings in Wapping. There men doffed caps to my Lord or his Grace; they gave and took their due, but did not writhe on the floor. And then this particular duke's blockish inattention to what her lord was saying filled her with concern. There he leaned, and there he looked out of window at the twinkling acacias, and there he picked his beard. Amilcare's tact must have deserted him, since he could let this simple slave turn critic. But the part, in any case, was difficult. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... said Jerkley, with the inattention of a man diverted from serious thought to an unimportant topic. "They are the windows of the room in which Mrs. Mardale died a quarter of a century ago. Mr. Mardale locked the door as soon as his wife was taken from it to the church, and the next day he had the windows ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... marks! A gentleman never has untidy nails, Otto. For objecting to winter flannels, two marks. Humph! For pocketing sugar from the tea-tray, ten marks! Humph! For lack of attention during religious instruction, five marks. Ten off for the sugar, and only five for inattention to religious instruction! What have you to ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... origin, and history of the dogmas you teach are enveloped. Imposed by force and authority, inculcated by education, maintained by the influence of example, they were perpetuated from age to age, and habit and inattention strengthened their empire. But if man, enlightened by experience and reflection, summon to the bar of mature examination the prejudices of his infancy, he presently discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions, which awaken his ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Scarabaeus, who has taken no part in the laborious labour of moulding the paste, arrives when it is on the road to aid the convoy, or even simply to pretend to help, in order that when the moment has come he may claim a share in the coveted meal, or even carry it all away if he can profit by a momentary inattention on the part of the lawful proprietor. I followed one of these Coleoptera for more than five metres from the place where his labour began. After having deposited his ball he began to dig up the earth around it;[55] but the mules had returned and ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Juve, who had been listening to him with seeming inattention, now appeared wholly anxious to hear the end of the sentence: ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But to have done ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... was over, the second act had begun, more visitors came to pay their respects to Lady Bray, and I endeavoured to recollect myself and shake off a behaviour that might well be construed inattention, if not ill manners; and might injure me even in that point on which I was then so deeply intent. I uttered two or three sentences; and her ladyship complimented me on being once ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... friend and a lover. And of all this there is ample evidence in his verse. Yet the alchemy of his poetry has passed through the potent alembics of verse and phrase all these rebellious things, and has distilled them into the inimitably fluent and velvet medium which seems to lull some readers to inattention by its very smoothness, and deceive others into a belief in its lack of matter by the very finish and brilliancy of its form. The show passages of the poem which are most generally known—the House of Pride, the Cave of Despair, the Entrance of Belphoebe, the Treasury ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... yes, I see, I know, I understand," with trembling eagerness, whilst through the mist and confusion of his fears, he can scarcely see or hear, much less understand, any thing. If you mistake the confusion and fatigue of terror for inattention or indolence, and press your pupil to further exertions, you will confirm, instead of curing, his stupidity. You must diminish his fear before you can increase his attention. With children who are thus, from timid anxiety to ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... turned his head; it was only an instant's inattention, but Tom Rogers had been waiting for it. Springing behind in a flash, he seized John Steele by the throat. It was a deadly, terrible grip; the fingers pressed harder; the other strove, but slowly fell. As dizziness began to merge into oblivion, Rogers, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... which are counted against it. The task of arousing every man to such a degree of interest that he would remember to mark his ballot on the suffrage amendment seemed a hopeless task. Those who know the usual inattention given to any constitutional amendment by the rank and file of voters can estimate how difficult it was to get a majority of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... landscape. All the earth was now obscure: stars sparkled in the dome of the sky. From a high, sandy neck their path surmounted, he beheld the minarets of the town, seeming to cut the sky above the sharp sea-line. The timbre of his mother's voice made for inattention like the monotonous shrill note of the cicada; and he had at all times a trick of projecting his wits into the scene around him, whence it needed a shout to re-collect them, as she knew to her grievance. She shouted now, and punched him in ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... frowned impatiently. Hers was an alert, vigorous mind, bright and strong like a steel trap, and her brother's vagueness and growing habit of inattention irritated her. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... rich, and as circumscribed in its range, as though I had been standing before the Lady-altar, and the flowers, themselves adorned also, held out each its little bunch of glittering stamens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating 'nerves' in the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in church, framed the stair to the rood-loft or closed the perpendicular tracery of the windows, but here spread out into pools of fleshy white, like strawberry-beds in spring. How simple ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... study, instead of affording you any real instruction, have only given you habits of inattention, which you will find very difficult to overcome; for your eyes have wandered over the page, while your thoughts have been with the fool's, to the ends ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... escort. Caleb, noting that Steve's head was forward-thrust, knew that his eyes must be fastened hungrily upon the town in the valley; and he understood the reason for the disdainful tilt of the little girl's chin. For even at the age of ten Barbara Allison was not accustomed to inattention. Caleb smiled, rather ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... road-mender's last word as we spun away; and we were glad of the warning; for despite careful driving, a few seconds of inattention might have sent us crashing into and over a deep trough across the road, half hidden by thick dust. There were many of these gutters, which might have been put underneath in the form of culverts; but, as the Cherub remarked, since nobody takes the trouble ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... little head upon Eveena's knee or mine; generally silent, but never so silent as to seem to be a spy upon our conversation, rather as a favourite child privileged, in consideration of her quietude and her supposed harmlessness and inattention, to remain when others are excluded, and to hear much to which she is supposed not to listen. Having no special duties of her own in the household, she would wait upon and assist Eveena whenever the latter would accept her attendance. When the whole party were assembled, it was her ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... on with listless inattention, but two days later she returned in a change of mood which put to blush the worldly materialism of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... there seems little hope of our finding any one who will take the trouble to collect them, or a sufficient number of real admirers of these relics who would come forward to ensure a suitable reward for the labour. We are sorely disgraced among foreigners for inattention to the course and progress of our own learning. No work exists, like those which illustrate and embellish the French, Italian, and German literature, which professes to give a summary view of its history. The knowledge of its antiquities, its customs, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... me into the school, of which he was master, and my education may be said fairly to have begun. My progress, however, was very slow partly owing to ill-health, but more, I must acknowledge, to carelessness and inattention. In fact, during the first four years I was at school, I learnt very little of anything, with the exception of reciting verses, which I seemed to learn without any mental effort. My memory became very ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... vast distressful litter and heavy brooding stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a shelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horror of dead bodies; they are dreadful to me—dreadful. I dread their stiff attitudes, their terrible intent inattention. To this day such memories haunt me. That night they nearly overwhelmed me.... I thought of the grim silence of the surgeon's tent, the miseries and disordered ravings of the fever hospital, of the midnight burial ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... speak of his own life. He did not shrink from talking about himself, for he was free from that exacerbated, timid vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips. He talked to her in his restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her shoe, and thinking that the time was bound to come soon when her very inattention would get weary of him. And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping head that made him think of a tragic Venus arising before ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... that does not bear the stamp of mathematical or judicial certainty, we risk losing as we go along most of the opportunities or clues which the great riddle of this world offers us in its moments of inattention or graciousness. At the beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content ourselves with little. For the incident in question to be convincing, previous evidence in writing, more or less official statements would be required, whereas we have only the ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... as we from impostors who keep inconveniences, "under the notion of a tavern," without any call of natural genius thereto; none endure with such unexemplary patience the superb indifference of inn-keepers, and the condescending inattention of their gentlemanly deputies. We are the thralls of our railroads and hotels, and we ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Dundas continued very remiss in her lessons, she unrelentingly required the count's attendance, and sometimes, not in the most gentle language, reproached him for a backwardness in learning she owed entirely to her own inattention and stupidity. The fair Diana would have been the most erudite woman in the world could she have found any fine-lady path to the temple of science; but the goddess who presides there being only to be won by arduous climbing, poor Miss ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... there every year, to please my husband. But a great deal of my time was taken up in corresponding with my mother. She was always nervous if she did not hear regularly from me. I really feel quite ashamed of my inattention. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... our sacred mysteries," says Origen, "know that when you receive the body of the Lord, you take care with all due caution and veneration, that not even the smallest particle of the consecrated gift shall fall to the ground and be wasted. [489:3] If, through inattention, any part thus falls, you justly account yourselves guilty. If then, with good reason, you use so much caution in preserving His body, how can you esteem it a lighter sin to slight the Word of God than ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the house without once looking up, without noticing any one who passed her. She brushed by Mrs. Wragge in the passage as she might have brushed by a piece of furniture. She ascended the stairs, and caught her foot twice in her dress, from sheer inattention to the common precaution of holding it up. The trivial daily interests of life had lost ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... admittance to this degree of Masonry, is a proof of the good opinion the brethren of this Lodge entertain of your Masonic abilities. Let this consideration induce you to be careful of forfeiting by misconduct and inattention to our rules, that esteem which has raised you to the rank ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of fine weather to encourage free growth where it is desirable. Plants swelling their fruit to be supplied occasionally with clear liquid manure. The succession plants to be supplied with water at the roots, as inattention to that particular during hot weather is very likely to cause some of the ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... sent Jean hurrying off to the shed whence rations were supposed to be issued, but on each occasion he only got his toes trod on and his ribs racked in the crush. The Prussians, whose organization was so wonderfully complete, continued to manifest the same brutal inattention to the necessities of the vanquished army. On the representations of Generals Douay and Lebrun, they had indeed sent in a few sheep as well as some wagon-loads of bread, but so little care was taken to guard them that the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... session, that the East India Company, in London, are by the said Act allowed to export their teas into America in such quantities as the Lords of the Treasury shall think proper. And some persons, with an evil intent to amuse the people, and others thro' inattention to the true design of the Act have so construed the same as that the tribute of three pence on every pound of tea is to be exacted by the detestable task masters here. ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... Sunday, he took her to church, at St. James's in Piccadilly, where they had difficulty in getting seats, and where several pious dowagers were scandalised at the inattention of their male company to the service. Ned walked out alone in the afternoon, but, to his surprise, he was not accosted by any gentleman pretending to recognise him as some one else, as a means ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... man holds good also of civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and easily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects have acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... this exhibition of inattention with a little pout, which is far from unbecoming, and too frank to conceal ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... seen them done; her talk revealed a matter-of-course knowledge of secrets, a natural intimacy with the inaccessible. It was like Harry to show no signs of being impressed; but very shrewd eyes were upon him, and his impassivity met with amused approval since it stopped short of inattention. She broke it down at last ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... inattention of writers to punctuation, it was observed that the lawyers used no stops in their writings. "I should not mind that," said one of the party, "but they put ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts, 'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table; whether it was well or ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind; so that I was brought up in such a perfect inattention to those matters, as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me. Indeed, I am so unobservant of it, that to this day I can scarce tell, a few hours after dinner, of what dishes it consisted. This has ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... of these apparent anomalies which presents itself is inattention on the part of the observers; but it is one that will not bear examination, though it may apply in some cases. The sound is too loud, at any rate near the epicentre, to escape notice, and it is generally heard before the shock begins ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... A certain inattention on the part of the Deity was no doubt responsible for the fact that "something" did not "happen" to the family of Lord Lawdor. On the contrary his four little giants of sons throve astonishingly and a few months after the Gareth-Lawless ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the man said, lowering the gun. He stared glassy-eyed into space for a moment, nervously working his teeth against his lip. Startled at his own inattention, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... that Jenny shirked, and that went on nevertheless in spite of her inattention, plying and moulding somewhere deep below her thrilling joy. The thought was, that she must not show Keith that she loved him, because while she knew—she felt sure—that He loved her, she must not be the smallest fraction of time before him in confession. She was too proud for that. He would tell ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... her with a shrewd eye. In spite of his inattention of the night before, the interest of Miss Mallory's appearance upon the scene at Tallyn had not been lost upon him, any more than upon other people. The rumor had preceded her arrival that Marsham had been very much "smitten" with her amid the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a subject of the highest importance in moral training, and deserve the serious attention of committees as well as teachers: inattention to these matters, may demoralize every child that enters the school. In many schools throughout the country I have seen great want of attention to this subject, the seats were too high, the circular holes too large, causing fear on the part of the infants, and also ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... preoccupation now, and he was bent upon doing what he wished to do. Talbot and the two editors rallied him upon his absence of mind, and even Helen, despite her new interest in Wood, looked a little surprised and perhaps a little aggrieved at his inattention; but none of these things had any effect upon him. His mind was now thrown for the time being into one channel, and he could not turn it into ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... mistakes—are never harmful; because they are always made in a true direction,—falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it; and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art—the mistakes of sheer inattention, and want of sympathy—are mortal. The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his meaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... tired," said the other, relapsing into a stony inattention which did not end even when Brodie brought the car to a stand outside the police ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... that of a first-rate orchestra, composed of performers who are well acquainted with each other, are accustomed to play together, and know almost by heart the work they are executing. Even then, the inattention of a single player may occasion an accident. Why incur its possibility? I know that certain artists feel their self-love hurt when thus kept in leading-strings (like children, they say); but with a conductor who has no other view than the excellence of the ultimate result, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... from all which originated those sad events which have disgraced one nation, and exasperated the other forever. Shortland may be excused, when it is considered that England lost her colonies by not studying the American character; and the same inattention to the natural operations of the human heart, is now raising America gradually up to be the first naval power on the terraqueous globe. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... lecture or oral lesson, they can answer in writing Borne simple questions carefully stated, it will be a further advance. It is something to grasp accurately the scope of a question. The plague of girls' answers is usually irrelevancy from want of thought as to the scope of questions or even from inattention to their wording. If they can be patient in face of unanswered difficulties, and wait for the solution to come later on in its natural course, then at least one small fruit of their studies will have ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... mind of firing among the group, that I had the good fortune to discover my mistake. The figures seated and covered with grey clay had very much the resemblance of a grey species of kangaroo which we had often seen on the Bogan. I then went forward with him, and was received with the most demure inattention; that is to say, by the natives sitting cross-legged, with their eyes fixed on the ground, which it appeared was their formal mode of expressing respect or consideration for strangers ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... this anecdote at some length, as it tends to show how these sudden acts of hostility, which have been attributed to caprice and perfidy, may often arise from deep and generous motives, which our inattention to Indian character and customs prevents ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of the Deity. 'With regard to their worship,' Captain Cook does the Otaheitans but justice in saying, 'they reproach many who bear the name of Christians. You see no instances of an Otaheitan drawing near the Eatooa with carelessness and inattention; he is all devotion; he approaches the place of worship with reverential awe; uncovers when he treads on sacred ground; and prays with a fervour that would do honour to a better profession. He firmly credits the traditions ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... refusal, the prince turned to me, and, probably incited by the goose-like expression of my face, made me a deep bow. This sarcastic bow, this refusal, transmitted to me through my triumphant rival, his careless smile, Liza's indifferent inattention, all this lashed me to frenzy.... I moved up to the prince and whispered furiously, 'You think fit to laugh at ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... operates disadvantageously to an attorney in the eyes of those who employ him, as well as the public, when he fails in consequence of some neglect or oversight. Frequent applications to the court, to relieve him from the consequences of his inattention, tell badly on his character and business. He may be able to make very plausible excuses; but the public take notice, that some men with large business never have occasion to make such excuses, and ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... late, my Inez," he said, "and Don Augustin would be apt to reproach you with inattention to your health, in being abroad at such an hour. What then am I to do, who am charged with all his authority, and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... energy to be preoccupied. The absent-minded man is oblivious of ordinary matters, because his thoughts are elsewhere. One who is preoccupied is intensely busy in thought; one may be absent-minded either through intense concentration or simply through inattention, with fitful and aimless wandering ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... popular observation. To this he answered, "I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." As this was said in the hearing of this distressed woman, it was not only calculated to silence the disciples, but to discourage the suppliant. A mere inattention to her urgent plea might have been imputed to some deep abstraction of mind, which we know sometimes renders a person in the full exercise of his faculties as indifferent and insensible to external objects or sounds as if he were in a profound sleep; or he might have been supposed to be occupied ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... musical accomplishments, a very good fellow; and so is Mrs. "Conky"—an amiable and agreeable woman, whose only fault is an excessive anxiety for the comfort of her guests, leading her at times to forget, in the words of the Chinese proverb, that "inattention is often the highest form ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... of older children that have already learnt something, teachers notice unusual inattention and indifference, committing to memory comes harder than usual and what is finally learnt is recited in an awkward and stammering way. The children sleep unusually much and often by day; on the other hand their sleep at night ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... upon her that tricks and honours were pretty far gone, she never remembered that she had herself to blame for the matter, but turned upon her poor niece with 'Sly creature!' and so forth. And while owing to this inattention, Gertrude had lost the benefit of her sage Aunt Rebecca's counsels altogether, her venerable but frisky old grandmother—Madam Nature—it was to be feared, might have profited by the occasion to giggle and whistle her own advice in her ear, and been indifferently well obeyed. I ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was taken up in the discussion of a letter of Edgar's, more than usually discontented with his employment; and another of Alda's, who had been laid under orders to write to her eldest brother, and desire him to remonstrate with Edgar on his inattention, laziness, and pleasure-seeking. The anxiety had long been growing up; Felix had come to write his difficult letter by the light of Geraldine's sympathy, and they were weighing what should be said, when the door-bell rang, some ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more extraordinary and unaccountable, than the inconsistency of mankind in every thing; even in the practice of that divine virtue benevolence; and most of our mistakes arise more from indolence and from inattention, than from any thing else. The busy part of mankind are too intent upon their own private pursuits; and those who have leisure, are too averse from giving themselves trouble, to investigate a subject but too generally considered as tiresome and uninteresting. But if it be true, that we ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... Sleuth did not achieve the success that the previous ones had. The invalid suddenly developed both restlessness and inattention, with such a tendency to frequent interruptions as to ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... hat with the somewhat stately and excessive manner, which he could always substitute at the shortest notice for brusquerie or inattention, he went his way. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Imogen seated herself, before she discovered, by a casual glance over the prospect, and at some distance, a youth, who seemed to advance with hasty steps towards the castle. At first she was tempted to turn away her eye with carelessness and inattention. There was however something in his figure, that led her, by a kind of fascination for which she could not account, to cast upon him a second glance and a third. He drew nearer. He leaped with an ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... again to your house," said the boy, who did not perceive her inattention—"Father would have come to your house again, to play the tune the young gentleman fancied so much, but ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... was cast in the flames, and with renewed caution not to forfeit their success by inattention, Sindri passed out, leaving Brock to ply the bellows as before. Loki was now in desperation and he prepared for a final effort. This time, still in the guise of the gadfly, he stung the dwarf above the eye until the blood began to ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... however, the general character of the Norwegians, for they are tender-hearted, kind, and generous to strangers; but fear had superseded the sympathy of the old lady's expansive heart; and had men of riper years than her sons been present, we should not have met with so much inattention to our necessities. Even the girl, young though she was, desired to administer to our need; but sweetness of manner, simplicity, tenderness, and noble generosity are unchanging types of the youthful female character in ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... absorbed in the occupation of tracing the broguing of her shoes with the long stalk of a chestnut leaf. For a moment she watched the slim brown hand, as carefully intent on this useless task, as if working on a canvas; then she suddenly withdrew her foot, feeling almost vexed with him for his inattention and ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... frequently, impaired their constitutions by study, or careless inattention to their health, and the violence of their passions bearing a proportion to the vigour of their intellects, the sword's destroying the scabbard has become almost proverbial, and superficial observers have inferred ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... regulations, inattention to its recommendations, if not disobedience to its authority, not only in individuals but in States, soon appeared with their melancholy consequences—universal languor, jealousies and rivalries of States, decline of navigation and commerce, discouragement of necessary manufactures, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... few days. He had even said tender nothings to Jean Roland and expressed an eager desire to see her in Louisville, where she was to visit before returning to Detroit. So flattering was his manner that the girl forgave him for his inattention during her stay at Buck Hill and was all smiles ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... he was roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going, Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon the vast and unexploited resources of the North, all of which was more ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the remark of the keeper of the table. He had overheard my counsellor. He felt his losses, and was angry. I saw that, and it determined me. I took the counsel of the stranger. I was the more willing to do so, as I reproached myself for my inattention to my friend. It was time to see what had been his progress, and I prepared to leave the theatre of my own success. Before doing so, I turned to my counsellor, and thus addressed him: "Your advice has made me win; I trust I will not offend a gentleman who has been so ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... form of the colonial governments, being probably of Pope's opinion that "the system that is best administered is best." In Grenville's opinion, the Massachusetts government was good enough, and all the trouble arose from the inattention of royal officials to their manifest duties and from the pleasant custom of depositing at Governor Bernard's back door sundry pipes of wine with the compliments of Mr. Cockle. Most men in England agreed that such pleasant customs had been tolerated long enough. To their ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... with the other tried to obey her shrill directions about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might skip beside him; he looked at us with a half-proud, half-shamefaced smile, calling down a rebuke for his inattention ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... grand mass, with music which was not finished. It was too warm in the church stuffed with people, and the inattention was general. Men who recognized each other saluted with a light movement of the head; conversation was exchanged in a low voice; some young actors struck attitudes for the benefit of the women, and the pious responded to Dominus Vobiscum ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... instigation surely of the devil himself, have had eyes to see a flaw in the deed. Sir John Popham is appealed to. Who could doubt the result? He answers that there is no doubt that the words were omitted by the inattention of the engrosser—Carew Raleigh says that but one single word was wanting, which word was found notwithstanding in the paper-book, i.e. the draft—but that the word not being there, the deed is worthless, and the devil may have his way. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... about with her; and Helena and Gregory hanging on her knees. Gregory, of course, had tomorrow's task easily in hand, with another star for a day's good conduct in school; but Helena, shining in the gold and flush of her radiant inattention, would know nothing. Helena, Lee Randon acknowledged, spelled atrociously. If it weren't for the clubs and his spiked shoes he'd turn and go home directly, himself supervise the children's efforts at education. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not only by reason of gradual inattention to some of the common properties, which, if language were ruled by convention alone, would be in their entirety both the perpetual and the sole constituents of the connotation; but also from the incorporation in ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... mysterious disappearances began. It was summer before Aunt Olivia woke up—not from her nap, but from her inattention. Quite suddenly she came upon the realization that Rebecca Mary was not about the house; nor about the grounds, for she instituted prompt search. She went to all the child's odd little haunts—the grapery, the orchard, the corn-house, even to her own beloved back yard, full of sweet-scented ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... part of such as are fit for service, can be spared on any one station at one time. The East and West Indies, Mediterranean, Africa, and other parts over which Britain extends her claim, make large demands upon her navy. From a mixture of prejudice and inattention, we have contracted a false notion respecting the navy of England, and have talked as if we should have the whole of it to encounter at once, and for that reason, supposed, that we must have one as ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... course of the discussion the history of the Demonetizing Act of 1873 was brought out, and the degree of attention, or rather inattention, which was given to its passage,—On proceeding to vote the Senate rejected an amendment by Mr. Morrill, providing that for the first year only 25 per cent, and for the second year only 50 per cent, of the duties should be receivable in silver.—The amendment of Mr. Wilson "that $100,000,000 should ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of his "inattention," his "indifference,"—even of his apparent disobedience and rebelliousness. What other children hear without an effort he has to strain every nerve to catch. He misunderstands the question that is asked of him, makes an ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... was gone. Awareness drifted in formless inattention until a focal point, a mere nucleus of intellect, captured and held it. The nucleus strengthened, became an impression of identity—not his own identity, nor any that he knew, but that of some Other. From this other presence came insistently the warmth and gentleness of good will, an unreserved outpouring ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... devoted himself solely to this one object. During those years he lived but to calculate and think, and the most ludicrous stories are told concerning his entire absorption and inattention to ordinary affairs of life. Thus, for instance, when getting up in a morning he would sit on the side of the bed half-dressed, and remain like that till dinner time. Often he would stay at home for days together, eating ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... part of Paco, raised it to his lips, and drank it slowly off, as if to make the pleasure of the draught as long as possible. Thus engaged, he did not observe a man lurking in the shadow of an opposite barn, and who, taking advantage of the sentinel's momentary inattention, and of the position of Paco, who stood so as to mask his movements from the soldier, glided across the street, darted into the house, and, passing unseen and unheard before the open door of the guard-room, nimbly and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... hour more, Magdalen composedly walked into the room. She was pale and depressed. She received Miss Garth's remonstrances with a weary inattention; explained carelessly that she had been wandering in the wood; took up some books, and put them down again; sighed impatiently, and went away upstairs ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... condition under our rule, but it is only by looking to the past a right answer can be given to the questions: What right have we to govern India? From what evils has our government delivered it? What benefits have we conferred on its population? Inattention to the past has led many to give in some cases an utterly wrong, in other cases a very inadequate, answer to these questions. It is clear that India has been brought under our rule by what may be rightly ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... regain her freedom—through inattention or weakness—must then make use of the "counts" familiar to all generations of children, to decide which of them shall take the place ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... scientist. When he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as energetic as Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric energy, which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the medical world as B. B.; and the envy roused by his success in practice is softened by the conviction that he is, scientifically considered, a colossal humbug: the fact ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... on the leads till the staircase should be clear. Knight was not in a talkative mood that morning. Elfride was rather wilful, by reason of his inattention, which she privately set down to his thinking her not worth talking to. Whilst Knight stood watching the rise of the cloud, she sauntered to the other side of the tower, and there remembered a giddy feat she had performed the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... delightful landscape there is an obvious fault; there is no distinction between the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly; they are both flowery, and consequently undiversified. This could not proceed from the poet's want of judgment, but from inattention: it had not occurred to him that he had employed the epithet flowery twice within so short a compass; an oversight which those who are accustomed to poetical, or, indeed, to any other species of composition, know to be ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... at all times. Her companion did not embarrass her by his lack of responsiveness as he embarrassed most people. She had a feeling that his reticence did not spring from inattention. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... practices weekly, and there were the usual fines for those who came late, or missed a practice, for inattention to the leader, or for a dirty instrument, the heaviest fine of all being for intoxication. But long after this there was a Tideswell Brass Band which became famous throughout the country, for the leader not ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to these accursed times, you will easily allow that it might unhinge me for doing any good among ballads. My own loss as to pecuniary matters is trifling; but the total ruin of a much-loved friend is a loss indeed. Pardon my seeming inattention to your ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... uncle for an allowance. He had grown up with the feeling that Buston Hall was to be his own, and had not regarded his uncle as the donor. His father, with his large family, had never exacted much,—had wanted no special attention from him. And if not his father, then why his uncle? But his inattention, his absence of gratitude for peculiar gifts, had sunk deep into Mr. Prosper's bosom. Hence had come Miss Thoroughbung as his last resource, and Miss Thoroughbung had—called him Peter. Hence his mind had wandered to Miss Puffle, and Miss Puffle had ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... some surprise at the deficiency of my scholarship. For this, various reasons are assignable, all of which, however, hinge upon these two formidable obstacles—the inconveniency of local position, and the thoughtless inattention of youth. In remote country places, long and rough ways, conjoined not unfrequently with wild weather, require that children, before they can enter school, be pretty well grown up; consequently, they quit it the sooner. They are often useful at home in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Alicia's remote sitting-room had been served at leisure, her tea had rarely been hot, and her modestly tinkled bell irregularly answered. Often her far from liberally supplied fire had gone out on chilly days, and she had been afraid to insist on its being relighted. Her sole defense against inattention would have been to complain to Mr. Temple Barholm, and when on one occasion a too obvious neglect had obliged her to gather her quaking being together in mere self- respect and say, "If this continues to occur, William, I shall be obliged to speak ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... records the fall of a handsome gate, with outworks and bastions, on the night of St. George's Day, April 23rd, 1240, probably from inattention to the foundations. The King, on hearing of it, ordered the fallen structure to be more securely rebuilt. A year later the same thing happened again, which the chronicler states was due to the supernatural interference of St. Thomas a Becket, and that the citizens ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... they had learned, they would lounge upon the sofa, lie on the rug, stretch, yawn, talk to each other, or look out of the window; whereas, I could not so much as stir the fire, or pick up the handkerchief I had dropped, without being rebuked for inattention by one of my pupils, or told that 'mamma would not like me ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the old man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc piece as it dropped ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... that, vexed by the inattention of the scholars, and by whispering, in which Miss Annie joined, I hastily told her to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... and became a master of the art of riding that wild vehicle, but I had no gift in that direction and was never able to stay on mine long enough to get any satisfactory view of the planet. Every time I tried to steal a look at a pretty girl, or any other kind of scenery, that single moment of inattention gave the bicycle the chance it had been waiting for, and I went over the front of it and struck the ground on my head or my back before I had time to realise that something was happening. I didn't always go over the front way; I had other ways, and practised them all; but no matter which ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... slumbers, perceived with terror and despair the countenance and occupation of his general. He fell on his knees before him. "My friend," said Napoleon, "here is your musket. You had fought hard, and marched long, and your sleep is excusable; but a moment's inattention might at present ruin the army. I happened to be awake, and have held your post for you. You will ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... We join up with the laggard inattention of custom. With himself each man brings his rifle, his pouches of cartridges, his water-bottle, and a pouch that contains a lump of bread. Volpatte is still eating, with protruding and palpitating cheek. Paradis, with purple nose ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the—the charity of superior experience and the inattention of intellectual preoccupation and the amused concession to ignorance must steadily, if gradually, disappear? Is ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... excitable children become when they do not go to bed in good time. Edi, too, sat quite ill-humoredly before his plate, as if he had to swallow sorrel instead of little golden apples; for he felt much troubled that his father had heard of his inattention in the school. Ritz had expected a kind of admonishing speech from him, because the outburst had taken place right after he had spoken to Sally. Since it did not come and no one seemed to trouble about him, he settled himself firmly in his seat and ate everything that ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... possible; never over; and if the child be fed out of doors in its carriage it is well to have a flannel bag of some kind to slip over the bottle to keep it at the same temperature until the meal is finished. Many cases of colic are caused by inattention ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... entered an embrasure in Willis's Battery, took both legs off two men, one leg off another, and wounded another man in both legs; thus four men had seven legs taken off, or wounded, by one shot. These casualties were caused by the inattention of the men to the warning of a boy who was looking out for shot. There were two boys in the garrison whose eyesight was so keen that they could see the enemy's shot coming, and both were employed in the batteries especially exposed to the enemy's fire, to warn the men ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... and quiet, came back to him the events he had overlooked and forgotten. He recalled now some gossip of the servants, and hints dropped by Susy of a violent quarrel between Peyton and Pedro, which resulted in Pedro's dismissal, but which now seemed clearly attributable to some graver cause than inattention and insolence. He recalled Mary Rogers's playful pleasantries with Susy about Pedro, and Susy's mysterious air, which he had hitherto regarded only as part of her exaggeration. He remembered Mrs. Peyton's unwarrantable uneasiness about Susy, which he had either overlooked or referred entirely ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... by taking an uninvited seat beside him, and resting his chin on the palms of his hands. He did not eat, but simply transferred his inattention from the ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had, besides, a bearing on my future. I was standing one day near a boat-landing under Telegraph Hill. A large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and I was observing her with languid inattention, when I observed two men to stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where I stood. In a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps, and I could see that both were too well ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that she had rather not hear any more such confessions. She had listened to too many, and had allowed him to spend in confessions some of the strength which should have been applied to mending his faults. For the present, while she was preparing a way to help him to conquer his inattention, she advised him to say nothing to her, or to any one else, on the subject; but this need not prevent him from praying to God to give him strength to ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... son of General Mercer, be educated from henceforward at the expense of the United States. They conveyed in a few words the highest eulogium on the characters and merits of the deceased. Through inattention, General Warren, who fell on Breed's Hill, had not been properly noted when Congress passed their resolve respecting General Montgomery: the proposal for paying due respect to the memory of Mercer led to the like in regard ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... other's powers and acquirements. It is true, the traveller thought the student too pedantic, too much attached to systems, which, formed in solitude, he was unwilling to renounce, even when contradicted by the voice and testimony of experience; and, moreover, considered his utter inattention to the quality of what he eat and drank, as unworthy of a rational, that is, of a cooking creature, or of a being who, as defined by Johnson, holds his dinner as the most important business of the day. Cargill did not act up to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... case of a duke; but she had not known such dealings in Wapping. There men doffed caps to my Lord or his Grace; they gave and took their due, but did not writhe on the floor. And then this particular duke's blockish inattention to what her lord was saying filled her with concern. There he leaned, and there he looked out of window at the twinkling acacias, and there he picked his beard. Amilcare's tact must have deserted ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... very good fellow; and so is Mrs. "Conky"—an amiable and agreeable woman, whose only fault is an excessive anxiety for the comfort of her guests, leading her at times to forget, in the words of the Chinese proverb, that "inattention is often ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... unworthy a sentiment; that Rivers's complaisance had a little dissipated her chagrin, and enabled her to behave to me in the manner she did: that she had, however, almost hated me at the ball in the country: that the tenderness in Rivers's eyes that day whenever they met mine, and his comparative inattention to her, had ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... vexed by the inattention of the scholars, and by whispering, in which Miss Annie joined, I hastily told ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... marble house. The round table, set for five, gave Hugh Johnstone the strategic advantage of separating his secret enemy from his blushing daughter. Hawke demurely paid his devoirs to Madame Justine Delande, with a finely studied inattention to either the guest of the evening or the beautiful girl who only murmured a few words when presented to her father's only visitor. "I wonder if Justine, poor soul, will see the resemblance?" It had been a triumph of art, Madame Berthe Louison's magnificent dinner toilette, those rich robes ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... possession of him, was as it were thinking upon two floors. Upon the one he was thinking of the vast problems of a society of a hundred million people staggering on the verge of anarchy, and upon the other he was perplexed by the feverish inattention of Prothero to the tremendous things that were going on all about them. It was only presently when the serenity of his own private life began to be ruffled by disillusionment, that he began to realize the intimate ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... entrance of late comers, of whom, owing to the bad roads, there were a larger number than usual. The minister was evidently annoyed, not so much by the opening and shutting of the door as by the inattention of his hearers, who kept turning round their heads to see who the new arrivals were. At length the minister could bear ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... are looking at the engines of the submarine. There, four or five men, ignoring whether they were under the water or on the surface, were concentrated on their work. One mistake, and the submarine and its crew are lost. Hence there is no inattention to duty. Finally, ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... le Prefet, that this yellow envelope does not come from your detective. I presume that, after writing his report at a table in the Cafe du Pont-Neuf and closing it, he had a moment of inattention during which somebody substituted for his envelope another with the same address, but containing a blank sheet ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... flock through half-closed lids. He looked tired, and rather ill, Fanny thought, but distinctly a personage. She wondered if he held them or they him. That recalled to her the little Winnebago Temple and Rabbi Thalmann. She remembered the frequent rudeness and open inattention of that congregation. No doubt Mrs. Nathan Pereles had her counterpart here, and the hypocritical Bella Weinberg, too, and the giggling Aarons girls, and old Ben Reitman. Here Dr. Kirsch had risen, and, coming forward, had paused to lean over ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... either a singular or a plural noun. It ought to be recollected, however, that when used as the representative of a singular noun, this word retains its original plural form; and, therefore, the verb connected with it, should always be plural. Inattention to this peculiarity, has betrayed some writers into the erroneous conclusion, that, because you implies unity when it represents a singular noun, it ought, when thus employed, to be followed by a singular verb; as, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... as a good-looking clerk with a taste for betting and fanciful dress, who had been discharged from the Orb mill for inattention to his duties, and I wondered that Minnie should have chosen him from among her many other ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... part in the laborious labour of moulding the paste, arrives when it is on the road to aid the convoy, or even simply to pretend to help, in order that when the moment has come he may claim a share in the coveted meal, or even carry it all away if he can profit by a momentary inattention on the part of the lawful proprietor. I followed one of these Coleoptera for more than five metres from the place where his labour began. After having deposited his ball he began to dig up the earth around it;[55] but the mules had returned and ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... rebellion of the Percies by less than four weeks; and that event may, it is presumed, be mainly attributed to the inattention shown to their requests of payment of the large sums which they had expended in the King's service. They were not only harassed by debts, and destitute of means to pay their followers, but their honour, as the Earl expressly told the King, was involved in ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the world—until he fell in love. Now he sees his mother as she is; a wrinkled old woman, perverse, unreasonable, and inclined to meddle with his domestic affairs. The hands that soothed his childish fretting are no longer lovely. Inattention to small details of dress, which he never noticed before, are painfully evident. The eyes that have watched him all his life with loving anxiety, shining with pride at his success and softening with tenderest ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... that. Might have been coupled with someone's inattention, too. But that's unimportant now. The important thing is that the sector records were destroyed ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... negligence or treachery of the commanders of the convoys, wherever it had been found, would have been punished, but they would not have charged them with those miscarriages which were produced only by the obstinacy or inattention of the masters of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... a shrewd eye. In spite of his inattention of the night before, the interest of Miss Mallory's appearance upon the scene at Tallyn had not been lost upon him, any more than upon other people. The rumor had preceded her arrival that Marsham had been very much "smitten" with her amid the pine woods of Portofino. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if I'd any heart to do it, but I'm in trouble, I've lost a case, a case that was doing well, through nothing in the world but inattention on the part of a nurse I had begun to trust. And when I spoke only a small piece of my mind she collapsed in a whining heap on the floor. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... of singers undergoing very disagreeable operations on their throats for chronic diseases of various descriptions; now, my observation and experience assure me that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the root of the evil is chronic inattention to food and raiment. It is a common thing to hear a singer say, 'I never touch such-and-such food on the days I sing.' My dear young friend, unless you are an absolute idiot, you would not partake of anything on the days you sing which ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... hair, then of an emaciated body. There is a man in the wood! And then—did they betray themselves by some slight movement?—there are a couple of slender antelopes who were but now invisible and who melt into their surroundings again at the slightest inattention. It is like a pictorial demonstration of protective coloring in men ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... only by looking to the past a right answer can be given to the questions: What right have we to govern India? From what evils has our government delivered it? What benefits have we conferred on its population? Inattention to the past has led many to give in some cases an utterly wrong, in other cases a very inadequate, answer to these questions. It is clear that India has been brought under our rule by what may be rightly called aggressive war only to a very limited extent. It is also clear that the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... spent six months there every year, to please my husband. But a great deal of my time was taken up in corresponding with my mother. She was always nervous if she did not hear regularly from me. I really feel quite ashamed of my inattention. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... a moment's inattention Sewell perceived that he wished to be asked something more. "I hope," he said, "that nothing more has been going wrong with you?" and as he asked this he laid his hand affectionately on the young man's shoulder, just as Evans ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... to confess that he has shown occasional marks of inattention even while the Master was discoursing in a way that I found agreeable enough. I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the old Master. It seems to me rather that he has become interested in the astronomical lessons ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... demonstrations; and he says, "Yes, yes, I see, I know, I understand," with trembling eagerness, whilst through the mist and confusion of his fears, he can scarcely see or hear, much less understand, any thing. If you mistake the confusion and fatigue of terror for inattention or indolence, and press your pupil to further exertions, you will confirm, instead of curing, his stupidity. You must diminish his fear before you can increase his attention. With children who are thus, from timid anxiety to please, disposed to exert their faculties too much, it is obvious that ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... party should be free to terminate the connection at the end of each succeeding six months. By this system we secured more care and regularity on the part of the pupil apprentices; as, while it checked inattention and irregularity, it offered a direct and substantial ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... son, from whom they had expected so much. He had begun life with bright prospects, had entered into business with his own capital, but had failed after a short career, owing to his extravagant habits and his inattention to business. After this he had traveled for several firms, and while it was believed he received a large salary, there were many who shook their heads at the stories of his dissipation which reached their ears from time ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... back against the corner of the wall, made a couch of the bench on which he sat, and began to chew crust, until such time as his repast should be ready. There had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the stove, and that temporary inattention to and distraction from one another, which is usually inseparable in such a company from the arrival of a stranger. It had passed over by this time; and the men had done glancing at him, and were ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... which he had gone out was not yet settled, and however great his anxiety to meet his family, he would not endanger his worldly interests so vitally as he would have done by any neglect or reckless inattention in ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the new characters differ little from all others we have met before, and that the scene they inhabit is only another variety of the great order we have so often observed, we relapse into our ancient habits of inattention; we think more of ourselves, and less of those we meet; and musing our moments away in reverie, or in a vain attempt to cheat the coming day of the monotony of the present one, we begin to find that the various-vested hours have bounded and are bounding away in a course ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... court of the savages, and not having books in the island, he had consequently many words to learn of this country's language when he arrived in England. This task his retentive memory made easy to him; but his childish inattention to their proper signification still made his want of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... covers the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach. Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from habit and inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and experience, brings to mature examination the prejudices of his childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions which awaken his sagacity and excite ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire—the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate manner, and the air of bland inattention with which they receive your remarks, only to be detected in the fixed or wandering eye. He had learnt the art of being interested in other people, and in what they had to say, and of indicating by a subtle tact in speech that he was following them, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been struck with one of fortune's darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought upon, the like calamity befell the old man or woman that now, with pleasant humour, rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in the holy evening of man's life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow ashamed of our distresses new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not do it intentionally, but inattention to proper names was an aristocratic habit ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... have any faculity, it is that of being able to scent common sense at the first glimmer. Your sentences are so steeped in it that I catch their full meaning long before you end them—hence my apparent inattention. But we're not yet done with the visible face of the Moon: it seems to me you have not yet enumerated all the advantages in which it surpasses ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... of the first menstruation is a most critical time in the life of every young girl, and the mother should be prepared to give her daughter the best of advice. Some slight inattention, some undue exposure, some thoughtlessness due entirely to ignorance on these great subjects, may change the whole future from a life of comfort and good health to prolonged days of misery and ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... her horror, she saw that, from inattention and ignorance of what might be expected, she had allowed the servants to fill every single wineglass of the four standing at her right—positively every one. Sherry, claret, hock, champagne—she was provided ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... personal comfort. The constitution of Clapperton was well known to have been of an iron nature; it had already withstood the pestilential climate of some parts of Soudan, in his previous travels, and, with that impression upon his mind, he regarded, perhaps, with indifference, or more likely with inattention, any effect which might arise from the marshy and swampy country through which the party travelled in the commencement of their journey. The disastrous sequel will, however, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... pedlar, missing, as he said, a little doggie which belonged to him, began to halt and whistle for the animal. This signal, repeated more than once, gave offence to the rigour of his companion, the rather because it appeared to indicate inattention to the treasures of theological and controversial knowledge which was pouring out for his edification. He therefore signified gruffly, that he could not waste his time in waiting ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... had to cross the Kologa. It was but a large rivulet: two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks were sufficient to ensure the passage; but such was the confusion and inattention that the emperor was detained there. Several pieces of cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It seemed as if each corps was marching separately, as if there were no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing, in short, that bound ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... same strain but for a look of deep rebuke from her own partner. The partner was a stately, middle-aged lady, a president of the Cheemaun Whist Club, and a second Sarah Battle. She had suffered much from the silly inattention of the winner of the green stars, she frowned majestically, not because she objected to the young woman's condemnation of the Hat, but because she considered it much worse form to talk during a game of cards than during ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of May the 22d, 1787, informs me that mine of May the 6th, 1786, had never got to hand. I now have the honor to enclose you a copy of it, of no other consequence than to show you that I was incapable of so insensible an inattention as the miscarriage of that letter exposed me to the charge of in your mind. I shall take opportunities of forwarding to you more of the seed of the Spanish Saintfoine, some of which I have received directly from Malta. I have the ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... genius have, very frequently, impaired their constitutions by study, or careless inattention to their health, and the violence of their passions bearing a proportion to the vigour of their intellects, the sword's destroying the scabbard has become almost proverbial, and superficial observers have inferred from thence, that men of genius have commonly ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Grenville was well content with the form of the colonial governments, being probably of Pope's opinion that "the system that is best administered is best." In Grenville's opinion, the Massachusetts government was good enough, and all the trouble arose from the inattention of royal officials to their manifest duties and from the pleasant custom of depositing at Governor Bernard's back door sundry pipes of wine with the compliments of Mr. Cockle. Most men in England agreed that such pleasant customs had ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... should be provided which will isolate each class from every other class, and thereby save at least the visual distractions and perhaps a part of the auditory distractions. To fail to do this is to cultivate in the child a habit of inattention to the lesson, and to kill his interest in the church school and its work because of its failure to impress him or ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... philosophical system is its similarity to the vulgar one; by which means we can humour our reason for a moment, when it becomes troublesome and sollicitous; and yet upon its least negligence or inattention, can easily return to our vulgar and natural notions. Accordingly we find, that philosophers neglect not this advantage; but immediately upon leaving their closets, mingle with the rest of mankind in those exploded opinions, that our perceptions are our only ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... frequent and long conversations with the alchymist. He found him, as men of his pursuits were apt to be, a mixture of enthusiasm and simplicity; of curious and extensive reading on points of little utility, with great inattention to the everyday occurrences of life, and profound ignorance of the world. He was deeply versed in singular and obscure branches of knowledge, and much given to visionary speculations. Antonio, whose mind was of a romantic cast, had himself given some attention to the occult sciences, and he entered ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... which it was the master's duty to set me, and then I might with a clear conscience have indulged freely in my own peculiar tastes. As it was, when the Christmas holidays arrived, I was sent home with a letter from the master containing severe complaints of my inattention and negligence of my duties, while my brothers were complimented on the progress they had made in their studies. The master told me he should write, but our father received us all in the same affectionate way; and as he said nothing on ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Oscar's inattention to his studies was not his only fault at school. His general behavior was worse than it had ever been before. Vexed that he was compelled to return to school so near the expiration of the term, it seemed as though he was determined to make as little improvement in his studies, and as much trouble ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... they said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord;" "I love the place, O Lord, wherein Thine honour dwells." All slovenliness in the performance of the service, all irreverence, or signs of inattention, and indifference, are tokens of a want of thankfulness. We should get this thought fixed in our minds when we enter Church,—I have come here to-day mainly to thank God for His great goodness to me, and to all men. I have come also to ask ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... what says the apologetic minister? Astonished that anybody could think of abridging a king's license in such particulars, he brushes away the whole charge as so much ungentlemanly impertinence, disdaining any further plea than the pressure of business, which so naturally accounted for the royal inattention or forgetfulness in these little affairs. Observe that this pressure of business never was such that the king could not find time for pursuing these intrigues and multiplying these reversions of woe. What enormities! A king (at all times of Navarre, and for ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... played truant from school, and associated with the worst boys in the village. I well remember the morning he first entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. I learned afterward that he had so long borne the names of "dunce" and "blockhead" in the school he attended in his own village that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his mind that it was useless for him to try to ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... continued to thread the narrow passage; the slightest inattention would have brought her upon the reefs. Those who could employ their eyes kept looking now at the approaching stranger—now at the direction where they hoped the frigate would appear. At length old Doull's deep voice was heard exclaiming, "We are free now, sir, of all dangers; we ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dubois. He was lying against a huge slab of the war map. To it there stuck and from it there dangled little wooden objects, the symbols of infantry and cavalry and guns, as they were disposed upon the frontier. He did not seem to be aware of this at his back, he had an effect of inattention, not indifferent attention, but as if he ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... equilibration, in the Grecian art of desultory equitation (where a single rider governs a plurality of horses by passing from one to another) that the flying contest with difficulty and peril, may challenge an anxiety of interest, may bid defiance to the possibility of inattention, and yet, after all, leave the jaded spectator under a sense of distressing tension given to his faculties. The sympathy is with the difficulties attached to the effort and the display, rather than with any intellectual sense of power and skill genially ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had plunged him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the president, who tried to guess the contents of ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... spoken sooner; but I could not. I believe I was a little faint;" and Dora's eyes timidly sought those of the chaplain, who, meeting them, remembered many such a glance when his pupil had feared to displease him by inattention or disobedience. Again he thought to have discovered the source of her refusal, and again ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... not attending at all? And what else of the things in life is done better by those who do not use attention? Does he who works in wood work better by not attending to it? Does the captain of a ship manage it better by not attending? and are any of the smaller acts done better by inattention? Do you not see that when you have let your mind loose, it is no longer in your power to recall it, either to propriety, or to modesty, or to moderation; but you do everything that comes into your mind in obedience ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... seas might not overpower them at places where the free use of the oars could not be had on account of the surrounding rocks or the masses of seaweed with which the water was everywhere encumbered at low tide. This order had been thoroughly impressed upon the men, as carelessness or inattention to it might have proved fatal to ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... was restless; some yawned, some dozed, some complained of the heat. The air of the hall hummed with many-toned inattention, and the song, like a frail boat, tossed upon it in vain till it sank under ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... Milton did not / escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. / We now hear no more of it; not that their poems are better understood / at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is / established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, / who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet / sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his / feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, / than as soaring above, us. If any man expect ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her copy-book presented by no means so good an appearance as usual; and never had Miss Day made out so poor a report for her. She carried it with much secret satisfaction to the little girl's father, and entered a long complaint of the child's idleness and inattention. ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... which crowds itself on the mind of a man who attempts to describe this immense capital, forms such a chaos, that you will, I trust, give me credit for the assertion, when I assure you that it is not from neglect or inattention I sometimes take more time than may appear strictly necessary to comply with your wishes. Considering how deeply it involves the peace and comfort of strangers, as well as inhabitants, I am not at all surprised at the anxiety which you express ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... it, and although the inattention of the young shopmen annoyed them, they sat well sideways in their chairs that they, too, might take a peep at the ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... the first time, read within its walls, under the authority of an episcopal licence; but on the commencement of Sunday duty a painful circumstance presented itself which had not been anticipated, viz. an astonishing inattention to the prayers of the Church: all appeared a blank—no interest, no spiritual concern. The cause was evident in the want of prayer-books, soon however supplied by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, and one of the bishops of the Church. A schoolmaster, Mr. Edward Hawkins, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... a muffled tone, she requested the baron to take her back to the tent, but while fulfilling her wish he wondered at the long strides of the capricious young lady at his side, and the mortifying inattention with which she received ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her hand, as if to reply that they were free to make fun of her if they pleased. But at this moment she perceived that Gervais, profiting by her inattention, was busy seeking his "paradise lost." And thereupon she set him on the ground: "Ah, no, no, monsieur!" she exclaimed. "I have told you that it is all over. Can't you see that people would ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... been forced to abandon them on the road, the pathways along the glens being often so narrow, and so encumbered with the detritus from the overhanging mountains, as to make it necessary to pack our baggage very compactly; inattention to this important point in mountain travelling is sometimes followed by very serious consequences, for the chair or bedstead, projecting far beyond the centre of gravity of the unfortunate animal, catches against a corner of rock, and both ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... author is apt to find comfort. I conclude, that what my reputation wants in extent is made up by its solidity. Minus juvat gloria lata quam magna. I have great satisfaction in considering the delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in ascribing my want of popularity to the ignorance or inattention of those I have not. All the world may forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake him. Yet, notwithstanding so sincere a confession, I was once induced to show my indignation against the public, by discontinuing my endeavours to please; ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... who says, "I did not assist you in your lawsuit, for I was assisting another friend," or "I did not visit you when you had your fever, for I was helping so-and-so who was entertaining his friends," excusing himself for his inattention to one by his attention to another, so far from making the offence less, even adds jealousy to his neglect. But most people in friendship regard only, it seems, what can be got out of it, overlooking ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a census of faults and defeats named by the teacher. Here inattention by far led all others. Defects of sense and speech, carelessness, indifference, lack of honor and of self-restraint, laziness, dreamy listlessness, nervousness, mental incapacity, lack of consideration for others, vanity, affectation, disobedience, untruthfulness, grumbling, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... probably some new words, which are learned as signs. Often children have only one book even of this sort, at which they are kept until they learn it through by heart, and they have been heard to "read" it with the book bottom side up or shut! All these books cultivate inattention and intellectual vacancy. They are—the best of them—only reading exercises; and reading is not perceived to have any sort of value. The child is not taught to think, and not a step is taken in informing him of his relation to the world ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conduct to their tenantry; but though the instances are honourable and splendid, they are not general; nor is it in the nature of things that they can be general. In France, matters were in general different; and the inattention of the nobility to their duty was one cause of the revolution; they had forgot, that, if they neglected or oppressed the industrious, they ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... said the other, relapsing into a stony inattention which did not end even when Brodie brought the car to a stand outside the police station-house in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... health; and the raw wet weather of one of our ungenial summers brought on cold, and sore throat, and fever; yet his vessel was kept at the Nore from the end of June till the end of November, serving as a slop and receiving ship. This unworthy treatment, which more probably proceeded from inattention than from neglect, excited in Nelson the strongest indignation. During the whole five months he seldom or never quitted the ship, but carried on the duty with strict and sullen attention. On the morning when orders were received to prepare the BOREAS for being paid off, he ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... morning with her head full of cuspadores. She missed all her lessons, and got a bad mark for inattention, but the thought of a cuspadore kept her ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... that, by thus deliberately rejecting everything that does not bear the stamp of mathematical or judicial certainty, we risk losing as we go along most of the opportunities or clues which the great riddle of this world offers us in its moments of inattention or graciousness. At the beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content ourselves with little. For the incident in question to be convincing, previous evidence in writing, more or less official statements would be required, whereas we have only the declarations of the husband, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... together, while Concho, now mindful of his crippled mule, made his way back to the trail where he had left her. But she was no longer there. Constant to her master through beatings and bullyings, she could not stand incivility and inattention. There are certain qualities of the sex that belong to all ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... on the hand, which he had received in the conflict in the capital, had been so inflamed and aggravated that he had lost the use of two fingers; and he had, in the retreat, received two severe wounds in the head, one of which became so inflamed from inattention, and from the fatigue and excitement he had gone through, that a portion of the bone had to be removed; and the general lay, for some time, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... the RIGHT dinner-party by mistake?' he asked, 'and apologized like mad, by Jove! and insisted he couldn't stay. The people nearly had to tie him down in his—' Captain Gordon stopped, arrested by his companion's sudden and complete inattention. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in the discussion of a letter of Edgar's, more than usually discontented with his employment; and another of Alda's, who had been laid under orders to write to her eldest brother, and desire him to remonstrate with Edgar on his inattention, laziness, and pleasure-seeking. The anxiety had long been growing up; Felix had come to write his difficult letter by the light of Geraldine's sympathy, and they were weighing what should be said, when the door-bell rang, some sounds puzzled them, and just ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with which Cecilia read this letter was visible to the whole company; and while Mr Arnott looked at her with a wish of enquiry he did not dare express, and Mr Monckton, under an appearance of inattention, concealed the most anxious curiosity, Mr Morrice alone had courage to interrogate her; and, pertly advancing, said, "He is a happy man who writ that letter, ma'am, for I am sure you have not ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... was a dream of reading a mass of minute details, including names of places entirely unknown to him. It may be admitted, in accordance with the psychological theory, that B. might have received all this information from A., but, by dint of inattention—'the malady of not marking'—might never have been consciously aware of what he heard. Then B.'s subconscious memory of what he did not consciously know might break upon him in his dream. Instances of similar mental ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the stock brought from the Cape is dead, and from the inattention of the men who had the care of the cattle, those belonging to Government and two cows belonging to myself are lost. As they have been missing three weeks, it is probable they are killed by the natives. All my sheep are ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... the dust cloth. The boy felt a quick irritation at her apparent inattention; but the purpose, born of her apparent readiness to hear and approve him, held. "I want Lucy to go, too, Miss Herron," ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... eyes too, I assure you, and eyes that know how to speak; he has a look of saucy unconcern and inattention, which ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... not grateful. She took her industrial lesson ill, with much haste and inattention, so that once when the director and his nephew fell behind, the great man, whose speech to his kinsman in private was often little less broad than ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... number of meritorious persons who have never identified themselves with current political opinions, and who have slipped into public employment, thanks to some brief moment of inattention on the part of the politicians. These intruders sometimes get on by the mere force of circumstances, but they never reach the highest posts which are always reserved, as indeed is proper and fitting, for those in whom the people ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... up a bust of the king at the mayor's office. Felix Phellion, a worthy son of his father, had never drawn the slightest veil over his opinions or his conscience; he allowed Celeste to read into them with the candor and the inattention of a student of problems. The young girl, on her side, professed a horror for atheism, and her conscience assured her that a deist was cousin-germain ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... could not hear, he could see. The slightest inattention at his guard duty at that second would have resulted in two deaths. But ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... impertinent anecdotes, speculations on the character and affairs of your neighbors, the repetition of former conversations, or a discussion of the current petty scandal of society; much less, if you allow yourself in careless exaggeration on all these points, and that grievous inattention to exact truth, which is apt to attend the statements of those whose conversation is made ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... here, and complains much of never having had one letter answered since Pitt has been in power; notwithstanding which, I shall take him up if the battle is to be fought before Christmas. I am afraid more rats will run, on account of Pitt's inattention to these trifles, than on any other account whatsoever; indeed I heard as much in town. Rose and Steele may laugh at such details, but they are necessary; and the constituent will not believe the member's assiduity unless he sees a real or ostensible ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and distractions, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel, but will do as a skilful painter did formerly, draw a veil before the countenance of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the absence of any excuse for the delay Cappy Ricks promptly came to the conclusion that Matt Peasley was ashore in Seattle, disporting himself after the time-honored custom of deep-sea sailors home from a long cruise. There could be no other reason for such flagrant inattention to orders; for, had the man Peasley been ill, the mate, Murphy, whom the captain vouched for as sober and intelligent, would have had his superior sent to a hospital and wired the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... odor, and will pull away from the bowl in a stringy mass, having a watery appearance very different from the fine, spongy texture of properly risen dough. The acidity of such dough may be neutralized by the addition of an alkali, and housewives who through carelessness and inattention have allowed their bread to become "sour," often resort to saleratus or soda to neutralize the acid. The result of such treatment is unwholesome bread, wholly unfit for food. It is better economy to throw away bread material which needs to be sweetened with soda ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... halting, once woefully incorrect. The teacher in charge was about to reprove her for inattention; but the wide, sorrowful eyes made an unconscious appeal, and the blunder ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... pronounced the word Macao; but this we had reason to suppose they understood in a different sense; for in return they sometimes held up fish to us, and we afterwards learnt, that the Chinese name for fish is of a somewhat similar sound. But what surprised us most, was the inattention and want of curiosity, which we observed in this herd of fishermen: A ship like ours had doubtless never been in those seas before; perhaps, there might not be one, amongst all the Chinese employed in this fishery, who had ever seen any European vessel; so that we might reasonably have expected ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... freedom without consciousness of it, so there may be a consciousness of freedom without the reality. It may be regarded as a higher degree of knowledge when we not only know but know that we know. Consciousness is opposed to habit, inattention, sleep, death. It may be illustrated by its derivative conscience, which speaks to men, not only of right and wrong in the abstract, but of right and wrong actions in reference to ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But to have ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... thoughts? Yesterday I spoke to Mrs. Harrington about her, for my curiosity became irresistible. She is a slave, a new purchase of Gen. Harrington's, and the personal servant of his wife. Mrs. Harrington smiled in her usual contented way, and gently complained of the girl's uselessness and studied inattention, but she seems unused to opposition of any kind, and languidly allows even her servants to control her wishes. This fiery slave—for, with all her stillness, she is fiery—overpowers the gentle nature of her mistress, and ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... formidable, but the girls soon found that what their father demanded was application, and that inattention displeased him much more than stupidity. His smile, though rare, was one of the sweetest things in the world, and his approbation was delightful, and gave a stimulus to the entire day's doings. Mysie ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be limited by the power of the horse. Every man, that has ever undertaken to instruct others, can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... in her efforts to entertain their guest, the meal was hurried and uncomfortable. When in repose McNally's face was clouded, and the occasional spells of interest into which he somewhat studiously aroused himself could not conceal his general inattention. Her father, too, was preoccupied, and was so abrupt in his conversation as to leave small trace of the easy lightness of manner that ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... secret of his "inattention," his "indifference,"—even of his apparent disobedience and rebelliousness. What other children hear without an effort he has to strain every nerve to catch. He misunderstands the question that is asked of him, makes an absurd answer, and is either scolded or laughed at. It isn't ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... crept to the edge, and overlooking the preacher, imitated all his gestures in so grotesque a manner, that the whole congregation were unavoidably urged to laugh. The father, surprised and confounded at this ill-timed levity, severely rebuked his audience for their inattention. The reproof failed in its effect; the congregation still laughed, and the preacher in the warmth of his zeal redoubled his vociferation and his action; these the ape imitated so exactly that the congregation ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... Sleep-walking is a part of reverie, or studium inane, described in Sect. XIX. In this malady the patients have only the general appearance of being asleep in respect to their inattention to the stimulus of external objects, but, like the epilepsies above described, it consists in voluntary exertions to relieve pain. The muscles are subservient to the will, as appears by the patient's walking about, and sometimes doing the common offices ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... now, and he was bent upon doing what he wished to do. Talbot and the two editors rallied him upon his absence of mind, and even Helen, despite her new interest in Wood, looked a little surprised and perhaps a little aggrieved at his inattention; but none of these things had any effect upon him. His mind was now thrown for the time being into one channel, and he could not turn it into another if ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... laughter, which rang with such childish delight that I retorted by offering several malevolent observations upon the babbling of French servants and the order of mind attributable to those who listened to them. Her defence was to affect inattention and paint busily until some time after I ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... became a master of the art of riding that wild vehicle, but I had no gift in that direction and was never able to stay on mine long enough to get any satisfactory view of the planet. Every time I tried to steal a look at a pretty girl, or any other kind of scenery, that single moment of inattention gave the bicycle the chance it had been waiting for, and I went over the front of it and struck the ground on my head or my back before I had time to realise that something was happening. I didn't always go over ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a simple "snapshot" outfit. The first thing to remember is that there is absolutely no excuse for the large percentages of failures that beginners have in making pictures, and which are due solely to their own carelessness and inattention to simple details. First of all, immediately after making an exposure, be sure to form the habit of turning the key until a fresh film comes into place; then you will never be troubled with the question whether you ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the inattention of the Stanburys, in whose disinterested friendship I had reposed so much confidence, even though a shadow of late had been thrown over our intercourse by my engagement with Claude Bainrothe, a shadow of which I thought I saw the substance in the bitter jealousy and rancorous, unreasonable love ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... we accept the forms imposed upon us by utility, and train ourselves to apperceive their potential beauty. Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention. When the mind is absorbed and dominated by its perceptions, it incorporates into them more and more of its own functional values, and makes them ultimately beautiful and expressive. Thus no language can be ugly to those who speak it well, no religion unmeaning to those who have learned to pour ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... find fault with herself on every Occasion, that we cannot consent, that a Character so exemplary in the greater Points should suffer merely from the Inattention of the hasty Reader. Let us therefore consider of some of the Objections made against her Story: And yet we may venture to assert, that there is not an Objection that is come to Knowlege [sic], but is either answered or anticipated ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... nails, five marks! A gentleman never has untidy nails, Otto. For objecting to winter flannels, two marks. Humph! For pocketing sugar from the tea-tray, ten marks! Humph! For lack of attention during religious instruction, five marks. Ten off for the sugar, and only five for inattention to religious instruction! What ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and becomes part of the pervading sound or silence of a man's environment; and the face, although it never regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with its everlasting riddle. Its profound inattention to man is part of its power over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and has regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come within the focus of its great glancing vision. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... terrier, which has already attained to celebrity. It was accident that led to our discovery of his talent for doing sums correctly. Our children were sitting together at work on their home-lessons, and one of my little girls—seized with a fit of inattention—was unable to solve her very easy task, viz., 122 plus 2. At length, and after the child had stumbled repeatedly over this simple answer, my patience was at an end, and I punished her. Rolf, whose ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... what matter they may reasonably be expected to apprehend, if he is to have them assimilate properly the facts of the lesson. He must further show sympathy and tact in order to inspire the pupils to their best effort. He must be able to detect unerringly the symptoms of inattention, listlessness, and misbehaviour, and by a well-directed question to bring back the wandering attention to ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Major Putoff fired a shot to make the vessel heave-to and leave the mail. The shot passed through the foresail, but was not heeded. A second shot was fired and then Johnson considered it prudent to heave-to and go ashore. He was sternly questioned as to his inattention to the first orders to heave to, and replied that being a young sailor he did not understand how to heave-to. The officer told him to bring the mail ashore, but was met with a refusal, it being contrary to instructions. Johnson started back to his craft and was followed ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... when the mysterious disappearances began. It was summer before Aunt Olivia woke up—not from her nap, but from her inattention. Quite suddenly she came upon the realization that Rebecca Mary was not about the house; nor about the grounds, for she instituted prompt search. She went to all the child's odd little haunts—the grapery, the orchard, the corn-house, even to her own beloved back yard, ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... him the events he had overlooked and forgotten. He recalled now some gossip of the servants, and hints dropped by Susy of a violent quarrel between Peyton and Pedro, which resulted in Pedro's dismissal, but which now seemed clearly attributable to some graver cause than inattention and insolence. He recalled Mary Rogers's playful pleasantries with Susy about Pedro, and Susy's mysterious air, which he had hitherto regarded only as part of her exaggeration. He remembered Mrs. Peyton's unwarrantable uneasiness about Susy, which he had either overlooked or referred ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... an account, as far as I can give it, of what we may do to help ourselves in the matter, by feeding and nurturing the finer and sweeter thought, which, like all delicate things, often perishes from indifference and inattention. Those of us who are sensitive and imaginative and faint-hearted often miss our chance of better things by not forming plans and designs for our peace. We lament that we are hurried and pressed ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was that what he had learnt in the Park had so astounded him that his inattention to the child had not been wonderful. He had—as Parker testified—sought the little fellow vehemently, and had he been successful, he might yet have made some effort, trusting to his master's toleration; but the loss and reproach had made him an absolutely desperate man. Was ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laughing-stock, of Friedrich's, and has yielded some gleams of momentary fun, he and this marriage of his, between Prince Henri and the King, in the tragic gloom all round. [Schoning, ii. SOEPIUS.] Nothing so surprises me in Friedrich as his habitual inattention to the state of his Garrisons. He has the best of Commandants and also the worst: Tauentzien in Breslau, Heyde in Colberg, unsurpassable in the world; in Glatz a D'O, in Schweidnitz a Zastrow, both of whom cost him dear. Opposition sneers secretly, 'It is as they ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mysteries," says Origen, "know that when you receive the body of the Lord, you take care with all due caution and veneration, that not even the smallest particle of the consecrated gift shall fall to the ground and be wasted. [489:3] If, through inattention, any part thus falls, you justly account yourselves guilty. If then, with good reason, you use so much caution in preserving His body, how can you esteem it a lighter sin to slight the Word of God than to ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of wine. "I am perhaps too sensitive to any kind of inattention; but it's not wholly ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... followed the woman: down a winding alley, past rows of rotting tenements, into a cellar below a ginshop. There, in this one squalid room, she found a dozen babies, all tied fast in cribs or chairs, starving, or dying of inattention. The woman, taken by surprise, did not grow violent this time: she fled, and Mrs. Fry, sending for two women Friends, took ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... mason, took charge of the purchase with which the stones were laid; while the pointing the joints of the walls with cement was intrusted to William Reid and William Kennedy, who stood upon a scaffold suspended over the walls in rather a frightful manner. The least act of carelessness or inattention on the part of any of these men might have been fatal, not only to themselves, but also to the surrounding workmen, especially if any accident had happened to the crane itself, while the material damage or loss of a single stone would have put an entire stop to the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... duly prefaced by an introductory sentence connecting it with a certain preceding speech. They know that, once embarked, no converser can tell where the give and take of talk will carry him; but they also know that this does not necessitate awkward and direct changes of subject. The weakness of inattention and of unconscious shunting in conversation is virtually unknown in ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... this sort is at West Nottingham, Maryland. The minister Rev. Samuel Polk, had been discouraged by the inattention of his people to his message. He had come to feel that this is an unbelieving age and had surrendered himself to the steadfast performance of his duties, the preaching of the truth faithfully and the ministry to his people so far as they ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... distinguished by the brilliant qualities of his mind, did not, in his youth, seem to show any happy disposition for study. His father, who formed an unfavourable opinion of his talents, was much distressed, and frequently reproached him in severe terms for his inattention and idleness, to which young Bilderdyk did not appear to pay much attention. In 1776, the father, with a newspaper in his hand, came to stimulate him, by showing the advertisement of a prize offered by the Society of Leyden, and decreed to the author of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... sympathy, affection and amusement? We may see daily, in nearly every family, parents finding fault with their children, in a vexatious, irritated or sorrowful tone of voice, to which the children reply by inattention, or tears, or more often by a repetition of the same tone of irritation. These scoldings pass through the child's mind without leaving any trace of an effect. Such stereotyped scenes produce in the intelligent ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... keeps he it in the text with due reverence, and only remarks in the margin sic MS. In like manner we shall not amend this error in the title itself, but only note it obiter, to evince to the learned that it was not our fault, nor any effect of our ignorance or inattention.—Scriblerus. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... both in profit and reputation: while that of table linen is gaining proportionably in both.[100] There were formerly great tanneries in Caen and its immediate vicinity, but lately that branch of trade has suffered extremely. The revolution first gave it a violent check, and the ignorance and inattention of the masters to recent improvements, introduced by means of chemistry, have helped to hasten its decay. To balance this misfortune, there has of late sprung up a very general and judiciously directed commercial ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... splendid instances there might be of kindness towards their slaves, there were some evils of almost universal operation, which were necessarily connected with the system of slavery. Above all, the state of degradation to which they were reduced, deserved to be noticed, as it produced an utter inattention to them as moral agents; they were kept at work under the whip like cattle; they were left totally ignorant of morality and religion; there was no regular marriage among them; hence promiscuous intercourse, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... we have shown, with strict rules and regulations, backed by fines in case of the slightest inattention, and the certainty of prompt dismissal in case of gross neglect or disobedience, with the possibility of criminal prosecution besides looming in the far distance, our friend, John Marrot, knowing ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... his hat with the somewhat stately and excessive manner, which he could always substitute at the shortest notice for brusquerie or inattention, he went his way. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to slay the dragon. He dreamt of it day and night, until he brought home a bad mark for "attention" in his school report. He told his mother about it; she laughed and said he might leave the poor old fellow alone; there were plenty of dragons to slay at home, self-will, disobedience, inattention, and so on! She made a momentary impression on the little boy, who always wanted to be good but found it difficult at times, curious to say, to carry ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
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