"Absorption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the leading phases in the evolution of the national thought and sentiment. The subtle influence of the deeply-grounded religious feeling which, implanted by the Puritan pioneers, has survived generations of intense absorption in material progress and the distractions that modern life offers to the possessors of newly-acquired wealth; the pride of the people in their independence, and their natural tendency to overrate it in comparison; ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... from Captain Abney, pointing out that Prof. Rowland's plates gave clearer spectra than any others; they were free from "ghosts," caused by periodicity in the ruling, and the speculum metal had no particular absorption. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... hourly fear that they experienced of disastrous inundation from the surcharged river. He had never thought of it, yet he had read of it, and even talked, and yet now for the first time in his selfish, blind absorption was certain of it. He stood still for some time, watching doggedly the enormous yellow stream laboring with its burden and drift from many a mountain town and camp, moving steadily and fatefully towards the distant bay, and still ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... say that the old forms of effort by which mothers fed and clothed and sheltered their children led directly to absorption of interest, energy and conscientious labor within the house. The new forms of effort by which these essentials of healthful and comfortable living are secured lead directly to all manner of cooeperative social adjustments of supply to demand. The standard of demand, however, let it never ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... January,—as the light enlarges, and the trees revive from their rest,—there is a general liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius in their stems; and I suppose there is really a great deal of moisture rapidly absorbed from the earth in most cases; and that this absorption is a great help to the sun in drying the winter's damp out of it for us: then, with that strange vital power,—which scientific people are usually as afraid of naming as common people are afraid of naming Death,—the tree gives the gathered earth and water a changed existence; ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... consequence of war among human groups has been the absorption of weaker groups and the growth of larger and larger political groups, until in modern times a few great nations dominate the population of the whole world. That this was not the primitive condition, we know from human history and from other facts which indicate the disappearance of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... his life's best work into this drama, and he believed he had written with a master's cunning; nevertheless, when his message had gone forth a sudden panic had seized him. He had begun to fear that his judgment was distorted by his nearness to the play, or that his absorption in it had blinded him to its defects. It was evident now, however, that these fears had been ill-founded, for no play could receive such laudatory reviews as these and fail to set ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... football field and on the running path, both as a boy and as a young man. Walking tours were for long my favorite recreation, even after the bicycle became an increasing attraction. My health, however, suffered in other ways from too constant absorption in lustful thoughts, which found vent in erotic verses and tales, generally destroyed soon after they were written. I have been subject since I was a boy to more or less prolonged fits of mental depression. How far I have inherited ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gases which would asphyxiate us or cause a general conflagration. It is scarcely necessary to point out that dire results would follow upon any interference with the balance of our atmosphere. For instance, the well-known French astronomer, M. Camille Flammarion,[39] has imagined the absorption of the nitrogen of the air in this way; and has gone on to picture men and animals reduced to breathing only oxygen, first becoming excited, then mad, and finally ending in a perfect ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... under the lamp; reading with a very grave face, Pitt saw too, and it a little sobered the brightness of his own. It was not the dulness of stagnation or of sorrow this time; at least Esther was certainly busily reading; but it was sober, steady business, not the absorption of happy interest or excitement. She looked up carelessly as the door opened, then half incredulously as she saw the entering figure, then she shut her book and rose to meet him. But then she did not show the lively pleasure he had expected; her face ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... do; in a real weakness of all parties; a momentary shadow, and dream of power in some one; and the subjection of all to the yoke of a stranger, who knows how to profit of their divisions. This, at least, was the case of the Greeks; and surely, from the earliest accounts of them, to their absorption into the Roman empire, we cannot judge that their intestine divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed less than three millions of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... turned to her bureau, affecting a discreet absorption in her list. And presently Ralph Bevan went out into the garden with Fanny to gather ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... Spanish control of the navigation, and the intermittent but always possible hostility of the Spanish officials, to be peculiarly irksome. They were, as a rule, too shortsighted to see that the only permanent remedy for their troubles was their own absorption into a solid and powerful Union. Therefore they were always ready either to join a movement against Spain, or else to join one which seemed to promise the acquisition of special privileges ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... subscribe, and these I venture to call Hindu doctrines. In theological conversations with Hindus, three doctrines very frequently show themselves as a theological background. These are, first, Pantheism; secondly, Transmigration and Final Absorption into Deity; and, thirdly, Maya, i.e. Delusion, or the Unreality of the phenomena of Sense and Consciousness. I find a recent pro-Hindu writer making virtually the same selection. In the ninth century, she writes, Sankarachargya, the great upholder of Pantheism, ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... fault, I say, Godfrey was not guilty—more, however, I must confess, from healthful drawings in other directions, than from philosophy or wisdom: he was a reader—not in the sense of a man who derives intensest pleasure from the absorption of intellectual pabulum— one not necessarily so superior as some imagine to the gourmet, or even the gourmand: in his reading Godfrey nourished certain of the higher tendencies of his nature— read with a constant reference to his own views ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Economist's annual review. Their total paid-up capital was 38-1/2 millions, their deposit and current accounts were just under 300 millions, and their total liabilities were 377 millions. In the course of thirty years the 109 banks had shrunk by the process of amalgamation and absorption to thirty-five, that is to say, they had been divided by three; the number of their offices, however, had been multiplied by nearly four, while their deposit accounts had grown from 300 millions to 1155, and their ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... absorption. "Let's get out of this," he said hoarsely and he took my horse's bridle (he had left his own beast at the edge) and led him back to the open. But I noticed that his eyes were always turning back ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... indemnity, and accepted a partial restitution of his Gascon lands. Like so many of the treaties since 1259, it was a truce rather than a peace. Many details still remained for settlement, and it was pretty clear that the French, having the whip hand, would drive Gascony towards the goal of gradual absorption which had been so clearly marked out by Philip ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... like chucking a monkey-wrench into the cerebration machinery of the Paris experts. They admitted that the absorption and elimination of arsenic varied with the individual, and generally handed the case over to the defence. M. Devergie was the only one who stuck out, but only partially even then. "I persist in believing,'' he said, " that M. Lacoste succumbed to poisoning ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... weakness was just that visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in spite of his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was his memory of passing events. In the petulance of his optimism he ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... watching the scene below, was aroused from his gloomy absorption by the click of the box door and the rustle of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... her being were set now in a new channel, and flowed as impetuously there as they had been wont to flow in the old ones. Her husband, his needs, his movements, were now the centre around which her fine and ceaseless activity revolved. There was not a trace of sentimental expression to this absorption. A careless observer might have said that her manner was deficient in tenderness; that she was singularly chary of caresses and words of love. But one who saw deeper would observe that not the smallest motion of the doctor's escaped ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... ones!" he had sighed, and she had bidden him be a good boy and do his best for the day, leaving the future in God's hand. "God will give you your work!" she had told him; and how she and his father had rejoiced together when his absorption in a box of tools, and his ingenuity therewith, had pointed out a congenial career. She had prayed and trusted for guidance in bringing up this dear son, and that being so, she must now believe that the offered post was the right thing, and that the distant land was just the very spot of all others ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... aristocratic theory of existence. Leisure for the grand duties which devolve on the lords of mankind. It doesn't seem to strike Xenophon that this rigid system of self-absorption in the higher selfhood of the social system might be destructive of individual life. Of course he would say, "No, it ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... sort of delicious death, a swooning ecstasy, an absorption of her individuality in his. Just as the spring gradually displaced the winter by a new branch of blossom, and in that corner of the garden by the winsome mauve of a lilac bush, without her knowing it his ideas caught root in her. New thoughts and perceptions were in growth within her, and every ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... surface, however, do not only occur when the light has no particular colour, but also when a coloured surface is struck by light of the same or opposite colour. In the first instance complete reflexion takes place; in the second, complete absorption. And both these effects are registered by the eye in precisely the same manner as those mentioned before. For example, a red surface in red light looks simply white; a green surface in red ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... that men almost know, the dream that has just escaped every one, the whisper in sleep that would have explained if one could remember when one woke, the word that has been thrillingly flashed to one in moments of absorption and has fled before one might catch the sound, the far hope of science, the glimpse that comes to dying eyes and is voiced in fragments by dying lips. Here without penetrating the great reserve or tracing any principle to its beginning, was the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... movements of "creation" and "absorption," which are called in Hindu symbolism the outbreathing ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... adults who realize the intense and secret absorption of thought in the minds of many boys and some girls concerning the problem of the physical conformation of the other sex, and the time, patience, and intellectual energy which they are willing to expend on the solution ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a boy, she was brave as well as cunning; and, owing to the wind and his absorption, stole on him unheard, and pinned him with her strong ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... bird, with a tongue specially adapted for being formed into a tube for the absorption of honey from flowers. The name is ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... at their ends in minute spongioles, or mouths for the absorption of fluids containing nutriment. In these fluids there exist greater or less quantities of carbonic acid, and a considerable amount of this gas enters into the circulation of the plants and is carried to those parts where it is ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... speaks of him in these last years as heartbroken by public events, as suffering with the pains of creation. "He was crucified to his thought. Like St. Thomas he was never away from his thought. A fellow friar had to care for Thomas, to feed him 'sicut nutrix' because of his absorption in his thought." Thus Father Vincent saw Frances cherishing Gilbert ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... across in Marius the account of Marcus Aurelius carrying away the dead child Annius Verus—"pressed closely to his bosom, as if yearning just then for one thing only, to be united, to be absolutely one with it, in its obscure distress"—I remembered the absorption of the writer of those lines, and of his sisters, in the suffering of that poor little creature, long years before. I feel tolerably certain that in writing the words Walter Pater had that past ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... advantage over those of his own class. At dinner he found himself behaving circumspectly. He knew already that the cultivated taste objects to the use of a table-knife save for purposes of cutting; on the whole he saw grounds for the objection. He knew, moreover, that manducation and the absorption of fluids must be performed without audible gusto; the knowledge cost him some self-criticism. But there were numerous minor points of convention on which he was not so clear; it had never occurred to him, for instance, that civilisation ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... at length that place where the destinies of France and England, so long interwoven, became again distinct, and where the English nationality, which five-and-twenty years before was in imminent danger of absorption as the fruit of victory, was decisively saved from this fate by a defeat for which all England then in her blindness mourned. The loss of Guyenne made an alien dynasty national, and by stopping the outflow of the Anglo-Saxon race upon ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the relevant from the merely reminiscent; the running away, the beating, the settling down, the complete absorption in the new life (vividly indicated by the seven children and their habits), stood out saliently. Add the attitude of old friends, and Lady Richard could not deny the value of the parallel. She acknowledged ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Lord's life, how each sin contributed to put men in opposition to our Lord. It is not the actual sin of gluttony that we shall find in operation here but certain inevitable effects of it, What is the effect of gluttony on the soul of man? Absorption in the pursuit of the pleasures that spring from material things; the indulgence of the appetite, and the natural result of such indulgence which is to render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The man whose motto is, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... of its waters, to the north of our line of route, the equality of surface of the interior would never permit it again to form a river; and that it only required an examination of the lower parts of the marshes to confirm the theory of the ultimate evaporation and absorption of its waters, instead of their contributing to the permanence of an inland sea, as ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... would be very weak, Dr. Taylor points out, but not impossible of detection with the present refinement of receiving instruments, provided no great absorption ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... low garden wall, Sylvia upon the other. Stolen meetings are apt to be very sweet and stirring to young blood; but the sordid consideration of the railway fare to Weybridge forbade frequent indulgence, and such was my absorption in social questions, such my growing hatred of Sylvia's anti-human form of religion, that even here I could not altogether forbear from argument. Indeed, I believe I often left poor Sylvia weary and bewildered by the apparently crushing force of my representations, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... and its boundless love for all humankind. The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through absorption in his work. The author was, in a way, taking genial aim at himself in this piece, a fact which his son Bjorn, who played the principal part, did not hesitate to emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... horses. But for his revenues the Alwa-sahib had to look many a long day's march afield. Leagues of desert lay between him and the nearest farm he owned, and since—more in the East than anywhere—a landlord's chief absorption is the watching of his rents, it followed that he spent the greater part of his existence in the saddle, riding from one widely ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Hungary were not to be left land-locked they must at all hazards prevent the absorption of their South Slav subjects by the Kingdom of Servia. Pan-Serbism at once menaced the integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and jeopardized its position on the Adriatic. Hence the cardinal features in the Balkan policy of Austria-Hungary were a ruthless repression of national ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... the pleasant rest house, called Passagrahan, for our luncheon. Soon the rain which had threatened us fell in torrents, but neither this fact nor any other obstacle dimmed our enthusiasm as we sped on our homeward way. To prove my own absorption in the day's programme I would state that I amused the party on our arrival at the train by saying to our Malay servant, "Buddha, will you take my ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... fortunate, and slowly and with much straining and little apparent joy swallowed it. Often the rivals would not meet in mid air, and the lapse provided the delusion of innocent play. There were hundreds of examples of absorption of the least fit by the fittest to survive, and the chronicling of the cannibal feast would be incomplete if a singular detail were unrelated. The participators seemed of like size. Complexion alone varied and foppish discrimination ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... end of his cigar, which made a little trail of sparks as it rolled along the sopping platform, and turned to look in through the window of the ticket office. Something in the agent's attitude of literary absorption aggravated him. He went round to the door ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... a devotion to a beautiful dream, I don't, on the whole, believe in art for art's sake, and I don't think I believe in prayer for prayer's sake. But I don't propound my ideas as final. I think it possible—I can't say more—that a life devoted to the absorption of beautiful impressions may affect the atmosphere of the world—we are bound up with each other behind the scenes in mysterious ways—and similarly I think that lives of contemplative prayer may affect the world. I should not attempt to discourage anyone from ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... allegorical method appears now as artificial and frigid, it must be remembered that it was one which recommended itself strongly to the age. The great creative era of the Greek mind had passed away with the absorption of the city-state in Alexander's empire. Then followed the age of criticism, during which the works of the great masters were interpreted, annotated, and compared. Next, as creative thought became rarer, and confidence in human reason began to be shaken, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... the wine card. I looked for a courteous refusal, accompanied by some such gallant speech as, that he would drink to the ladies only with his eyes; but nothing of the kind happened. He searched the list for a moment with the absorption of a connoisseur, then unblushingly ordered a bottle of Romanee Conti, which wine, he carelessly announced, he preferred to champagne, as being "less obvious." The price, however, would be pretty obvious on Mrs. Kidder's bill, I reflected; seventy ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the fire had burned hollow. Viola had dropped to her knees, and was for the moment a huddled blot of whiteness amongst the crimson tones. I advanced, filled with self-reproach for my selfish absorption. But she rose almost directly, wrapped in some of the muslin, and walked from the dais to the screen. I hesitated to follow her there, and went back to the fallen picture. I picked it up and gazed on it with rapture—how perfect it was! The best thing of a lifetime! ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... also was being damaged in the rear became dimly conveyed to me through the sensation of draught. Already the world to the left of me was mere picturesque perspective, while the growing importance of my nose was threatening the absorption of all my other features. These things did not trouble me. I merely noted them as phenomena and continued ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... from it in the other; and which aspires to nothing less than an absolute unity of knowledge with its object, and refuses to be satisfied short of a fusion and solution and saturation of both impression and action with reason, and {139} an absorption of all three departments of the mind into one. Time would fail us to-day (even had I the learning, which I have not) to speak of gnostic systems in detail. The aim of all of them is to shadow forth a sort of process by which spirit, emerging from its beginnings and exhausting the whole ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... feigning an intense absorption. Constance's hand slipped from his shoulder. She wanted to command him formally to resume his lessons. But she could not. She feared an argument; she mistrusted herself. And, moreover, it was so ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the merchant robbed and held to ransom. The freedom of the aristocracy spelled misery for every other class. These self-constituted tyrants passed their lives in devastating faction fights. Worst of all, their divisions and their absorption in petty schemes of personal aggrandisement left Europe at the mercy of uncivilised invaders. In the ninth and tenth centuries, medieval society experienced the same ordeal to which the Roman Empire had been subjected in the fifth. From the North and from the East a new generation ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... into a kinetic energy which in practical effect resulted only in the slight acceleration of the vacuum current, and thus never reached the outer wall. The Erentz engineers claimed for their system a pressure absorption of 97.4%, leaving, in Grantline's case, only 2.6% of room pressure to be held by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... week in which the two children played together, his mother, whose intense desire it was to understand him, observed in him a certain absorption of mood when he was not talking or amusing himself actively. He began to fall into a habit of standing at the windows, often with his chin in his hand, looking out as if he were so full of thought that he saw nothing. It was not an old habit, it was ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to overcome obsessions is likely to be ignored by two classes: the self-centered individuals who see no reason for learning what they do not want to learn, and the individuals who have no time for, or interest in, self-training because of absorption in subjects of wider relation, as art, or science, or reform. The philosophy of Haeckel ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... soft inarticulate noise, like that of some mother-animal caressing her young. He took no notice of Margaret's presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss him; and he submitted to it, giving her a little push away when she had done, as if her affection disturbed him from his absorption in the dead. He started when he heard Frederick's cries, and shook his head:—'Poor boy! poor boy!' he said, and took no more notice. Margaret's heart ached within her. She could not think of her own loss in thinking of her father's case. The night was wearing ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... deeper movements of life, a realizing power, a broader sense of humor, as well as humor itself, a concentrated and universal human interest; all of which is not so much the result of finer art as of a greater absorption of life, which comes not from more knowledge, but from more wisdom. The Choir Invisible is like an inward realization of the 'Domain of Arnheim!' More than in his other books there rests upon this ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... the hills. We are looking for nothing but little things, and therefore we see nowhere any threshold or field worthy of God. How can the sense that the living God is near to our life, that He is interested in it and willing to help it, survive in us, if our life be full of petty things? Absorption in trifles, attention only to the meaner aspects of life, is killing more faith than is killed by aggressive unbelief. For if all a man sees of life be his own interests, if all he sees of home be its comforts, if all he sees of religion be the outlines of his own ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... determined to be business-like, not to give him information unless he asked for it; and I sat there, studying him. He was direct and this pleased me, for it bespoke a quick decision. But after a time I grew tired of looking upon his absorption, for his mood was unvarying, and he held one position almost without change, so I began to walk about, looking at the pictures of factories and of mines, hung on the walls. The day was hot and the windows were up, and I looked down on the ant-working industry in ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... ordinarily have paused to bend her head and listen to an unaccustomed sound, but in her as well as in him the close-centred magic was working absorption. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Truth hit him and began to sink in with the inexorable absorption of water dropping down into a bucket of dry sand. It took some time for the process to climax. Once it reached Home Base it took another period of time for the information to be inspected, sorted out, identified, analyzed, and in a very limited ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... absorbent than the other parts,—there will be less painting over required, but where the grain comes end upwards to the surface the glue will be rapidly absorbed. The painting over these parts must be repeated, the glue as a matter of course being kept warm—all the work ditto, until absorption ceases. This is a matter of some importance, as in many instances joints have become loose or broken apart, not from the perishing of the glue or damp, but from the want of this precaution on the part of the repairer during this preliminary proceeding. It must be borne in mind ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... residential qualification, the comparative dullness of politics, the attractiveness of other careers, &c, but Mr. Bradford declares that the one explanation which goes further than all these is the absorption of all the powers of the government by the legislature, and the consequent suppression of individuality. ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... when it had completed its round of experience-life. For instance, in the Si Haei, it is said that: "The vital essence is dispersed after death together with the body, bones and flesh; but the soul, or knowing principle of the self, is preserved and does not perish. There is no immediate absorption of the individuality into the Tao, for individuality persists, and manifests itself according to the Law." And Chuang-Tze said: "Death is but the commencement of a new life." It was also taught by ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... did with such absorption that when the group broke up, several hours later, Average Jones was committed, by plan and rote, to the new and hopeful ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I was vexed at the migration of Scamander, and the total loss or absorption of poor dear Simois, how happily Methley reminded me that Homer himself had warned us of some such changes! The Greeks in beginning their wall had neglected the hecatombs due to the gods, and so after the fall of Troy Apollo turned the paths of the rivers that flow from ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of vastness, richness, and sublimity, and the romantic absorption in the individual—these two qualities appear in their extremes throughout the work of Hugo: in that of ALFRED DE VIGNY it is the first that dominates; in that of ALFRED DE MUSSET, the second. Vigny wrote ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... stage of a longer journey. He had never shown any liking for the Neapolitan Bourbons, and the willingness which he expressed to Gioberti to crown Charles Albert King of Italy if his arms were successful, was probably duly appreciated by Ferdinand II. To save the Pope from absorption by the retrograde party, and to avoid the certainty of a foreign invasion, Gioberti, who became Prime Minister of Piedmont in November 1848, was anxious to occupy the Roman states with Sardinian troops immediately after the Pope's flight, when his subjects ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... mere quaint humour, thought Rivers; but when Grey added, "I should have said, sir, too interested company," he began to wonder at the self-absorption of what was evidently a provincial gentleman. At last, with "Your very good health!" he took freely of the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... regret that his mind was narrow and his understanding shallow, that in matters of religion he was bigoted; while at the same time he perceived that his extreme zeal in the services of the temple, his absorption in ceremonial observances of all kinds, were due in no slight degree to ambition, and that he was endeavoring to obtain reputation for distinguished piety with a view to succeeding some day to the office of high priest. He ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... what medium or by what means, but it got noised abroad that Septimius was engaged in some mysterious work; and, indeed, his seclusion, his absorption, his indifference to all that was going on in that weary time of war, looked strange enough to indicate that it must be some most important business that engrossed him. On the few occasions when he came out from his immediate haunts into the village, he had ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... because the manhood was perfect and sinless, therefore the sympathy of Christ was deeper than any human sympathy, howsoever tender it may be; for what unfits us to feel compassion is our absorption with ourselves. That makes our hearts hard and insensitive, and is the true, 'witches' mark'—to recur to the old fable—the spot where no external pressure can produce sensation. The ossified heart of the selfish man is closed against divine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... matter to direct and simple natures, such as Kate Kildare's, but she forced herself to it now. Had she in any way failed her children, as Jemima seemed to imply? Was it possible that in her absorption in a fixed idea she had neglected them, taken their welfare too much for granted? Was there anything she might have done for them that she had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... is impossible to believe that the resemblance is only apparent and deceptive. In an individual man or mammal, if the periosteum of a bone is destroyed or removed the bone dies, and is then either absorbed, or separated from the living bone adjoining, by absorption of the connecting part. In the stag both skin and periosteum are removed from the antler: probably they would die and shrivel of their own accord by hereditary development, but as a matter of fact the stag voluntarily removes them by rubbing the antler against tree trunks, etc. ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... by endosmose, and account for the rapid enlargement of the sporidia. By a series of experiments he became satisfied that this was the case to a considerable extent, but he adds:—"I cannot help supposing that a greater absorption of greasy matter in the cell which is the first product of germination raises an objection to an aqueous endosmose. One can also see in this experience a proof of the existence of two special membranes, and so suppose ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... an analysis of the different components of the body can the varied and complicated phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted for support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for absorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own distinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical terms, ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... Will achieve a high position in the school, but must take care that too close absorption in study does not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... a solar spectrum; if the source of light is a [Page 49] star, candle, glowing metal, or gas, it is the spectrum of a star, candle, glowing metal, or gas. An instrument to see these spectra is called a spectroscope. Considering the infinite variety of light, and its easy modification and absorption, we should expect an immense number of spectra. A mere prism disperses the light so imperfectly that different orders of vibrations, perceived as colors, are mingled. No eye can tell where one commences or ends. Such a spectrum is said to be impure. What we want ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... our grasp," said he, in answer to some close inquiries of Markland. "There has been a most vigorous prosecution of the works, and a more rapid absorption of capital, in consequence, than was anticipated; but, as you have clearly seen, this is far better than the snail-like progress at which affairs were moving when Mr. Lyon reached the ground. Results which will now crown our efforts ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... be and remain free. It is communism, it is socialism, it is the revolutionary tendency, whose principal agents have been Robespierre, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and M. Guizot, which have thrown into our midst these fatal ideas of the centralization and absorption of all activity in the State. The press is very free, and the pen of the journalist is an object of merchandise; religion, too, is very free, and every wearer of a gown, be it short or long, who knows how to ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and constancy of her devotion to her husband,—the absorption of the woman in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back love for love, then my own adoration for ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... her palm, her eyes on the floor. She made a grand picture of thought, something more active than meditation. Her dress trailed in long, sweeping lines, and against its rich dark purple folds her strong, white hands lay in vivid contrast. The most wonderful charm of her personality was her complete absorption in thought, or the speech of her visitor. She was interested in this keen-eyed, strong-limbed young fellow as a possible convert and reformer. She wanted to state herself clearly and fully to him. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... antiseptics: Hyposulphite of Soda, eight ounces; Potassi Iodide, one ounce. Mix well and make into eight powders and give one powder twice daily in drinking water, or place in gelatin capsule and administer with capsule gun. This prescription will prevent the absorption of impurities from the abscess ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... each of these organs, the performance of each of these various duties, involve in their operation a continual absorption of the matters necessary for their support, from the blood and a constant formation of waste products, which are returned to the blood, and conveyed by it to the lungs and the kidneys, which are organs that have allotted to them the office of extracting, separating, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... single drop of water can be found. It must necessarily depend on the dew for its moisture; and this probably is absorbed by the skin, for it is known, that these reptiles possess great powers of cutaneous absorption. At Maldonado, I found one in a situation nearly as dry as at Bahia Blanca, and thinking to give it a great treat, carried it to a pool of water; not only was the little animal unable to swim, but I think without help it would soon have been ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to have a most decided raison d'etre; they represent comfort, convenience, and in the case of the velvet coat, satisfy a sensitiveness to texture, incomprehensible to other natures. As for the long hair of some artists, it can be a pose, but it has in many cases been absorption in work, or poverty—the actual lack of money for the conventional haircut. In cities we consider long hair on a man as effeminate, an indication of physical weakness, but the Russian peasant, most sturdy of individuals, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... entered the room Brown had dropped into a seat by the window, his eyes two pin points. His abstraction was so deep, his absorption in his dreams so complete that when Smith spoke, he leaped to his feet and put himself in an attitude ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... might even be accounted a god. The achievement of this status, however, did not complete his cycle, for the ultimate goal still remained. This was the same as in earlier centuries—release from living by union with or absorption into the supreme Spirit; and only when the individual soul had reached this stage was the cycle of birth and re-birth completed. The reverse of this process was illustrated by the fate of demons. If a man lapsed from ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... emptiness of the house, the dim light of the luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors banging—all these ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Wetheridge. "We have just arrived from a long absence abroad," she exclaimed, "and I'm glad and thankful to say that my husband's health is at last restored. For the first year or two he was in such a critical condition that I grew selfish in my absorption in his case, and I neglected you—I neglected everybody and everything. Forgive me, Mildred. I have not yet had time to ask your story from Mr. Wentworth, but can see from the way he looks at you that you've inflated him with exultation, and now I shall wait to hear all from ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... scope of the effects which would be incident to any general absorption, such as that contemplated by socialists, of productive enterprise by the state, will be yet more clearly seen if we turn to a kind of production on which I have dwelt already, as affording the simplest and most luminous example possible of the respective parts played in the modern world by ordinary ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... which belong to many provinces of human intelligence? The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at least: oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and knowledge. There is something quite delightful to witness in the absorption and devotion of a genuine specialist. There is a certain sublimity in that picture of the dying scholar in Browning's "A ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... its materials, by the survivors of the Jewish community themselves, who were too poor to repair it. The tablet that once adorned its entrance, bearing in gilt characters the name ESZLOYIH (Israel), has been appropriated by a mosque. The 300 or 400 survivors seem in danger of absorption into the Mahomedan or heathen population. The last Rabbi and possessor of the sacred tongue died some thirty or forty years ago, the worship has ceased, and their traditions ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of the object. Yet the spectator does not notice these stupendous discrepancies. The representation, in spite of its vast difference, at once carries the mind on to the actuality, and the spectator may even appear to himself, in moments of complete absorption, to be looking at the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... but complicated toy that under the manipulation of his grimy fingers rattled a number of frail-like staves and worked a number of wheels and drums, yet there was no indication of her ignorance in her sparkling eyes and smiling, breathless attitude. Perhaps she was interested in his own absorption; the revelation of his preoccupation with this model struck her as if he had made her a confidante of some boyish passion for one of her own sex, and she regarded him ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Ireland, for the moment, prostrate under the heel of Great Britain. The last remnants of self-government disappeared with the absorption of the two exchequers in 1817. Although Ireland still retained a separate administration, that administration was not under the control of any self-governing authority. Out of the Dragon's teeth of the Union rose the sinister army ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... air. This method is open to the objection of difficulty in storing the ice above the fruit. Moreover the uniformity of its cold air supply is questionable. Mechanical storage in which cold temperatures are secured by the compression or absorption of gases is altogether impracticable for individual growers, as it costs from $1.50 to $2.00 a barrel of capacity to construct such a storage. Rents of this kind of storage range from 10 to 25 cents a barrel per month, or 25 to 50 cents a barrel for the season of from ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... breathing experienced after scalds or burns on the cuticle, the cough that follows the absorption of cold or damp by the skin, the oppressed and laborious breathing experienced by children in all eruptive diseases, while the rash is coming to the surface, and the hot, dry skin that always attends congestion of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... through the whole winter is so slight that there are very few days upon which it is seen at all. The snow when it falls rarely lies more than a day or two, for the reasons that the dry air produces rapid evaporation and the dry soil quick absorption, so that it disappears without evidence of melting, and there is not the danger to the invalid of wet ground ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... train at Friendship. He balanced in the aisle alone, while the few occupants of the car sat without speaking—men dozing, children padding on the panes, a woman twisting her thin hair tight and high. Doctor June looked at those nearest to be sure of their tired self-absorption, but as for me, who sat very near, I think he had long ago decided that I kept my own thoughts and no others, since sometimes I had forgotten to give him back a greeting. So it was in a fancied security which I was loath to be violating, that he opened his ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... through the Mediterranean while Australasian troops were perpetually passing westwards through the Mediterranean. Military forces belonging to the one belligerent Empire were, in fact, crossing each other at sea. This involved an avoidable absorption of ship-tonnage, it threw an avoidable strain upon the naval forces of the Entente, and it imposed an avoidable period of inaction upon the troops concerned. Look upon the Anzacs simply as counters and upon the Great War as ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... man of science or poetry, who lives monastically in the embrace of a fine idea, who remains sober, patient, and chaste; else to some self-contented fool, feeding himself on folly, reeking of health, in a perpetual state of absorption with his own smile; or to the soft and happy race of loungers, the only folk really happy in Paris, which unfolds for them hour by hour its ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... when he had spent those exquisite hours with his love, now six weeks ago—a young half moon. Could it be only six weeks? A lifetime of anguish appeared to have rolled between. And where was she? Then, for the first time, the crust of his self-absorption seemed to crumble, and he thought with new stabs of pain how she, too, must have suffered. He began to picture her waiting by the gate—she would be brave and quiet. And then, as the day passed—what had she done? He could not imagine, but she must have suffered ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... for our guidance in its culture. The plants should be laid down in rows of five or six inches distant from each other, in a soil moderately damp, of an aluminous or clayey nature, and free to a great extent of the more soluble alkalies, potash and soda, as these, by absorption, may destroy the coloring matter of the plant, and so diminish its value as a dye-stuff. Finally, in preparing the roots for exportation, they should be cleansed from all earthy particles, exposed for drying in the shade, and without any further preparation ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... this interaction between the author as a human agency and his theme as an intellectual reagency, might best be studied. From him might be derived the largest number of cases, illustrating boldly this absorption of the universal into the concrete—of the pure intellect into the human nature of the author. But nowhere could illustrations be found more interesting—shy, delicate, evanescent—shy as lightning, delicate ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... its purity is assured, but the presence of carbonic acid from the carbonate is a disadvantage with many indicators; barium hydroxide solutions may be prepared which are entirely free from carbon dioxide, and such solutions immediately show by precipitation any contamination from absorption, but the hydroxide is not freely soluble in water; ammonia does not absorb carbon dioxide as readily as the caustic alkalies, but its solutions cannot be boiled nor can they be used with all indicators. ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... it was that superstition is so hard to eradicate from the human mind. In Birnier was a strain of humorous melancholy which appreciated the comedy of human marionettes made to dance to the legion of devils and bugaboos invented by themselves, and as a stimulant to the dominant scientific absorption was the knowledge that upon him and his fellows depended their only hope of release—which was the greater reason that Bakahenzie should slay him, he added whimsically, did he but ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... approach, or attempt to determine, the quantity of manure required, we have to take into account the loss by wash, either from the surface or by downward percolation, and the absorption of manure by the roots of the shade trees. We have also to take into consideration the manure returned by the shade trees in the shape of fallen leaves, and the ammonia derived from the rainfall, so that it is impossible to state with any approach to accuracy the amount of manure ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... in North Africa for many diseases. The poor slaves were again driven on by the whip. We reached the well just after sunset. Haj Ibrahim rode far in advance on his maharee to see that the well was all right, our water being exhausted. Happily the weather prevented any great absorption of its water. When the slaves got up, having suffered much to-day from thirst, although so cold, they rushed upon the water to drink, kneeling on the sands, and five or six putting their heads in a bowl ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... fastidious dog upon a hearth rug, I rearranged my chair and books and papers. The temptation of the Catalogue and shelves, of course, was accountable for much, yet not, I felt, for all. That was a manageable seduction. My work, moreover, was not of the creative kind that requires absolute absorption; it was the mere readable presentation of data I had accumulated. My notebooks were charged with facts ready to tabulate—facts, too, that interested me keenly. A mere effort of the will was necessary, and concentration of no difficult kind. Yet, somehow, it seemed beyond me: ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... lady was laughing at him. I like the "elegant copy" very much. It is certain that in this world there is a deal of rough work to be done, and I feel that, attractive and beautiful as so many things are, too much absorption of them has a weakening ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... sir, to speak for poor Eric," he said in a voice low and trembling with emotion, as, with downcast eyes, he modestly approached towards Dr Rowlands, not even observing the presence of the others in the complete absorption of his feelings. He stood in a sorrowful attitude, not venturing to look up, and his hand played nervously with the ribbon of ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... of the three important patents led to the absorption of Maine by the government of Massachusetts. The claim of Massachusetts to jurisdiction over the settlements in New Hampshire as readily applied to Maine; and, in addition, the patent granted in June, 1632, by the Council for New England, to George Way ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... stooping figure and his wan, deeply wrinkled cheeks, when he first showed himself on rising from his chair. The changeless influence of one monotonous pursuit and one monotonous habit of thought was next expressed in the dull, dreamy self-absorption of his manner and his look while his daughter was speaking to him. The moment after, when he had roused himself to welcome his guest, was the moment which made the self-revelation complete. Then there flickered in the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... it to his nose with great apparent relish and a perfect absorption of his attention in the proceeding, the client gradually broke into a ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... up our life as the moon sways the tides—this surely is the artist's wisdom. Idealism is like love, {apora porimos}, holding us as it were in touch with the intangible: it will have us conceive the Absolute without that helpless absorption in thought which changed Amiel's life from a fountain to a vapour: it would keep us near the surf and confluence of things. Its function is not to give any mysterious transcendental knowledge, but ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... branching off at the base of Mount Franklin, three only were wooded and rich in pasturage like that of the corral, which bordered on the west on the Falls River valley, and on the east on the Red Creek valley. These two streams, which lower down became rivers by the absorption of several tributaries, were formed by all the springs of the mountain and thus caused the fertility of its southern part. As to the Mercy, it was more directly fed from ample springs concealed under the cover of Jacamar Wood, and it was by springs of this nature, spreading ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... swear to it. But Timothy, in his Sunday suit, with a blue tie and an elaborate scarf-pin, looked the picture of innocence, and it was concluded that, although no one had suspected it, he was thinking of setting up housekeeping for himself. The cap'n's face had an earnest absorption. He was evidently occupied only ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown |
