"Distracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... streets were immense. The Jacobites came in troops, hoping to enjoy the pleasure of reading shame and rage on the face of him whom they most hated and dreaded. The hope was disappointed. The Prussian Minister, a discerning observer, free from the passions which distracted English society, accompanied the royal procession from St. James's Palace to Westminster Hall. He well knew how bitterly William had been mortified, and was astonished to see him present himself to the public gaze with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... yet speechless, and distracted by the choice amongst ten thousand varieties of argument and advice for the better nursing of the infant riot,—a drunken man advanced from the inn and laid himself across the street immediately before the feet of the horses which were at this moment harnessing to the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... eighteen hundred years afterwards, still retained their belief in the aforesaid circumstances, and still insisted that everybody else should believe them too on pain of eternal damnation; would not Mr. Everett consider these men as certainly distracted? "Mulata[fn5] nomine de ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... money matters very far from royal. Yet he was not without virtues. He was not unjust; he was a statesman more loyal to his pledges than most of his contemporaries or their successors. He gave something like order and rest to a distracted land, and raised her again to a position at least respectable among the nations, securing himself on a most unstable throne without resorting to the usual methods of the tyrant. Had he died when Morton died, the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... so filled with traitors. The country of Sweden at this time was distracted by the intrigues of the rival political parties of Hom and Gyllenborg, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... and a stubborn belief in one's own merits which is quite impervious to the lessons of experience. On sensitive and imaginative people the result of the professional struggle with life, the essence of which is often social pretentiousness, is different. It ends in a mournful and distracted kind of fatigue, a tired sort of padding along after life, a timid bewilderment at conditions which one cannot alter, and which yet ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quietly sure of herself for that. But little Fyne, as I spied him next morning (out of the carriage window) speeding along the platform, looked very much like a common, flustered mortal who has made a very near thing of catching his train: the starting wild eyes, the tense and excited face, the distracted gait, all the common symptoms were there, rendered more impressive by his native solemnity which flapped about him like a disordered garment. Had he—I asked myself with interest—resisted his wife to the very last minute and then bolted up the road from the last conclusive argument, as though it ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... possesses my soul and governs it! Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no longer anything in myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified spectator of all the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He does not wish to, and so I remain, trembling and distracted, in the armchair in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse myself, so as to think that I am still master of myself: I cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to the ground in such a manner that no force could ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... a while like a man distracted. He heaped himself with all manner of superfluous reproaches, for having (as he said) first brought the Rose into disgrace, and then driven her into the arms of the Spaniard; while St. Leger, who was a sensible man enough, tried in vain to persuade him that the fault was not his at all; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... driven distracted at the jackal's words; but, in order to save the lives of the other two, she did at last throw the little one out of the nest. The jackal ate it up, ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... over to her mother, drew her, dragged her from the sofa, led her to the door of the room. Mrs. Tarrant, on the way, reunited herself with Olive (the horror of the situation had at least that compensation for her), and, clinging and staggering together, the distracted women, pushed by Verena, passed into the vestibule, now, as Ransom saw, deserted by the policeman and the reporter, who had rushed round to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... humming, and this of itself distracted my mind from the lines before me; moreover, my eye was fascinated by the gleam of her flying needle, and I began to debate within myself what she was making. It (whatever it might be) was ruffled, and edged with lace, and caught here and there with little bows of blue ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Mr. Clare. He witnessed the last gasp, the last little convulsive motion of the frame. He continued to look; he sometimes imagined that he saw life renewed. At length he could deceive himself no longer, and exclaimed with a distracted accent, "And is this all?" He would have thrown himself upon the body of his friend; the attendants withheld, and would have forced him into another apartment. But he struggled from them, and hung fondly over the bed. "Is this ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... but we feel really sorry for him when he disappears in the Kelpie's Flow. And when Scott has to do with his own peasants, with the thoroughbred Presbyterian Scotchman, he can bring intense tragic interest from his homely materials. Douce Davie Deans, distracted between his religious principles and his desire of saving his daughter's life, and seeking relief even in the midst of his agonies by that admirable burst of spiritual pride: 'Though I will neither exalt myself nor pull down others, I wish that every man and woman in this ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... it, clung to it, and it failed me. Never once did it stop my ears to the sounds of a curse; when I was beaten it didn't make the blows a whit lighter; it never healed my bruised flesh, my bruised spirit! Yes, that drove me distracted for a while; but I'm sane now—now it is you that are mad, mad to believe! You foolish people, not to know [beating her breast and forehead]—that Hell or Heaven is here and here! [Pointing to the book.] Take it! [GERTRUDE turns away and ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... Salazar and his wife. They insist that it is a pleasure, and will not allow mamma to pay anything for the lessons. I also go every Tuesday to tell stories at the Children's Hospital. It is the dearest hour of the week. When I am distracted about bills and expenses and mamma's health and Mrs. Chadwick's mismanagements and Yung Lee's mistakes (for he is beautiful as an angel and stupid as a toad), I put on my hat and go out to the children, poor little things! They always have a welcome ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the colony from those evils which threaten it by the turbulent and dishonest conduct of vagrants who are allowed to infest the country in every part; nor do we see any prospect of peace or happiness for our children in a country thus distracted by internal commotions. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... The distracted wife begged and implored in vain; her husband persisted in staying in bed, and at last, in despair, she left him and went back to ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Thus, although they kept considerable Inter-Allied forces in Germany, they failed to impose their decrees there, notwithstanding the circumstance that Germany was disorganized, nearly disarmed, and distracted by internal feuds. The Conference gave way when Germany refused to let the Polish troops disembark at Dantzig, although it had proclaimed its resolve to insist on their using that port. It allowed ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... voluntary sleuth. The station was well thronged, a circumstance which enabled him to keep inconspicuously close to his victim. Furthermore, Dupont was obviously looking for somebody, and so distracted. Presently a shabby, furtive little rat of a man nudged his elbow, and Dupont followed him to a corner, where they confabulated in undertones for many minutes; while Lanyard loitered just outside their normal range of vision. An unnecessary precaution: they were unafraid of observation, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the United States that was so divided and distracted about the Philippine question was unanimous as to the pre-eminent merits as a naval commander of George Dewey, though he was the embodiment of all the anti-Americans railed at. This is the official paper ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... where high-rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar officers; and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville. Babel-tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles endless in front of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the throng in the town hall had shown waning interest in this discussion. There seemed to be matters outside that distracted the attention of those ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... her companions, who were sleeping peacefully in the cabin, while she was torn and distracted by these agonizing fears? She dared not do so, lest one of them should speak and betray them all. Cyd was impetuous, and a word from him might render futile the labors and the perils ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... told that it was his, and took possession of it violently. Why wasn't there more track? Wouldn't I get more track? I explained that it would go by steam, and he began unscrewing the cap on the little boiler until he was distracted by the man-of-war, and with natural acquisitiveness started to take possession of that. Biddy was bewildered by the doll, which Maude had taken up and was holding in her lap. She had had talking dolls before, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... now——" He broke off in a half sob. Cantankerous as the old man had shown himself to be, and grasping withal, the boys could not help but feel sorry for the stricken old fellow. He looked pitifully bowed and old and wretched in the midst of his distracted farm hands, who were running about and shouting and not doing ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... speculative point of history. But care must be taken not to carry this enquiry farther, than merely for instruction or amusement. The idea, that the consciences of posterity were concerned in the rectitude of their ancestors' decisions, gave birth to those dangerous political heresies, which so long distracted the state, but at length are all happily extinguished. I therefore rather chuse to consider this great political measure, upon the solid footing of authority, than to reason in it's favour from it's justice, moderation, and expedience: ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... of the party had witnessed any movement of their vanished companion. Absorbed by the scene, they were struggling onward beneath the overhanging cliff, when the arrival of the distracted lover, his mad gesticulations and horror-stricken looks, recalled them to hear his ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... time degenerated into a mere department of the State. In spite of the worldly passions that invaded it and the dissensions that distracted it, the Church remained mindful of its duty as not merely a guardian of the deposit of faith but as a school of Christian morality. This was the principle of the penitential discipline of the ante-Nicene period. It was saved from becoming a mere form, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... partiality, extorted by the threats of Carolina and Georgia in 1788, which gives them a disproportionate representation because of their property in men, and the unity of interest which makes them always act in behalf of Slavery as one man, have made them thus omnipotent. The North, distracted by a thousand interests, has always been at the mercy of whatever barbarian chief in the capital could throw his slave whip into the trembling scale of party. The government having been always, since ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... in the hands of a people, or their representatives and delegates, but they are solid conclusions, drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs. It may, perhaps, be asked, by way of objection to this, why did not standing armies spring up out of the contentions which so often distracted the ancient republics of Greece? Different answers, equally satisfactory, may be given to this question. The industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain, and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with ...
— The Federalist Papers
... on. In one place on the frieze there is an overlapping—here we have half a fisherman with half a pile of nets at his foot, crowded damply against half a ship on half a crimson ocean. The frieze is not in the plot, but frankly it fascinates me. I could continue indefinitely, but I am distracted by one of the two objects in the room—a blue porcelain bath-tub. It has character, this bath-tub. It is not one of the new racing bodies, but is small with a high tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; discouraged, however, by the shortness of its legs, it has submitted ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... said Ellen, who could not bear for him to blame himself, 'I'm sure it was no wonder—he's so distracted with the pain, and Harold getting idling, and forgetting to bring him the ointment. Why, even that vagabond boy was so shocked, that he went all the way to Elbury that very night for it. I told Alfred you'd tell him that anybody would be put out, and nobody ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand that ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... sincerely and purely for the love of God, and a small score will serve for the number of our righteous deeds. Let the holiest and best things we do be considered. We are never better affected to God than when we pray; yet, when we pray, how are our affections many times distracted! How little reverence do we show to that God unto whom we speak! How little remorse of our own miseries! How little taste of the sweet influence of His tender mercy do we feel! The little fruit we have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... has known a child so distracted with the number and variety of his playthings, that he tired his maid every day to look them over: and was so accustomed to abundance, that he never thought he had enough, but was always asking, "What more? What new thing shall I have?"—"A good ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... leaped into the surf and climbed the crags with his soldiers. As they reached the top they formed in compact order, and attacked and carried with the bayonet the nearest French battery, a few rods distant. The division of Lawrence soon came up; and as the attention of the enemy was now distracted, they made their landing with little opposition at the farther end of the beach whither they were followed by Amherst himself. The French, attacked on right and left, and fearing, with good reason, that they would be cut off from the town, abandoned all ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... if I told you what I was thinking about. Never mind, it has gone wherever thoughts go. I will tell you what I am thinking about now, which is—that it is about time we got out of this place. My uncle and Bessie must be half distracted." ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Copplestone, a young man newly come to the Indian Civil Service, was sent to their Punjaub station. He made Mrs. Wilder realize her own charm, he made her terribly conscious that she was older than him, he made her anxious and distracted and madly, idiotically in love with him. She forgot that there were other things in life, she put aside ambition for a stronger temptation, and she did not care what ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... in love with her, and from what information I can obtain his love, or pretended love, was not reciprocated by my child; and now comes the mystery. One day my daughter went out to do a little shopping; she has not been seen by any of her friends since, and I am almost distracted with apprehension. She is very beautiful, as I've said, and I felt that she was perfectly safe while living with the family where she was employed. I was told by a person with whom I am acquainted that I should put the affair in the hands ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... with me," I said. "I am already distracted by the puzzle you offer to me. You are so young and beautiful, so fair in your ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Malcolm. With him was also slain Edward his son; who after him should have been king, if he had lived. When the good Queen Margaret heard this—her most beloved lord and son thus betrayed she was in her mind almost distracted to death. She with her priests went to church, and performed her rites, and prayed before God, that she might give up the ghost. And the Scots then chose (116) Dufenal to king, Malcolm's brother, and drove out all the English that formerly were with ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... would have moved any one to tears, to have seen how Friday kissed him, embraced him, hugged him, cried, laughed, hallooed, jumped about, danced, sung, then cried again, wrung his hands, beat his own face and head, and then sung and jumped about again like a distracted creature. It was a good while before I could make him speak to me, or tell me what was the matter; but when he came a little to himself, he told me ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... yielding sand crumbling beneath Jinny's feet rendered her faltering progress even more slow. She paused hesitating, ran distractedly backwards a few paces; then, as John imperatively waved his arms, plunged forward again and toiled up the slope. All at once her distracted eyes met those of the girl from whom she had fled a little while before, the cockling girl, who was seated very composedly on an out-jutting point of the sandhill, whence she must have had a good ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... with the "Disk-worship" had for about forty years distracted the attention of the Egyptians from their Asiatic possessions; and this circumstance had favoured the development of a highly important power in Western Asia. The Hittites, whose motto was "reculer pour mieux sauter," ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... come to pass in our days in Italy and Spain, until better times return to those now distracted countries, and the extremities of evil bring them back to something of their ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... was crossing Tower Wharf, by a press-gang; and on my resistance, was disarmed, taken prisoner, and carried on board; where, after being treated like a malefactor, I was thrust down into the hold among a parcel of miserable wretches, the sight of whom well nigh distracted me. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the circling tern mark the movements of the distracted shoals, the blacks in canoes fit in to the scheme of destruction, taking a general toll. So preoccupied are the bonito, that they fall a comparatively easy prey to the skilled user of the harpoon. Sharks continue the chain of destruction by dashing forays on the bonito, and occasionally ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... have adopted an honest mode of livelihood is continually on the increase. Some allowance must be made for their having been deprived of their former calling by the cessation of the continual wars which distracted India under native rule, and the extension of roads and railways which has rendered their mode of transport by pack-bullocks almost entirely obsolete. At one time practically all the grain exported from Chhattisgarh ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... was almost up. The hour for his interview with the spectre cook of Bangletop was hardly forty-eight hours distant, and he was wellnigh distracted. No solution of the problem seemed possible since the earl had so peremptorily declined to fall in with his plan. He was glad the earl had done so, for otherwise he would have been denied the tremendous ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Distracted and little in the mood for gaiety as she felt that night, yet when she entered the large ballroom of the Amusement Club she could not help laughing at the quaint and original decorations for the occasion. For the entertainment was one of the great features of the Season, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... parts of Europe were too much engrossed with their own concerns, to interest themselves deeply in the quarrels that distracted the German empire. The king of Spain, naturally of a melancholy complexion and delicate constitution, was so deeply affected with the loss of his queen, who died in the course of the preceding year, that he renounced all company, neglected all business, and immured himself in a chamber ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the young man's life; his blood had already begun to run cold at the sight of his adversary foaming with rage and standing between him and the door, when the noise of the fall distracted ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... think me as mad as I think him for suggesting it; but if, on the contrary, I prove that as we traded then 850,000 l. a year to our loss, we can trade now with them 600,000 l. to our gain, then I will venture to draw this consequence, that we are distracted, speaking of our trading wits, if we do not ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... miles and miles away close to the heart of her lover. If she could but have known this, it would have comforted her. Beverley had intended to leave it with Jean, but in his haste and excitement he forgot; writing the note distracted his attention; and so he bore Alice's picture on his breast and in his heart while pursuing his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... medicine man of some primitive peoples the in-sup-ak' is a beneficial force to the sick. The methods are all quiet and gentle; there is none of the hubbub or noise found in the Indian lodge — the body is not exhausted, the mind distracted, or the nerves racked. In a positive way the sufferer's mind receives comfort and relief when the anito is "removed," and in most cases probably temporary, often permanent, physical relief results from ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... are my only hope. Consent to be mine, or the world has no hold on me!' His voice was hurried and incoherent. Raising my eyes to his, I beheld them wild and bloodshot. Terrified at his look, and overcome by my own distracted thoughts, my head sunk on the marble. With increased violence he exclaimed, 'Have I deceived myself here too? Therese, did you not prefer me? Did you not love me? Speak now, I conjure you, by your own happiness and mine! Do ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... The distracted man stared into the darkness and his blue eyes were troubled. The vision of the disordered and disorganised band of miners marching silently in the wake of his mother's funeral into whose lives he by some supreme effort was to bring order was disturbed and shattered by the more definite and ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... lost her diamond ring she hunted more than a hundred places for it! She was most distracted! She thought somebody had stolen it from her! She hunted it in all the Newspapers! She hunted it in all the stores! She hunted it all up and down the Village streets! She hunted it in the Depot carriage! She hunted it in the Hired Girl's trunk! Miles and miles and ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a horse. And if thou utterest the same words again, thou shalt be doomed to an ignominious death." He then commanded his guards to see the sentence put in force, but to preserve his life. The unfortunate emperor was now almost distracted; and urged by his despair, wished vehemently for death. "Why was I born?" he exclaimed. "My friends shun me, and my wife and children will not acknowledge me. But there is my confessor, still. To him will I go; perhaps he will recollect me, because he has often received my confessions." He went ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the inner side of a white rose leaf. Her hair was a very light brown, almost golden, and fluffy, soft, and fine as a skein of Arras silk. She was of medium height, with a figure that Venus might have envied. Her feet and hands were small, and apparently made for the sole purpose of driving mankind distracted. In fact, that seemed to be the paramount object in her creation, for she had the world of men at her feet. Her greatest beauty was her glowing dark brown eyes, which shone with an ever-changing luster from beneath the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... this battle was that Hettel was wounded by Hagen, who, in his turn, was injured by Wat, and that the distracted Hilde suddenly flung herself between the contending parties, and by her tears and prayers soon brought about a reconciliation. Hagen, who had tested the courage of his new son-in-law and had not found it wanting, now permitted his daughter to accompany her husband ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Major Belwether, already distracted by his non-participation, through his own fault, in Plank's consolidation of Amalgamated with Inter-County, was pitiable to the verge of the unpleasant. Like panic-stricken rabbits, his thoughts ran in circles, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Rosemary herded the three distracted creatures to the Ingleside veranda. Gilbert and Anne were both away, having also gone to the House of Dreams, but Susan appeared in the doorway, gaunt and practical ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... same day Leone was born, and the young father, distracted by his loss, took the child home to England. The old housekeeper at the Rashleigh farm took the girl, and Robert Noel consented that she should be brought up as a child of ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... he was between waking and sleeping when a queer delusion distracted him. Humming in his ears was the refrain of a song which was both familiar and hauntingly pleasant. It seemed to charm away his poignant anxieties, to lull him with a feeling of safety. He wondered if his troublesome adventures ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... if there were any nervous or anaemic children in his school. "Not one," he replied enthusiastically; "our system eliminates them." "But how about the teachers?" I ventured to remark, having in mind the image of a distracted young woman whom I had seen attempting to reduce forty little ruffians to some semblance of law and order through moral suasion. If I judged conditions correctly, that woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My guide became confidential when ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... and endure it as best she could. And as soon ... oh, as soon as ever she COULD, Aunt Frances would come and take her away from them. "Don't cry TOO much, darling ... it breaks my heart to think of you there! TRY to be cheerful, dearest! TRY to bear it for the sake of your distracted, loving Aunt Frances." ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... Leopold II., found the monarchy involved as Russia's ally in an attack upon Turkey; threatened by the Northern League of Prussia, England, and Holland; exhausted in finance; weakened by the revolt of the Netherlands; and distracted in every province by the conflict of the ancient and the modern system of government, and the assertion of new social rights that seemed to have been created only in order to be extinguished. The recovery of Belgium and the conclusion ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... tale, And load with sighs the passing gale, And love-distracted rave: But hark, fair maid! whate'er they say, You're but a breathing mass of clay, Fast ripening ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... hungry as Clark was, he instantly comprehended the danger to which his boys were exposed, and started off in pursuit of them. The shrieks of the distracted woman soon called the neighbours together, who instantly joined in the search. It was not until this afternoon that any trace could be discovered of the lost children, when Brian, the hunter, found the youngest boy, Johnnie, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... conduct of the latter, both before and after the mutiny; as well as with the assurance of Christian himself, the very night he quitted Taheite, that the idea of attempting to take the ship had never entered his distracted mind, until the moment he relieved the deck, and found ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... dread that the power that lays waste this house, not like the gods, the all-true, the evil-boding Erinnys summoned by the curses of the father, is bringing to a consummation the wrathful curses of distracted OEdipus.[156] 'Tis this quarrel, fatal to his sons, that arouses her. And the Chalybian stranger, emigrant from Scythia, is apportioning their shares, a fell divider of possessions, the stern-hearted steel,[157] allotting them land to occupy, just as much as it may be theirs to possess ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... ruts, feeling his way, like a true American, into the career that best suited him, that Celia might be a type of the awakened American woman, who does not know exactly what she wants. To be sure, she wants everything. She has recently come into an open place, and she is distracted by the many opportunities. She has no sooner taken up one than she sees another that seems better, or more important in the development of her sex, and she flies to that. But nothing, long, seems the best thing. Perhaps men ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... going away, alone? What must you think of me?' this young man exclaimed; and he began to tell her something about her sister and to ask her at the same time if he might not go with her—help her in some way. He made no inquiry about Mr. Wendover, and she afterwards judged that that distracted gentleman had sought him out and sent him to her assistance; also that he himself was at that moment watching them from behind some column. He would have been hateful if he had shown himself; yet (in this later meditation) there was a voice in her heart which commended his delicacy. He effaced ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... irremovable from his observatory? Who could expect otherwise than that, with the prospect before him of viewing the giant among planets, ten times nearer than any mortal eye had ever done, he should have begrudged every moment that distracted his attention? ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Press is not successful only in the case of the idle and the overfed; it finds its patrons also among those who are too tired to put their minds into anything really interesting from an intellectual or artistic point of view, but whose attention can be distracted and whose interest held by a more or less open appeal to the primitive instincts of sex. Tired people want to be amused and interested if possible; but they are not easily amused by anything that appeals to the mind, because ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... are scarce consistent, when I tell you how they are distracted. Every hour of my life my mind is strangely divided; this minute perhaps I am above the stars, with a thousand systems round about me, looking forward into a vast abyss, and losing my whole comprehension in the boundless space of creation, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... demented, deranged, insane, delirious, dementate, mad, lunatic, distracted, frantic, crazed, crack-brained; rickety, decrepit, shaky, tottering, dilapidated; desirous, eager, infatuated. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... crouching, half kneeling, on the ground, with his hands pressed to his loins. He was deadly pale, had evidently been in torment all night, and was crying, over and over again, in a low, agonized tone, "Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!" as he looked with distracted eyes at the bloody, half-naked body of his dead comrade and saw in it his own impending fate. The stench, the buzzing flies, the half-dried blood, the groans, and the cries of "O, mi madre!" "O Jesu!" from the half-naked ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... has been most unlucky, as it will encourage the Yankies, under the present inveterate and execrable Government, to persevere in a ruinous warfare—ruinous to the American States, and galling to this country, liable to be distracted by the efforts of an interested and mischievous faction, which, through lack of firmness in Government, often paralyses ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Cheever was so distracted between the scruples of his lawyer and Zada's lack of them that when Charity confessed how she had set detectives on him and had secured a dictagraphic record of his alliance with Zada he was overcome ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... forgiveness remained; the republic became formidable only because it was impossible for her to retrace her steps. But factions distracted her within; without, her terrible element, the sea itself, leaguing with her oppressors, threatened her very infancy with a premature grave. She felt herself succumb to the superior force of the enemy, and cast herself a suppliant before the most powerful thrones of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... yes. And as it is three months since you have been here, and though, distracted as you must be in your important occupations, you have forgotten to pay me my rent—as, I say, I have not tormented you a single instant, I thought you would ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... calamity, every domestick pain or gratification, every sally of caprice, blunder of absurdity, or stratagem of affectation, may supply matter to him whose only rule is to avoid uniformity. But it often happens, that the judgment is distracted with boundless multiplicity, the imagination ranges from one design to another, and the hours pass imperceptibly away, till the composition can be no longer delayed, and necessity enforces the use of those thoughts which then happen to be at hand. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... je suis sur que cela lui fera plaisir." M. de la Ferriere bowed, and thus it came to pass that I witnessed the performance after all, being seated on a stool behind some extremely beautiful women whose white shoulders repeatedly distracted my attention from the stage. In regard to Montbard there was some little trouble, as M. de la Ferriere did not like the appearance of his "revolutionary-looking beard," the sight of which, said he, might greatly alarm the Empress. Montbard, however, indignantly refused to ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... chicken, startled by his silent approach, sprang out of the hedge and fluttered in front of his wheel, clucking madly. Grey pealed his bell, but it had no effect on the distracted chicken, which seemed bent on destruction. He clutched his brake; it would not work. There came a stifled squawk, and a ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... filled, responsive to the emotion about her. "I'm just about distracted," she cried. "I love everybody and everything so, I can't stand it! I want to kiss you both and I can't make up my mind which to kiss first—and it's that way about everything! It's all so good I don't know what to begin on." She brought their faces together and achieved a simultaneous kiss with ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... received no answer. To a message from Mr. Burk he replied that the line had been changed by his orders. As for Abe Lee, they might as well have questioned one of the surveyor's grade stakes. Even Barbara, besought by the distracted citizens, could tell them nothing except that her father would return Saturday. There was nothing to do save to wait for Mr. Worth and to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... tranquillity. So keenly did I feel the joy of reconciliation that, fearing in any way to dispel it, I took hasty leave of him, and, without looking to one side of me or the other (in order that my attention might not be distracted), left the grounds and re-entered the rickety, battered drozhki. Yet the joltings of the vehicle and the variety of objects which flitted past my eyes soon dissipated that feeling, and I became filled with nothing but the idea ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... could, to withstand the Storm that threatned a Denial. And her Father came to her, and demanding her Answer, she told him, 'She could not be the Wife of Vernole, since she was Wife to Rinaldo, only son to Bellyaurd.' If her Father storm'd before, he grew like a Man distracted at her Confession; and Vernole hearing them loud, ran to the Chamber to learn the Cause; where just as he enter'd he found De Pais's Sword drawn, and ready to kill his Daughter, who lay all in Tears at his Feet. He with-held his Hand; and asking the Cause of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... could not completely efface from my memory, the frightful scenes enacted around that prairie hamlet, which bereft me of my loved one, leaving my heart and fireside desolate for ever. Prostrated by fatigue and exposure, distracted by the constant dread of outrage and death, I had well-nigh abandoned all hope of ever escaping from the Indians with my life, but, as the darkness of the night is just before the dawn, so my fears which ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... on the familiar shore, And hear the waves of the distracted sea Piteously calling and lamenting thee, And waiting restless at thy cottage door. The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor, The willows in the meadow, and the free Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me; Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more? Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sympathy; it was positive, active antipathy to all the ideas Lois held most dear. The very allusion, however incidentally made, to the little old grey church at Barford, where her father had preached so long,—the occasional reference to the troubles in which her own country had been distracted when she left,—and the adherence, in which she had been brought up, to the notion that the king could do no wrong, seemed to irritate Manasseh past endurance. He would get up from his reading, his constant employment ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the young woman had said, though it was a light load for the powerful Kentuckian; and he concluded at once that it must contain a considerable amount of gold. In the distracted condition of the State very few had any confidence in the banks, and some had turned their bills into coin for any emergency that might arise. Before he reached the road he saw another scout getting ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... they skirted the edges of a circular clearing and saw the high pines fringing the southern horizon; overhead the heavens were almost black, except where great streams of stars swept in irregular bands. It was a glorious sight, Krayne told Roeselein—too sublime to be distracted by mere mortal love-making, he mentally added. Nevertheless he was glad when they were again in the woods; he could barely distinguish the girl ahead of him, but her outline made his heart beat faster. Once, as they neared the town, he helped her down a declivity into ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... devotion, cast off the fruit born of action, and freed from the obligation of (repeated) birth, attain to that region where there is no unhappiness. When thy mind shall have crossed the maze of delusion, then shalt thou attain to an indifference as regards the hearable and the heard.[145] When thy mind, distracted (now) by what thou hast heard (about the means of acquiring the diverse objects of life), will be firmly and immovably fixed on contemplation, then wilt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... gift of speech. The secret of this strange mirth lay in the troubled state of his spirits, which, like the vexed ocean at midnight (if the simile be not too magnificent), tossed forth a mysterious brightness. The undefined apprehensions that had drawn him to the inn still distracted his mind; but, mixed with them, there was a sort of joy not easily to be described. By degrees, and by the assistance of the wine, the inspiration spread, each one contributing such a quantity, and such quality of wit and whim, as was proportioned ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... voices urging the human race to co-operate for the general advantage. The world, torn and distracted by the subsistence struggle, yearns toward a method of life that will ease the strain and relieve the heart-ache that are involved in the present-day conflict. It seems that this world-need can be met by a world economic organization ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... poet and divine, said of music, "That it did relieve his drooping spirits, compose his distracted thoughts, and raised his weary soul so far above earth, that it gave him an earnest of the joys of heaven before he possessed them." His worthy biographer, Izaak Walton, tells us—"His chiefest recreation was music, in which heavenly art ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... cab which Hapgood had despatched after Sabre from the coroner's court overtook its quest, the driver put himself abreast of the distracted figure furiously hobbling along the road and, his second pound note in view, began, in a fat and comfortable voice, a beguiling monologue of "Keb, sir? ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... country now almost entirely taken up by thriving dairy-farmers. Turning south again from New Plymouth by the coast-road, Chute had to fight but once in completing a march right round Mount Egmont, and thenceforward, except on its southern verge, long-distracted Taranaki saw no ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... judge as to this, I have but one question to ask you, and the public, which deigns with distracted finger to turn these pages. My ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... interesting to any one else to hear of the wonderful apple crop in the orchard at the Place, or of how the miller's pony strayed away on the common and was lost for two days, or of how Godfrey and Nancy missed their way when out blackberrying, and came home after dark to find the aunts half distracted and Rogers and Pete searching, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... eternal question of his Aurora—la belle Aurore, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring,—I had set out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the plane—he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first engages! That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and I are not sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears it across the garden into ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the loft when I heard above the quickening notes a sudden patter of heels across the nave; then a pitiful drumming of fists upon the barred door that led into the east corner of the cloisters. Knowing that escape that way was now impossible for the distracted man, and feeling pity for him, I crossed the nave and followed after him in the gloom. As I drew near I heard him flee again—down the south aisle to the other door of the cloisters. Here once ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... assisting an army of English soldiers to lay siege to Ypres. So the distrustful people dwelt amid perpetual quarreling, trade pitted against trade, town against town, fostering weakness of government and shameful submission in defeat. No town suffered as did Ypres during this distracted state of affairs in Flanders of the sixteenth century, which saw it reduced from a place of first importance to a dead town with the population of a village. And so it remained up to the outbreak of the world war ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... many, and it was necessary to display the utmost strength of mind. Indeed, few completed the course of which I have spoken without issuing therefrom reliable, seasoned fighters who could keep their heads in the most embarrassing of official positions, and at times when older and wiser men, distracted with the annoyances of life, had either abandoned everything or, grown slack and indifferent, had surrendered to the bribe-takers and the rascals. In short, no ex-pupil of Alexander Petrovitch ever wavered from the right road, but, familiar ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... living though fainting victim, nearly dead at the belief that she is about to die. With her head resting on her shoulder, she has glided before the smoking altar. Her body has lost all rigidity on her bending legs, her arms hang down at her side; her glance is distracted; she has lost all volition in the use of her limbs; and she is there, sinking motionless, her throat scarcely distending with a breath, turning white under her crown of roses, which the painter's brush has made to pale in sympathy. Between her body and the altar a young priest is leaning ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... While thus distracted, she heard her mother in the kitchen burst into a merry laugh. She ran hastily out to see what had ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... I would choose would be a place with all the plagues, and none of the attractions, of a capital; a provincial city on fire with factions political and religious, peopled by raving Orangemen and raving Repealers, and distracted by a contest between Protestantism as fanatical as that of Knot and Catholicism as fanatical as that of Bonner. We have our share of the miseries of life in this country. We are annually baked four months, boiled four more, and allowed the remaining four to become cool if ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... perch, and my heart beat anxiously with hope that I should be able to creep within shot. What a moment of interest! It is still vivid in the memory, with all its doubts and fears and wildly-beating hopes. The crane seemed preparing to fly. Death! I felt nearly distracted with apprehension. The interest and excitement became intense. I crept from tree to tree, and whenever I thought I was observed, stood motionless. My eye-balls became dry and hard with incessant gazing. I feared to ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... was alone in the night, distracted and desolate. This testing of the estimation in which he was held in the north country after the debacle in Adonia made his despondency as black as the darkness ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... ayez pitie de moi! I have no more dan de child no sense in affairs." Mackenzie interrupted him with a brutal laugh. The more humane banker's clerk was moved by the simplicity of this avowed ignorance of business. He went up to the distracted dancer, and said, "It is not to be expected that every body should understand business as we do, sir: if you are innocent, only give yourself time to recollect; and though it's unfortunate that you never keep any regular accounts, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... on, "kind, good, and tender," telling poor distracted, misguided Jaffier, in his humiliation, that she joyed more in him than did his mother, Lady Betty darted a sharp, searching glance through the boxes. Ah! yonder they were! The little girls the parson's daughters, with their uncle the squire, fault-finding, but ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... reputations for malignant dissection.' If only that he imparted, in a black time, when it appeared but too likely that the Alliance might falter and succumb from mere sick-headache, his own defying, ardent, and invincible spirit to a tired, puzzled, distracted and distrustful nation; if only that he dispelled the vapours, inspired a new hope and resolution, brought the British people to that temper which makes small men great, assured our Allies that their ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... constitution, the regularity of his habits, sustained through a life of great exertions and vicissitudes, produced a vigor and equanimity which are seldom the accompaniments of a laborious mind or of a distracted life. "I do not remember," he says, "to have felt lowness of spirits one quarter of an hour since I was born." "Ten thousand cares are no more weight to my mind than ten thousand hairs are to my head." "I have never lost a night's sleep in my life." "His face was remarkably ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... operations and strong pile-drivings, he finds half a furlong of his latest heavy piling clean gone. What in the world has become of it? Pooh, the swollen lake has burst it topsy-turvy; and it floats yonder, bottom uppermost, a half-furlong of distracted liquid-peat. Whereat his Majesty gave a loud laugh, says Bielfeld, [Baron de Bielfeld, Lettres Familieres (second edition, a Leide, 1767), i. 31.] and commenced anew. The piles now stand firm enough, like the rest of the Earth's crust, and carry strong ashlar houses and umbrageous ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The distracted politics of Poland, however, naturally drew the attention of Europe to that country when Charles, on February 28, vanished out of Avignon 'into fairyland,' like Frederick after Molwitz. Every Court in Europe was vainly searched for 'the boy that ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... "We have been distracted about him for more than two hours! he should surely have been here by half-past six! Mr. Trevlyn has sent messengers to the depot, to make inquiries, and the officekeeper thinks Mr. Linmere arrived in the six o'clock train, but is not quite positive. Mr. Weldon went, himself, ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... perfectly crowded. Among a number of very agreeable ladies, several were to be distinguished for the elegance of their figure, though there were no more than three remarkable for beauty. These terrestrial divinities would not only have embarrassed the Grand Signior for a preference, but even have distracted the choice of the Idalian shepherd himself. The dancing was already begun to an excellent band of music, led by Citizen JULIEN, a mulatto, esteemed the first player of country-dances in Paris. Of the dancers, some of the women really ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... daughter or cousin loved a man of low degree. Her kindred discovered the intrigue and punished the lover's presumption by binding the unhappy man, and laying him naked in one of the large ants' nests common in a Highland forest. He died in agony of course, and his mistress became distracted, roamed wildly in the glen till she died, and her phantom, finding no repose, haunted it after her death to such a degree that the people shunned the road by day as well as night. Mrs. Grant of Laggan tells the story, with the addition, that her husband, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... rebellion which unhappily prevails in the Colony over a large area, and ministers regard it as an imperative duty to do everything in their power to subdue that rebellious spirit, and restore peace and good-will to the distracted country."[284] ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... were within her bonnet. When they reached the school they found that many a child was absent who should have been there, and Mrs. Fenwick knew that the truant urchins were amusing themselves at the new building. And with those who were not truant the clang of the new bell distracted terribly that attention which was due to the collect. Mrs. Fenwick herself confessed afterwards that she hardly ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... constrained to each other's company. I was for going to my house in Spitalfields, he would go to his parish in Sussex; but the plague was broke out and spreading through Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire, and he was so mad distracted to think that it might even then be among his folk at home that I bore him company. He had comforted me in my distress. I could not have done less; and I remembered that I had a cousin at Great Wigsell, near by Jack's parish. Thus we footed it from Oxford, cassock and buff ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... that time, were full of bears. The darkness of a cloudy night was rapidly coming on, and the alarmed father, gathering a few of his neighbors, hastened in search of the lost child. The mother remained at home, almost distracted with suspense. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and twenty times his own force sent against him, in the shape of the regular government troops, had utterly failed to reach even the outer walls of his retreat, they being entrapped in all manner of snares, and shot down like a herd of wild and distracted animals. Several repetitions of these attempts with similar results had fairly disheartened the officers and soldiery, and they utterly refused to proceed on any such dangerous service for the future, while the officers of the government ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... raves, since Soul and Spirit are alike Disturbed throughout, and severed each from each As urged above, distracted by the bane; But when at length the morbid cause declines, And the fermenting humours from the heart Flow back—with staggering foot first treads Led gradual on to ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... I had only learned to use a gun!" gasped the distracted girl. "Could I shoot straight enough to do any good, if I tried? Or would ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... full confidence of his men. He seems to have had some ability as a general, but he was unequal to the task of maintaining order and uniting the distracted colony. Berkeley said that he continued the other officers, but that they "soon disagreed amongst ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... recording machine. Experienced stenographers say that they form the habit of recording so automatically that they fail utterly to comprehend the meaning of what is said. You as a student cannot afford to have your attention so distracted from the meaning of the lecture, therefore reduce your classroom writing to ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... ran; "I hope I haven't distracted your brain with the spoof letters I've been sending in the name of a fictitious Clotilde. You told me the other day that the servants, or somebody at your home, tampered with your letters, so I thought I would give any one that opened them something exciting ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... affection for him, feigns to break with her, and she, though really loving him, returns an indifferent answer and marries Gaspero out of pique. The distracted lover thereupon falls upon his sword in the presence of the newly wedded couple, and the bride, touched by the spectacle of her lover's devotion, languishes and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... to admit this, when, a week later, he seemed to be no nearer a solution of the problem than he was at first. He had tried everything he could think of, and he had Eradicate and Koku, the giant, almost distracted, by making them stay in small telephone booths for hours at a time, while the young inventor tried to get some reflection of one face or the other to come over ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... the performance, and for me the mangy old camels and the pimpled elephants of yore led the procession through accompanying ranks of boys who have mostly been in their graves for half a lifetime; the distracted ostrich thrust an advertising neck through the top of its cage, and the lion roared to himself in the darkness of his moving prison. I felt the old thrill of excitement, the vain hope of something preternatural and impossible, and I do not know what could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... observing these auspicious seasons and places, they make a great mistake. It is a matter of course that an auspicious day must be chosen so far as avoiding wind and rain is concerned, that men may bury their dead without their minds being distracted; and it is important to choose a fitting cemetery, lest in after days the tomb should be damaged by rain, or by men walking over it, or by the place being turned into a field, or built upon. When invited to a friend's or neighbour's funeral, a man should avoid putting on smart clothes ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... nature and lower its merits too much. Still such a peevish and condemnatory verdict as this has a tendency to make people milder in their rage, for it is the sudden and unexpected that makes people go distracted. And we ought, as Panaetius somewhere said, to imitate Anaxagoras, and as he said at the death of his son, "I knew that I had begotten a mortal," so ought every one of us to use the following kind of language in those contretemps that stir up our anger, "I knew ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... were doomed to walk the earth, I was tempted to comment on this stricture on her departed parent, but a large cat, much scarred with fighting and named Violet, insisted at that moment on crawling into my lap, and my attention was distracted. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... next turned to getting ready things to take with me. Having opened upon myself the sluice gates of advice, I rapidly became distracted. My friends and their friends alike seemed to labour under the delusion that I intended to charter a steamer and was a person of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. This not being the case, the only thing to do was to gratefully listen ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... black and gold dress, and the huge feather fan was folded across her bare arms. Every time he looked at it, he remembered how those same arms had been clasped round his own stiff and unbending neck. And sometimes he found the thought distracted his ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... privileges; the senate yielded to them; cabals and factions took place among those who were anxious to please, for the purpose of guiding the people; rash measures were adopted, the councils and the power of Carthage became distracted and weak, and its ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... case it clearly appeared that one Leong Ming Aseng, apparently a respectable tradesman, at all events a man of means, had given $60 for a young girl aged 13 years, to one of the kidnapers, and he took her away beyond the reach of her distracted mother under circumstances from which he must have known that the child had been kidnaped. But although the facts were known at the Police Court, and this man remained exceeding ten days afterward in the Colony, no charge ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... of crosslights His beauty, His supremacy, His completeness, and a soul utterly devoted to Him—these are the conditions to which that light will ever manifest itself, and illumine the whole man. But if we come with divided hearts, with distracted aims, giving Him fragments of ourselves, and seeking Him by spasms and at intervals, and having a dozen other deities in our Pantheon, beside the calm form of the Christ of Nazareth, what wonder is there that we see in Him 'no beauty that we should desire Him'? 'Unite my heart to fear Thy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Another, distracted from her work by some startling vibration, leaves her nest at the moment when the layer of red-brown wadding is being completed. She flees to the dome, at a few inches above her unfinished work, and spends ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... gates of Paris were to be locked, that none might escape. Carriages were to be excluded from the streets. All citizens were ordered to be at home. The sections, the tribunals, the clubs were to suspend their sittings, that the public attention might not be distracted. All houses were to be brilliantly lighted in the evening, that the search might be more effectually conducted. Commissaries, accompanied by armed soldiers, were, in the name of the law, to enter every dwelling. Each citizen should show what arms he had. If any ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... whence he never again arose. An hour or two served to convince us, that he was seized with the fatal disorder; and so rapid was its progress, that a few more decided that no hopes of recovery could be entertained. My poor dear distracted mistress quitted not his bedside night or day, though I plainly perceived by her looks on the third morning, that she had taken the infection. I too was growing very ill, but of myself I could take no thought. On the fourth ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... centipede was happy quite, Until the toad, for fun, Said, 'Pray which leg goes after which?' This stirred his mind to such a pitch, He lay distracted in a ditch, Considering ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... Johnson. Opposite him was Miriam and another of the Johnson circle, and also he had brawn to carve and there was hardly room for the helpful Betsy to pass behind his chair, so that altogether his mind would have been amply distracted from any mortuary broodings, even if a wordy warfare about the education of the modern young woman had not sprung up between Uncle Pentstemon and Mrs. Larkins and threatened for a time, in spite of a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... deal of bird's work in treading and shuffling down the loose sticks and straws, before one can feel it is to be a nest. Robert laughs at me sometimes for pushing about the chairs and tables in a sort of distracted way, but it's the very instinct of making a sympathetical home, that works in me. We were miserably off in London. I couldn't tuck myself in anyhow. And we enjoy in proportion these luxurious armchairs, so good ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... quite a week since Darby and Joan had so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from Firgrove; yet to the distracted aunts it seemed as if years instead of days had dragged away since that bright morning when they had bidden the little ones good-bye, and left them standing among the pussies and the flowers, looking the picture of health, beauty, and innocence. ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur |
