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Abstractedly

adverb
1.
In an absentminded or preoccupied manner.  Synonyms: absently, absentmindedly, inattentively.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Abstractedly" Quotes from Famous Books



... is late, indeed," said the emperor abstractedly. "I thought I had already dined; Champagny, however, reminded me that this was not the case. Well, Josephine, let us eat!" And he commenced eating the soup which the ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... but it won't hurt me to walk. Nothing hurts me—Leah Mordecai the despised." Then, averting her face, the young girl gazed abstractedly into the street, and began humming ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... Regnald, who was neither good nor brave Nor graceful, liked not Eustace from the start, And this night hated him. With angry brows, He sat in a bleak chamber of the Hall, His fingers toying with his poniard's point Abstractedly. Three times the ancient clock, Bolt-upright like a mummy in its case, Doled out the hour: at length the round red moon, Rising above the ghostly poplar-tops, Looked in on Regnald nursing his dark thought, Looked in on the stiff portraits on the wall, And dead Sir ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... gas-jet that hung in the middle of the room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly. It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all. He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said. Yet she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... this year he brought with him his wife, my mother. When she entered she was trembling so that I thought her to be suffering from some nervous disease. Then she asked for a seat and a glass of water. She said nothing; she looked around abstractedly at my work and only answered 'yes' and 'no,' at random, to all the questions which he asked her. When she had left I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... "Hum-m-m!" said Cleek abstractedly, and then sat silent for a long time, staring at his spats and moving one thumb slowly round the breadth of the other, his fingers interlaced and his lower lip pushed upwards ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... goes in pursuit of visionary systems, it is not far from the regions of doubt; and the greater its capacity to think abstractedly, to reason and refine, the more it will be exposed to, and bewildered in, uncertainty.—From an enthusiastic warmth of temper, indeed, we may for a while be encouraged to persist in some favourite ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... good-looking woman of about thirty, raised her large dark eyes to the face of Achmet with a look of gratitude, but did not reply. Indeed, her husband did not seem to expect an answer, for he continued to smoke for some time in silence, with his eyes fixed abstractedly on a tame gazelle—the kitten of the harem—which ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... and the boys proceeded to exchange duties, Budge taking the precaution to hold the banana himself, so that his brother should not abstractedly sample a second time, and Toddie doling out ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... forcibly, will be found, I think, upon reflection to reside more in our habits of apprehension than in the subject: and that the giving way to it, when we have any reasonable grounds or the contrary, is rather an indulging of the imagination than anything else. Abstractedly considered, that is, considered without relation to the difference which habit, and merely habit, produces in our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do not see anything more in the resurrection of a dead man than in ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... sat down at the table, and was soon as deeply engaged with his large book as if he had suffered no interruption; while Martin and Barney, having gazed gravely and abstractedly at him for five minutes, turned and smiled to each other, jumped into their hammocks, and were ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... gave it up in despair and abstractedly felt for his watch-fob. Which wasn't there. Neither, investigation developed, was the watch. At which crowning stroke of misfortune,—the timepiece must have slipped from his pocket into the water while he was tinkering with that infamous carbureter,—Maitland ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... valleys of the Graces. In short, this circuitous course, when attentively considered, will be found to be the shortest road by which he could conduct the reader to the desired end: for in accomplishing this it is necessary to regard not that road, which is most straight in the nature of things, or abstractedly considered, but that which is most direct in the ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... her air was strange and full of presage,—as, indeed, she had meant it to be. But he remained as silent as she, only reached out his emaciated hand and, laying it on her head, smiled again but this time far from abstractedly. Then, as he saw her cheeks pale in terror of the task before her, he ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... chattering of monkey-language. He beheld his plump diminutive servitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, storming ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy's outfit, which he had removed ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... a half-holiday, and a baseball match of unusual interest was to come off on the school ground that afternoon; but, somehow, I didn't go. I hung about the house abstractedly. The Captain went up town, and Miss Abigail was busy in the kitchen making immortal gingerbread. I drifted into the sitting-room, and had our guest all to myself for I don't know how many hours. It ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... seen confessing themselves to each other, or receiving the confessions of their lay companions in misfortune, and encouraging them to undergo the evil hour, with as much calmness as if they had not been to share its bitterness. As protestants, we cannot abstractedly approve of the doctrines which render the established clergy of one country dependant upon the sovereign pontiff, the prince of an alien state. But these priests did not make the laws for which they suffered; they only obeyed them; and as men and christians we ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... of the party came through the office on their way to the dining-room, Francis lagged behind and handed Kurt a letter which the latter abstractedly slipped ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... she sank into an armchair, entirely exhausted and overwhelmed by the fearful resistance she had made to her feelings. She remained there motionless, her eye fixed, her face pale, and both hands resting on the arms of her chair, abstractedly looking at the pattern of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... submitting to an interview at the hands of A. Lincoln Pollock,—sat alone before the fire, his long legs stretched out, a magazine lying idly in his lap, his pipe dead but gripped firmly in the hand that had remained stationary for a long, long time halfway to his lips. He was staring abstractedly into the neglected fire. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... think that the passage in question deserves a very slight fraction of the praise bestowed upon it; but the criticism, like most of Johnson's, has a meaning which might be worth examining abstractedly from the special application which shocks the idolaters of Shakspeare. Presently the party discussed Mrs. Montagu, whose Essay upon Shakspeare had made some noise. Johnson had a respect for her, caused ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... in all his life, black-eyed, and with skin white as snow illumined by the dawning flush of the sun. She was laughing heartily, and her laugh enhanced her dazzling loveliness. Taken aback he gazed at her in confusion, abstractedly wiping the mud from his face, by which means it became still further smeared. Who could this beauty be? He sought to find out from the servants, who, in rich liveries, stood at the gate in a crowd surrounding a young guitar-player; but they only laughed when they saw ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... abstractedly. They were in the ladies' cabin, awaiting its preparation as a stage, behind the curtains that screened it from the gentlemen's cabin, the auditorium. His ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... of this ungracious speech had the effect of putting the party at its ease. Lady Cressage seated herself beside her friend on the sofa, and gently, abstractedly, patted one of her hands. Thorpe remained on his feet, looking down at the pair with satisfied cheerfulness. He tool, a slip of paper from his pocket, to support a statement he ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... Every one seemed to be under the influence of some narcotic. Even the officers aft, whose duty required them never to be seated while keeping a deck watch, vainly endeavoured to keep on their pins; and were obliged invariably to compromise the matter by leaning up against the bulwarks, and gazing abstractedly over the side. Reading was out of the question; take a book in your hand, and you were ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... his book, where he had been beholding a large breadth of light on the spiritual sky, and answered, somewhat abstractedly, but with the gentle politeness he ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... in which ladies delight, which appear to be designed for no particular purpose, and which, curiously enough, are always either a little more or less than half finished. I think she very seldom spoke. She was positively crushed by that most superior person, her mother. Flo was gazing abstractedly into the sea, hearing her mother but not listening, while Thornton was seated a foot or two below her, gazing up into her deep-blue eyes, shaded by her large hat and dark hair, as happy and deluded as a lunatic who thinks himself monarch ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... circumstances. An inn may not appear the best possible place for meditation, especially if the moralizer's bedchamber be next the yard where carriages roll, and hostlers swear perpetually; yet so situated, I, this morning as I lay awake in my bed, thought so abstractedly and attentively, that I heard neither wheels nor hostlers. I reviewed the whole of my past life; I regretted bitterly my extravagance, my dissipation, my waste of time; I considered how small a share of enjoyment ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... young girl, half-abstractedly. "Of course it's a Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those old Andalusian immigrants two hundred years ago. It's quite Arabic in its suggestions. I have got something like it in an old CANCIONERO ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... professor abstractedly, as she comes to a full stop. He has never seen her dressed like this before. She is all in black to be sure, but such black, and her air! She looks quite the little heiress, like a little ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... justice of God; because the same word of truth which says, 'Whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely,' also says, 'The soul that sinneth [or lives and dies in sin unpardoned] shall die.' Thus sin is the object of God's hatred, and not the man, abstractedly considered. May we therefore each of us have grace to look to Christ for full and complete salvation, who hath put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, whereby he has perfected for ever them that are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... him, and looked abstractedly out of the window. Her features settled in thought. Their expression gradually deepened from their usual tone of mild, resigned sorrow to one ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... moved back and forth in front of the easel; drew away from or bent over to closely scrutinize the canvas; shifted the easel a hair breadth several times; sat down; stood erect; hummed and muttered to himself abstractedly; cleared his throat with an impressive "Ahem"; squinted through nearly closed eyes, with his head thrown back, or turned in every side angle his fat neck would permit: peered through his half-closed fist; peeped through funnels of paper; sighted over and under his open hand or a paper held to shut ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... eyes, shook his head and turning from the young man whose long legs extended over the end of the lean sofa upon which he sprawled in one corner of the laboratory, held the test-tube, which he had been studying abstractedly, up to the light. The flickering gas was not good for delicate work, and it was only lately that Barstow, spurred on by a glimpse of the end to a long series of experiments, had attempted anything after dark. He squinted thoughtfully ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... dull, now was a very different person to him, a woman who seemed to have only just revealed herself, asserting a power of attraction he had never suspected in her. He found himself trying to catch glimpses of her face at different angles, as she sat listening abstractedly ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... friends) are, I admit, as you very truly represent them, but indifferently qualified for storming a citadel. After all, God knows whether this citadel is to be stormed by them, or by anybody else, by the means they use, or by any means. I know that as they are, abstractedly speaking, to blame, so there are those who cry out against them for it, not with a friendly complaint, as we do, but with the bitterness of enemies. But I know, too, that those who blame them for want of enterprise have shown no activity at all against the common enemy: all their skill ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paid it a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had engaged to be there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chanced abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he might well ask himself; admiration of ladies' work, in their absence, was unlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless, the touch of the warm, soft silk ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... alive, it might be you who killed him, or why should you have held your tongue about his death? But if he was dead, and you had a reason for killing him, you might have held your tongue for fear of being accused." Then after a silence he added, abstractedly: "Cyprus is a beautiful place, I believe. Romantic scenery and romantic people. Very intoxicating ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... a little more, and sighed as he abstractedly prodded among his pigeonholes. That slippery floor typified it all,—that dim room full of dusky corners! Ah, if he could only get that slim young man with the long coat and the pointed beard out on the black-and-white chequered pavement of the Grindstone, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... Shan[AY] standing up as a beautiful background of perpendicular white, from whence range upon range of dark lines loom out in the hazy atmosphere. From the extreme summit of one snow-laden peak, whose white steeple seems truly a heavenward-directed finger, I gaze abstractedly all around upon nothing but dark masses of gently-waving hills, steep, weary ascents and descents, green and gold, and yellow and brown, and one's eyes rest upon a maze of thin white lines intertwining them all. These are the main roads. I am alone. My men are far behind. I am awed ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... his patients. While he continued to perform his functions with a singular speed and dexterity, he never for a moment ceased 'a running fire of small talk, now addressed to the patient in particular, now to the crowd at large, sometimes a soliloquy to himself, and not unfrequently, abstractedly, upon things in general. These little specimens of oratory, delivered in such a place at such a time, and, not least of all, in the richest imaginable Cork accent, were sufficient to arrest my steps, and I stopped for some time ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... met her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with her abstractedly as he did with anyone he happened to encounter on his way down the aisle. He had never met her elsewhere, for the Wests were Episcopalians, with church affinities in Lowbridge, and no occasion for calling ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... said Jaquith, abstractedly. "Didn't I tell you? They went South, and she took yellow fever. It was only ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... to have done it."—Anon. "History painters would have found it difficult, to have invented such a species of beings."—ADDISON: see Lowth's Gram., p. 87. "Universal Grammar cannot be taught abstractedly, it must be done with reference to some language already known."—Lowth's Preface, p. viii. "And we might imagine, that if verbs had been so contrived, as simply to express these, no more was needful."—Blair's Rhet., p. 82. "To a writer of such a genius as ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... expressed his uneasiness. "Mirabeau," says he, "is a host in himself; and I should not be surprised if by his own eloquence and popularity only he were to carry it; and yet I regret that he has taken the lead in it. The cause is so lovely, that even ambition, abstractedly considered, is too impure to take it under its protection, and not to sully it. It should have been placed in the hands of the most virtuous man in France. This man is the Duc de la Rochefoucauld. But you cannot alter things now. You cannot take it out of his hands. I am sure he will be second ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... last victim went down, that the conflagration shot up into the air with most unbounded fury. The house was large, deeply thatched, and well furnished; and the broad red pyramid rose up with fearful magnificence towards the sky. Abstractedly it had sublimity, but now it was associated with nothing in my mind but blood and terror. It was not, however, without a purpose that the Captain and his gang stood to contemplate its effect. "Boys," said he, "we had betther be sartin that all's safe; who knows but ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... by this unprecedented carefulness for her health on the part of the usually careless Leslie, went down abstractedly to her professor, and wished he would go home. He was well into the midst of a most heartfelt and touching proposal of marriage before she realized ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... took up the book abstractedly, and carelessly turned the leaves, wondering how he should say what was in his heart. A loose paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. It was the newspaper cutting that Winifred had saved, but had forgotten to copy, in the ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... moments he sat there thinking deeply. He continued to smoke, his gaze abstractedly fixed upon the blue film which floated before it upon the still air. Gradually the dislike seemed to pass out of his eyes. The fire in them to die down. Something almost like a smile replaced it, a smile for which his ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... gift of condescending majestically to Mr. Prohack while licking his boots. He listened to Mr. Prohack as to an autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knew not the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazed abstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on the walls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, and it was home in upon Mr. Prohack that the inscriptions in actual practice referred to Mr. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... shortly after breakfast. I had taken my sights for the brig's longitude, worked them out, laid down the result upon the chart, and was abstractedly gazing at the latter as it lay spread out before me upon the cabin table, anxiously seeking inspiration from a study of the coasts, islands, and harbours delineated in miniature upon the white paper, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... the excellence of a tragedy to depend upon its plot—and, since a tragedy, as such, is obviously the exhibition of an action, no one can deny his statement to be abstractedly true. Accordingly he directs his principal attention to the economy of the fable; determines its range of subjects, delineates its proportions, traces its progress from a complication of incidents to their just and satisfactory ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... me to give over. I have been four days on this letter, for the gout comes now to me oftener than it did, and I do not know when I may again write to thee with my own hand; so I resolved I would e'en empty my whole budget at once. Thy mother is well and blooming; she is, at the present, abstractedly employed in a prodigious piece of tapestry which old Nicholls informs me is the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in coarse home-spun clothing, his eye defiant, but his countenance white with the anxieties of his situation. He was surrounded by a troop of sabres; the horses' hoofs made a great clatter upon the hard road, and Count Victor, walking abstractedly along the river-bank, came on them before he was aware of their proximity. As he stood to let them pass he was touched inexpressibly by the glance the convict gave him, so charged was it with question, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... course you would lose the estate; but what would my condition be then. No! I have everything at stake—you, comparatively nothing. I will not accede to so absurd a proposition." There was a short pause, the widow resumed her embroidery with an air of apparent indifference. The baronet sat abstractedly gazing out of the window, evidently turning over something in his mind. As she had stated he had tried to wheedle her out of the papers, but she had hitherto, by great tact, adroitly managed to shift the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... much to write her," she sighed, chewing her pencil abstractedly. "I wish I could work a typewriter. 'Twould be so much easier to 'tend to all my letters then. It's tiresome writing things by hand. If it wasn't Elspeth, I wouldn't try today. It's so lovely and cool just to sit here and watch folks pass along the street. I 'most wish now that I had gone with ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... which he cannot comprehend? His skull was so admirably fortified, by nature, that it was equally impenetrable to the heavy batteries of argument or the skirmishing artillery of wit. Let the cannon roar: he heard it not. He was abstractedly contemplating those obscure depths in which he remained for ever seated; and where he had visions innumerable, though he ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Together with the reputation of Fuller as an historian, his reputation in other respects for a long while underwent eclipse; for, as it is reviving again, we may not say that it passed away. His matter quite apart—and it is always interesting—and abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is always original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John Nichols, an editor of his Worthies, timidly hazarded the observation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... abstractedly at the fire. He started. "I dare say," he began, "I'm not very interesting; yet it's possible that my affairs have taken up a little too much of my time. However,—" he stopped, took from his pocket an envelope, and threw it ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... eligible myself, as I don't know any German. It's such a beautifully sharp pencil, though, that I hate not to write with it." Patty poised the pencil a moment, and abstractedly traced the ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... Pollyanna," rejoined Mrs. Carew, abstractedly. On Mrs. Carew's face there was still no look ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... potatoes very quietly and thoughtfully that noon, a procedure so contrary to his usual actions that his mother asked him if he felt well. He nodded abstractedly, went upstairs to the big, sunny sewing room, searched the family needlecase for a long stiff darning needle and extracted several rubber bands from the red cardboard box on the library table. Then he sauntered off to wait in the school yard for assembly bell, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... fire half abstractedly. "Three of us were named," he said, "to have a conference with General Johnson." He turned to her, his eyes aglow, "I'll never forget that meeting. He asked us to be seated with his usual courtesy. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... poetry. There is such an apparent incongruity between the simple ideas of the rural swain and the polished language of the courtier, that it seems impossible to reconcile them together by the utmost art of composition. The Doric dialect of Theocritus, therefore, abstractedly from all consideration of simplicity of sentiment, must ever give to the Sicilian bard a pre-eminence in this species of poetry. The greater part of the Bucolics of Virgil may be regarded as poems of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... He shook hands abstractedly all around when the affair came to a close. He remembered bundling his make-up and trinkets into a piece of newspaper and tucking it under his arm. A pleased face presented itself at one time before his eyes ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... he replied abstractedly, going into his cool study. He flung himself into an armchair before the writing-table, and began to read the letters. Two were tossed aside carelessly, but on opening the third he sat up with a quick exclamation. Here at last was the "call" he had been expecting, a "call" from the deacons ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... the doctrine, and does not, like that which we first examined, involve a contradiction. There may easily be a greater quantity of any particular commodity than is desired by those who have the ability to purchase, and it is abstractedly conceivable that this might be the case with all commodities. The error is in not perceiving that, though all who have an equivalent to give might be fully provided with every consumable article which they desire, the fact that they go on adding to the production proves that ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... the junior member of the firm to come in; the senior member of the firm, who had just brought up an arm load of green hickory and dry hackberry stove wood, was standing beside the box-shaped stove, abstractedly brushing the sawdust and wormwood from his sleeves and coat front. The colonel was whistling and whittling, and the general kept on brushing after the last speck of dust had gone from his shiny coat. He walked to the window and stared into ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... abstractedly. Yoritomo left, and Stanton got up on the rubdown table and lay prone. The therapist, seeing that his patient was in no mood for conversation, proceeded ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... but to respond in the same gracious strain; but he was certainly more reserved than usual in his speech, and behaved with an almost exaggerated amount of respect and formality. After the first two or three sentences he noticed that her eyes began to look abstractedly away from him, and that she answered one of his remarks at random. And while he was wondering, with some irritation, what this change might mean, she drew back into a bow window, and motioned to him almost imperceptibly ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... a start. A child! Jenny's child! Silver Cloud's grandchild! This was a complication he had not thought of. No! It was too late to tell his secret now. He only nodded his head abstractedly and said coldly, "I ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... way out. Sunshine had shone uninterruptedly on one side of his space suit for as long as five minutes. Despite the insulation inside, that was too long. He turned quickly to expose another part of himself to the sunlight. He knew abstractedly that the metal underfoot would sear bare flesh that touched it. A few yards away, in the shadow, the metal of the hull would be cold enough to freeze hydrogen. But here it was fiercely hot. It ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... horizon and spread a vast peacock tail of color across the sky. In Grant Park, opposite the Public Library, men lay on their backs with their hands folded under their heads and stared up into the colors of the sky. The newspaper reporter stood abstractedly on the corner counting the automobiles that purred by to see if more taxicabs than privately owned cars passed a given point in Michigan Avenue. Then he walked across the street for no other reason than that there were for the moment no more automobiles to count. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... a design which made Villiers start and look up at Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window. Villiers turned page after page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard black and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... Conservation of Force," p. 341). "Although the word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another" (p. 15). "Causation is the will," "creation is the act, of God" Grove on "Correlation of Physical Forces," (p. 199). "Between gravity and motion it is impossible to establish the equation required for a rightly-conceived ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... more sudden and dramatic in appearing and can be made immediate use of, whereas the master is slowly formed, and even then turns out unsatisfactory in many ways. He is apt to be that well-known and inconvenient sort of person who, when he comes in out of the rain to dress for his wedding, abstractedly prepares to retire instead, and then, still more abstractedly, puts his umbrella to bed and stands himself in the corner. All the same, it is no less divine to create a master by slow, laborious methods ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... it grew intolerable. She was perhaps only a little less irritating than the man who became so unconscious in the habit of inattention that on one occasion his converser had scarcely finished when he began abstractedly: "Yes, very odd, very odd," and told the identical ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... he brings him that he divests himself of his property; and it is, in fact, a minor species of slave trading, when he has thus enfranchised his slave, to re-capture that slave by the necessities of his condition, or by working upon the better feelings of his heart. Abstractedly from all legal technicalities, there is no real difference between thus compelling the return of the enfranchised negro, and trepanning a free native of England by delusive hopes into perpetual slavery. The most ingenious casuist could not point out any essential distinction between the two cases. ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... "Listen, Quiroga," he said, somewhat abstractedly, "I'll undertake to collect what the officers and sailors owe ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the sensitive Nicky who first perceived and pointed out a change in Jane. She moved among them abstractedly, with mute, half alienated eyes. She seemed to have suffered some spiritual disintegration that was pain. She gave herself to them no longer whole, but piecemeal. At times she seemed to hold out empty, supplicating hands, palms ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... it?" Annie would say, abstractedly, when some enthusiastic girl pored over the colonial letters or the old portraits. "See here, Margaret," she might add, casually, "do you see the inside of this little slipper, my dear? Read what's written there: 'In these slippers Deborah Murison danced with Governor Winthrop, on the night ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... caught off guard by the change of direction, rubbing abstractedly at the reddened tip of his prominent nose. "Of course it is winter. Ice, there must be ice at the higher lakes in the mountain, they are always frozen at this time of the year. But what ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... first sight, she is sitting erect, her head turned slightly to the left shoulder, and both hands resting on the dog's head garnishing the right arm of the chair. She is gazing abstractedly out at the landing, as if waiting for some one overdue. The face is uncovered; and it is to be said here that, abhorring the custom which bound her Byzantine sisterhood to veils, except when in the retiracy of their chambers, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... correct, he surpasses even himself in so combining and contrasting them, that they serve to bring out each other's peculiarities. This is the very perfection of dramatic characterization: for we can never estimate a man's true worth if we consider him altogether abstractedly by himself; we must see him in his relations with others; and it is here that most dramatic poets are deficient. Shakspeare makes each of his principal characters the glass in which the others are reflected, and by like means enables us to discover what could not be immediately ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... my friend answered abstractedly. 'Of course, of course; things were all so very big in those days, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... man," he said abstractedly; for he looked upon the banker with that dim suspicion which is aroused in ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... with his hands full of letters, and gave a sharp glance at Dora, who was there before him this morning, sitting with a newspaper in her lap, and her hands clasped, gazing abstractedly into space. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... still struggling with the far flushing east. Cass alighted, placed Miss Mortimer in the hands of the landlady, and returned to the vehicle. It was still musty, close, and frowzy, with half awakened passengers. There was a vacated seat on the top, which Cass climbed up to, and abstractedly threw himself beside a figure muffled in shawls and rugs. There was a slight movement among the multitudinous enwrappings, and then the figure turned to him and said dryly, "Good ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... and pressed her husband's hand. "I do forgive you, Joe dear," she said, still smiling, with eyes abstractedly fixed on the ceiling; "and you ought to be whipped for deceiving me so, you bad boy! and making me make such a speech. There, say no more about it. If you'll be very good hereafter, and will just now ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... half-abstractedly at the upturned young faces, pushed his way through the little group, and taking up a parcel of papers and a surgical case which lay near, went straight to his carriage, which was heard immediately afterwards to ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... accompanied by corresponding variations in the co-operating parts; while it is obvious that the greater the number of variations which are needed in order to effect an improvement, the less will be the probability of their all occurring at once. It is no reply to this to say, what is no doubt abstractedly true, that whatever is possible becomes probable, if only time enough be allowed. There are improbabilities so great that the common sense of mankind treats them as impossibilities. It is not, for instance, in the strictest ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... particularly so at the present moment. Miss Haviland, with her chin gracefully resting on one folded hand, and her calm and beautiful, but now deeply-clouded brow, shaded by the white, taper fingers of the other, was abstractedly gazing into the glowing coals on the hearth before her, while the gentle, but less reflective McRea, with a countenance disturbed only by the passing emotions of sympathy that occasionally flitted ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... abstractedly at the two lovely feet of Miss Grace Plumer, with an air that implied how far his mind had wandered in their conversation from any merely personal considerations. Miss Grace Plumer had not made as much progress as Mr. Newt since their last meeting. Abel Newt seemed to her the handsomest fellow she ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... the street he did not look back, but wandered abstractedly through by-streets in the falling rain, scarcely realizing where he was, until he found himself drenched through, with his closed umbrella in his tremulous hand, standing at the half-submerged levee beside the overflowed river. Here again he realized how completely he had been absorbed and concentrated ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... I were you, when ladies at the play, Sir, Beckon and nod, a melodrama through, I would not turn abstractedly away, Sir, If I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... they only talk among themselves abstractedly, with their ears elsewhere, and an unconscious ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... countenance changed from an expression of pleasant badinage to one of sentimental interest, while he gazed abstractedly in the young lady's face, without ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... can with truth say much more; I do not even wish an increase of fortune, considering it abstractedly from its being incompatible with my marriage with the loveliest of women; I am indifferent to all but independence; wealth would not make me happier; on the contrary, it might break in on my present little plan of enjoyment, by forcing me to give to common acquaintance, of whom ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... Flammarion McGower. He said: "I can prognosticate With estimates correct; And when the skies I contemplate, I know what to expect. When dark'ning clouds obscure my sight, I think perhaps 'twill rain; And when the stars are shining bright, I know 'tis clear again." And then abstractedly he scanned The heavens, hour by hour, Old Ptolemy ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... direction, beyond the wide seas, lay his refuge and ultimate hope came to him with so much force as to cause him to reel like one on whom a severe blow had been dealt. He stood for some time, seemingly bewildered, in the din and noise of the wharf, noting abstractedly the many bales of cotton, as truck after truck-load was rushed aboard an outward bound steamer. The bales seemed to fascinate him completely. A stevedore yelled at him to move out of the way and aroused ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... with chagrin, his own and the Judge's futile attempts at tact. Mirabelle was tact-proof; you might as well try subtle diplomacy on a locomotive. He took another deep breath, and gazed abstractedly out over the roof-tops. He wished that Henry would write. Henry had his defects, but the house was not quite livable without him. Mr. Starkweather was swept by an emotion which took him wholly by surprise and almost overcame him; he sat up, and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... coulee was left at peace, with scratching hens busy with the feeding of half-feathered chicks, and a rooster that crowed from the corral fence seven times without stopping to take breath. In the big corral a sorrel mare nosed her colt and nibbled abstractedly at the pile of hay in one corner, while the colt wabbled aimlessly up and sniffed curiously and then turned to inspect the rails that felt so queer and hard when he rubbed his nose against them. The sun was warm, and cloud-shadows drifted lazily ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... that and other matters, and paying small attention to the passing crowd. I was vexed and mortified, and had fully decided to throw up the whole,—on such hairs do things hang,—when, suddenly turning a corner, my bridle-reins became entangled in the snaffle of another rider. I loosened them abstractedly, and not till it was necessary to bow to my strange antagonist, on parting, did I glance up. The person before me was evidently not accustomed to play the dandy; he wore his clothes ill, sat his horse worse, and was uneasy in the saddle. The unmistakable air of the gamin was apparent ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... the traveller either rises above or sinks to the level of, or rather below, his party. I had been sitting abstractedly, like the great quietist, Buddha, when the looks of the assembly suggested an "address." This was at once delivered in Portuguese, with a loud and angry voice. Gidi Mavunga, who had been paid for Nsundi, not for the Yellala, had spoken like a "small boy" (i.e., a chattel). ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... never done the like before. Grace was first to expostulate, but was at once cut short by an oath from her brother, whose evident state of high excitement could not brook the semblance of reproof. Mary Acton's marketing glance was abstractedly fixed upon the actual corpus delicti; each fine plump bird, full-plumaged, young-spurred; yes, they were still warm, and would eat tender, so she mechanically began to pluck them; while, as for poor downcast Roger, he remembered, with a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... he began, in calmer tone, "seeing that the reasons were good—more plainly, seeing it was God's will that the Child should not be found—I settled my faith into the keeping of patience, and took to waiting." He raised his eyes, full of holy trust, and broke off abstractedly—"I am waiting now. He lives, keeping well his mighty secret. What though I cannot go to him, or name the hill or the vale of his abiding-place? He lives—it may be as the fruit in blossom, it may be as the fruit just ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... the dinner is also marked by exhilarating experiences. With one coat-tail unwittingly tucked far up his back, so that it seems to be amputated, and his alpaca umbrella under his arm, he enters a grocery-store of the village, and abstractedly asks how strawberries are selling to-day? Upon being reminded that fresh fruit is very scarce in late December, he changes his purpose, and orders two bottles of Bourbon flavoring-extract sent to his address. And now he wishes to know what they are charging for sponges? They tell ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various

... the object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other purpose. We are still to seek what is this other purpose, which government ought to fulfill abstractedly from the idea of improvement, and which has to be fulfilled in every society, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... liberty: for what king will ever call 'Etats again, if he can possibly help it! The new legislators were pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of all men. We are all born so, no doubt, abstractedly; and physically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish a perfect government, and give the same education to all men. But are they so in the present constitution of society, under a bad government, where most have had no education at all, but have been debased, brutified, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... conjecture,' she said, rising from her chair, rather drearily and abstractedly, 'and there is good old Lady Sarah. I must go and ask her how she does.' She paused for a moment, holding her bouquet drooping towards the floor, and looking with her clouded eyes down—down—through it; and then she looked up suddenly, with an odd, fierce smile, and she said bitterly ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... coffee without replying, the perspiration standing in drops on his large, freckled face and shining on his heavy eyebrows. Presently he looked at Nicholas, who was eating abstractedly, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... to her senses. She at length realised that her legs felt rather tired. After lingering about abstractedly for a long while, she quietly returned into the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, supporting herself on Tzu Chuean. As soon as they stepped inside the entrance of the court, her gaze was attracted by the confused shadows of the bamboos, which covered the ground, and the traces of moss, here thick, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... murmured, abstractedly, scarcely thinking of what he was saying, and only conscious of the thrill and ecstasy of love which seemed to him the one thing necessary for existence ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... her dress and gazed abstractedly upon the white "Californian." Just then, a "parade" was the dominant idea in the poor fellow's limited intelligence. Amy's simple white flannel frock, with its scarlet sash, and the scarlet cap upon her dark curls, suggested ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... he did not answer at all—at others, he answered incoherently to the questions of Verkhoffsky, by whom he rode, gazing abstractedly around him. The Colonel, thinking that, like an eager hunter, he was engrossed by the sport, left him, and rode forward. At last, Ammalat perceived him whom he was so impatiently expecting, his hemdjek, Saphir Ali, flew to meet him, covered with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... For a moment he puffed vigorously, then, all at once, the pleasure of it seemed to die away, and presently the bowl dropped down on his chin. M. Garon lifted it away. Kilquhanity did not speak, but kept saying something over and over again to himself, looking beyond M. Garon abstractedly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... he'd kept to his intention," muttered St. John abstractedly. He was thinking deeply, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... to great advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory remark of her companion's. However, she parted from her young friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know as soon as her mind was made up on the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... waited in silence until Landers had passed hesitatingly through the door; then followed him out into the hall. A moment, and he returned, standing abstractedly by the lecture table. He picked up his scattered notes absently, shaking the ends even with a painstaking hand; then as carefully scattered them as before. He looked up at the silent, waiting class, and ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Silently and abstractedly, did that too sensitive youth follow his revered parents, and a train of smock-frocks and wheelbarrows, along the pier, until the bustle of the scene around, recalled him to himself. The sun was shining brightly; the sea, dancing to its own music, rolled merrily ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... jongleur made no response, but sat with his eye fixed abstractedly upon the ceiling, as one who calls words to his mind. Then, with a sudden sweep across the strings, he broke out into a song so gross and so foul that ere he had finished a verse the pure-minded lad sprang to his feet with the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... day on which he announced his ennui to Tom had been quite typical. He had risen at noon, lunched with Mrs. Lawrence, and then ridden abstractedly homeward atop one ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... chairs eagerly up to the doctor's, but for a minute he did not seem to see them, but sat gazing abstractedly into the fire, then he took a long draw upon ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. "Have I been so vile all for ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... Gideon, cheerfully. After a pause, in which he unostentatiously rearranged the table which the widow was abstractedly disorganizing, he said gently, "After tea, when you're not so much flustered with work and worry, and more composed in spirit, we'll have a little talk, Sister Hiler. I'm in no hurry to-night, and if you don't ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... all there," she said, abstractedly; and, returning, she kissed her gentle companion, bade her good night, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... dear Greatson," he said abstractedly, "do not want the real thing—from you. Every man to his metier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds are for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is yet to learn how the full force and effect of any demeanor, as evidence of guilt or innocence, can be known, unless it be also fully known to what that demeanor applied,—unless, when a person did or said anything, it be known, not generally and abstractedly, that a paper was read to him, but particularly and specifically what were the contents of that paper: whether they were matters lightly or weightily alleged,—within the power of the party accused to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... explanation, but there was something in the girl's manner of saying it which seemed to give the young man complete satisfaction. Then the speaker seated herself on a fragment of rock, and set her chin upon her hand. It was a round and rather prominent chin, and the young man, who stood abstractedly twirling his hat, making a pivot of the two fingers which protruded through the hole, thought that he had never seen a chin quite like it. Or perhaps, on second thoughts, was it that dimple at the side of the mouth, in which an arch mockery ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... that there was to be a brief respite, however; for the Old Woman turned to the steaming pot and began testing its contents with great seriousness, lifting the ladle to her lips again and again, and looking abstractedly far ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge

... what is relatively right; it still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other. That is to say, though we must ever aim to do what is best for the present times, yet we must ever bear in mind what is abstractedly best; so that the changes we make may be towards it, and not ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... God may be appeased, and mortals blest. Whether from length of time its worth we draw, The word is scarce more ancient than the law: Heaven's early care prescribed for every age; First, in the soul, and after, in the page. Or, whether more abstractedly we look, Or on the writers, or the written book, Whence, but from Heaven, could men unskill'd in arts, 140 In several ages born, in several parts, Weave such agreeing truths? or how, or why Should ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden



Words linked to "Abstractedly" :   absently, abstracted



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