"Preoccupation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the blandishments of the young coquette and the King's response, guessed the whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it, seeing that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... window of a stationer's shop around the corner, gleamed the paste-pot of my daydreams. Every day I passed it, but every day my thoughts were distracted by some hope or disenchantment, some metaphysical perplexity, or giant preoccupation with ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... My greatest preoccupation hitherto has been the problem of decadence, and I had reasons for this. "Good and evil" form only a playful subdivision of this problem. If one has trained one's eye to detect the symptoms of decline, one also ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... of population, the common people are more trustworthy than the corporations, the colleges, or the newspapers. The selfishness, the preoccupation, the anti-republicanism of these, are proverbial. We know that editors are echoes, not leaders, printing what will sell, not what is true. Landor declared that there is a spice of the scoundrel in most literary men. Everybody understands that a corporation's ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... husband's salary. This feeling made her refuse all intercourse with Madame Colleville, then very intimate with Francois Keller, whose parties eclipsed those of the rue Duphot. Nevertheless, she mistook the quietude of the political thinker and the preoccupation of the intrepid worker for the apathetic torpor of an official broken down by the dulness of routine, vanquished by that most hateful of all miseries, the mediocrity that simply earns a living; and she groaned at being married ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... prepared to charge. Charge it did and in those close quarters there was no room to fence for openings. Instantly the two beasts locked in deadly embrace, each seeking the other's throat. Pan-at-lee watched, taking no advantage of the opportunity to escape which their preoccupation gave her. She watched and waited, for into her savage little brain had come the resolve to pin her faith to this strange creature who had unlocked her heart with those four words—"I am Om-at's ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... drawl of preoccupation, and Sally could keep the conflagration under no longer. She was aflame from ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... passed through d'Esgrignon's mind, something like a shudder ran through him when he remembered that he still owed sixty thousand francs, to say nothing of bills to come for another ten thousand. He went back melancholy enough. His friends remarked his ill-disguised preoccupation, and spoke of ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... of this preoccupation was inability to work and little interest in recreation, and as the long weeks wore away I grew morose, morbid, and hypochondriacal. The pride which kept me from sharing my secret with my friend also held me at my post and nerved me to endure the torment in the rapidly ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... my chair will stand in that corner," said Mrs. Bradford, going back to her great preoccupation. "I must measure it. I do wish I had ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... downstairs, "What a strange girl! Is she afraid that the count will regain consciousness? or, on the contrary, does she wish him to speak? Is there any question of a will under all this? What else can it be? What is at stake?" His preoccupation was so intense that he almost forgot where he was going, and he paused on every step. It was not until the fresh air of the courtyard blew upon his face, reminding him of the realities of life, that the charlatanesque element in his nature regained ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... have fluttered at the compliment. In her present preoccupation, it drew from her only a ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... sir, before you go," said Douglas, asserting himself desperately against Conolly's absolutely sincere disregard of him and preoccupation with Marian, "that Mrs. Conolly has been placed in her present position entirely through her own conduct. I repudiate the insinuation that I have deserted her in a foreign city; and I challenge inquiry ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... we find a double preoccupation with the past and with the future, a longing to know what all experience might have been hitherto, and on the other hand to hasten to some wholly different experience, to be contrived immediately with a beating heart and with flying banners. The imagination of the age was intent on history; its conscience ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... verses of "Ethna Carberry" (Mrs. Anna Johnstone MacManus) that are as fine as this. Mrs. Dora Sigerson Shorter is a balladist of stark power, and Miss Eva Gore-Booth a lyric poet whose natural lilt no preoccupation with mysticism can for ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... negligence that the gods and angels have no real objective existence. Believers contend that they really exist objectively and excuse the neglect on account of preoccupation. For example, the God of traditional Christianity is supposed to spend much time counting hairs on the heads of His people and watching sparrows fall to the ground. Sceptics are reverently but earnestly asking: Why does He not keep the sparrows from falling? Why does He not let the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... and it began to rain. He ignored the rain. But December rain has a strange, horrid quality of chilly persistence. It is capable of conquering the most obstinate and serious mental preoccupation, and it conquered Priam's. It forced him to admit that his tortured soul had a fleshly garment and that the fleshly garment was soaked to the marrow. And his soul gradually yielded before the attack of the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... his preoccupation, he had not failed to note the wistfulness in Evelyn's dutifully smiling eyes. He was more than usually tender with her on his return, and successfully banished the wistfulness by giving up his polo to take her for a ride. Honor ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the window with a sigh, and stepped back to the table for the tinder-box, that for the eleventh time he might relight his pipe. He sat down, blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling, and considered. His nature triumphed now over his recent preoccupation; the matter of the moment, which concerned him not at all, engrossed him beyond any other matter of his life. He was intrigued to know in what relation one to the other stood the three so oddly assorted travellers he had seen arrive. He bethought him that, after all, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... of the old Dresden china equipage pleased me, forced itself upon my notice in spite of the deep preoccupation of my mind. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... business, the tyro to whom the elements of his occupation are unknown. We have seen that when he wrote Catilina he had neither sat through nor read any of the plays of the world, whether ancient or modern. The pieces which belong to his student years reveal a preoccupation with Danish dramas of the older school, Oehlenschlaeger and (if we may guess what Norma was) Holberg, but with nothing else. Yet Ole Bull, one of the most far-sighted men of his time, must have perceived the germs of theatrical ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... at dinner on that evening, and scarcely responded to the joking remarks of his brother officers. These jocularly put his preoccupation down to love, for it was an open secret that the baronet admired the fair Peruvian, although no one as yet knew that Random was legally engaged with Don Pedro's consent. The young man good-humoredly stood all the chaff hurled at him, but seized the opportunity to slip away to his ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... at what time the wasting disease, of which he died, first settled upon him; but he seems to have been always somewhat sickly of body, and with just that at times depressing, at times exciting, malady which tells most upon the whole organisation. That preoccupation with death, which in early life led him to write his Biathanatos, with its elaborate apology for suicide, and at the end of his life to prepare so spectacularly for the act of dying, was but one symptom ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Through all her preoccupation and the quick, dexterous movement of her hands she could feel her pity tightening her throat: pity that hurt like love, that was delicious and exquisite like love. Nothing mattered, nothing existed in her ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... tones upon the human organism are set forth with mathematical precision. He need not trouble himself overmuch at the outset with definitions of Beauty. The chief thing is to become aware of the long and intimate preoccupation of men with beautiful objects and to remember that any inquiry into the nature and laws of poetry will surely lead him into a deeper curiosity as to the nature and manifestations of aesthetic feeling ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... don't understand morbidezza, and that kind of thing. You will come to my house, I hope, and I will show you what I did in this way," he continued, turning to young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled from his preoccupation in observing Dorothea. Ladislaw had made up his mind that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry Casaubon, and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed that opinion even if he had believed her. As it was, he took her words ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... all so beautiful in the midst of the watchfulness imprisoning me," she sighed, ever returning to her mild, pathetic preoccupation. ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... he told himself, as he noted that his speedometer had dropped from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... but a step or two to my hotel, where I got my lighted candle from the porter and mounted the four flights to my own room. Although I could not deny that I was drunk, I was at the same time lucidly rational and practical. I had but one preoccupation—to be up in time on the morrow for my work; and when I observed the clock on my chimney-piece to have stopped, I decided to go down stairs again and give directions to the porter. Leaving the candle burning and my door open, to ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Aberdeen to hear me speak, and as I looked down on them from the platform of the opera house, I detected on their faces an expression which was not so much attention, as preoccupation. They were not listening to my words, they were thinking of my relationship to them, of the mystery involved in my being there on the platform surrounded by the men of the county whom they most respected. They could not ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the pale and quivering lips were pressed to her forehead. The caress was not a feigned tenderness. Mrs. Kinloch really loved the girl, with such love as she had to bestow; and if her manner had been latterly abstracted or harsh, it was from preoccupation. She was soon satisfied that the suspicion she dreaded had not found place in the girl's mind. Leading the way by imperceptible approaches, she spoke in her softest tones of her joy at Hugh's altered manners, her hopes of his future, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... almost unbroken silence. When preoccupation withstands the influence of a social meal with one pleasant companion, the mental scene must be surpassingly vivid. Just as she was rising a tap came ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Hen did not see, but he said it was of no consequence. Then, coming to the edge of the wharf, he shook hands all round, never noticing, in the preoccupation of his mind, the knife that Franci flashed and brandished in his eyes as a parting dramatic effect. He held John's hand long, and seemed to labour for words, but found none; and so they slipped away and left him standing alone on the wharf, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... was learning a hard lesson. Harlan's changeless preoccupation hurt her cruelly, but, woman-like, she considered it a manifestation of genius and endeavoured to be proud accordingly. It had not occurred to her that there could ever be anything in Harlan's thought ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... skyiest works there; and the tomb of the youthful and princely prelate became the strangest and most beautiful thing in that strange and beautiful place. After the execution of the Pazzi conspirators, Botticelli is employed to paint their portraits. This preoccupation with serious thoughts and sad images might easily have resulted, as it did, for instance, in the gloomy villages of the Rhine, or in the overcrowded parts of medieval Paris, as it still does in many a village of the Alps, in something ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... his wig with its profligate ringlets, gave the lie to his apparel and pretended bearing, just as his thoughts clashed and jangled with his speech. But these worthy people ended by crediting such discordances to the preoccupation of his busy mind. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... ingenuous, kind or cruel, that pass over the bridge. Perhaps the public may be surprised to hear that the general expression on the faces of Londoners of all ranks varies from the sad to the morose; and that their general mien is one of haste and gloomy preoccupation. Such a staring fact is paramount in sociological evidence. And the observer of it would be justified in summoning Heaven, the legislature, the county council, the churches, and the ruling classes, and saying to them: "Glance at these faces, and don't boast too much about ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... cases there seems to be a temporary preternatural activity of the imagination in certain directions, of which no very obvious explanation is discoverable. Thus, we sometimes find our minds dwelling on some absent friend, without being able to give any reason for this mental preoccupation. And in this way arise strong temporary leanings to illusory perception. It may be said, indeed, that all unwonted activity of the imagination, however it arises, has as its immediate result a temporary mode of expectation, definite or indefinite, which easily confuses our ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... preoccupation of thought with other things. We have but a certain limited amount of energy of thought or attention, and if we waste it, as much as most of us do, on 'things seen and temporal,' there is none left for the unseen realities and the God who is 'eternal, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... inconsideration; inconsiderateness &c. adj.; oversight; inadvertence, inadvertency, nonobservance, disregard. supineness &c. (inactivity) 683; etourderie[French], want of thought; heedlessness &c. (neglect) 460; insouciance &c. (indifference) 866. abstraction; absence of mind, absorption of mind; preoccupation, distraction, reverie, brown study, deep musing, fit of abstraction. V. be inattentive &c. adj.; overlook, disregard; pass by &c. (neglect) 460 not observe &c. 457; think little of. close one's eyes to, shut one's eyes to; pay no attention to; dismiss from one's thoughts, discard from one's thoughts, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... if my country had spoken through the voice of my officer. I should feel proud and honored to be able to serve my country by obeying its commands. No thought of self—no vulgar preoccupation with my own petty vanity could touch my mind at such a moment. To me my officer would not be a mere man: he would be for the moment—whatever his personal frailties—the incarnation of ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... smash, with a sudden offstage clatter and thump and cry which reminded me there were more people in the world than Chaddie McKail and her philandering old husband. For during that interregnum of parental preoccupation Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down the lower half of the front-stairs in an empty drawer commandeered from my bedroom dresser. Their descent, apparently, had been about as precipitate as that of their equally ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... look at him the least bit harder; but she was already, in a manner, explaining. "Her preoccupation is probably on two different heads. One of them would make her hurry back, but the other makes her stay. She's commissioned to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... as the staff officer rode up to the carriage door. "Colonel Connor has been driven back from Front Royal." Jackson smiled grimly, but made no reply. His eyes fixed themselves apparently upon some distant object. Then his preoccupation suddenly disappeared. He read the dispatch which he held in his hand, tore it in pieces, after his accustomed fashion, and, leaning forward, rested his head upon his hands and apparently fell asleep. He soon roused himself, however, and turning to Mr. Boteler, who tells the story, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... attempt to bring the Radcliffe romance up to date; terror in Ainsworth's other novels; Marryat's Phantom Ship; Bulwer Lytton's interest in the occult; Zanoni, and Lytton's theory of the Intelligences; The Haunted and the Haunters; A Strange Story and Lytton's preoccupation with mesmerism. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... reflected glory in being the friend of Winckelmann, who was reputed to have profited by his teaching in art. Under the inspiration of Oeser Goethe's interest in the plastic arts in general, which had received its first impulse at home, became a permanent preoccupation for the remainder of his life. He took regular lessons in drawing from Oeser, made acquaintance with all the collections, public and private, to be found in Leipzig, and even made a secret visit to the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... preoccupation with the Governor's strange performance, was so slow to respond that Miss Seebrook, thinking that he was deliberating as to which star he should bestow upon her in return, generously broadened the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... inclined to think the destination of the French. Yet, being dependent upon a wind then practically constant in direction, it would not do to yield a mile of ground, except upon a mature, if rapid, deliberation. Nelson's own mind was, by constant preoccupation, familiar beforehand with the bearings of the different conditions of any situation likely to occur, and with the probable inferences to be drawn; his opinions were, so to say, in a constant state of formation and development, ready for instantaneous application to any emergency as it arose. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... looked about, as if noting for the first time Farrington's preoccupation. "Is he quite well?" he ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... "eoliths," and they have been traced back by Verworn to the Miocene of the Auvergne, and by Rutot even to the upper Oligocene. Although these eoliths are even nowadays the subject of many different views, the preoccupation with them has kept the problem of the age of the human race continually ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... his medical attendant with a sour surprise. There was a latent anxiety in the doctor's eye, a latent preoccupation in the doctor's manner, which he was at a loss to account for. For a moment the two faces confronted each other silently, in marked national contrast—the Scotchman's, long and lean, hard and regular; the German's, plump and florid, soft and shapeless. One ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... he would like to ask what Ford meant to do, but he refrained. There was something besides preoccupation in Ford's face, and it did not make for easy questioning. Jim did yield to his curiosity to the extent of watching through a window, when Ford went out, to see where he was going; and when he saw Ford had the jug, and that he ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... was being discussed neither of the pair noticed, in their preoccupation, that little Abraham had crept into the room, and was awaiting an opportunity of asking them ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Wharfside was well aware, human creatures under such circumstances are liable to have, the interested community could not quite make out; but that something more than ordinary was going on, and that the prettiest of all the "Provident ladies" had a certain preoccupation in her blue eyes, was a fact perfectly apparent to that intelligent society. And, indeed, one of the kinder matrons in Prickett's Lane had even ventured so far as to wish Miss Lucy "a 'appy weddin' when the time comes." "And there's to be a sight o' weddings this ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... with which Mademoiselle Zephirine engulfed her gains in those capacious pockets of hers,—for the old blind woman no longer repressed upon her face the visible signs of her feelings. Madame du Guenic's evident preoccupation was the chief topic of conversation, however. The chevalier had remarked the abstraction of the beautiful Irish woman. When they reached Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's door-step, and her page had gone in, the old lady answered, confidentially, the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... source of Deadman's Pool gave a new interest to the valley, and the boys played the role of detectives under an arrangement to report the results of their investigations at night. Each spent a day of careful observation, and at the camp- fire each wore a look of preoccupation. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... labors had the character of experiments, which, nevertheless, were so guided by experience that they were rarely futile or unremunerative. On themes that accorded with his tastes and pursuits he would often talk earnestly and well, but his silence and preoccupation at other times proved that it is not best to be dominated by one idea, even though it be ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his annoyance, or to keep himself from temptation, he bent closer over the article he was writing for The Museion. She came and stood beside him, watching him as he worked, still with his air of passionate preoccupation. Presently he found himself drawn against his will into the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... consent to annihilate my overwhelming desire to meet you. Last night, in spite of me, your name, which was burning me, sprang from my lips. My husband, one of your admirers, it seems, appeared to be somewhat humiliated by the preoccupation which, indeed, was absorbing me and causing unbearable shivers to run all through me. A common friend of yours and mine—for why should I not tell you that you know me, if to have met socially is ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... storm he had stirred up. But surely he knew Dick in all his moods! He had probably encountered it before. They sped on through the fragrant summer night, and she talked at random, hardly knowing what she said. If the squire noticed her preoccupation, he made no comment. He had conceived a great ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said that he ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... throwing her shawl over her shoulders. Every time she was given a commission the strong desire seized her to accomplish it promptly and well, and she was unable to think of anything but the task before her. Now, lowering her brows with an air of preoccupation, she asked zealously: ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... "the white man's charter of freedom," had become Lincoln's shibboleth. Various utterances and written fragments of the summer of 1854, reveal the intensity of his preoccupation. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... daubs' that wandering about, with a bag on one's back, from mountain to mountain, under the pretext of studying and of sketching nature. I know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free; without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy, without any counselor save your eyes. You pull up, because a running brook seduces you, or because you are attracted, in front of an inn, by the smell of potatoes frying. Sometimes it is ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... found I was doing it mechanically, and had to begin over again, making an effort to keep my mind to my task. I think it is an axiom that no man can properly perform the business of life who indulges in emotional preoccupation. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the three miles behind her; and she grew a little afraid lest in the white darkness she might miss the little church; once past it, though never so little, and looking back would be in vain. It was a question if she would not pass it even with her best endeavour. In her preoccupation it had never once occurred to Diana to speculate on what she would find at the church, if she reached it; and now she had but one thought, not to miss reaching it. She had some anxious minutes of watching, for her rate of travelling had been slower than she knew, and there was a ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... up at her in vague rebuke of her levity, and there was suppressed tenderness in his eyes, notwithstanding his preoccupation with ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... prophecy by these remarks: "In 1805 or 6, amid the preoccupation of war and military politics, he [Fourier] foresaw and described with accuracy the future formation of vast joint-stock companies destined to monopolize and control all branches of industry, commerce and finance, and establish what he called 'An industrial or commercial feudalism'—a feudalism ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the talk pivoted inevitably round the departed Dobson, she sat immersed in preoccupation so deep as to be conspicuous even in Missy. Aunt Nettie, smiling, once started to make a comment but, unseen by his dreaming daughter, was silenced by Mr. Merriam. And immediately after the meal she'd eaten without seeing, the faithful tablet again in ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... preoccupation of practical action, coming between reality and ourselves, produces the fragmentary world of common-sense, much as an absorbing medium resolves into separate rays the continuous spectrum of a luminous body; whilst the rhythm of duration, and the degree of tension peculiar to our consciousness, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... door, with Miss Dibbs in close attendance. The imprudent child could not forbear to glance at me; but I, seeing the dragon's watchful eye upon me, remained absolutely irresponsive. Nay, to throw Miss Dibbs off the scent, I fixed my eyes on my neighbor with assumed preoccupation. Flushing painfully, Mary hurried out, and I heard Miss Dibbs sniff again. I chuckled over her obvious disapproval of my neighbor and myself. The excellent woman evidently thought us no better than we ought to ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... up at him with the blank stare of preoccupation, and changed expression as the question filtered into his brain and fitted somehow into the puzzle. He grinned, said maybe he would, folded the sheet of paper filled with what looked like a meaningless jumble of letters and figures, bought a plat of that township and begged some ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... concentrated look of one who listens stamped upon his face. His sharp ears had detected some sound which—perhaps through her preoccupation—she had not noticed. He stepped quickly to the Captain's side, and taking up the lamp by its chain, he leapt into the air like a clown, and came down on his heels with a thud that shook the chamber. Simultaneously he dropped the lamp with a clatter, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... night Charles went back to Lancaster Gate, as I could not fail to remark, with a strange air of complete and painful preoccupation. Never before in his life had I ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... time to recover herself. She ventured another look at George Bartram. The impression which he produced on her this time roused her curiosity immediately. His face and manner plainly expressed anxiety and preoccupation of mind. He looked oftener at his plate than at his uncle, and at Magdalen herself (except one passing inspection of the new parlor-maid, when the admiral spoke to her) he never looked at all. Some uncertainty ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... You said you'd been a partner. You have. Some day I'm going to tell you how grateful I am." In his preoccupation, he forgot to tie up the blankets; and, one hand on "Red's" shoulder, he let the cord fall on ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... manifestly something must be deducted; we are in wonder-land, and among supernatural or magical conditions. But the forging of the shield and the wonderful house of Alcinous are no merely incongruous episodes in Homer, but the consummation of what is always characteristic of him, a constant preoccupation, namely, with every form of lovely craftsmanship, resting on all things, as he says, like the shining of the sun. We seem to pass, in reading him, through the treasures of some royal collection; in him ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of a ship. His feet accustomed to insecure ground, still were keeping on terra firma a certain sensation of elastic unsteadiness. His goings and comings were not awakening the curiosity of the people seated in the open, for a common preoccupation seemed to be monopolizing all the men and women. The groups were exchanging impressions. Those who happened to have a paper in their hands, saw their neighbors approaching them with a smile of interrogation. There had suddenly disappeared that distrust and suspicion which impels ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... laughing, he'll know it's about him. He's in the kitchen, now. He's come in the back way. Do be quiet." She had given her hand without other greeting in her preoccupation to each of the Sewells in turn, and now she passed ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... of discussing principles, drew pictures of the material advantages of the consular rule, less to convert the countess than to detect in her eyes some expression which might enlighten him as to her projects. Gothard's frequent disappearances, the long rides of his mistress, and her evident preoccupation, which, for the last few days, had appeared in her face, together with other little signs not to be hidden in the silence and tranquillity of such a life, had roused the fears of these submissive royalists. Still, as no event happened, and perfect quiet appeared to reign ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... think he was right; but surely it was no harm to overhear the affianced of a 'bus-driver talking tender nothings to him all the way from Knightsbridge to Kensington, bending over from the seat she had taken next him. The witness was going up to a dentist in that region, and professed that in his preoccupation with the lovers he forgot the furies of a raging tooth, and decided not to ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... was suspicious. Soft cheeks became rosy at his approach—partly, perhaps, because soft and dainty toes in satin slippers were trodden upon with maternal emphasis at that moment. Soft eyes looked love into eyes that, alas! only returned preoccupation. There was always room on an engagement card for Paul's name. There was always space in the smallest drawing-room for Paul's person, vast though the latter was. There was—fond mothers conveyed it to him subtly after supper and champagne—an aching void ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... natural disposition was evidently a bright and gay one, but this evening sadness overshadowed her, and to such a point that, in spite of her efforts to be lively and pleasant, she could not hide her sad preoccupation. ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... Modern Republican," because the political philosophy which he espoused was precisely that of Eisenhower (Larson is now, 1962, Director of the World Rule of Law Center at Duke University, where his full-time preoccupation is working for repeal of the Connally Reservation, so that the World Court can take jurisdiction over United ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... with due enthusiasm, yet with a certain uneasy preoccupation in his manner. "Were you up before day, did you tell me, to get these? That seems too ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Jacobin party, the declared enemies of the order of things which he wished to establish, capable, he thought, of any crimes, and whose works he had had the opportunity of judging. This exclusive preoccupation sometimes turned away his attention from more pressing perils and bolder enemies. A conspiracy to which the police had lent themselves, and which had failed without any of the accomplices daring to put their hands on their arms, roused public attention, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... his anxious preoccupation he could see that the church itself was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past. For four centuries it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had to tell was not calculated to encourage Jumping Frog in his high-handed policy. His face fell considerably, and Pepin, taking advantage of his preoccupation, walked off with Antoine to ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... an article on "The Triple Alliance" and in the Magazine of 1898 and 1899 there are papers on "The Colonial Expansion of the Great European Powers", "The Italian Riots of May, 1898", "The Philippine Question", "The Dreyfus Incident." This preoccupation of young college women of the nineteenth century with modern industrial and political history is significant when we consider the part that woman has elected to play in politics and reform since the beginning of ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... the Restoration the time had come when our nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the time had likewise come when our nation felt the imperious need of freeing itself from the absorbing preoccupation which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was impossible that this freedom should be brought about without some negative excess, without some neglect and impairment of the religious life of the soul; and the spiritual history ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... deal of thought to any of those matters, he thinks about them since he has felt himself dominated by this singular personage, and Adrian Baker has become, in fact, his fixed idea, his absorbing thought, his unceasing preoccupation, his constant monomania. Berta's father and the housekeeper may very well attribute to him marvellous powers, suggested by their own excited imaginations; but we must not share in those hallucinations, nor are we to conclude from them that Adrian ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... great purpose. The disease will work itself out. And I know God's whole truth to man was revealed long since, and any one of calm soul may know it. The hope of learning the purpose through the ages, the following of the gleam, is the preoccupation of the insane. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... to the city together. He was very busy looking over papers, and noticing his preoccupation I did not attempt to engage ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... that, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon the ground, people often wondered whether he was thinking of anything at all, or whether such intentness did betoken a grave preoccupation. Sometimes they tested him. "What you thinkin' about, Jim?" one would ask him, when they met upon the road; but Jim never replied in any illuminating way. If he answered at all, it was only to query, "How's your gardin?" and then, as soon ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the box. He was silent as she opened it. She noted his preoccupation, his gray eyes looking off to ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... watching the child's preoccupation for a moment, in a tone of half exasperated amusement). Well, but you're the quiet one, surely! (Mary looks up at him with a shy smile, her eyes still full of dreams.) Glory be to God, I'd not know a soul was alive in the room, barrin' myself. What is it you're at, Mary, that ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... pages with it, or what?" asked Muishkin, still rather absently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which the conversation had ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that they must unlearn certain things the schools had taught them: preoccupation with the relative merits of Gothic and Classic—tweedledum and tweedledee. Furthermore, they must learn certain neglected lessons from the engineer, lessons that they will be able immeasurably to better, for although the engineer is a very monster of competence and efficiency within his limits, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... trouble to conceal that he was trying to appease her. Their parting sank to the level of the commonplace for he shook hands hastily, and her look of appeal flattened itself ineffectively against his preoccupation. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... hero-worshipful gaze focussed on him from all the tables of the Caffe' Greco. But not for adulation had he come to Rome. Rome was what he had come for; and the fussers of the coteries must not pester him in his golden preoccupation with the antique world. Tischbein was very useful in warding off the profane throng—fanning away the flies. Let us hope he was actuated solely by zeal in Goethe's interest, not by the desire to swagger as ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... if nothing else. But he forgets, if thus he thinks and thus would have you think, that the man who now confronts you from the bar is separated by an immense experience from the boy he was at that hour of surprise and selfish preoccupation. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Charleston—that his interests in the South had become so large as to require personal attention; also that he had new enterprises in view. The young man's interest and ambition were naturally kindled. As Mara had taken the Bodines and their affairs as an antidote for her trouble, he sought relief in the preoccupation which the Ainsleys might bring to his mind. Accordingly he met father and daughter at the station and escorted them to the hotel with ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... conclusions drawn in 1871. I have seen it anew of late with its population of 700,000 souls. It is a place to-day to excite wonder, and pity, and fear. All the tides of its life move with bustling swiftness. Nowhere else are the streets more full, and nowhere else are the faces so expressive of preoccupation, of anxiety, of excitement. It is making money fast and accumulating a physiological debt of which that bitter creditor, the future, will ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... investigators that they attempted to provide it in social terms. It is, indeed, one of the primary characteristics of the British mind to be interested in problems of conduct rather than of thought. The seventeenth century had, for the most part, been interested in theology and government; and its preoccupation, in both domains, with supernatural sanctions, made its conclusions unfitted for a period dominated by rationalism. Locke regarded his Human Understanding as the preliminary to an ethical enquiry; and Hume seems to have considered his Principles of Morals the most vital of his works. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... his life, Frederick had been undergoing a crisis. But a little more and his preoccupation with Goethe's "Italian Journey," his intercourse with the artists, and the vast number of his impressions of sublime art would have turned him aside from science. But one day he chanced to meet Mrs. Von Thorn and her daughter Angele. He became engaged, and there was no question now ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... splendid prelude. For the Browning of 1840 it was no longer a sufficient task to trace the epochs in the spiritual history of lonely idealists, to pursue the problem of existence in minds themselves preoccupied with its solution. "Soul" is still his fundamental preoccupation; but the continued play of an eager intellect and vivacious senses upon life has immensely multiplied the points of concrete experience which it vivifies and transfigures to his eyes. It is as if a painter ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... would be very sad if absence and preoccupation with such a thing as Art were to dull the ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... an atmosphere in which religion was our main preoccupation, I cannot recall ever hearing it appealed to as a counteragent to this most persistent enemy of man. In dealing with your daily dreads you simply counted God out. Either He had nothing to do with them or He brought them upon you. In any case His intervention on your behalf ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... trying to make you understand how I feel when—when it's that way with me.... As it generally is." He raised one hand and let it fall with a gesture of despondency so eloquent that it roused Kellogg out of his own preoccupation. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... will be remembered, had covenanted with the papacy to protect it from its adversaries. The king of the Lombards had taken advantage of Charlemagne's seeming preoccupation with his German affairs to attack the city of Rome again. The pope immediately demanded the aid of Charlemagne, who prepared to carry out his father's pledges. He ordered the Lombard ruler to return the cities that ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... was Andre's preoccupation, he could not fail to notice that his visitor's eyes sought the veiled picture with strange persistency. While M. de Mussidan was looking at the various sketches on the walls, Andre had time to ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... novelty, or their fullness. Employed chiefly, during his sojourn in Sweden, in work on mineral chemistry, he has remained all his life the undisputed chief in this branch of science in German universities. This preparation and preoccupation, which one might have thought sufficient to occupy his time, did not, however, prevent him from taking the chief part in the development of organic chemistry, and of filling one of the most elevated positions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... sole child of any real importance—had arranged that her progress should be arrested at just that stage, and had stationed a calm and diplomatic woman to convince her that her child was indeed the main preoccupation of the Horace Mann School. A pretty sight—the interview! It charmed me as the sight of an ingenious engine in motion ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett |
