"Preoccupied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the firm thus preoccupied the business "winked out." Berry died, leaving Lincoln the debts of the firm, twelve hundred dollars,—to him an appalling sum, which he humorously called "the national debt"; and on which he continued ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left." This plainly implies an acknowledged right in either to occupy whatever ground he pleased that was not preoccupied by other tribes. "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan, and journeyed east; and Abraham dwelt ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... while Walter Fetherston was preoccupied by these curious apprehensions, the original of that old carte-de-visite was seated in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel, smoking a cigar with a tall, broad-shouldered, red-bearded man ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... through a crowded room and notice that some of its occupants are not adding their voices to the chatter. We resolve to study these unspeaking persons. Some of them merely have nothing to say, or are timid or preoccupied; or it may be they deliberately have set themselves not to talk. These are silent. Some plainly desire not to talk, it may be in general or it may be upon some particular topic; they may (but need not) regard themselves as superior to their associates, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... by Dorothy's side, trying to bring back her strength. It entered my mind at times that after all I was not as tender a husband to Dorothy as I should have been. I was with her a good deal, to be sure. At the same time, I was much preoccupied. She did not like politics, and could not share my interest in that direction. The condition of the country really distressed her. She had seen slavery in its benign aspect, and she was impatient with any criticism ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... half-closed in one of those daydreams in which Miss Mary—I fear to the danger of school discipline—was lately in the habit of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door. On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... narrow conception if we were to consider as scientific the partisans of the theory alone; more than anywhere else discussion is fruitful in the natural sciences; and if it is necessary to be constantly preoccupied with the general ideas of the day, it is not at all necessary to adhere to them servilely. The naturalists of to-day are in possession of a formula with which we must always preoccupy ourselves; in other words, there ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... cabins and getting them ready for occupancy. On Saturday morning he went down and told Uncle Jeb that he was starting for home. He was greatly relieved that the old man did not ask any questions about his companion. Uncle Jeb was much preoccupied now with the ever-growing multitude of scouts and their multifarious needs, and gave slight thought to that little sprig of a camp up ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... insight of some one wiser than himself, or of society as expressed in its customs and institutions. But no man ever admitted that his life was purely a matter of expediency, or that in his dominant ideal he was the victim of chance. In the background of the busiest and most preoccupied life of affairs, there dwells the conviction that such living is appropriate to the universe; that it is called for by the circumstances of ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... happiness and virtue,—in cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure. He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but lofty and unselfish. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... joined the others at the fire, and explained that at the hotel-keeper's suggestion they had meant to head for the Indian village, and make inquiries on their way up at the logging camp. Though Blake talked to them, he had a preoccupied look, and Harding knew that he was thinking of the letter. He had, however, no opportunity for questioning him, and he waited until the next day, when Emile, whom they were helping, chose a shorter way across a ravine than that taken by the police and the men with the bob-sled. When ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... I turn to you with such a confession? I am ashamed now"—and she impetuously dashed her tears away with a toy of a handkerchief. "But the words spoke themselves before I could stop them. You see, I have no one to talk to—no one to advise me. I think I must be the loneliest girl in all this big preoccupied world." ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... hint of a break in the Wilson cabinet. Supposedly, all was harmony. Yet this correspondent, judging from the excited manner of the Secretary of State, the sharpness of his noncommittal replies, and his preoccupied air as he emerged from the cabinet room, scented the trouble and published the following story hours before other correspondents had their eyes opened to the history-making ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... write in a popular style, to effectually serve a purpose. They also prove his enthusiasm for the liberty of discussion, and how, although he was always willing to treat on politics alone, he was preoccupied with metaphysical ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... true womanly nature, capable of love, anger, and devotion. She had a look, too, of refinement, like one who might have been a better lady than most, had she been allowed the opportunity. When alone she seemed preoccupied and sad; but she was not often alone; there was usually by her side a heavy, dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary of speech and gesture—not from caution, but poverty of disposition; a man like a ditcher, unlovely and uninteresting; whom she petted and tended and waited on with her eyes as ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Aunt M'riar should start and flinch from speech, and that Uncle Mo should look preoccupied about everything outside the conversation? Can you imagine the sort of feeling an intensely truthful person like Aunt M'riar would have under such circumstances? How could she, without feeling like duplicity itself, talk about this son as though he were unknown to her, when his foul ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and with a thump of exultation his heart urged him across the street toward her. She evidently had not seen him; her eyes were on the ground and she seemed preoccupied. In her hand she held a letter. A gasp of astonishment, almost of alarm, came from her lips, her eyes opened wide in that sort of surprise which reveals something like terror, and then she crumpled the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... sits down irresolutely, and bestows recognitions on the assembled officials with a preoccupied air.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... been so preoccupied, if they had looked out of that window, they would have seen a horse and buggy approaching over the dunes. Seth and Mrs. Bascom were on the buggy seat, and the lightkeeper was driving with one hand. The equipage had been hired at the Eastboro livery ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Yet she had suddenly declared her intention of returning to Atherly, to consult him on affairs of importance. Peter was both surprised and eager; there was but little affection between them, but, preoccupied with his one idea, he was satisfied that she wanted to ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... preoccupied with other matters that he wanted me to talk to you about," said her husband, hesitatingly. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... the distant golden head. It seemed as if they had wanted to avoid him, they had gone so quickly, just bowed and been carried on—if only Chrystie would look back and smile. Standing on his toes, jostled and elbowed, he caught a glimpse of them, all three, outside the door. They appeared preoccupied, the two girls talking across Aunt Ellen, with no backward glances for a young man struggling to reach them—anyone could have seen they had forgotten his existence. With a set face he turned and made for the side exit. They had no use ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... when this resolve was almost ready to shape into the deed, the sensible reasoning on which it was based was suddenly upset. The maid Flora came, bringing a new message from the preoccupied ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... at once from the strange likeness to her own son, and her welcome was kindly given. But she was anxious and preoccupied, having but risen from the perusal of the despatches Paul had brought; and although her natural courage and hopefulness would not permit her to despond, she could not but admit that danger menaced the cause of the ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... house itself where bits of it peered suggestively across the orchards. Mrs. Franklyn seemed always busy about something or other, and never interfered with us except to propose motoring, tea in another part of the lawn, and so forth. She flitted everywhere, preoccupied, yet apparently doing nothing. The house engulfed her rather. No visitor called. For one thing, she was not supposed to be back from abroad yet; and for another, I think, the neighborhood—her husband's neighborhood—was puzzled by her sudden cessation ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... all young men had been to Mabel a source of wonder and of pride. Even when the young men were the friends of her husband and of herself, the preoccupied manner with which Vera received them did not provoke in Mabel any resentment. It rather increased her approbation. Although horrified at the recklessness of the girl, she had approved even when Vera rejected an offer of marriage from ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... meal I have, not unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their separate stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit to a gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race, preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—hadou mageiros—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... haven't told us how you came to find our house," said Roger, suggesting a perfectly natural line of inquiries that caused Humpy to become deeply preoccupied with a pump he was operating in a basin of ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... one of these wild swoops into the realm of the Death Angel, and totter to her room and lie down, and murmur: "I wonder what ailed Kenneth to-day. He seemed Preoccupied." ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... tranquil days of which nothing broke the peaceful monotony. The children were extraordinarily tractable, perhaps because Mrs. van Cannan seemed too preoccupied to lay any injunctions upon them. True, Roddy made one of his mysterious disappearances, but it was not long before Christine, hard on his heels, discovered him emerging from an outhouse, where she later assured herself that he could have come to no great ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... they work seemingly more by a process of thought and feeling rather than with the aid of tools. For they sit on the ground with a bowl of water, a small charcoal fire, a strip of metal, and a deeply preoccupied look, and after a time the article is finished. The overlaying of silver by antimony is their particular craft. Owing to the orders they received, they soon began to charge prohibitive prices. At certain times it was possible to get egret ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... voiceless contemplation of the wide view over the Reservation the Scotsman stirred in his chair. The thoughtful knitting of his heavy brows relaxed, and he glanced at the preoccupied face of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... not much talk over our meal. Mr. Craig was evidently preoccupied, and as blue as his politeness would allow him. Slavin's victory weighed upon his spirits. Finally he burst out, 'Look here! I can't, I won't stand it; something must be done. Last Christmas this town was for two ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... much preoccupied with the sense of form, and makes these excellent observations to him—perhaps her best piece of literary criticism. 'You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is but the effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Dalrymple his dinner and kept him company for a while. But he was gloomy and preoccupied, and before long she retired to the regions of the laundry, which was installed in a long low building that ran out into the vegetable garden at the back of the house. Monday was generally the day for ironing the heavy linen of the convent, which was taken up on Tuesdays ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... do," said Calvert. "I hate the very sight of a wasp-waisted, self-sufficient Prussian subaltern. They're everywhere. Imperial arrogance seems to pervade even their beer gardens." His voice trailed off into silence again, as in a preoccupied manner his finger wandered over the map. It stopped suddenly as he leaned closer to study the pink plot on which it rested. "Krovitch; Krovitch!" he muttered, "now where the devil have I heard of Krovitch? Russian province ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... only see sharply, but read aright what he sees. The facts in the life of nature that are transpiring about us are like written words that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or, the writing is a cipher and he must furnish the key. A female oriole was one day observed very much preoccupied under a shed where the refuse from the horse stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn fowls, scolding them sharply when they came too near her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just beyond. The bird, not finding what she wanted outside, boldly ventured into the stable, and was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... apologise to me for the trouble in which she had involved me. As the short drive to Frankfort often helped to entertain me and distract my thoughts, I gladly fulfilled her wishes, and found her in a state of convalescence but still weak, and obviously preoccupied with the effort to fortify my mind against all disagreeable surmises about herself. She said that Herr von Guaita was like an anxious, almost hypersensitive father to her. She told me that she was very ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... was bitter, the explanation was to be sought in the mere force of habit dating from childhood, and had, indeed, a pathetic significance to one sufficiently disengaged from the sphere of her acerbity to be able to judge fairly such manifestations of character. A rigid veto upon all things secular, a preoccupied severity of visage, a way of speaking which suggested difficult tolerance of injury, an ostentation of discomfort in bodily inactivity—these were but traditions of happier times; to keep her Sunday thus was to remind ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... observing its position, the waiter—a secret agent on the case—deliberately tipped over a champagne glass that stood within a few inches of the bag. Of course, Mademoiselle was worried lest the wine run over on her gown and while thus preoccupied, the waiter, stammering apologies, mopped up the table cloth with his serviette—mopped up the wine and cleverly covering the bag folded it in the napkin and hurried away. In two minutes he had opened it, abstracted the letter from the young ordnance officer; and was back, apologizing ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... nervous face that was likely to lure strangers and irritate familiars. In the streets and restaurants people looked at her with interest. But people who spoke to her often lost their interest. There was a silence about her like a night mist. She seemed in this silence preoccupied with something that did not concern them. Men found the recollection of her more pleasing than her presence. Something they remembered of her seemed always to be missing when they encountered her again. Lonely evening fields and weary peasants moving ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... chattered so fluently and frankly just before, that her absolute silence might have suggested to me the possibility that she had heard and was pondering things not intended for her knowledge, had I been less preoccupied. Enured to the perils of war, of the chase, of Eastern diplomacy, and of travel in the wildest parts of the Earth, I do not pretend indifference to the fear of assassination, and especially of poison. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... two stately girls, whom he did not name. Thorwald and Zenith kindly helped the doctor and me to answer the many questions which these new friends were so eager to ask, so that, as breakfast proceeded, all became engaged in the conversation. My own mind, however, was somewhat preoccupied. I thought perhaps Thorwald might be in haste to depart for home, and I was determined not to let the company separate till I had made an attempt to discover who my midnight singer was. So, when there came a convenient lull in the talk, ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... attained the summit of her hopes, and an event had just taken place which preoccupied her. Micheline, deferring to her mother's wishes, had decided to allow herself to be betrothed to Pierre Delarue, who had just lost his mother, and whose business improved daily. The young girl, accustomed to treat Pierre like a brother, had easily consented to accept ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... do not imagine that; he is evidently troubled to-day. You saw how preoccupied he was. Something has gone wrong, something annoys him. He did not ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... past two months, however, he was aware of a different quality in Mrs. Coleman's silence. She held to it even when he wished to talk, answering him in monosyllables. She was preoccupied. The senseless turmoil in which the town had been thrown by the Co-Citizens' agitation was foreign to all he had ever known of her nature and retiring disposition, and he was loath to connect her with it. But he could not help knowing ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... make him divine all this in the chariness of her promise to write. She would write; of course she would. Buthe would be busy, preoccupied, on the move: it was for him to lether know when he wished a word, to spare her the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... smile hung in the corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which the Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. "Very good of you to bring my things," he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the receding ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "Sir, the house is on fire!" shrieked a frightened servant, running into Dr. Lawson's study. "Go and tell your mistress," said the preoccupied professor, without looking up from the book he was reading; "you know I have no charge of household matters." A woman whose house was on fire threw a looking-glass out of the window, and carried a ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... himself esteemed, appears to have been principally preoccupied with the moral problem. He was the author of the famous apologue which represented Hercules having to choose between two paths, the one being that of virtue, the other of pleasure. Like Socrates later on, he too was subject to the terrible accusation of impiety, and underwent capital punishment. ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... formally adopt Christianity (early 4th century). Despite periods of autonomy, over the centuries Armenia came under the sway of various empires including the Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Persian, and Ottoman. It was incorporated into Russia in 1828 and the USSR in 1920. Armenian leaders remain preoccupied by the long conflict with Muslim Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a primarily Armenian-populated region, assigned to Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1920s by Moscow. Armenia and Azerbaijan began fighting over the area in 1988; the struggle escalated after both countries attained independence ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... which he was desirous of hearing, and which he almost feared to hear. Men spoke to him, and women also, but he hardly answered. His aunt once called him into her room, and with a cautionary frown on her brow, bade him go dance. "Don't look so dreadfully preoccupied," she said to him in a whisper. But he shook his head at her, almost savagely, and went away, and did not dance. Dance! How was he to dance with such an enterprise as that upon his mind? Even to Burgo Fitzgerald the task of running away with another man's wife ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... his soft white nose and weary neck for a long, long time under the effigy of his namesake swinging overhead, and when the Cheap Jack did come out, he seemed so preoccupied that the tired beast got home with ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... had no further questions to ask. He seemed preoccupied and passed the recess that followed the prospector's testimony in pacing the corridor. Lucky Banks had been suggested as an intelligent and honest fellow on whom the Government might rely; but his statements failed to dovetail with his knowledge of Alaska and the case, and after ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... that we forget things it would be well for us to remember." He had come in that day with a certain preoccupied grimness of expression which was not unknown to her. It was generally after one of his absences that he ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... carve the chicken before her. No one else made their appearance; but Mrs. Sefton did not apologize for their absence. She scarcely eat anything herself, and made no attempt to sustain the conversation. She looked preoccupied and troubled, and as soon as the meal was over she begged Bessie to amuse herself, as she had some important business to settle, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the room together, and drank their beer at a neighboring garden. They were both rather silent and preoccupied. As they parted, Offitt said, "I've got a scheme on hand for raising the wind, I want to talk to you about. Be at my room to-night between nine and ten, and wait till I come, if I am out. Don't fail." Sam stared a little, but ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... which Bradley had remained, was shooting in and out from the cliffs with great violence, now straining the line by which she was held, and now whirling against the rock as if she would dash herself to pieces. An effort was made to pass another rope to Bradley, but he was so preoccupied that he did not notice it, and the others saw him take a knife out of its sheath and step forward to cut the line. He had decided that it was better to go over the falls with her than to wait for her to be completely wrecked against the rocks. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... weakened by illness as to be incapable of giving my mind to more than one subject for reflection at a time (that subject being now the extraordinary recovery of my health)—or whether I was preoccupied by the effort, which I was in honor bound to make, to resist the growing attraction to me of Susan's society—I cannot presume to say. This only I know: when the discovery of the terrible position toward Rothsay in which I now stood suddenly overwhelmed ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... acted before the court, however, the royal and noble ladies, undoubtedly, wore many of their finest jewels, as did also the sovereign and courtiers. Still, preoccupied as Shakespeare must have been with the presentation, or representation of the dramatic performance, he probably had little time or inclination to devote especial attention ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... velvet. In the coverts, arbutus crept out with a hawthorn-like fragrance from patches of lingering snow. The main street leading into the town from the Massasoit House and the station also had an air of repose and dignity as if those who had business in it were not preoccupied by the frenzy for bargains, but had time and the inclination for loitering, politeness, and sociability. That was in 1870, and I fear that Springfield must have lost some of its old-world simplicity ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... bethought them to consecrate several articles to it, and so it became a serious matter. The period of incubation (brooding) lasted since 1883 till the month of March 1884; when they considered the question they preoccupied them but about a National Exhibition. Afterwards the ambition increased. The ministery, then presided by Mr. Jules Ferry, thought that if they would give to this commercial and industrial manifestation an international character they would impose the peace not only to ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... eyes upon Saval, arid evidently preoccupied, said in a careless tone: "You children are ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... lady, Yarinka, his favorite niece, is lounging on an ottoman between his end of the table and the door, very sulky and dissatisfied, perhaps because he is preoccupied with his papers and his brandy bottle, and she can see nothing of ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... and the crescent moon rose slowly. Yet the two men still sat smoking and chatting, Shuttleworth somewhat surprised to notice how unusually preoccupied his host appeared. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... they were a community extremely preoccupied by their own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the government of the State for the purpose of making the conditions of their own industry and of their own ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and though I must say He worked in a rather preoccupied way, He owned that to duty 'twas better to cling Than follow the flight of a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... eyes, and, escaping from her friends, retired to her bedroom, and, drawing the curtains of her cubicle, spent the afternoon alone. She was strangely softened and subdued; she said little when Vera, Kitty, and Maud stammered out their apologies for deserting her on the shore, and appeared so preoccupied and thoughtful at tea-time, that she scarcely noticed when the others spoke to her. Patty, who guessed what was troubling her cousin, took her aside before preparation for a few ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... in a kind of peaceful monotony, broken by the frequent visits of Nurse Brown and the house surgeon, with his grave face and preoccupied air; and for some time Ida lay in a kind of semi-torpor, feeling that everything that was going on around her were the unreal actions in a dream; but as she grew stronger she began to take an interest in the life of the great ward and her fellow-patients; and on the second day after her return to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... her, "Uncle Felix," as she now called him, was always the same adorable and comprehending companion, forever opening up to her new vistas of interest, never too busy to answer her questions, never too preoccupied to explain the different objects he was handling. If she were ever in the way, she was never made to feel it. Instead, so gentle and considerate was he, that she grew to believe herself his most valuable assistant, daily helping him to arrange the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... law of Corsican society up to comparatively recent times; and its effects are still visible in the life of the stern islanders. In his charming romance, "Colomba," M. Prosper Merimee has depicted the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in the streets; for the women, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Tommy; "you're black." And Aaron opened with the Double Corner; but so preoccupied was he that it became a variation of the Ayrshire lassie, without his knowing. His suspicions had to find vent in words: "You dinna ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... up on the telephone during luncheon time. He seemed throughout the meal preoccupied; and more than once, with a word of apology to me, he and Eve exchanged confidential whispers. I felt certain that something was in the air, some new adventure from which I was excluded, and my heart sank as I thought of all the grim ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... right and the true—come in and occupy the field at the beginning—they might mould these new settlements. But instead they wait until everything is fixed, and the comforts and luxuries obtainable, and then come to find the ground preoccupied. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the path and hastened forward so as to reach home before the approaching storm. So completely was she absorbed in her own thoughts that she scarcely noticed that Plato himself seemed preoccupied. Instead of capering along like a playful kitten or puppy, he walked by her side unusually silent. When they had gone a short distance and were approaching a path which intersected their road at something near a right angle, the teacher missed ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sleepily-inclined individual, much preoccupied with a jack-knife and a shingle, "allowed" the distance to be a matter of from a mile and a half, to two miles, or "mebbe" ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... battles of the world throughout the ages were more important than the everyday skirmishes in his own household. Theo, therefore, knew that on no pretext whatever might she venture to appeal to her preoccupied father in her difficulties; but she was faithful to her charge, and gallantly enough fought with the distracting items and their corresponding figures, which should have agreed, but didn't. It was uphill work, however, ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... but one of each. Inside the door a soda fountain hissed provocatively. They took lemon and vanilla respectively, and the lordly purchaser did not take up his change from the wet marble until he had drained his glass. He had become preoccupied. He was mapping out a career ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... nervously examining my mail every day, looking for some word from her. All of the letters received by me seemed so insignificant, so worthless, because there was none from her. The slight buoyancy of spirit which I had felt gradually dissolved into gloomy heart-sickness. I became preoccupied; I lost appetite, lost sleep, and lost ambition. Several of my friends intimated to me that perhaps I was working ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... the reuniting of Austria and Hungary, it has also had another function—that of drawing together all the States deriving territory from the break up of Austria—even uniting Italy and Serbia, up till recently preoccupied with mortal enmity over the Dalmatic. It is a great service to unity to have this group of powers with a common understanding, and will perhaps be more highly appreciated in the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... self-possessed, even animated; and, Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive. She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband. Felix Winscombe, she thought, would mean—escape. He used ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... this, Captain Applegarth now losing his preoccupied air as if there were nothing to be gained, he thought, by dwelling any longer on ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... the words: "My dear, I want you to come with me," when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes moving from side to side—like the tail of a preoccupied cat—that she was not attending. "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't get at any ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with him I was quarrelling. I tell you this because I shall never see you again. You do not know me—or care. I may be dead to-morrow—you would never hear. We are only just passing in life, and have paused to speak. The man I married was by necessity a preoccupied breadwinner, and during his daily absences in hot pursuit of the staff of life I met—well, we will say this man," taking up ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... subject for earnest thought and anxious inquiry. Those who in the earlier times of American discovery supplied information on these points, were generally little qualified for the task. Priests and missionaries alone had leisure or inclination to pursue the subject; and their minds were often so preoccupied with their own peculiar doctrines, that they accommodated to them all that fell under their observation, and explained it by analogies which had no existence but in their own zealous imaginations. They seldom attempted to consider what they ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... your glasses, and we'll drink to a jolly night," cried Haldane, and all complied with wonderful zest and unanimity. The host, however, was too excited and preoccupied to note that while Mr. Van Wink and Mr. Ketchem were always ready to have their glasses filled, they never drained them very low; and thus it happened that he and the slightly superior gentleman who made free ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... feeling of a nation. The work of dissolution proceeds in silence and in secret. But the established order subsists until the moment comes for a new synthesis. And in the sixteenth century the necessary impulse of regeneration was to come, not from Italy, satisfied with the serenity of her art, preoccupied with her culture, and hardened to the infamy of her corruption, but from the Germany of the barbarians ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... and too empty to die in. To-morrow they would do with her what they liked. But before she died she must tell them—tell the gentlemen in black clothes that there are things no woman can bear. She must explain how it happened. . . . She splashed through a pool, getting wet to the waist, too preoccupied to care. . . . She must explain. "He came in the same way as ever and said, just so: 'Do you think I am going to leave the land to those people from Morbihan that I do not know? Do you? We shall see! ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... her as she thought of the grave-faced, preoccupied man who came each morning into the room with the question, "Well, mother, is there anything you need to-day?" What possible service could she render him? Her heart failed her again as she thought of John's pretty, new wife, and of the two big boys, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... time much preoccupied with an orphan, Sabrina Sydney, whom he had taken from the Foundling Hospital, and whom he was educating with the idea of marrying her ultimately. Honora, on the other hand, had received the addresses of Mr. Andre, afterwards Major Andre, who was shot as a spy during ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... kind of happiness, without which we might feel at a loss. If the professor's solitary wish had been fulfilled, and there had been no longer cause for him to say, "If I had but this, I should be satisfied," might it not still happen that in some unguarded, preoccupied moment he should start and blush to find his lips senselessly forming themselves into the utterance of the old formula? Would it not be a sad humiliation to acknowledge that the treasure he had all his life craved, did not so truly fill and occupy ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... himself forget the rather preoccupied manner in which some of the Tepoktan scientists occasionally eyed him, he peered down at the big dam of the hydro-electric project being completed to Kinton's design. Power from this would soon light the town built to house the ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... the road to the country, the priest trailing his umbrella behind him, speaking of the temperance hall but preoccupied about the funeral he had missed, my eyes marking the flight of flocks of ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... to restore the old Mizraimic faith, the reformer must have a more than human sanction; he must not merely come in God's name, he must have the proofs subject to his word; he must demonstrate all he says, even God. So preoccupied is the mind with myths and systems; so much do false deities crowd every place—earth, air, sky; so have they become of everything a part, that return to the first religion can only be along bloody paths, through fields of persecution; that is ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... slow, but time being given, he had the capacity to form sound opinions. Not infrequently, when I called at his office for conference, he would say: "My mind is preoccupied— you must either decide for yourself, or call again." As a result, he never gave an opinion or tendered any advice in relation to the business of the Internal Revenue Office while I was at the head of it. Mr. Chase had only a limited knowledge ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... Northmour and his mystery. I am not an angry man by nature, and I believe there was more curiosity than resentment in my heart. But war I certainly declared; and, by way of preparation, I got out my revolver, and, having drawn the charges, cleaned and reloaded it with scrupulous care. Next I became preoccupied about my horse. It might break loose, or fall to neighing, and so betray my camp in the Sea-Wood. I determined to rid myself of its neighborhood; and long before dawn I was leading it over the links in the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... and his wife were too much preoccupied about their son's condition to think seriously of what was taking place, but it was strange enough in its way, and Taquisara thought so as he looked on, and wondered what Neapolitan society would think if it could stand, as one man, in his place, and see with his eyes, knowing what he knew. But ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... parties wandered among valleys, alms, forest, and peaks in company sometimes with Italian alpinists, sometimes by themselves, prying, poking, snooping about with all the emotionless pertinacity of Teuton tourists preoccupied with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... somewhat preoccupied and silent. When appealed to she answered as brightly as usual, but a thoughtful, anxious look came to her face when she ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... St. Peter's, seems heartless and derisive; such monuments striking us as conceived and ordered by their inmates while alive, like Michael Angelo's Pope Julius, and Browning's Bishop, who was so preoccupied about his tomb in St. Praxed's Church. The Renaissance, the late Middle Ages, felt better than this: on the extreme pinnacle, high on the roof, they might indeed place against the russet brick or ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... the subject of your meditations, little woman?" he inquired, with a laughing look into her face, as the train came to a momentary standstill at a country station. One might suppose, from your exceeding grave and preoccupied air, that you were engaged in settling the affairs of ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... hanging over the huge shaft leading down to the engine-rooms of the Super-dreadnought, and my companion was explaining to me something of the driving power of the ship. But on this first meeting, how much I might have asked of the kind, great man beside me, and was too preoccupied to ask! May the opportunity be retrieved some day! My head was really full of the overwhelming facts, whether of labour or of output, relating to this world-famous place, which were being discussed around me. I do not name the place, because the banishment ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to a man in silence and solitude, to be wrought out with deep and deliberate conscientiousness; they are rather such as He around one in his outgoing and his incoming, in the field and by the way-side, overlooked by the preoccupied multitude, but abundantly patent to the few who will not permit the memories or the hopes of life to thrust away its actualities, and, once pointed out, full of interest and amusement even to the absorbed and hitherto unconscious throngs. We have here no pale-browed, far-sighted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... doctor's advice on a grave subject. After a couple of weeks' reflection, his idea of experimenting in agriculture, of extricating that unappreciated estate of Chantebled from chaos, preoccupied him to such a degree that he positively suffered at not daring to come to a decision. The imperious desire to create, to produce life, health, strength, and wealth grew within him day by day. Yet what fine courage and what a fund of hope he needed to venture upon an enterprise ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... a good observer, in the sense that he saw details clearly—unlike Byron, who had for nature but a vague and a preoccupied eye—and evidently, too, his observation is steeped in strong feeling, and is expressed in most melodious language. Yet we get the impression that he neither saw nor felt anything beyond exactly what he has expressed; ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Poland was the while negotiating with France and Austria. It was hoped that France would support the Rising financially, and persuade Turkey with French encouragement to declare war on Russia. France, preoccupied with internal revolution, had no thought to spare for Polish affairs, and her assistance was never gained. Nor had the Poles' overtures to Austria any happy result. The Austrian Government gave secret orders to arrest Kosciuszko and Madalinski if they ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... further along the bridge, stood still, as if to watch something that was floating in the water, in reality to look covertly back at her. She had taken no notice of him as he passed, but when he paused, she raised her head; and then she looked at him—with a preoccupied air, it was true, but none the less steadily, and for several seconds on end. The words died on Maurice's lips: and going home, he was as ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... work up his case, loses his heart. But Cinderella's mind is preoccupied with her ball. Ill from overwork and underfeeding, she wanders into the street, falls faint—and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... of the type which he had already presented in the speaker of Pauline, only that here the poet is not infirm in will, and, though loved by Palma, he is hardly a lover. Like the speaker of Pauline he is preoccupied with an intense self-consciousness, the centre of his own imaginative creations, and claiming supremacy over these. He craves some means of impressing himself upon the world, some means of deploying the power that lies coiled within ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... his conversation in heaven does not need to set a watch on his lips lest he take up an ill report about his neighbour. He who walks every day on the streets of gold will step as swiftly as may be, with girt loins, and with a preoccupied eye, out of the slippery and unsavoury streets of this forsaken earth. He who has fast working out for him an exceeding and eternal weight of glory will easily count all his cups and all his crosses, and all the crooks in his lot but as so many light afflictions and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... difficulty; he seemed preoccupied, and after I was shown the transmitter, and its mechanism was explained, he took my hand warmly, pressed it between his own, and then speaking in the Martian tongue to ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... interest in the work than he would if his hand did not belong to him nor than if a spirit laid hold of and guided the pencil. Some mediums who write automatically have to be mentally quiet; they find that if the mind is preoccupied the hand will not write, although, even in such cases, it frequently happens that the amanuensis is ignorant of the communication until he ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... bad-tempered, but she was ignorant, nervous, over-anxious, and desperately afraid of losing her situation. She had during so many years lived without affection that the wells of it had dried up within her, and now, without being at all a bad old lady, she was simply preoccupied with the business of managing her neuralgia, living on nothing a week, and building to her deceased brother's memory a monument, of heroic character and self-sacrifice. She was short-sighted and ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... teaching, Elgin considered that her parents ought to be thankful in the probability that she had escaped some dramatic end. But her occupation further removed her from intercourse with the town's more exclusive circles: she had taken a definite line, and she pursued it, preoccupied. If she was a brand snatched from the burning, she sent up a little curl of reflection in a safe place, where she was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... furrows; the gateway of feeling was open, but the tremulous lips refused to speak. Before he could recover his self-possession, Monroe was gone. Mr. Lindsay tried to read the newspapers, but the print before his eyes conveyed no idea to his preoccupied brain. Then his thoughts turned to his beautiful villa in Brookline, and he remembered how that morning his daughter stepped lightly into the brougham with him at the back piazza, rode down the winding path between the evergreen-hedges, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... his terror that was disturbing. Peter was well acquainted with the physical aspects of fear—that is the fear of violence and death. That kind of fear made men restless and nervous, or silent and preoccupied; or like liquor it accentuated their weaknesses of fiber in sullenness or bravado. But it did not make them furtive. He could not believe that it was the mere danger of death or physical violence that obsessed his employer. That sort of danger ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Gilder. Always interested in "Mrs. Jones," from first sight, when he had laughingly said that the "little sprite of a woman" would be almost too alluring if surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue, Anthony was now frankly preoccupied with her affairs. He was not even annoyed that, unaided by me, her quick mind had grasped the secret of his identity. "It was like her to spring on to it by instinct," he said, smiling that thoughtful smile of his, which was more than ever effective in his Arab get up. "And like her not to give ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... few: but, because they are bent down and pressed beneath so heavy a burden, they have not time allowed them to take breath. My senses, therefore, as if feeling a portion of my debt and obligation, preoccupied themselves with such objections, and with others yet more strong. They struggled, as I said, no short time, in fearful strait, whilst I read, "There is a time for speaking, and a time for keeping silence." At length, the creditor's side prevailed ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... work of some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment my goodly aerial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to tell the destined name of my abortive play; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and laughed a moment with the keeper, then gave me his buxom paw in farewell. I was led through stone passages, past rows of barred cells from which peered visages of fellow prisoners, incurious and preoccupied, or truculent and reckless—men under indictment and without bail, convicts making appeal, and culprits jailed for minor offenses. Such men were to be my comrades for the future. Some were out in the corridors, pacing up and down or chatting with friends; for the laws ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... might have had time to avoid the trap, or at least to get my hand to my revolver and make a fight for it; or, indeed, in the last resort, to destroy what I carried before harm came to it. But my mind was preoccupied, and the whole thing seemed to happen in a minute. At the very moment that I had declared to myself the vanity of my fears and determined to be resolute in banishing them, I heard voices—a low, strained whispering; I saw two or three figures in the shadow of the poplars by the wayside. An instant ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... of the two brothers and the aunt to Julia's discomposure, and their blindness to its true cause, must be imputed to the fullness of their own minds. They were totally preoccupied. Tom was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it. Edmund, between his theatrical and his real part—between Miss Crawford's claims and his own conduct—between love and consistency, was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... they may be as poor as Job's turkey, he received a great many circulars addressed by typewriter, and the only letters he really cared for were from his wife, so that when he was very hard at work or much preoccupied the others accumulated somewhere in the workshop, and were ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford |
