The commander of the first Roman galley must have looked with an intense absorption upon the estuary of the Thames as he turned the beaked prow of his ship to the westward under the brow of the North Foreland.

Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore inspires involuntary respect.

My fancy made a picture of them distended with three weeks' absorption of mineral springs.

It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters, that in the true painters, writers, musicians, there was a power which drove them to such complete absorption in their work as to make it inevitable for them to subordinate life to art.

Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped with the palms outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt to accompany mental absorption .

One of the most important forces in this period of his slow preparation was his study of German and his absorption of the idealistic philosophy of Kant, Schelling, and Fichte, of the broad philosophic influence of Goethe, and the subtile influence of Richter.

Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption , stretched his neck to hear who they were.

It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity--of absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her own personality--an expression that is most of all discouraging to a lover.

Nothing bad passed for half an hour-- nothing at least, to be exact, but that each of the companions occasionally and covertly intermitted her pursuit in such a manner as to ascertain the degree of absorption of the other without turning round.

When she was too lonely, she would go to them and shed her own troubles and problems by absorption in those of others.

In her absorption she did not note the sudden activity upon the vessel, the purring of the engines, the throbbing of the propeller.