Rapt Quotes & Sayings

They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had done each other, and they were rapt in a regard of what their life together might have been. — John Williams

And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes. — John Milton

In the broad light of day, I could not give his tale nearly so much credence as I had granted it when sitting rapt before a midnight fireplace whilst the tempest without erased the natural world. — Lyndsay Faye

Birkin came with Hermione. She had a rapt, triumphant look, like the fallen angels restored, yet still subtly demoniacal, now she held Birkin by the arm. And he was expressionless, neutralised, possessed by her as if it were his fate, without question. — D.H. Lawrence

Compared with the usual fate of humans, we who are engaged in preservation work, daily in contact with what we most like and admire, are fortunate indeed. As I write this, I have just returned from a gathering of men and women in the museum and historic-house field. What cheerful, rapt faces! What intensity of interest! What freedom of discussion, where difference of opinion about procedure was taken for granted and met with a smile. Do you really think this is common experience in the workaday world? Are you unaware of the fact that most people often feel that they are traveling the wrong road, and bitterly conclude that it is too late to return to a distant fork? — Freeman Tilden

The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination. — Fredric Jameson

Yet five minutes after she had passed the statue of Achilles she had the rapt look of one brushing through crowds on a summer's afternoon, when the trees are rustling, the wheels churning yellow, and the tumult of the present seems like an elegy for past youth and past summers, and there rose in her mind a curious sadness, as if time and eternity showed through skirts and waistcoats, and she saw people passing tragically to destruction. — Virginia Woolf

And then there are the cravings.. Oh, la! A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows.
She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn't dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. — Jonah Berger

information, listening to every word with rapt attention. Now that she had established herself in the duke's household, the last thing — Brenda Novak

Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. — William Shakespeare

My father was the king of the joke-tellers. I was so impressed as a child watching him, holding people in rapt attention. — Carol Leifer

And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sound he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds. — Ray Bradbury

The creative scientist studies nature with the rapt gaze of the lover, and is guided as often by aesthetics as by rational considerations in guessing how nature works. — Albert Einstein

Robbed of a rapt audience, advertisers know that influencing how you spend what to do while depends on having some control over how you spend the resources in your head. — Greg Carlson

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovelier things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. When music sounds, all that I was I am Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; And from Time's woods break into distant song The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along. — Walter De La Mare

Each soul must awaken from the aloneness of a private dream world to greet the morning sun, view the sweet earth, apprehend the great silence, and demonstrate an appreciative thanks to everyday of life by living in a rapt state of attentive awareness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth — James Joyce

If only mankind could hold its own fertility in awe, which is one and the same whether it manifests itself in the spirit or in the flesh. For creativity in the spirit has its origins in the physical kind, is of one nature with it and only a more delicate, more rapt and less fleeting version of the carnal sort of sex. — Rainer Maria Rilke

A strange thing happened to me in my dream. I was rapt into the Seventh Heaven. There sat all the gods assembled. As a special dispensation I was granted the favor to have one wish. "Do you wish for youth," said Mercury, "or for beauty, or power, or a long life; or do you wish for the most beautiful woman, or any other of the many fine things we have in our treasure trove? Choose, but only one thing!" For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed the gods in this wise: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose one thing - that I may always have the laughs on my side." Not one god made answer, but all began to laugh. From this I concluded that my wish had been granted and thought that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste: for it would surely have been inappropriate to answer gravely: your wish has been granted. — Soren Kierkegaard

Tickets and lifts begged on carts, but Grigori was mesmerized by her face as she talked. Once again Lev listened with rapt attention, making amusing comments, asking the occasional question. Soon, Grigori noticed, Katerina had turned in her seat and was talking exclusively to Lev. Almost, Grigori thought, as if I was not even here. — Ken Follett

I imagined you with rapt admiration,
Especially when I first saw you on my life station. — Ritika Chhabra

Horse Frightened by a Lion depicts a majestic stallion in a very different situation. Stubbs painted this magnetic masterpiece to illustrate the nature of the sublime, which was one of his era's most popular philosophical concepts,and its relation to a timelessly riveting feeling: fear. The magnificent horse galloping through a vast wilderness encounters the bottom-up stimulus of a crouching predator and responds with a dramatic display of what psychologists mildly call "negative emotion." The equine superstar's arched neck, dilated eyes, and flared nostrils are in fact the very picture of overwhelming dread. The painting's subject matter reflects he philosopher Edmund Burke's widely circulated Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which asserts that because "terror" is unparalleled in commanding "astonishment," or total, single-pointed,
indeed, rapt
attention, it is "the ruling principle of the sublime. — Winifred Gallagher

For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints. — James Joyce

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. — Albert Einstein

Judging from the way they sat and goggled at the drag on the stage it was obvious that they were indulging in delightful fantasies that brought to them substantial memories of the girls they had left behind in London or Manchester. As the Quartermaster Captain lisped after performing before a particularly rapt audience: 'I bet there were more standing pricks than snotty noses tonight'. Astonishingly, I suspect he was right. We probably helped to keep the home fires of passion burning. — Eric Hiscock

The speckled sky is dim with snow,
The light flakes falter and fall slow;
Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,
Silently drops a silvery veil; And all the valley is shut in
By flickering curtains gray and thin. — John Townsend Trowbridge

This is a lot more satisfying," he said, "when I have intelligent life whom I can render awed, rapt with attention for my clever verbosity."
The ugly lizard-crab-thing on the next rock over clicked its claw, an almost hesitant sound.
"Your right, of course," Wit said. "My usual audience isn't particularly intelligent. That was also the obvious joke, however, so shame on you. — Brandon Sanderson

In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? — Herman Melville

You see, what I really want, and what I'm getting with Stephen, is the opportunity to rebuild myself from scratch. David's picture of me is complete now, and I'm pretty sure neither of us likes it much; I want to rip the page out and start again on a fresh sheet, just like I used to do when I was a kid and had messed a drawing up. It doesn't even matter who the fresh sheet is, really, so its beside the point whether I like Stephen, or whether he knows what to do with me in bed, or anything like that. I just want his rapt attention when I tell him that my favorite book is Middlemarch, and i just want that feeling, the feeling I get with him, of having not gone wrong yet — Nick Hornby

But in reality, with Mr. Ellison there is an essence of probity about him; unlike Dorian Grey, him and his hidden portrait are both wonderful. When he speaks there is a certain intonation he gets that reveals so much about him, that you can't help but to feel rapt, and so few get to hear his unspoken thought because they are fixated on the bling and the big show. — Avra Amar Filion

No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Around 1900, according to music writer Alex Ross, classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.2 One was expected to sit immobile and listen with rapt attention. Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and opera houses. — David Byrne

We do not dance to reach a certain point on the floor, but simply to dance. Energy itself, as William Blake said, is eternal delight - and all life is to be lived in the spirit of rapt absorption in an arabesque of rhythms. — Alan W. Watts

Give us privacy," James told him, his voice sharp. The man beat a hasty retreat. James shut and locked the door behind him. Handy that, a lock. He started loosening his tie. When it was untied, he hooked a finger into the hoop at my neck. He pushed my back to the wall. Or rather, the door. He reached above my head and I looked up. There was a coat hanger above me, hooked over the top of the tall door. James was tying his tie to it with swift, sure motions. He pulled my arms up and together, wrapping the tie around them, tying more swift knots around my wrists. This took longer, and I watched those skillful hands with rapt attention. "This is going to get loud, Bianca. I'm going to fuck you so hard that you scream my name. And you are going to scream so loudly that nobody will doubt just why you're screaming. Would you like to tell me what you and Roger were talking about before I'm inside of you? Or will this be a mid-fuck confession? — R.K. Lilley

VERY ODD, HOWEVER, Annabel was beginning to feel, how the stranger continued to hold the hand-sickle, at his side; now he'd turned to her, seeing her, yet without an air of surprise, as if he'd known she was there, observing him; he smiled, in a rapt sort of silence, as no gentleman would ever do, in fact; as if he and Annabel Slade had met by chance in a public place, or in some dimension in which the sexes might "meet" impersonally, like animals, with no names, no families - no identities. In that instant, Annabel felt both chilled and flushed with warmth; and somewhat faint; and had to resist the impulse to hide her (burning) face in the little bouquet of flowers she had picked, that the bold stranger would not stare so directly upon her with his penetrating gaze. A — Joyce Carol Oates

Being on stage was all about the palpable energy of a rapt audience hopefully buying into a life onstage. The immediate connection with the audience was the best part for me. The camera is not as fun, but your work is preserved forever. There's immortality to it. — David Walton

They met me in the day of success: and I have
learned by the perfectest report, they have more in
them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire
to question them further, they made themselves air,
into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in
the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who
all-hailed me 'Thane of Cawdor;' by which title,
before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred
me to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, king that
shalt be!' This have I thought good to deliver
thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou
mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being
ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it
to thy heart, and farewell. — William Shakespeare

these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with its accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe. — Nina George

Every so often, a lightning flash would reveal us to each other, and the expression on his face - so rapt, so helpless, so utterly mine - was the most beautiful thing I ever expected to see in my life. — April Lindner

Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. — Robert Frost

He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. — James Joyce

She tries to think, but the monotonous stuttering of the wheels breaks the flow of her thoughts, and the narcotic cowl of sleep tightens over her throbbing forehead - that muffled and yet overpowering railroad-sleep in which one lies rapt and benumbed as though in a shuddering black coal sack made of metal. — Stefan Zweig

For until this morning I had known contemplation only in its humbler, its more ordinary forms - as discursive thinking; as a rapt absorption in poetry or painting or music, as a patient waiting upon those inspirations, without which even the prosiest writer cannot hope to accomplish anything; as occasional glimpses, in nature, of Wordsworth's 'something far more deeply interfused'; as systematic silence leading, sometimes, to hints of an 'obscure knowledge'. But now I knew contemplation at its height. — Aldous Huxley

I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in a revery. — Henry David Thoreau

He was so rapt in his thoughts that he did not hear anything much that Guido was saying, that lovely bubbling speech of Guido's when he was at last content.
Tonio allowed it to pass over him, and now and then he would give a little gracious nod. — Anne Rice

Give full attention to what you do. If you give a rapt attention to what you do, you can have what you could have done in 3 hours well completed within 2 hours or less. Concentration is the key word. — Israelmore Ayivor

They stayed for rapt moments in the crystal sphere of this soul, as if in a realm of invisible radiation, listening to unearthly music, and then returned to their daily lives with hearts cleansed and strengthened, as if descending from a high mountain peak. — Hermann Hesse

Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source, The rapt one, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth. — William Wordsworth

amanuensis. A rapt — Abraham Verghese

Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro, who swayed beside him on his travels, leather-brown and skeletal, crowned with lace and gold circlet, hung about with chains of diamonds and pearls, her bone-fingers fantastically ringed. — A.S. Byatt

'Play It Again Sam's opening shot is the same as 'Purple Rose's final one: a close-up of a face, rapt in a movie house. I've certainly felt that in my life. I've been known to cry watching Gene Kelly. — David Rakoff

Fergie will sing ballads to the dogs and they'll sit there rapt. You know your wife's a star when she keeps the dogs entertained for 20 minutes. — Josh Duhamel

Darren played with the ice cream before raising a spoonful to his mouth. I watched him lick it before he wrapped his lips around the spoon, closing his eyelids and savoring the flavor on his tongue. He slowly withdrew the spoon from his mouth and opened his eyes. He smiled coyly at my rapt attention. I just wanted to reach across the table, grab a fistful of his hair and lick the ice cream right out of his mouth. — Alexis Woods

Holy intimacy is fostered with the marriage to two commitments: one to sitting in quiet solitude with the inner Self; the other to sitting in rapt attention with one's mortal Beloved — Mariah McKenzie

I was walking down Granville Street, Vancouver's version of "The Strip," and I was looking into one of the video arcades. I could see in the physical intensity of their postures how rapt the kids inside were. It was like one of those closed systems out of a Pynchon novel: a feedback loop with photons coming off the screens into the kids' eyes, neurons moving through their bodies, and electrons moving through the video game. These kids clearly believed in the space games projected. Everyone I know who works with computers seems to develop a belief that there's some kind of actual space behind the screen, someplace you can't see but you know is there. — William Gibson

Albert Einstein: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed... Elegantly — Matthew Cross

It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team. — Isaac D'Israeli

You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look. — W. H. Auden

Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are not more. — Matthew Arnold

That solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade, made Don Fabrizio's heart ache as he stood black and stiff in a doorway: this eminently patrician room reminded him of country things; the chromatic scale was the same as that of the vast wheat fields around Donnafugata, rapt, begging pity from the tyrannous sun; in this room, too, as on his estates in mid-August, the harvest had been gathered long before, stacked elsewhere, leaving, as here, a sole reminder in the color of the stubble burned and useless now. The notes of the waltz in the warm air seemed to him but a stylization of the incessant winds harping their own sorrows on the parched surfaces, today, yesterday, tomorrow, forever and forever. The crowd of dancers, among whom he could count so many near to him in blood if not in heart, began to seem unreal, made up of that material from which are woven lapsed memories, more elusive even than the stuff of disturbing dreams. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

They also bring to mind what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse dispirited or distastefully unintelligible. The award of a Nobel Prize in literature to Andre Gide who in his work fervently and openly insists that pederasty is the superior and preferable way of life for adolescent boys furnishes a memorable example of such judgments. Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake a 628page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital. — Hervey M. Cleckley

Everything was damp and rife and hot as though the jungle were an immense collection of oily rags growing hotter and hotter under the dark stifling vaults of a huge warehouse. Heat licked at everything, and the foliage, responding, grew to prodigious sizes. In the depths, in the heat and the moisture, it was never silent. The birds cawed, the small animals and occasional snakes rustled and squealed, and beneath it all was a hush, almost palpable, in which could be heard the rapt absorbed sounds of vegetation growing. — Norman Mailer

Myriads of individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse with one another, contribute their heart's pulses to the universal music, and presently vanish, giving place to others. All this age-long sequence of private living, which is the actual tissue of humanity's flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as it were, the disembodied form of its growth. — Olaf Stapledon

I vote you read and we fellows will listen in rapt silence." "And thus Kit is indoctrinated into the conspiracy to which all males belong," Sophie muttered. "And you ladies don't have conspiracies of your own?" He brought the child to his shoulder and started rubbing Kit's little back. The sight sent odd tendrils of warmth drifting through Sophie's insides. "We women are cooperative by nature; that's different from conspiratorial." She — Grace Burrowes

Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.
Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past. — Terry Pratchett

Sometimes, in a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise
till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at
my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the
hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but
so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I
minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing
memorable is accomplished. — Henry David Thoreau

The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. — Catherynne M Valente

Victory comes late
And is held low to freezing lips
Too rapt with frost
To take it — Emily Dickinson

All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency. — Marvin Mudrick

Wasn't I rapt?
Wasn't I ravished? — C. K. Williams

As Ariel recounted the events of her dream, two magnificent, batlike wings grew from the backs of her shoulders, stretched as if preparing to fly, then retreated back into their host. The sound heard when the wings disappear is the giggling of Alanna, who watched the event much the same way I did, in rapt wonder. — Don A. Martinez

At about this point I began to feel peculiar. I looked round me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked like nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moon-brains. I felt in terrible danger of puking. I didn't know whether it was the awful movie giving me a stomach-ache or all that caviar I had eaten. — Sylvia Plath

Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Light of Love Each shining light above us Has its own peculiar grace; But every light of heaven Is in my darling's face. For it is like the sunlight, So strong and pure and warm, That folds all good and happy things, And guards from gloom and harm. And it is like the moonlight, So holy and so calm; The rapt peace of a summer night, When soft winds die in balm. And it is like the starlight; For, love her as I may, She dwells still lofty and serene In mystery far away. — John Hay

Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Bathed in light, submerged in sound and rapt in feeling, the sentient body, at once both perceiver and producer, traces the paths of the world's becoming in the very course of contributing to its ongoing renewal. Here, surely, lies the essence of what it means to dwell. It is, literally to be embarked upon a movement along a way of life. The perceiver-producer is thus a wayfarer, and the mode of production is itself a trail blazed or a path followed. Along such paths, lives are lived, skills developed, observations made and understandings grown. But if this is so, then we can no longer suppose that dwelling is emplaced in quite the way Heidegger imagined, in an opening akin to a clearing in the forest. To be, I would now say, is not to be in place but to be along paths. The path, and not the place, is the primary condition of being, or rather of becoming. — Tim Ingold

Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the power That made him; it was blessedness and love! — William Wordsworth

My eyes are bright, my hair has come loose from its ribbon, and Stella's scarf is waving around my neck. But that's not what I see when I look at the picture. I see three unlikely friends holding hands. And Ryan, Kenny, and Melanie are standing behind us, rapt.
And in the sky above us, I see a miracle. — Wendy Mass

The hill is like an old woman, all her human obligations met, who sits at work day after day, in a kind of rapt leisure, at an intricate embroidery. She has time for all things. Because she does not expect ever to be finished, she is endlessly patient with details. She perfects flower and leaf, feather and song, adorning the briefest life in great beauty as though it were meant to last forever. — Wendell Berry

Few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention. — Jack Woodford

Cat, gray tabby, calm, watches large, black ant. Man, rapt, stands staring at cat and ant. Ant advances along path. Ant halts, baffled. Ant back-tracks fast - straight at cat. Cat, alarmed, backs away. Man, standing, staring, laughs. Ant changes path again. Cat, calm again, watches again. — Lydia Davis

His gaze slid toward the back of the sanctuary and collided with Joanna, standing silently in the doorway. You ... Crockett's voice tapered off.
For a moment, all he could do was stare. Her rapt attention, the tiny smile that brought into relief the freckles dusting her cheekbones, the way the light passed through the doorway behind her to see her hair ablaze beneath the prim straw bonnet she wore. Yet it was her inner light that captured him the most. The serenity of her features. The glow in her blue eyes. This was a woman of authentic spirituality. No wonder the Master Weaver had chosen her to be the central thread to anchor his new tapestry. — Karen Witemeyer

Just then Warren's breathing, which part of me was listening to with rapt attention, stopped. Adam heard it too, crouching as if there were an enemy in the room. Maybe there was. Death is an enemy, right? — Patricia Briggs

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed. — John Muir

And noticed his eyes, they stayed on me whenever I spoke - almost intimidating in their focus. He was actually listening to me, not just waiting for a chance to speak, his focus one hundred percent on me. It felt odd, a man paying such rapt attention to me, and I tried to remember the last time I had such complete attention, without eyes darting to a phone, or a sentence interrupted, details lost. — Alessandra Torre

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye. — Robert Louis Stevenson

For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;
this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God
when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired. — Plato

I looked up from my writing,
And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
The moon's full gaze on me. — Thomas Hardy

He used to tell her everything, and she used to listen in rapt attention. She wondered when that had changed and who'd lost interest first, he in the telling or she in the listening. — Lisa Genova

In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying ... the child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginning, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through. — Peter Matthiessen

She's an excellent presenter and would have succeeded in advertising, is what I think. She generates a sense of excitement in the room and I become aware that my hands are moist with sweat, but not from fear. From needing to know what happened next. I like the drama. I glance around the room and other people look rapt as well. And I feel like, That's the reason to go to a gay rehab. People appreciate the drama. — Augusten Burroughs

distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences, our cradles, our baby carriages, our first steps, all as reported by our parents, stories to which we listen with the same rapt attention — Orhan Pamuk

He stood in the doorway, holding the back of his own arms. And I knew what I felt. It was a monstrous intimacy with another being, an intimacy that made even the rapt moments of life seem dim and under control. Never, never in all my existance had I been threateened with an intimacy quite like this. — Anne Rice

He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!'
'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.'
'No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain. — Emily Bronte

I've never wanted to be with women so much as I wanted to be them: there are women whose career arc excites me, whose ease of expression is impressive, whose mastery of party banter has bee simultaneously hostile and rapt. — Lena Dunham

Virtue runs before the muse,
and defies her skill;
she is rapt and doth refuse
to wait a painter's will. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think! — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy the man whose lot it is to know The secrets of the earth. He hastens not To work his fellows hurt by unjust deeds, But with rapt admiration contemplates Immortal Nature's ageless harmony, And how and when the order came to be. — Euripides

If we are looking for some specific, expected danger, we are less likely to see the unexpected danger. I urge that she pay relaxed attention to her environment rather than paying rapt attention to her imagination. — Gavin De Becker