If no internal attention be required in reciting the Hours, it is difficult to see how voluntary distractions are forbidden by Divine Law.

Involuntary distractions are those which come unbidden and unsought to the mind, are neither placed directly, nor by their causes, by the person at prayer.

This want of internal attention is called mental distraction.

The bodily distractions might consist of sensations of weariness referred to the back, the arms and the eyes, and fainter sensations from the digestive organs, heart and lungs.

We know all too well, in everyday experience, that tension is not really relaxed by a temporary distraction.

He never went into society, but found a pleasant distraction from his studies in educating the daughter of his landlady.

Even here, remembering the volatility and sprightliness, inseparable from the age, humanity will induce him not to animadvert with warmth upon the appearances of a casual distraction, but he will rather solicit the return of attention by gentleness, than severity.

And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor.

When want assails his solitary shed, When dire distraction's horrent eye-ball glares, Seen 'midst the myriad of tumultuous cares, That shower their shafts on his devoted head.

It was a welcome distraction, too, this new idea, with which to while away the weary interminable day.

With a gesture of utter distraction she had burst into tears, and had caught hold of the little one near her, pressing him to her breast as if to shield him from the other, the unknown son, the stranger, who by his resurrection threatened to thrust himself in some degree in the younger lad's place.

In no way did Des Esseintes derive even a fugitive distraction from his boredom from this literature.

It is almost impossible to avoid very grave distractions and to sustain attention if there be not a good knowledge of the matter and form of the Hours recited.

It is, therefore, only with difficulty that I can make up my mind to leave my room early in the morning, and if ever I force myself to do so without sufficient cause, nothing remains to me for the rest of the day but the choice between idle distraction and morbid introspection.

Consuming my days with the infinite distractions of travel, I missed, as one who attempts two occupations at once, the sure satisfaction of either.

Has not negligence in these matters caused innumerable distractions? II.

In the first fortnight I got flogged for tying a huge mass of brown paper to the tail of the favourite cat of the master's lady, with which she rushed with an insane and terrifying distraction into the drawing-room.

I must get her away from here, where she is such a lovely distraction.

The marginal distractions in such a case would consist, first, in external sensations, such as the glare from your study-lamp, the hissing of the radiator, the practising of a neighboring vocalist, the rattle of passing street-cars.

All other interests were mere distractions.

He did indeed obtain a momentary distraction from his resolution to ascertain the name of the person who had so spoilt his afternoon.

The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that, in the first act, chills the blood with horrour, to the fop, in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt.

This had silently collapsed into an order of things so vicious, growing also so hopelessly worse, that all honest patriots invoked a purifying revolution, even though bought at the heavy price of a tyranny, rather than face the chaos of murderous distractions to which the tide of feuds and frenzies was violently tending.

She was an admirable letter-writer, and in the midst of her numerous domestic distractions always found time for the duties of correspondence.

It is true that the most faithful souls suffer from occasional involuntary distractions.