"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... women, which one rarely sees in America. Some of them were evidently well over seventy, and yet, with one or two exceptions, they had sound limbs, clear eyes, and healthy complexions. As for the young girls, many of them were exceptionally pretty; and the children were sturdy youngsters, not the wan, thin-legged little creatures one sees in Paris. In fact, all of these people appeared to belong to a different race from that of the Parisians, to come from finer, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... come hame—ye sall hae a roosin' ingle, and a blast o' the goodman's tobacco-pipe forbye.' Wullie was naething laith, and back they gaed the-gither. Wullie sits down at the fire, and awa' wi' her yarn gaes the wife; but scarce had she steekit the door, and wan half-way down the close, when the bairn cocks up on its doup in the cradle, and rounds in Wullie's lug: 'Wullie Tylor, an' ye winna tell my mither when she comes back, I'se play ye a bonny spring on the bagpipes.' I wat Wullie's ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... were made daily to the head-chief to permit the rescue of the remainder. Four times was he sought to grant such permission before he consented, then at dawn of the fifth morning he gave directions to loose the rafts and ferry the women over. A miserable remnant they were, unclad, wan, and wasted; but a return to the old habits of life soon restored them to their former selves, and peace, happiness, and ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... calculation of how this fellow meant to gain his livelihood. She wilfully put it to the credit of Arthur's tact that his elder was amiable, without denying her debt to the good man for leaving her illness and her appearance unmentioned. He forbore even to scan her features. Diana's wan contemplativeness, in which the sparkle of meaning slowly rose to flash, as we see a bubble rising from the deeps of crystal waters, caught at his heart while he talked his matter-of-fact. But her instinct of a present safety was true. She and Arthur discovered—and it set ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sinking back on his pillows wan from the strain. Monty handed him a glass of water, and adjusted the bandages with a hand as tender as a woman's. He lifted the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... with a sigh. "My father—and I am like him—loved only once." Her words came constantly into his mind. "I came too late," he thought; and it seemed to him this little plain woman, looking wan and pale in the early morning light, was better worth winning than any other earthly thing he had ever known. He had left her side, and was standing looking with a frown out of the window as they awaited the summons to breakfast. After a while she came ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... must have some doubts about the matter, else he would not even suppose such a thing. God knows what I should do then. There are other ways—other ways." He passed his hand over his eyes as he spoke, as though to shut out some ugly vision. Such a wan, strange expression played over his grim features that he was hardly to be recognized as the revered elder of the Trinitarian Chapel or the esteemed man of business of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... went to Giant Land," said the young inventor, with a wan smile. "Otherwise I'd never have Koku," and he looked affectionately at the big man, who laughed happily. In nature Koku ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... power of intuition given to the aged when near their grave, Pierrette's whole life, on which her mind had dwelt throughout her journey. She divined the illness of her darling, and knew that she was threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose in her wan gray eyes, from which her troubles had worn both lashes and eyebrows, two pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a dreadful brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the withered cheek, but did ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... teu chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't ought to be kept no longer, and if he wan't to hum, I were to fetch 'em ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "Fourteen bouquets and wan basket," says the little woman, "and Mamie Odenheimer, she got seventeen bouquets and two baskets and a sign. Well," she looked anxious, but smiled, "I know of siven bouquets Tommy will git for sure. And that's not countin' what Harry Lossing will do for him. Hiven bless ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... himself, and said: 'I ordered six to come; it is waste of lymph to do one only: get the other five.' After a short absence, I was back, reporting the other five not in a condition to do anything, even to be vaccinated. The ghost of a weary smile lit up the wan face. I saluted ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... copper—the hull lot went to a man down in York State, when the Iron Company bust up here, and for two or three year the chap he jest sent up his note for the taxes, and they've a drefful shiftless way o' lettin' things go in this ere town, 's you know, sir; there wan't nobody that knowed what a sugar orchard was a lyin' in there, or there'd been plenty to grab for it; but I don't s'pose there's three men in the town'd ever been over back o' Birch Hill till this Ganew he come and cut a road in, and had his sugar-camp agoin' one ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of the Dead Sea presently, bowling past the Inn of the Good Samaritan and beginning to descend into the valley, twelve hundred feet below sea level, that separates Palestine from Moab. The moon shone full on the water, and it looked more wan and wild than an illustration out of Dante's Inferno. There was no doubt how the legends sprang up about birds falling dead as they flew across it. It was difficult to believe that anything could be there and not die. It was a vision of the land ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... and wan, fond lover?" he says gayly, but with so kindly an intonation that even the most pugnacious could not take umbrage ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... As he did so, he was struck by an idea. It was that the place might possibly be a little better for more positive colour. It was, perhaps, a thought too pale—mild and sweet as a kind old face, but a little devitalised, even wan.... Yes, decidedly it would bear a robuster note—more and richer flowers, and possibly some warm and gay stuff for cushions ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... tales of saints in my breviary," soliloquized Mary of Scotland; and in the streaming moonlight, as she spoke, a faint outline gathered, lips and eyes of solemn peace, a crown of blood-red roses pressing thorns into the wan temples that dripped sanguine streams, and in the halo above the wreath a legend, partially obscured, that ran, "Utque talis Rosa ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... a year after the disappearance that a wan living skeleton staggered out of the wilderness in Africa, and blindly groped his way to the coast, as a man might who had lived long in darkness, and found the light too strong for his eyes. He managed to reach a port, and there ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... although very rarely, we have seen him deeply agitated. We have seen him grow so pale and wan, that his appearance was actually corpse-like. But even in moments of the most intense emotion, he remained concentrated within himself. A single instant for self-recovery always enabled him to veil the secret of his first impression. However full of spontaneity his bearing afterwards ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... and was leaning back against the cushions of his easy-chair, with a face so wan and weary that she started up in alarm, and springing to his side, exclaimed, "Dear papa, I am sure you are not well! Do stop working, and lie down on the sofa. And won't you let me tell Patrick to go for the doctor when he ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... saut wind is blawing Upon the misty shore: As, like a stormy snawing, The deid go streaming o'er:— The wan drown'd deid sail wildly Frae out each drumly wave: It's O and O for the weary sea, And O for ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that she had scarcely dropped off to sleep—though in reality she had been unconscious for more than two hours—when she awoke suddenly, to see Doubler sitting erect in the bunk, watching her with a wan, sympathetic smile. There was the light of reason in his eyes and her heart gave an ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... comment and she tremblingly tore them into bits and scattered the bits from her window. Then she went to the bank and took up the note for the six hundred dollars she had originally borrowed. It left her nothing, but she was free. She had lived the summer and was where she had started. A little wan, feeling a little empty, she caught the train for Bloomfield. All during the trip she gazed from the window, dizzily conscious of the shifting landscape, dimly ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Day broke cold, wan, threatening, under a leaden sky. The hunters traveled thirty miles by noon, and halted in a hollow where a stream flowed in wet season. Cottonwood trees were bursting into green; thickets of prickly thorn, dense and matted, showed ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... dark heaven, as the troop defiled into the canon; they glinted with a steely lustre through the roof of fallen trees that arched the gorge from side to side, then a wind of morning blew and they grew pallid and wan in a shining haze, and, towering far up above them, vaguely terrific in shadow, the horsemen saw the heights they were to climb all grayly washed in the night-dew. So they swept up the mountain-side in their gay and breezy career, on from ascent to ascent, from abutment to abutment, crossing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... did converse with things above, Acquainted with Emmanuel's love. Most orthodox he was and sound, And many errors did confound. For Zion's King, and Zion's cause, And Scotland's covenanted laws, Most constantly he did contend, Until his time was at an end. At last he wan to full fruition Of that which he had ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... we are not to think of ourselves," said Molly with a wan attempt at a smile, "but somehow I don't feel like following her advice ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... ground beneath them was soft and sandy. But the storm had died away as suddenly as it had come. The tall, stark pine trees, which a few hours ago had been bending like whips before the rushing wind, stood now stiff and stark against the wan sky. There was not even motion enough in the air to clear away the white mists which hung around. Only the troubled sea remained to mark the ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cullud pusson ter do is ter p'ramberlate ter de Linkum lines. Ki! I doan wan' what drap outen OUR sogers' pockets. I kin git Virginny leaf widouten runnin' 'mong de spooks arter it. De place fer a big fine is whar de brush is tick and de Linkum men crawl away so dey woan be tromp on. Who knows but I kin fine a place whar a ginral ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... away from the shore, and Dolly was floating on the crimson and purple sea, with a flush of crimson and purple sent down upon her from the clouds, and everything in the world glowing with colour or tipped with gold,—her face as she gazed into the glory took such an expression of wan despair, that Rupert forgot where he was. Greatly he longed to say something to break up that look; and could not find the words. The beauty and the peace of the external world wrought, as it sometimes does, by the power of contrast; and had set Dolly to ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... hat, and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Then he went on, no longer speaking in French and then translating,—his usual concession to my supposed desires,—but mostly now in quasi-English: "Mais, you thing this great gouvernement wan' hones' men work ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... heavy on the sands Above the warped, wan tide, Whose waves thrust ineffectual hands Beneath ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... sheen on everything, a soft, glowing sheen of phosphorescence from the rocks rising to meet the pale wan starlight. The night air was soft, with a gentle breeze that rippled the distant lake into a great spread ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... man, thin, wan, naked, and bleeding, who seemed to have risen from the grave to revenge the sufferings of his life. His countenance was ghastly pale, his hair lying in matted locks on his neck; and the long beard, covering the lower part of his face, and falling almost to his waist, gave ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... best to comfort them. "Banshee daren't set fut in the garden, or raise wan skirl of a cry, after all the prayers yez have been sayin'," she would tell them. But when she left them it was only to go to the kitchen fire and pray against the same fear herself. But, apart from this shadow, that often lifted for ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... surface of the snow, while the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... closely, even to such details of the scene as the little chapel by the sea, the moonlight, and the answer which Sir Bedwere made the wounded king, when bidden to throw Excalibur into the water, "'What saw thou there?' said the king. 'Sir,' he said, 'I saw nothing but the waters wap and the waves wan.'" ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... seemed to miss a beat, for against the wan surface of the river he saw an arm raised and a gun point—presumably at the dummy he had left under the tent. Oddly enough his shock of horror was not primarily that one should seek to kill him, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... that passed around her; but even then she called for her child, and charged the nurse to be kind to it, and to indulge it in everything till its father returned. This charge she gave, because she knew the babe wan sick, and needed the tenderest care. At last the mother lay without moving, her eyes closed, and her head resting on her arm. Thus she continued for two days, and then she uttered one cry, and ceased to breathe. ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... Josiah's part for a chicken-pie and vegitables of all kinds, and various warm cakes and pastries, compromised down to plans of tender steak, mashed potatoes, cream biscuit, lemon custard, and coffee. It wus settled in peace and calmness. He looked unstrung, very unstrung, and wan, considerable wan. But I knew that I and the supper could string him up agin; and I felt that I would not speak of the plan or the creek, or any agitatin' subject, until the supper was over, which ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... lie in the forest; on the damp earth, brown and chill, Gather near the evening shadows. Hark! the wind is sorrowing still. Vanished are the pine-crowned mountains, hidden in a dusky cloud; See the rain, it falleth ever from the wan and dreary sky: Rusheth on the swollen streamlet, wildly whirling, foaming by; And the branches, leafless waving, in the Fall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... and its own special significance. And yet the yellow of the Magdalen's dress, the deep green of the coat making ruddier the embrowned flesh of sturdy Joseph of Arimathea, the rich shot crimson of Nicodemus's garment, relieved with green and brown, the chilling white of the cloth which supports the wan limbs of Christ, the blue of the Virgin's robe, combine less to produce the impression of great pictorial magnificence than to heighten that of solemn ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the lady in a careless garb, reclining on a sofa, wan, pale, and of a sickly aspect On recognising me, she assumed a languidly-smiling air, and received me with much civility. I took my seat near her. She began ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... that a small and partly ruinous tenement in the outskirts of A. received a new family. The group consisted of four children, whose wan and wistful countenances, and still, unchildlike deportment, testified an early acquaintance with want and sorrow. There was the mother, faded and care-worn, whose dark and melancholy eyes, pale cheeks, and compressed lips told of years of anxiety and endurance. There was the father, with haggard ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on the flood, as I desired; and each visible tuft of marsh-grass might, but for its motionlessness, have been a prowling boat. Dark as the night had appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... really getting quite late," Barton observed, reluctantly. He liked to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received just a touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk to her; in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It would be miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and non-paying patients would be importunate ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... was framed in a virginal fringe of brown beard, and he was dressed by a London theatrical tailor. Mr. Wan-had no ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... bright and black of yore Were now more black and bright, And beam'd strange lustre in her face So deadly wan and white. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... the wan presage of the coming of the moon. The night was very still and very warm. As they skirted the long gardens Domini saw a light in the priest's house. It made her wonder how he passed his solitary ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... sigh of relief, and a little colour came into her wan face. But her eyes still dwelt curiously, and with apprehension, on mademoiselle, who stood looking sullenly into the fire; and seeing this my heart misgave me sorely that I had done a foolish thing in bringing the girl there. I foresaw a hundred questions ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... he labored diligently to impress upon the child of how great benefit that same money would be to him by and by. Just picture to yourself, if you can, that fond, foolish old man seeking to teach this lesson to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little cripple! But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was so apt a pupil that Old Growly made great joy and was wont to rub his bony hands gleefully and say to himself, "He has great genius,—this boy of ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... my dear!" she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak, wan voice, with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying from love and from consumption. "Sit down here ... I am glad to see you ... Only don't be angry—I am almost dying from migraine, and from my miserable heart. Pardon my speaking with difficulty. I think I sang too ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... "Try it wid wan eye instid," said he, putting on a brogue to match her own. She laughed and escaped, and, later, read ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... strangely and his voice was so low that it was almost a whisper—though it was not one. For the first time she felt something stir in her stunned mind—as if thought were wakening—fear—a vague quaking. Her wan small face began to wonder and in the dark roundness of her eyes a question was to be seen like a drowned thing slowly rising from the deeps of a pool. But she asked no question. She only waited a few moments and let him look at her until she said at last in a voice ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tears, to find some way of accommodating the dispute. Her nights were sleepless, her days were spent in weeping, and her health and strength were soon found to be wasting very rapidly away. She was emaciated, wan, and pale, and it was plain that such distress, if long continued, would soon bring her ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... flung his snowshoes into a corner, stamped the snow off his feet, and got himself a fresh plug of black tobacco from a shelf over the stove. Then he went out again, leaving the woman with a cold tremble in her heart and the wan desolation of hopelessness in her face as she set about getting ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... all right. And if he don't throw together some uh them sour-dough biscuits uh his, there'll be something happen! Hope the bean-pot's full. G'wan, yuh lazy old skate." He slapped the rein-ends lightly down the flanks of his horse and went at a trot around the end of the cabin. And there he was so utterly taken by surprise that he almost pulled his mount into ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... git right back in thar, an' keep still. It was just as that whole caboodle come tearin' up this las' time, sir. It wan't no safe place fer a girl whar you was. Ragan he promised to tell you, only he got hit 'fore the fracas was done. That's why Foster chirked up, an' that's all ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... Mr. Anketell arrived for a fortnight's holiday, and all the sad story had to be told to him. He was terribly grieved and upset— grieved to see his bright, happy Stella so wan and quiet, and troubled sorely to think Paul had so far forgotten himself and his duty to the younger ones as to place their lives ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Marse Doctor, 'n I follered yer, I want to tell yer:—Mistress 'splained all 'bout dat 'fore she died. Dey wan't nothin' wrong. Her an' her ma was 'feared to let old Master know she hed run 'way an' married Marse Henry. He said he wan't gwine ter will her nary cent. So mistess and her sister, Miss Ellen, arter ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... gazing intently towards the east gate, where the dust as of a recently passing vehicle was settling back to earth. She opened Mrs. Truscott's door, and saw Marion Sanford slowly descending the stairs, her face very white and wan. Out in the dining-room could be heard voluble voices, weeping, and Irish expletives of mingled wrath and grief,—and then, with eyes dilating with horror, with streaming hair, with pallid lips and a ghastly look in her white face, Grace Truscott, clad in a morning wrapper, came rushing ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... knowest no grief, though thy love may weep. A phantom smile, with a faint, wan beam, Is fixed on thy features sealed in sleep: Oh tell me the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... penetrating than that from the coming on of night, which shortly followed. It was impossible not to experience a shudder as of the approach of the Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon the green lawn, and we all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar to each other. The birds in the trees felt the spell. We could in fancy see those spectral camp-fires which men would build on the earth, if the sun should slow its fires down to about the brilliancy of the moon. It was a great ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... going to change your dress. Seats! My word! How splendid!" She clapped her hands quickly, immediately again taking up her work so as to continue it. Into her eyes had come once more that strange expression of pitying contempt. Her white hands flashed in the wan light as she quickly threaded her needle and ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... shadowy veil has spread, See want and infamy as forth they come, Lead their wan daughter from her branded home, To woo the stranger for unhallow'd bread. Poor outcast! o'er thy sickly-tinted cheek And half-clad form, what havock want hath made; And the sweet lustre of thine eye doth fade, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... put your eyes out!" The phrase stung me. With a quick movement, I grasped the hand mirror that lay on the stand by my bed, and looked critically at the image reflected there. Wan, hollow-eyed, with one side of my face and neck still flaming from my burns, I had a quick perception of the way in which my husband, beauty-lover that he is, must have contrasted my appearance ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... shoulder. But only for a moment; that high queenliness was not on the surface, merely, but in the heart, as well. "I think I'm getting tired of Weet-sur-Mer, dad," she said, quite steadily, with a wan little smile. "I seem to be hungering for New York again; wouldn't you like to ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... head, and every day at the hottest time Drummond proposed the same thing; till on the last day, after gradually growing weaker in his determination, urged as he was on all sides by the sufferers in hospital, the wan looks of the ladies, and the longings of ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... wan't manners, but it came out 'fore I thought, and Harney, he hits me a cuff, and tells me to hush my jaw. He got paid, though, for jes' then a voice I hadn't hearn afore, a wee voice like a girl's, calls out five hundred, and ole Harney ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... sanguine carnival of sausage-meat), Here, where Chicago belles their braided hair Pile in Greek knots,—to gaze on brawn and gristle! Here, where in gilded cars the pork-kings loll, Driven Mammon-like unto their marble homes, Lit by the wan light of the electric arc, Swift-wheeled and silent-tyred o'er ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... emphasis. "Where was I? The man an' his childer. Sure, I'll tell Yer 'Anner." Here she turned to the judge. "Fer he," with a jerk of her thumb towards the lawyer, "knows nothin' about the business at all, at all. It was wan night he came to me house askin' to see his childer. The night o' the dance, Yer 'Anner. As I was sayin', he came to me house where the childer was, askin' to see thim, an' him without a look o' thim fer years. An' did they ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea. There with wan face lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked wistfully out upon the changing wonders of the ocean; its far-off sails white in the morning light; its restless waves rolling shoreward to break in the noon-day sun; the red clouds of evening arching ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... departure. To be sure, the heads of the offices were polite enough; but when the young housekeeper had stated her case at the first to which she applied, and the Intelligencer had called out to the invisible expectants in the adjoining room, "Anny wan wants to do giner'l housewark in Charlsbrudge?" there came from the maids invoked so loud, so fierce, so full a "No!" as shook the lady's heart with an indescribable shame and dread. The name that, with an innocent pride in its literary and historical ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... stricken to the earth, when he saw his gay, kind playmate lying there, white as the pillow under his wasted face, in which his sunken blue eyes showed large and strange. The sick boy did not say anything that the other boys could hear, but they could see the wan smile that came to his dry lips, and the light come sadly into his eyes, when his mother asked him if he knew this one or that; and they could not bear it, and went out ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Cannes the winter of 1897 when he was suffering keenly. He had still the old charm and was especially attentive to my sister-in-law, Lucy, who saw him then for the first time and was deeply impressed. As we drove off, she murmured, "A sick eagle! A sick eagle!" Nothing could better describe this wan and worn leader of men as he appeared to me that day. He was not only a great, but a truly good man, stirred by the purest impulses, a high, imperious soul always looking upward. He had, indeed, earned the title: "Foremost ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... anny gintleman that took a thrip to Reno in ordher to saw off th' housekeepin' expinses on a rash successor wud find throuble ready f'r him whin he come back to Ar-rchey Road. No, sir, whin our people grab hands at th' altar, they're hooked up f'river. There's on'y wan decree iv divoorce that th' neighbors will recognize, an' that's th' wan that entitles ye to ride just behind th' pall bearers. That's why I'm a batch. 'Tis th' fine skylark iv a timprary husband I'd make, bringin' home a new wife ivry Foorth iv July an' dischargin' th' old wan without ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... They fell to talking about their own affairs, which to the young are the chief interests. It takes years "that bring the philosophic mind" to make abstractions stimulating. Finally they wafted homeward under a sky dark at the zenith and becoming paler and paler, violet, rose, wan white, with a line of intense violet along the horizon, and, as they sailed, Madeline sang softly as one does in the immediate ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To know and to act ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her impulse to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a vera stiff brae, an' ere we wan up to the kirk, it was gyaun upon eleyven o'clock. "Hooever," says the mannie, "we'll be in braw time; it's twal ere the sattlement begin, an' I'se warran they sanna apen the kirk-doors till's till than." So we tak's a luik roun' for ony kent fowk. They war stannin' ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... these, put down her wet umbrella in the shabby little hall, and opened the door of a barely furnished room, the walls of which were, however, lined with books. Beside the fire was the one really comfortable piece of furniture in the room, an Ikeley couch, and upon it lay a very wan-looking invalid, who glanced up with a smile of welcome. "Why, Erica, you are home ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... up into the kindly old face of the coloured woman, and a wan smile was on her lips as she replied, "Mam, you are a woman of good sense, and, God willing, I will get well." From that day ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... scene iv Sir Fran. No, that's a Miracle! But there's one thing you want... text reads one thing you wan't ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... very ignorant," said Lady Alice, smiling a wan smile, and touching the girl's cheek lightly with her hand. "How could he marry another woman when I was alive? Your father and I separated on account of what is called incompatibility of temper. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... at her and saw that she was wan and thin and weak, and he did not dare to preach to her the old family sermon as to his rank and station. "But, Anna, why do you tell me ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... head with a wan smile. She knew too well the terrible danger in which her lover stood, and she rightly guessed that the Queen would have no power ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... moment, a dozen or so of wan faced reporters, in massive beards and black hats, pressed eagerly through the crowd, and went to work like beavers dotting down all that was said, and a little more. Then commenced the address by Alderman Dan Dooley, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... drearier toward twilight falling, came A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew The mist aside, and with that wind the tide Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field Of battle: but no man was moving there; Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave Brake in among dead faces, to and fro Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling far along the gloomy ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... earth at all—voices in which no accent of sex transpired, abstract voices aloof from any stress of passion, undistressed by any longing, even for God. They were not human voices, and, hearing them, Evelyn had imagined angels bearing tall lilies in their hands, standing on wan heights of celestial landscape, singing their ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... but recently risen from a bed of pain, was wan and pale; his tall and stately form had shrunk, his massive head was bowed, his raven locks had ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... commander-in-chief in 1828 and 1829, which strongly reprobated the practice of holding Orange lodges in regiments. The lodges, he said, had been formed under warrants granted for that purpose by the Duke of Cumberland, who was the grand-master of the Orange body, and a field-marshal. It was true the wan-ants had not the name of his royal highness upon them; but he found it difficult to imagine that he was ignorant of the existence of Orange lodges in the army. Mr. Hume moved a string of eleven resolutions upon this subject. Mr. Patten, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wan, colorless, blanched, ghastly, ashen, cadaverous. Patience, forbearance, resignation, longsuffering. Penetrate, pierce, perforate. Place, office, post, position, situation, appointment. Plan, design, project, scheme, plot. Playful, mischievous, roguish, prankish, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... on. Ayein Lachesce in loves cas I finde how whilom Eneas, Whom Anchises to Sone hadde, With gret navie, which he ladde 80 Fro Troie, aryveth at Cartage, Wher for a while his herbergage He tok; and it betidde so, With hire which was qweene tho Of the Cite his aqueintance He wan, whos name in remembrance Is yit, and Dido sche was hote; Which loveth Eneas so hote Upon the wordes whiche he seide, That al hire herte on him sche leide 90 And dede al holi what he wolde. Bot after that, as it be scholde, Fro thenne he goth toward Ytaile Be Schipe, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... the light of the solitary lamp that lit the room. The clock was striking midnight, and the driving rain beat dismally against the window-blinds. But one month had passed since her elopement with Philip Searle, yet her wan cheeks and altered aspect revealed how much of suffering can be crowded into that little space of time. She started from her revery when the striking of the timepiece told the lateness of the hour. Heavy footsteps sounded upon the stairway, and, while she listened, Philip, followed ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Emperor, about the yere 1480. The same began likewise to encroach vpon the countries of Lituania and Liuonia, but the conquest only intended, and attempted by him vpon some part of those countries, was pursued and performed by his sonne Basileus, who first wan the citie and dukedom of Plesko, afterwards the citie and dukedome of Smolensco, and many other faire towns, with a large territory belonging vnto them, about the yere 1514. [Sidenote: 1580.] These victories ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... spread his legs apart, threw his head back, and his chest out. "Ye now behold Mister Matthew McCarthy, a king iv the noble Eldorado Dynasty by the strength iv his own right arm. Me possessions is limitless. I have more dust in wan minute than iver I saw in all me life before. Me intintion for makin' this trip to the States is to look up me ancestors. I have a firm belafe that they wance existed. Ye may find nuggets in the Klondike, but ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... broad, full-sphered skull the skin was drawn close, and shone in the light with positive brilliance; the temples were deep hollows, from which the forehead beetled like a wrinkled crag; the eyes were wan and dim; the nose was pinched; and all the lower face was muffed in a beard flowing and venerable as Aaron's. Such was Hillel the Babylonian! The line of prophets, long extinct in Israel, was now succeeded by a line of scholars, of whom he was first in learning—a prophet in all but the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... many were the grievous things upon that hill I bare: I saw the God of Hosts Himself stretched in His anguish there: The darkness veiled its Maker's corpse with clouds; the shades did weigh The bright light down with evil weight, wan under sky that day. Then did the whole creation weep and the King's death bemoan; Christ ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... her head when her mother spoke. She had not been shedding tears. Perhaps she might have looked less terribly wan and woeful if she ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... smaller one, which he entered from under a heavy blue velvet curtain, and found himself in an atmosphere heavy with warmth and perfume, and strangely oppressed besides. On one side of the large fire sat the young Queen, faded, wan, and with all animation or energy departed, only gazing with a silent, wistful intentness at her husband. He was opposite to her in a pillowed chair, his feet on a stool, with a deadly white, padded, puffy cheek, and his great black eyes, always ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... o' the leaf, and the cauld winds are blawin', The wee birds, a' sangless, are dowie and wae; The green leaf is sear, an' the brown leaf is fa'in', Wan Nature lamentin' o'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of their heads from right to left and back again as they swept their gaze through the grey emptiness of the waters where, about two miles distant, the hull of the yacht loomed up to seaward, black and shapeless, against the wan sky. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Sunday afternoon before Luke came round, a different Luke, a lean, wan, worn-out shred of a youth. His ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the little girl, spitefully. "Ey hate yo now warser than onny wan else. Ey hate yo because yo are neaw lunger my sister—becose yo 're a grand ledy's dowter, an a grand ledy yersel. Ey hate yo becose yung Ruchot Assheton loves yo—an becose yo ha better luck i' aw things than ey have, or con expect to have. That's why I hate yo, Alizon. When yo are a witch ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bout seven clocks or thereaway, you'd find a Still-Hed an' Worm At full work, in they tipper End iv The brown Glen in Ahadarra. Sir, thrum wan iv Die amstrung's Orringemen an' ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... pot of mojadderah. In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... he had lost so long ago, engaged in building a bower to receive him in, when his aged steps should bring him there at last. He is filled with joy to see her, so young—so bright—so full of promise—and is enraptured to think that she never was old, wan, tearful, withered. This is always one of the sources of consolation in the deaths of children. With no effort of the fancy, with nothing to undo, you will always be able to think of the pretty creature you have lost, as a child ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... have slept for hours had she been permitted to do so, but Lady Bassett, returning, awoke her to receive her welcome. She was charmed to have her back, she declared, though shocked to see her looking so wan, "so almost plain, dear child, if one may take the liberty of an old friend to tell ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... this island," replied her companion with a wan smile—no animals bigger than coons, and they couldn't make so much a noise. Besides, I heard him grunt, or moan, as he fell. So it must have ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... always been fair, clear, and delicate, but now it was so white, wan, and shadowy that her sweet blue eyes seemed preternaturally large, bright, and hollow. She began to speak, but with an effort that ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... with sudden color, fell to bustling about with a queer lump in his throat and talking ambiguously of Aunt Ellen's Christmas orders, painfully conscious that the girl's dark face had grown pitifully white and tense and that Roger's wan little face was glowing. And when the fire was damped by the Doctor himself, and his Christmas guests hustled into dazed, protesting readiness, the Doctor deftly muffled the thin little fellow in blankets and gently carried ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... here or you don' play none in my house. No living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it. Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs. If you don't like it, g'wan home." ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... of Meurs thirty and six years spent, Fourteen of which she took no nourishment; Thus pale and wan she sits sad and alone, A garden's all ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... starved at nurse. Anybody would have guessed Miss to have been bred up under the influence of a cruel stepdame, and John to be the fondling of a tender mother. John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter; Miss looked pale and wan, as if she had the green sickness; and no wonder, for John was the darling: he had all the good bits, was crammed with good pullet, chicken, pig, goose, and capon; while Miss had only a little oatmeal ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... of aspect, I ran and stumbled along the cliffs. Dead Man's Rock lay below wrapped in a curtain of mist. Thick clouds were rolling up from seaward; the grey light of returning day made sea, sky and land seem colourless and wan. But for me there was no sight but Polkimbra ahead. As I gained the little village I ran down the hill to the "Lugger" and knocked upon the door. Heavens! how long it was before I was answered. At last the landlady's head appeared at an upper window. With a few words to Mrs. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fire-lit kitchen, to prefer her request to Mrs. Grant about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his own—those in which he ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... to meet her and drew her to the table. She smiled in her wan, rather abstracted way at Bernard whom she ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... vigil. As the long hours wore on he felt creep over him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep. A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable something breathed to him, telling him when he was ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... awake?" was her greeting, as she perched herself on the foot of the bed. "I've just had the very sweetest note from Hunt-Goring accompanied by a box of the most exquisite Eastern cigarettes—'Companions of the Harem,' he says they are called. And how are you feeling now, you poor wan thing? What interesting shadows you have developed! I wish I could make my eyes look like that. The revered Max suffered agonies about you last night, and nearly slew me with a glance because I dared to touch my mandolin after ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... alone, and when I was shown into her salon I thought she looked rather wan and pale, but she greeted me affably and expressed delight that I should call before returning ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... on the height above Kellia Bay mark the headquarters where Col. Hughes and his Anzac staff are living. From ever-windy hills they look across the Narrows to the wan house where Byron lived. Gangs of Greeks are working for them. The extremity of Gallipoli Peninsula is as it were an imperial estate, and every day a round of work goes on at Helles, at Greenhill, at Suvla, and the rest. With the coming ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham |
