"Meditative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flapping in his swarthy face as he turns round facing to the opposite point of the compass. His supplications seem to be addressed to the dancing, white-capped waves, but the old Osmanlis mutter "Allah, Allah," in response between meditative whiffs of the narghileh, and the Arab and his fellow Mecca pilgrims swell the chorus with deep-fetched sighs of "Allah, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... all day, and dissipating all night. I can't possibly disturb her in her studio, for she has to work tremendously hard—and I'm decidedly not going to dissipate with her. So I shall have my days and nights to my sequestered and meditative self." ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... it was quite certain if we did not go forward we could not expect to get on, and that in the ordinary course of things if we proceeded we should undoubtedly come to something. To this I replied, in a meditative tone, that there was much truth in the observation, and that, at any rate, if we did not come to something, something ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... quickly away towards the house. Rene followed the retreating figure with a meditative look, so long as he could keep her in sight, then turned his gaze to the island and there stood lost in a deep muse, regardless of the fact that his sweetheart, Moggie, was awaiting a parting interview at the lodge, and that the tide that would ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' Tucker, but not in a borrowing sense of the word, as I remember," remarked Miss Lavinia in a meditative tone of voice. "And that would be the thing about my getting the new teeth. Don't either of you need 'em, and it would be selfish of me to spend on something they couldn't anybody borrow from me. Amandy, dig ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... know he was at Turtle Head; and I am satisfied now that he is the man that shook up Hasbrook that night," continued Laud, in meditative mood. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... a cup of coffee and a meditative cigar, he put on his mackintosh, sent for a cab, and drove to number 134 Manchester Road, which is one of a long row of small, two-storeyed brick houses, as clean as the all-pervading smoke and damp will permit them to be, but not exactly imposing ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... God's image) which is meet." This warning doubtless flattered Standish, but Robinson's later criticism of his methods at Weymouth hurt the little captain cruelly. He seems to have cherished an intense affection for the Leyden pastor, such as valorous natures often feel for meditative ones, and that Robinson died before he—Standish—could justify himself was a deep grief to the soldier to whom mere physical hardships were as nothing. We do not know a great deal about this relationship between the two men: in this as in so many cases the intimate stories of ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... June Mr. Spicer began to amuse himself with a little gardening. He had discovered in the coal-hole an ancient fork, with one prong broken and the others rusting away. This implement served him in his slow, meditative attack on that part of the jungle which seemed to offer least resistance. He would work for a quarter of an hour, then, resting on his fork, contemplate the tangled mass of vegetation which he ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Pupil (with meditative astonishment). How great is the power of King Dushyanta! Since his arrival our rites have ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... and very subtle was the vibrant stir of that wire as it conveyed back to his ear the little sigh with which she made answer to his plea. He took his way upward in a mood which was meditative but no ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating . . . [In a meditative manner.] Eighteen, but admitting to twenty at evening parties. Well, it will not be very long before you are of age and free from the restraints of tutelage. So I don't think your guardian's consent is, after all, ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... town, of between three and four thousand inhabitants, and has in it a good many quaint old houses, and is characterized (so I thought) by an air of respectable, stand-still, and meditative repose, which, I am afraid, will entirely give way before the railroad demon, for I understand that it is soon to be connected by the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton line with all parts of the kingdom. Just ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... was an indiction, this had become suddenly true. For the poetess's third contribution, without changing its strong local color and individuality, had been an unexpected outburst of human passion—a love-song, that touched those to whom the subtler meditative graces of the poetess had been unknown. Many people had listened to this impassioned but despairing cry from some remote and charmed solitude, who had never read poetry before, who translated it into their own limited vocabulary and more limited experience, and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... with cheek on fire, and a little natural water in her eyes, and looked ten times comelier and more womanly and interesting than she had done all day. The desertion of the best narrator broke up the party, and the unassuming Denys approached the meditative mijauree, and invited her in the most flattering terms to gamble with him. She started from her reverie, looked him down into the earth's centre with chilling dignity, and consented, for she remembered all in a moment what a show ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... solemn hour!—so silent, that the sound Even of a falling leaflet had been heard, Was that, wherein, with meditative step, With uncompanion'd step, measured and slow, And wistful gaze, that to the left, the right, Was often turn'd, as if in secret dread Of something horrible that must be met— Of unseen evil not to be eschew'd— Up a long vista'd avenue I wound, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... a raised divan, propped by cushions, and in front of her was a huge water-pipe at which she occasionally took a meditative pull. She was dressed quite in Oriental fashion, in trousers, zouave jacket, sash, and all the rest of it; but she was unmistakably English in features, though strongly suggestive of the Boadicea. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... same,' Crewe replied at once, though with less than his usual directness; the question seemed to make him meditative. 'Just the same. Every man looks at it in his own way, of course. I'm not the sort of chap to knuckle under to my wife; and there isn't one woman in a thousand, if she gave her husband a start, could help reminding him ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... and forth, ascetic and serene of face, two nuns buried in their hoods, telling their beads on long rosaries which measured their time of waiting, priests from the diocese of Lyon, recognizable from the shape of their hats, and other persons of stern and meditative mien seated by the great table of black wood which stood in the centre of the room, and turning the leaves of some of those edifying periodicals which are printed on the hill of Fourvieres, the Echoes ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood—"you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... their Eton day, and with no more satisfaction from Gerald did they part at the Slough station. The Marchmonts were loud in his praise, Marian sought the real opinion in Edmund's eyes, but he was leaning back, looking meditative, and when first he roused himself to enter into conversation, it was of Lionel and not of Gerald that ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... further satisfaction in his book. He knew that the burglar kept casting meditative glances at him as if in wonder at such brutality, and in truth, his own mind was not entirely at ease. If by any chance the story were true,—if there was a woman at his doors freezing to death, how could he sit enjoying the fire? But, on the other hand, could any one have a more ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... that he had passed through all these seas and toils, he thought it was time for his spirit, wearied with calamities, to withdraw from his labours. So he took a queen from Sweden, and exchanged his old pursuits for meditative leisure. His life was prolonged in the utmost peace and quietness; but when he had almost come to the end of his days, certain men persuaded him by likely arguments that souls were immortal; so that he was constantly turning over in his mind ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... he loved her memory with steady constancy. If—and I think we may—if we allow that every author has some especial quality with which, in more or less degree, he endows all his children—if we grant that Shakespeare's people are all meditative, even the sprightly Rosalind and the clownish Dogberry—if we allow that all our acquaintances in Dickens are a trifle self-conscious, in George Eliot conscientious to such an extent that even Tito Melema feels remorse ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... had started back toward the home corrals all right," said Jimmie, with a meditative smile. "Only she wasn't strong enough to make it all the way. She got weak in the knees an' went to sleep on the road. Now, if I had a fist full of money—" He sighed the rest ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... of suggestion that in fifteen minutes the Happy Family had passed out of sight over the top of the grade; all save Andy Green, who told them he would be along after a while, and that they need not wait. He looked at the clock, smoked a meditative cigarette and went up to the White House, to attend the second meeting of the Mutual Improvement and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... glint of a laugh that I had learned to expect and to—dread. I knew what he meant to imply, and I also knew that he knew that I understood that he considered me a disturbing element. Then he again raised the half-demolished hunk of bread to his mouth, stopped and regarded the apple in meditative indecision. From head to heels he was clothed in the most exquisite white flannel and buckskin tennis clothes, but for all their civilized worldliness he resembled nothing so much as a feeding king of the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and she remained in ignorance of the fact that Hamilton had just heard her make what she supposed to be a false oath for his sake. Soon after we reached the palace, my cousin and I walked out to the park, and after a long meditative silence, she asked:— ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... demanded, "Wherefore have ye stolen my gods?" Yet such was the general apostasy of the times, that this family was so much in advance of any other, that it was to it that Abraham was obliged to send, a generation previous, for a suitable wife for the amiable and meditative Isaac. What wonder then that many practices prevailed among the descendants of Jacob that were not in accordance with either the will or the ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... were swept away; and, in their stead, fields of waving grain hung their golden ears in the ripening sun, ready for the coming harvest. Flocks and herds grazed in the green pastures which sloped to the water's edge, or collected in meditative groups beneath the scattered trees that spread their ample branches to shelter them. The noble range of hills which rose beyond in beautiful inequalities, girdling the indented coast, presented a rich and variegated prospect. Broad patches of cultivation appeared in every sheltered nook, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... church a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... apt picture in a few words (if we like to take it so) of the long pilgrimage of the Human Race, its early and pathetic clinging to the tradition of the Eden-garden, its careless and vigorous boyhood, its meditative youth, with consciousness of sin and endless expiatory ritual in Nature's bosom, its fleeting visions of salvation, and finally its complete disillusionment and despair in the world-slaughter and unbelief of the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... pursued His travels to the capital apace;— Esteeming it a little hard he should In twelve hours' time, and very little space, Have been obliged to slay a free-born native In self-defence: this made him meditative. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... long trail to follow," he said, slowly, "trying to get back dues from the government. There's red tape and lawyers and rulings and evidence and courts to keep you waiting. I'm not certain," continued the commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, "whether this department that I'm the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It's only Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma'am, and it don't sound as if it would cover the case. But sometimes a saddle blanket can be made ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... whimsical character, and it did not arrive anywhere, so far as it went; but I believe that it might have been different with a Yankee story in verse such as we have fragmentarily in 'The Nooning' and 'FitzAdam's Story'. Still, his gift was essentially lyrical and meditative, with the universal New England tendency to allegory. He was wholly undramatic in the actuation of the characters which he imagined so dramatically. He liked to deal with his subject at first hand, to indulge through himself all the whim and fancy which the more dramatic ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... its own suggestions: but truth is to be mined from Nature, to be wrung from experience, to be seized as the victor's trophy on the battlefield of action and suffering. The flowers of poetry may bud spontaneously around the meditative spirit of genius, but the harvest of Truth, though, to be reaped by mind, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... the tenderness of his nature, toward a devotional life, and accepted with blind confidence the religious and moral teaching of the reverend fathers. A doctrine which preached separation from profane things; the attractions of a meditative and pious life, and mistrust of the world and its perilous pleasures, harmonized with the shy and melancholy timidity of his nature. Human beings, especially women, inspired him with secret aversion, which was increased by consciousness of his awkwardness and remissness whenever he found himself ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... occupied with their own affairs, chiefly evil, Gilbert was allowed to live as he pleased. But for the fact that even his well-filled purse must in the course of time be exhausted, he might have spent the remainder of his life in the Lion Inn, by the bridge, carelessly meditative and simply happy. But other forces were at work to guide his life into other channels, and he had reckoned ill when he had fancied, being himself unmoved, that the love of such a woman as Queen Eleanor was a mere incident without consequence, forgotten ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... reddish earthenware pot upon the table, took out a cigarette and lit it at a candle. Then he sat smoking, pushed back a little from the circle, gravely watching. Sometimes I heard his deep, grave voice assenting 'Ye-es, ye-es,' with meditative boredom. Sometimes his little finger flicked off the ash on to the floor. His manner was that of a man too much interested in the life about him to wish to be more than a spectator. His interest was in life, not in ideas. He was new to ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... 1 and 13), Horace recurs with tenderness to the "gentle Cinara" as having held the paramount place in his heart. She was his one bit of romance, and this all the more that she died young. Cinarae breves annos fata dederunt—"Few years the fates to Cinara allowed;" and in his meditative rambles by the Digentia, the lonely poet, we may well believe, often found himself sighing "for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... both with relief. The voyage had been a source of wonder to him from its first inception, and the day's proceedings had only served to increase the mystery. He made a light supper and, the house being too quiet for his taste, went for a meditative stroll. The shops were closed and the small thoroughfares almost deserted. He wondered whether it was too late to call and talk over the affair with Captain Bowers, and, still wondering, found himself in ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... nor their lives are measured by the ell No man more certain than another of to-morrow. —Seneca No one can be called happy till he is dead and buried Not certain to live till I came home Not melancholic, but meditative Nothing can be a grievance that is but once Philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die Premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty Profit made only at the expense of another Rather prating of another man's province than his own Same folly ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... little table is usurped by others that know not love. I like them, too, because they really seem to have an eye for the strange beauty and charm of the Sphinx, quite an unexpected taste for Botticelli. They ill conceal their envy of my lot, and sometimes, in the meditative pauses between the courses, I see them romantically reckoning how it might be possible by desperately saving up, by prodigious windfalls of tips, from unexampled despatch and sweetness in their ministrations, how it might be possible in ten years' time, perhaps even in five—the lady would ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... muttered; it was only thought, but the thought banished the smile of satisfaction from Ian's face. In a meditative mood he took up his gun, refreshed the priming and slightly chipped the flint, so as to sharpen its edge and make ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... oratory of music. This difference, being seized, would put an end to much musical sectarianism. There has been much contention whether the music of the modern Italian school, that of Rossini and his successors, be impassioned or not. Without doubt, the passion it expresses is not the musing, meditative tenderness, or pathos, or grief of Mozart or Beethoven. Yet it is passion, but garrulous passion—the passion which pours itself into other ears; and therein the better calculated for dramatic effect, having a natural adaptation for dialogue. Mozart also is great in musical oratory; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... relish. His conscience did not trouble him at all. Stuhk and his own career seemed already distant; they took small place in his thoughts, and served merely as a background for his present absolute content. He picked some oranges, and ate them in meditative enjoyment. For a while he nodded, half asleep, beside his fire, watching the darkened river, where the mullet, shimmering with phosphorescence, still leaped starkly above the surface, and fell in spattering brilliance. Midnight found him sprawled ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... spend much of the Sabbath evening in extending his notes of Mr. Bruce's sermons, but now, "Determined to be brief with these, for the sake of a more practical, meditative, resting, sabbatical evening." ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... after a time, taking a meditative but wholly unagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is and I ain't saying she ain't. But I never did say I was a perfessional housekeeper, did ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... no desire for wealth—for more than enough money to keep my wife and mother comfortable. They, like myself, have learned the lesson of being poor and happy. But I must keep them above want—I will keep them above want!" As he repeated the words the meditative mood dropped from him. He straightened himself in his chair with sudden energy, his voice trembled and sunk almost to a whisper, in place of the dreamy look ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... upon a mast rear'd far aloft, He bore a very bright and crescent blade, The which he waved so dreadfully, and oft, In meditative spite, that, sore dismay'd, I crept into an acorn-cup for shade; Meanwhile the horrid effigy went by: I trow his look was dreadful, for it made The trembling birds betake them to the sky, For every leaf was ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... management of metres like that of 'Love Among the Ruins,' for instance, he shows a different side; the pure lyrics in 'Pippa Passes' and elsewhere sing themselves; and there are memorable cadences in some of the more meditative ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... practice," said Peterkin with a broad grin. "Don't you think we should awake her to make her eat something first? Or perhaps," he added with a grave, meditative look—"perhaps we might put some food in her mouth, which is so elegantly open at the present moment, and see if she'd swallow it while asleep.—If so, Ralph, you might come round to the front here and feed her quietly, while Jack and I are tucking into the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... at a slow walk, one soft autumn evening, from the once noted and noticeable town of Emly, now a squalid village, towards the no less remarkable town of Tipperary, I fell into a meditative mood. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the mill, a woman's body was black against the gold-crested water. She leaned over the little bridge, her body strong, confident in its physical strength, her hands clasped, her eyes meditative. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... by the river's margin were beginning to display yellow leaves, though the landscape as a whole was smiling the doubtful, meditative smile of a young bride who, about to bear her first child, is feeling at once nervous and delighted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... his nose in a meditative way. "Well," he drawled, "He haven't made many, true enough. I'm not sayin' He mightn't have made more. But He've done very well. They's enough—oh, ay, they's enough t' get along with. For, look you! lad, they's ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... while they were talking thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however, on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since he had thrown his dark thoughts into ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of witch-meeting? Be it so, if you will; but, alas, it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown! a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate, man, did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... from the depths of sin and protected untold numbers against sin. It is also, as St. Ignatius remarks, the shortest way to Christian perfection. Hence St. Teresa implores those who have not yet begun this meditative prayer, to do so in the name of God, and through the love of Christ, and no longer deprive themselves of this most precious ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... There's one comfort, the chapel will be warm. I often catch forty winks in chapel—that is, if I'm lucky enough to get behind one of the tall girls, where Mrs. Willis won't see me. It does seem to me," continued Susan in a meditative tone, "the strangest thing why girls are ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... ardently delights. Not only is the Swiss determined by the peculiarities of his geographical position to lead a pastoral life, but the climate, and mountain scenery, and bracing atmosphere inspire him with the love of liberty. The reserved and meditative Hindoo, accustomed to the profuse luxuriance of nature, borrows the fantastic ideas of his mythology from plants, and flowers, and trees. The vastness and infinite diversity of nature, the colossal magnitude of all the forms of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... conformed to it; and in their contrast of the bewildering variety of finite visible things with the unity of the Eternal Being of which all are phases, those ancients were in close sympathy with the thoughts of the modern meditative saunterer by field and ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... of glorious and of other than glorious feature with which Fletcher has thought fit to interweave them; even in the close of the last scene of all we can say to a line, to a letter, where Shakespeare ends and Fletcher begins. That scene is opened by Shakespeare in his most majestic vein of meditative or moral verse, pointed and coloured as usual with him alone by direct and absolute aptitude to the immediate sentiment and situation of the speaker and of no man else: then either Fletcher strikes in for a moment with a touch of somewhat ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the garden, because nature too is subject to the law of decay and death. The flowers fade and men die. Meditative souls have ever gathered lessons of mortality there, and invested death with an alien softness by likening it to falling leaves and withered blooms. But the contrast is greater than the resemblance, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... robust. His hair was growing grey, his eyelids were rimmed with a blood-coloured border. However, he presided over the gathering. I had closed the door, so that no one should disturb our solemn conference. The guides appeared meditative, and sought to read in my eyes if my firmness ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... leaf added to it in "The Death of the Flowers," which was at once a pastoral of autumn and a monody over a beloved sister. A new element appeared in "The Summer Wind," and was always present afterward in Mr. Bryant's meditative poetry—the association of humanity with nature—a calm but sympathetic recognition of the ways of man and his presence on the earth. The power of suggestion and of rapid generalization, which was the key-note of "The Ages," lived ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... to-night she was so wide-awake, and Joanna and Elin were so fast asleep, that every movement forcing itself upon her ear, made her more wide-awake still. The turning of keys and unlocking of drawers roused her to a whimsical meditative wonder. Poor Pam! What dead memories and coffined hopes was she bringing out to the dim light of her solitary candle? Was it possible that she ever cried over them a little when there was no one to see her relaxing mood? Poor Pam! Theo sighed again, and was just ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Manor House to tell Mr. Brookes that he was engaged to his daughter, and to ask his consent. He did not think of his folly, he was too happy; he seemed like one in a quiet dulcet dream; he walked slowly, leaning from time to time against the wooden paling, for he wished to prolong this meditative moment; he saw everything vaguely, and loved all with a quiet fulness of heart; he took in the sense of this village and its life as he had never done before. He compared it with Ireland; Mount Rorke, with its towers, and lakes, and woods arose, and he was ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... room, there was now a constant, meditative, hooning whistling; but presently this ceased, and the silence seemed worse; for there is such a sense of hidden mischief in ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... taught this pleading to unpractised eyes? Who hid such import in an infant's gloom? Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise? Who mass'd, round that slight brow, these clouds ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... led her to pour forth all her impressions of the day. Indeed she repeated to him great part of the sermon, with a voice quivering with earnestness and emotion. He was not stirred in the same way as she had been, saying in his pensive meditative way, "The preacher is right. Love is life. The misfortune is when we stake our all on one love alone, and that melts from us. Then indeed ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you're odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slip of a boy—" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his native trick of phrasing, as he always ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... for Grace to call, and bidding her companion good- bye, she galloped down the hill, while Edith, in a meditative mood, suffered her favorite Bedouin to walk leisurely up the carriage road which led to ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... horse, and whose thigh was broken. Somebody (I suppose Mary Grace, since my Father could rarely bring himself to pay these public visits) went to see the child in the infirmary, and accidentally discovered that he was exactly the same age that I was. This, and the fact that he was a meditative and sober little boy, attracted us all still further to George, who became converted under one of my Father's sermons. He attended my public baptism, and was so much moved by this ceremony that he passionately desired to be baptized also, and was in fact so immersed, a few ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... play of social intercourse, its quick transitions, and incessant demands, are fatal to free and uninterrupted abandonment to the flow of soft internal emotions. Rousseau, dreaming, moody, indolently, meditative, profoundly enwrapped in the brooding egoism of his own sensations, had to mix with men and women whose egoism took the contrary form of an eager desire to produce flashing effects on other people. We may be sure that as the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be combined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed all things, oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. Beyond the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs and over the apple-trees behind, high up ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... was in a more meditative humour, more anxious to be left to my own dreamings, than when I ascended the railroad car with my companion to return to Jersey city; we were the only two in that division of the car, and my friend, who understood ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... mortal ever watched the ocean-roll or heard its thunder without feeling serious. I have noticed that even animals,—horses and cows,—become meditative in the presence of the sea: they stand and stare and listen as if the sight and sound of that immensity made them forget all else ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... intimate friend—she wouldn't hear a word against her. Only it hurts a woman's pride—there are some things one doesn't get used to . . . All this in confidence, of course? Ah—and there were the ladies signalling from the balcony of the hotel.... He plunged across the Promenade, leaving Selden to a meditative cigar. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a little dark figure perched in a meditative attitude, and immediately ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a meditative interest in a psychological phenomenon. 'Ay, she's been losing it backwards; she forgot who we were first, and remembered us all as little children; then she forgot us and your father altogether. Latterly she's been living back in the days when her father and mother ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the approach of another girl, a year or two her senior, and similarly attired, but with a very different expression in her lively, mischievous eyes. The hands of the latter came down on the shoulders of the meditative maiden so suddenly that she started and almost screamed. Then, looking up, a faint smile parted her lips, and the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... with a twisted mind Of the nasty, meditative kind. He'd meditate on the modes of Gosh, And dared to muse on the acts of Splosh; He dared to speak, and, worse than that, He spoke out loud, and he said it flat. "Why climb?" said he. "When you reach the top There's nowhere ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... out of the eyes of wild creatures, and out of the weeds and stones of the heath. How often, and for how profound a reason, does he not show us to ourselves, not as we or our fellows see us, but out of the continual observation of humanity which goes on in the wary and inquiring eyes of birds, the meditative and indifferent regard of cattle, and the deprecating aloofness and inspection ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... movement—Earnest haste of girded faith in the Flight into Egypt, the haste of obedience, not of fear; and unweariedness, but through spiritual support, and not in human strength—Swift obedience of passive earth to the call of its Creator, in the Resurrection of Lazarus—March of meditative gladness in the following of the Apostles down the Mount of Olives—Rush of adoration breaking through the chains and shadows of death, in the Spirits in Prison. Pacing of mighty angels above the Firmament, poised on their upright wings, half opened, broad, bright, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Peter looked meditative and stitched. "Old Fitz," he murmured, "is one of the best. A real sportsman.... Don't, Elmslie; I didn't think of that, I heard Childers say it. Childers also said, 'By Jove, old Fitz knocks spots out of 'em every time,' ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Dominie Bogardus, which his fancy had heard in the air; or was he obeying another Dominie, of a wider parish, whose voice he heard in his heart? It was not often that the painter went to church. More frequently, in his little studio at the top of a house in Fulton Street, he sat smoking meditative cigars during the Sunday hours; or, if the day were auspicious, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the children. There was a boy's curiosity in his face. From his lyceens uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was the Arabian Nights. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table, and his hand propping his head—the white fingers contrasting strongly with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he looked like ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place, — 'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... of one of the circle of hills which command a view of the city, and seemed to look down upon it with admiration. One of these was our old friend Father Antonio, and the other the Cavalier. The former was mounted on an ambling mule, whose easy pace suited well with his meditative habits; while the other reined in a high-mettled steed, who, though now somewhat jaded under the fatigue of a long journey, showed by a series of little lively motions of his ears and tail, and by pawing the ground impatiently, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... impulse to use his masculine strength, to push the door open before she could lock it again, but fortunately he restrained it. He went down-stairs slowly, shoes and stockings in hand; threw them down behind the big green stove in the smoking-room and lighted a meditative pipe. It was evidently a fact that women were difficult to understand; even Milly was. He had been uniformly kind and tender to her, and so far she had seemed more than content with him as a husband. But beneath ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... quite superfluous in a self-respecting garden. There is a good tennis lawn, plots of flowers, trimly-kept walks bordered with poinsettias, and trees with white, heavily-scented flowers, and opposite my bedroom is a little stone-paved enclosure where two cows and two calves lead a calm and meditative existence! And further, there are funny little huts scattered about where one catches glimpses of natives at their devotions or slumbering peacefully. Imagine in the middle of a garden at home coming on a cowhouse or a shanty! But ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... sometimes wondered that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted since, that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I have done in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself with meditative indecision. I had doubted before. I remember once being so near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the paper under my hand. But I held back, could not make up my mind, and happily was stayed. Had I not ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... her station in society demanded, with unaffected ease and grace. But while the trifles and pleasures of the passing day were to her companions everything, they were to her little and unsatisfying. For the last few years of her mother's life, whose habits were meditative and devotional, she had daily listened to the gracious lessons of divine truth, and the closet of Beatrice Adony was hallowed by the Eye that seeth in secret, and that often saw her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... pleasure. For all her sophisticated and independent manner she was still a child at heart. She had no thoughts of marriage, but it flattered her to think that she had the power to attract and interest this serious, brilliant man of the world. She said nothing more, relapsing into a meditative silence as she busied herself helping the maid to set out the ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... was not of the heroic type. He had nothing Homeric in his inspiration, nothing of the warrior or the patriot in his nature. His genius, when it pursued its bias, found instinctive utterance in elegy and idyl, in meditative rhetoric and pastoral melody. In order to assume the heroic strain, Tasso had recourse to scholarship, and gave himself up blindly to the guidance of Latin poets. This was consistent with the tendency of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... me silently with meditative eyes; and after a while she said slowly: I wish I were a man, only for a moment, to judge of myself and thy answer: for in one way thou art right, since I cannot understand why all men seem to lose their reason, as soon as they see me. And I said: There ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... star-gazer, your proffered story," said the tax-collector, bestirring the company from its meditative mood. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... sure, understand its meaning, but she felt as though it must have some deep significance. It came back to her again and again, like a melody which haunts the inward ear against our will; and her meditative fancy was trying to solve its meaning, when Diodoros returned to tell her that the street was quite empty. He knew now where they were, and, if she liked, he could lead her by a way which would not take them through the gate. Only Christians, Egyptians, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... occupied by these two ministers only; they had no competitors of equal rank. In 577, the King of Kudara made a second attempt to introduce Buddhism into Japan. He sent to the Yamato Court two hundred volumes of sacred books; an ascetic; a yogi (meditative monk); a nun; a reciter of mantras (magic spells); a maker of images, and a temple architect. If any excitement was caused by this event, the annals say nothing of the fact. It is briefly related that ultimately a temple was built for the new-comers in Naniwa ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of a truly prodigious size. His head was raised, and his great ears were pricked forward in a fashion which indicated that he was most intently listening; and upon his face was an expression of such benevolent sweetness, joined to such thoughtfulness and meditative wisdom, that in my heart (which is very open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the stair-way from ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... but the gay vanguard of the life which the street, quite dead through the Sunday dinner-hour, presently took on. Young couples with their progeny began to appear, returning from the weekly reunion Sunday dinner with relatives; young people meditative (until they reached the Pike Mansion), the wives fanning themselves or shooing the tots-able-to-walk ahead of them, while the husbands, wearing long coats, satin ties, and showing dust upon their blazing shoes, invariably pushed the perambulators. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... usually becomes less fastidious about the future of things in general, than when in the hopeful days of boyhood every prospect ahead was fringed with the golden expectations of a budding and inexperienced imagery; nevertheless, a thoughtful, meditative person, who realizes the necessity of drawing the line somewhere, would naturally draw it at impalation. Not being conscious of any presentiment savoring of impalation, however, the only request I make of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Nature, we have seen, offered to the former mysterious and oracular Sibylline leaves, profoundly significant of an indwelling humanity diffused through all her woods and fields and mountains, all her fountains, streams, and seas. Those meditative creators sat at her feet, earnest disciples, but gathering rather the spirit and motive of her gifts than the gifts themselves, making an Ideal and worshipping it as a deity. But for the cathedral-builder, Dryads and Hamadryads, Oreads, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... interest prompts them to imposture. A symbolical religion is a proof of a certain refinement in civilization—the refinement of sages in the midst of a subservient people; and it absorbs to itself those meditative and imaginative minds which, did it not exist, would be devoted to philosophy. Now, even allowing full belief to the legends which bring the Egyptian colonists into Greece, it is probable that few among them were acquainted with the secrets of the symbolical ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... over Kit's House, peered in at the windows, and found Mr. Fogo for the most part busied in peaceful carpentry, though with a mysterious trouble in his breast that at times drove him afield on venturous perambulations, or to his boat to work off by rowing his too-meditative fit. From these excursions he would return tired in body but in heart eased, and resume his humdrum life tranquilly enough; though Caleb was growing uneasy, and felt it necessary, more than once, to retire apart and "have et out," as he put it, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wise,' said Hazel, her spirits taking a little spring as the fire went down. But she turned and went in, and stood before the peaceful fire on the hearth, looking into its red depths. Primrose sat down, but with a different face, sober and meditative in another way. Gyda went out to her kitchen. Perhaps Hazel was tired of standing, for she presently knelt down on the hearth stone, holding out her fingers to the blaze, covered with the red light from head to foot. She looked rather pale, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... gathered chiefly from Friends in Council, though a few of them are taken from Companions of my Solitude. The two books are informed with the same spirit; and to a meditative person, one could not recommend a choicer store of reading. Those, however, to whom the works are as yet unknown, may wish to see some longer and more connected extract. It is difficult to decide upon what ought to be presented, where almost everything is exquisite; ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... birds begin to warble, the leaves and blossoms put forth, and all is new life once more. In every age the gentle heart and meditative mind have been impressed by the mournful correspondence and the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sympathises with the abnormal being whom he creates. Septimius illustrates the dangers of the musing temperament, but the dangers are produced by a combination of an essentially selfish nature with the meditative tendency. Hawthorne, like his hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the same questions as those which tormented poor ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... probably be heard, if anybody is. And a man must believe in God to explain your existence," added Sir Adam, in a gravely meditative tone. "It's ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... turned sideways, leaned one elbow on the table in a meditative way he had, and spoke slowly. Betty gazed up at him in wide-eyed attention, while Mary poured the coffee and Martha helped her mother by passing the cakes. Bobby sat close to his comfortable grandmother, who ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... who discuss poetry, lolling indolently upon the cushions of a divan, while they roll between their fingers the amber beads of their rosary, or walking slowly under the arcades of a mosque, draped in their white-silk simars, with a serious and meditative air, gestures elegant and measured, courteous and harmonious speech, and something discreet, polite, and already clerical in ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Bellevue district, conscious of the presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the barrenness of Bellevue—blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops, weedy lots. "Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs. Judique could give a place," he ruminated, as he rattled through the long, crude, airy streets. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... off here," observed the Crown Prince in a meditative voice, "I would be smashed to a jelly, like the child at the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in a meditative manner; "I have known Lady Mary for many years, and that is her great charm as a hostess. She is always anxious that her guests should amuse themselves after their own fashion. Too many of our entertainers, alas! will insist upon it we ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Cora will be over anxious to have me come back," she said, looking like a meditative cat-bird. "I know she kept that Celine in the house to ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... penetrating remark hits the difference between De Senancourt himself and most of the school. He is absolutely free from the vulgarity of wisdom, and breathes the air of higher peaks, taking us through mysterious and fragrant pine-woods, where more than he may find meditative repose amid the heat and stress of that practical day, of which he and his school can never bear ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... so as to command a better view of the road. He watched in meditative silence until the tramp had become a mere blot upon the whiteness of the dusty road and had finally disappeared over the brow of a distant hill. Then he spoke in tones ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... It needs to be said, in parenthesis, that in all these cases, while there is the musical effect from the standpoint of time and tone-color, there is still the perfection of speech. The theory will not hold, however, in much dramatic verse, or in meditative blank verse, as used by Wordsworth. Much of the poetry of Byron, Browning, Keats, and Shakespeare, while supremely great from the standpoint of color, or dramatic power, or picturesqueness, or thought, is not musical. To bring some poems within the limit of musical ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... noticed on one of the prominent streets a very neat monument to the memory of the great man. It is a niche, with two Corinthian columns, surmounted by a half-circular pediment, which is richly ornamented. A statue of Moliere is placed in the niche in a sitting posture, and in a meditative mood. In front of the columns on each side, there are allegorical figures—one representing his serious, the other his comic plays. Each bears a scroll which contains—one, his comic plays, arranged in chronological order; and the other, his serious plays, arranged in like manner. The basement ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... emptied by the trio; and presently there began to fall upon them a luxurious spell, under the influence of which little but the sound of quiet and confidential laughter interrupted the long intervals of meditative silence. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my meditative eye, still rather absently, I believe, descended her quite good figure to her boots. Thereupon, my gaze ceased to be absent. They were not boots. They were bronzed slippers with high heels and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of authority under Augustus and that going on under the reign of Napoleon, in such a way as to produce a bad effect on public opinion."[6247] In effect, nothing is more dangerous than history, for it is composed, not of general propositions that are unintelligible except to the meditative, but of particular facts accessible and interesting to the first one ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... toils and much suffering, she has come to meet things with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women of high thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair, enjoying the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairs surging through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of this retreat, voices are hushed and footfalls softened; and when the young fiances want to hide away for a moment, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... to a path which ran amidst a shady vista of trees, at the distance of a few paces from the river. This walk was in the evening a favorite resort of the Pompeians, but during the heat and business of the day was seldom visited, save by some groups of playful children, some meditative poet, or some disputative philosophers. At the side farthest from the river, frequent copses of box interspersed the more delicate and evanescent foliage, and these were cut into a thousand quaint shapes, sometimes into the forms of fauns and satyrs, sometimes ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the poet from his epic shabbiness; it may be doubted whether more has been done. There is in him, as in some other Hindu heroes, a shade too much of the meditative to suit our ideal of more ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... hush. A bright fire was burning on the dining-room hearth, the lamps were still lighted, and father was by the fire, smoking in a meditative manner. He put out his hand, which I did not take, and said, "Do ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the session ended. Frohman seemed strangely under the spell of the play. It made him silent and meditative. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... of poetry, merely because, as one of Johnson's most unfortunate criticisms expresses it, the ode suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel. To find beautiful and pathetic language, set to harmonious numbers, for the common impressions of meditative minds, is no small part of the poet's task. That part has never been achieved by any poet in any tongue with more complete perfection and success than in the immortal Elegy, of which we may truly say that it has for nearly ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... said, in a meditative way; "it is very late." Then, after a pause, she turned towards me with an expression in her face which said plainly enough: I am now going to give you a little confidential information. Her words were: "The fact is we are ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... and then from a lady's eye. You must not suppose I care at all about the matter. But as I have not even a book allowed me to take up my thoughts, my curiosity fixes itself strangely upon this silent, sulky, meditative little person, who takes about as much notice of me as of the figure of Father Time over ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Agricola, beginning with a meditative gaze at the sky without, and ending with a philosopher's smile upon his two companions,—"how free we people are ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... would emit bright sparks in isolation. But now it has come about after all, and I would not contradict you if you said that it was Rembrandt and Spinoza who drew me to the regions sanctified by their labors for the fulfilment of my life's task, had not this meditative dwelling sphere been already dear ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... was taking his leave, after some further exchange of opinions, rendered Miss Light the tribute of a deeply meditative sigh. "She has bothered me half to death," he said, "but somehow I can't manage, as I ought, to hate her. I admire her, half the time, and a good part of the rest ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James |
