"Musing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up on injustice. Man would not be man but for injustice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under Pharaoh's lash or Egypt's sun? It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the ignominious slaves that died? What care I that the virtue of some sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres' La Source? That the model died of drink and disease in the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... some causticity of humor, that her father should show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their betrothal as a fact. And thus musing, and joining in no conversation with other buyers except when directly addressed, he followed the assemblage hither and thither till the end of the auction, when Giles for the first time realized what his purchases had been. Hundreds of fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... calm little creek, where the yawl was tied by a line to a large fishing-smack, I tried to read, but very soon found I was thinking of anything but the words on the printed page; then to sleep; but still I was musing on the prospect now opened of a ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... room of his palace stood King Bele. He was leaning on his sword, musing over all that was past, and thinking of the future. He was an old man, and he felt that his strength was ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... interest he had shown her; were, if possible, even more constantly together, reading, writing, or engaged with music in library or drawing-room, seated side by side on veranda or lawn enjoying conversation, book or periodical; or, it might be, silently musing, hand in hand, by the soft moonlight that lent such a witchery to the lovely landscape. A pleasanter honeymoon ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... I have been musing upon "my sorrow was stirred." Can it be that every heart is a treasury of sadness which has but to be stirred up to set us in mourning? Is it proportionate to the amount of evil? Does a certain amount of evil necessarily bring a certain amount of sorrow soon or late? Do we suffer only by ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... nice apartment assigned him, and lay awake a long time, musing on the past and the present. "Ah, I see," he said to himself, "why I am an object of wonder and something of awe to the people of the valley. I have lived apart from human ties, while they have grown old ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... ways from it"' Will replied in a way that stopped further question. "Good luck!" he added as he walked on down The road toward The creek, musing. "And the spring-I wonder if that's there yet. I'd like a drink." The sun seemed hotter than at noon, and he walked slowly. At the bridge that spanned the meadow brook, just where it widened over a sandy ford, he paused again. He hung ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... powerful speaker. His oratory, like small coin of great value, was to be estimated, not by its bulk, but its intrinsic worth. He was once observed, it is said, when the theater was filling with the audience, to walk musing alone behind the scenes, which one of his friends taking notice of, said, "Phocion, you seem to be thoughtful." "Yes," replied he, "I am considering how I may shorten what I am going to say to the Athenians." Even Demosthenes himself, who used to despise the rest ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the head of a Moo Cow[1] from Canada, I was roused by a ring at ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... the other day, Was sauntering up the Sacred Way, And musing, as my habit is, Some trivial random fantasies, That for the time absorbed me quite, When there comes running up a wight, Whom only by his name I knew; "Ha! my dear fellow, how d'ye do?" Grasping my hand, he shouted. "Why, As times go, pretty well," said ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... While yet there was no fear of Jove. 30 Com pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestick train, And sable stole of Cipres Lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Com, but keep thy wonted state, With eev'n step, and musing gate, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: 40 There held in holy passion still, Forget thy self to Marble, till With a sad Leaden downward cast, Thou fix them on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Bertram Challoner better," Mrs. Keith replied, and was silent for a minute or two, musing on former days. "His mother was an old friend of mine—a woman of imagination, with strong artistic tastes; and Bertram resembles her. It was his father, the Colonel, who forced him into the army, and I'm somewhat astonished that he ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... promptness of hand; but that Ethel's pupil, Aubrey's friend, the boy of ingenuous face, could under any provocation strike helpless old age, or, having struck, could abscond without calling aid, actuated by terror, not by pity or repentance, was more than Dr. May could believe, and after brief musing, he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... walk'd about, Musing, and sighing, with your arms across; And when I ask'd you what the matter was, You star'd upon me with ungentle looks."—J. Caesar, Act ii, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing, the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... months before. How much had happened since that time! Fairfax foully murdered, Clifford, her cousin, on his way to pay the penalty of the deed. Truly strange things were wrought in the warp and woof of time. So musing, for little conversation was held, the long hours of the day glided into the shadows of evening, and found them at Trenton where they were to bide for the night. Peggy suggested seeing Governor Livingston, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... home. As soon as these important duties were discharged, she strolled out on the island, taking a path which led through the pretty glade, and which conducted to the only point not covered with bushes. Here she stood gazing at the limpid water, which lay with scarcely a ruffle on it at her feet, musing on the novel situation in which she was placed, and permitting a pleasing and deep excitement to steal over her feelings, as she remembered the scenes through which she had so lately passed, and conjectured those which still lay veiled ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... day longer;—we have counted many, in peril and fear, and this, is the last;—even now how softly the fearful time wastes. One day!—Oh God, thou only knowest what its shining walls encircle. (She leans on the window, musing silently.) Two years ago I stood here, and prayed to die.-On that same tree my eye rested then. With what visions of hope I played under it once, building bowers for fairies I verily thought would come, and dreaming, with yearning heart, of ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... evening, but being summertime the light was still bright; indeed, the sun was yet high in the heavens. So I left the people who wanted to have a last look at Mr. Wesley, and who found their way to the seashore in great numbers. I went slowly toward Humphry Bolitho's shop, musing upon what the great man had said to me, but thinking far more of my meeting with Naomi. It is true I was too excited to understand its real significance, but the impression left upon me was gladsome, and, although my prospects ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... quoth the knight, musing; "but thou mistakest my intentions. I let him not go; howbeit, at worst I would only mark him in the ear, and turn him up again after this warning, peradventure with a few stripes to boot athwart the shoulders, in order ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the very essence of which was, however, a passionate appeal to the spirit of national independence? What can be more germane to the poem than the delineation of the strength the poet had derived from musing in the bare and rugged solitudes of St. Mary's Lake, in the introduction to the second canto? Or than the striking autobiographical study of his own infancy which I have before extracted from the introduction to the third? It seems to me that Marmion without ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... she craved was to be liked for charms she had not, graces she scorned; and because she could not be sure how much of that sort she was winning she tingled with heat against him—and against Anna—Anna giver of guns—who had the money to give guns—till her bosom rose and fell. But suddenly her musing ceased, her eyes shone. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... unconscious of this gaze, pursued her meditations. Her eye caught the hour-glass that stood on a small table beside her. "Sand after sand," said she, musing to herself—"Sand after sand, thought after thought. The same sand ever trickling there; the same thought ever coursing through my mind. Oh, love! love! They say it enlarges the heart; I think it contracts it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the other maidens sat in tears, Sometimes, consoled, they jested at their fears, Musing what lovers Time to them would bring; But I was silent, thinking ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... I told him, indeed, merely the fact, omitting all commentary attached to it, for often had I then, and oftener have I since, in a solitary stroll down the avenue, thought of him, regretting the wide chasm in our intercourse, and musing ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... religion?' said I. 'Oh no!' he replied. 'Then,' said I, 'since your religion does not require it, and it appears, to our notions at least, rather a mark of grief and mourning, where is the use of paying a tax for it?' 'it is the custom of the country.' said he again. After this I returned hone, musing deeply on what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... appeared to muse. Here and there, the sun, finding a way through the green cloud of leaves, a visible fillet of light in the dim atmosphere, dappled the brown earth with rose. In her white frock, her dark hair loose about her brow, a faint colour in her cheeks, her dark eyes musing, musing but half smiling at the same time, I think she looked very charming, very interesting, very warmly and richly feminine, I think she looked very lovely, very lovable; and I don't wonder that Anthony—as his eyes rested upon her, fed upon her—felt something ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment.) All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a Croesus, a Crassus, or as rich as Whittington, what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall, ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies, had been ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... maiden stood musing, gentle and mild. I grasped the hand of the friendly child, but the lovely fawn shyly disappeared.... From the Rhine to the Danish Belt, beautiful and lovely maidens are found in palaces and tents; yet nobody pleases me."—SCHMIDT ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... were in the sight and presence of a holy God, and that all of them were hastening to an endless estate of either well or woe. One Andrew Dalziel, a debauchee (a cocker or fowler), who was in the house, it being a stormy day, cried out, "Sir, we neither know you nor your God." Mr. Cameron, musing a little, said, "You, and all who do not know my God in mercy, shall know him in his judgments, which shall be sudden and surprizing in a few days upon you; and I, as a sent servant of Jesus Christ, whose commission I bear, and whose badge I ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Musing on the difficulties of this Wonderland into which, according to immemorial usage, I had been born without a rag of clothes, I waited for Pup whilst he ate his fowl, and then again pressed forward, alert and vigilant, as beseemed a man scudding under bare poles through an apparently ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... future life, I argued with something of man's selfishness. I would not, indeed, that she should make herself miserable about me; but if, when her face had faded from my thoughts, some little record of myself should pleasantly remain with her, and now and then bring a transitory pang of musing regret, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... of the lodging-houses; and there he abode a while of days, relishing not food neither solacing himself with sleep; nor was this for lack of dirhams or diners, but for that his mind was occupied with musing upon the shifts of Destiny and bemoaning himself for that the revolving sphere had turned against him in enmity, and the days had decreed unto him the disfavour of our lord the Imam.[FN133] After such fashion he abode a space of days, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... musing and castle-building in the coals she scarcely knew, when a step on the polished floor made her look up, and with a little exclamation she rose to her full, slim, young height and turned to face a man who had come in with the unannounced ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "When I go musing all alone, Thinking of divers things foreknown, When I build castles in the ayr, Void of sorrow and void of feare Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, Methinks the time runs very fleet. All my joys to this are folly, Naught ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill. "How're the youngsters today? Ready for a ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... aspect is Mr. James Lane Allen, whose tales of the Kentucky Blue Grass Region I hope will be read as they deserve for many generations to come. Rex Beach swings along musing perhaps on the solitudes of Lake Hopatcong. Rupert Hughes studies the faces in the Avenue throng with the hope of finding the inspiration for a title for the projected novel that will be more eccentric, if possible, than the title of the last. ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... of those leading to the piazza of the modern Capitol, and "the interior is vast, solemn, and highly picturesque. It was here, as Gibbon tells us, that on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers, the idea of writing the 'Decline and Fall' of the city first ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... said to himself. "Ah, it must be the memory of dear Sieglinde's brilliant eyes, which rested so often upon that spot before she left the room. It is because I love her and think of her that I fancy I see a jewel shining in the dark." Musing thus he became sadder than before. Again Loge flamed up high, and again Siegmund saw the gleam of the sword, but still he did not know what he saw, so the lonely wolf-man was again left in darkness. Then the chamber door softly opened and Sieglinde stole ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... all?" said he, "I am heartily glad to hear it. Sceptic! No, no; you must not be a sceptic either, except for a time," continued he, musing very sagely. "It is no bad thing for a while: for it at least leaves the house 'empty, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... maddened the soul of Constantius, and smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after defeat in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during nights of insomnia, the emperor blamed himself for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... scholar by memories of past glory, in the peasant by intense local attachment, and kindled from time to time in all by the reaction of gross wrongs and moral privations. Sometimes in conversation, oftener in secret musing, now in the eloquent outburst of the composer, and now in the adjuration of the poet or the vow of the revolutionist, this latent spirit has found expression. Again and again, spasmodic and abortive emeutes, the calm protest of a D'Azeglio and the fanaticism of an Orsini, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... his turn again, and O'BRIEN will be eating and drinking the bread and water of affliction. Meanwhile, storms at top of his voice, beats the air with long lean arm and clenched hand, and makes dumb dogs of English Members sad with musing on the inequalities of fortune, which has given these Irishmen the great gift of pointedly saying what they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... not pass theirs," observed the gardener, with a musing smile when he was alone; "but theirs nearly had a jolly spill there at ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... down to his index. But he soon fell into a mood of abstraction. The races and the games did not interest him in the least. It was something else which attracted him. And, as he sat musing, the vision of the Hippodrome as he had last seen it rose clearly before him. He saw the seaweed-coloured marble; the glistening porticoes, adorned with the masterpieces of Greece, crowded with women in gemmed embroideries and men in white tunics hemmed with broad purple; he ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... would have killed me while I slept, but for my cabin boy. He was only sixteen, but he discovered the conspiracy and roused me. With the help of the other officers and a few loyal sailors we stood them off. Hot work it was." The Captain stopped an instant, musing. ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... accents were half-musing. "And if you will pardon me, I'll stake a good deal that you fought straight." He paused. "But to go back to your isle, your magic isle, if you please. You were ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... grace along the aisle, Leaving the chaste white sunlight of a smile Upon the gazing throng. Musing I thought upon their place as mothers of ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Eugene To idle musing was a prey; At morn an icy bath within He sat, and then the livelong day, Alone within his habitation And buried deep in meditation, He round the billiard-table stalked, The balls impelled, the blunt cue chalked; When evening o'er the landscape looms, Billiards abandoned, cue forgot, A table to ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... but I had an innate idea that they were of value. The silver tea-pot, the hissing urn, the spoons, the pictures in their frames, every article of furniture caught my wondering eye, and for a short time I had forgotten my father and my mother; but I was recalled from my musing speculations by the proprietor inquiring how far I had brought ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was grateful. Patrasche lay pondering long with grave, tender, musing brown eyes, watching the movements ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... Continuing his musing, and with a satisfied smile on his face, a smile that might indicate that the colonel was not so very much averse to giving over his fishing for the time being to take up his profession once more, he followed Aaron Grafton as the ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... billions. It made my mouth water to look at her, an' my eyes too—only that may have had somethin' to do with the keyhole, for them 'otels of Chamouni are oncommon draughty. Yes," continued Gillie, slowly, as if he were musing, "she's failed in love with wittles, an' it's by no means a misplaced affection. It would be well for the Count if he could fall in the same direction. Did you ever look steadily at ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... independence, shows plainly whether he will enter upon the path of virtue or of vice, he went forth into a quiet place, and sat debating with himself which of those two paths he should pursue; and as he there sat musing, there appeared to him two women of great stature which drew nigh to him. The one was fair to look upon, frank and free by gift of nature, (30) her limbs adorned with purity and her eyes with bashfulness; sobriety set the rhythm of her gait, and she was clad in ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... an old bar-pun, we barristers are supposed to be; nor will the reader be surprised to hear that suspicions, graver even than those which pointed to forgery, were evoked by the sad history. Much musing upon the strange circumstances thus disclosed, and profoundly cogitative on the best mode of action to be pursued, the "small hours," the first of them at least, surprised me in my arm-chair. I started up, and hastened to bed, well knowing from experience that a sleepless ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... of early evening, some months later, Tom was sauntering homeward, musing over the past, with an uncomfortable feeling that despite the long service he had given Mr. Warmore, and the many times he had expressed his satisfaction with him, the association was not likely to continue ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... a rider. She is a rider. This will be the ride of your lives," added Jane, in that same soft undertone, almost as if she were musing to herself. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... gazing for a long time and with profound sadness at Holbein's ploughman, and I was walking in the fields, musing upon country-life and the destiny of the husbandman. Doubtless it is a depressing thing to consume one's strength and one's life driving the plough through the bosom of the jealous earth, which yields the treasures of its fecundity only under duress, when ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Acadia; he was still absent, though the time be had fixed for his return was already past. An Indian woman, seeing Madame de Marson uneasy, asked her the reason of it, and, having learned it, told her, after musing some time on it, not to vex herself, that her husband would return such a day at such an hour, naming both, with a grey hat on his head. As she perceived the lady gave no credit to her prediction, she returned to her at the day and hour she had assigned, and asked her whether she would not come ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... soul: And, dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels join'd the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measures stole, Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay Round a holy calm diffusing, Love of peace and lonely musing, In ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... As he sat musing his eye fell upon the axe, and he started up and seized it as if suddenly reminded of some forgotten urgent duty. He fell to work at the big tree again, and laboured doggedly till nightfall. Inexperienced ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... bloody sword returns he, Musing, to his silent dwelling, When his son before him stands: "Whose this blood? Oh, father! father!" "The delinquent woman's!"—"Never! For upon the sword it dries not, Like the blood of the delinquent; Fresh ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... soldier hobbled away to his little house as fast as his three legs would carry him. Only one event in his life had eclipsed this in happiness—the interview in front of the White House. He rapped on the window with his stick, thereby frightening Cynthia half out of her wits as she sat musing sorrowfully by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... into the City, and was walking slowly on in my usual way, musing upon a great many things, when I was arrested by an inquiry, the purport of which did not reach me, but which seemed to be addressed to myself, and was preferred in a soft sweet voice that struck me very pleasantly. I turned hastily round and found at my elbow a pretty little girl, who begged to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... expect success, unless he is willing to work for it. A brother of the great orator, Edmund Burke, after listening to one of those eloquent appeals in Parliament, being noticed as employed in deep thought, was asked of whom he was musing. He replied: "I have been wondering how Ned contrived to monopolize all the talent in the family; but I remember that all through childhood, while we were at play, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... white-starred, gentle-eyed cows, who let Gypsy pull their horns and tickle them with hay, and make pencil-marks on their white foreheads to her heart's content, and looked at Joy's strange face with great musing beautiful brown eyes. But Joy was afraid they would hook her, and she didn't like to ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Achilles, musing as he roll'd his eyes O'er the dead hero, thus unheard, replies: "Die thou the first! When Jove and heaven ordain, I follow thee"—He said, and stripp'd the slain. Then forcing backward from the gaping wound The reeking javelin, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... slowly homeward, musing thoughtfully: "This is a strange world," she soliloquized. "Let philosophers air their utopian theories about its containing the elements of universal happiness. I know that human nature, as it is now constituted, is too selfish and mean to arrive at a state of absolute perfection. Truly, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... future glory, Giving to the world's great story A page, with mighty meaning fraught, That asks a wider range of thought. Borne onward on the wings of Time, I trace thy future course sublime; And feel my anxious lot grow bright, While musing on the glorious sight;— My heart rejoicing bounds with glee To hail ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and musing, Effie saw, more clearly than she ever could have seen in the bustle of her busy life, how infinitely desirable it is to be permitted to do God's work in the world. Those were days never to be forgotten by her. She grew thin and wan with confinement and watching, but ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... shone into the mind of Mr. Winkleman, as he returned musing to his office, and he saw that he was often to blame for the clouds that darkened so often over ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... last of the worshippers had withdrawn, and the parting strain from the organ had died away on the walls of the cathedral. As he was slowly descending the aisle, he paused before the place where Mrs. Rodney had been seated some days before; as he stood musing on the account which he had heard of her from Mrs. Denley, he observed a few lines written in pencil on the column against which she had been in the habit of leaning. They were so faintly marked, and had probably been so much effaced since, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... in his eyes: no "operation" is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an immediate fortune. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind his ear, he is like La Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his books of chivalry. His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or changes into a Spanish ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... still, and its master was weary. He sat there, quietly musing, feeling the sweet and tranquil presence near him. Now the fire was screened, the lights were out, save one dim glimmer, and he had lain down on the couch with the letter in his hand, and slept the dreamless ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... been angry with the declaration I had made. I followed her with my eyes as long as she continued in sight; then taking leave of the merchant walked out of the bazaar, without knowing where I went. I was musing on this adventure, when I felt somebody pulling me behind, and turning to see who it was, I was agreeably surprised to perceive it was the lady's slave. "My mistress," said she, "I mean the young lady you spoke to in the merchant's shop, wants to speak ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... heard what the old man said, he was affrighted with sore affright and trembled like reed in wind saying in himself, "Hardly do I feel me free from the affliction wherein I was by reason of sorcery, when Destiny casteth me into yet sorrier case!" And he fell a-musing over his condition and that which had betided him. When the Shaykh looked at him and saw the violence of his terror, he said to him, "O my son, come, sit at the threshold of the shop and look upon yonder creatures and upon their dress and complexion and that wherein they are by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... long time, Howkan read to him the confession, and Imber remained musing and silent. At ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... of late summer; all Nature seemed at peace. I looked aloft and reflected that the same stars were shining upon the civilization I had left so far behind. As we walked I lost myself in musing pensively upon this curious astronomical fact and upon the further vicissitudes to which I would surely be exposed. I compared myself whimsically to an explorer chap who has ventured among a tribe of natives and who must seem to adopt their weird manners and customs to save himself ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Perhaps the musing-fit into which I had by this time fallen, appeared somewhat suspicious in its abstraction; he gently interrupted: "Mademoiselle," said he, "I trust you have not far to go through these ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of lonely musing, Such as in evening silence come, When, soft as birds their pinions closing, The heart's best feelings gather home. Then in our souls there seems to languish A tender grief that is not woe; And thoughts that once wrung groans ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... So standing and distressfully musing, she heard the click of the Byingtons' door as Ruth left Leonard on the porch. But her thought went after Arthur. Where was he? That he had honestly gone where he had said he was going she painfully doubted. She stirred to move on, ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... have been a great many Oberons," Belinda went on, musing; "the melancholy packboy, the toll-man, the young gentleman! Ah! it is of no use thinking about it, one only ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to the shoulders, catching eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the titlepage of a song in a ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... general popularity than any other mode of using the plant leaves; the clergy were fond of the "dust" and carried the most expensive snuff boxes, while many loved the pipe and indulged in tobacco-smoking. The old vicar restored to his living enjoyed a pipe when seated in his chair musing on the subject of his next Sunday's discourse, "with a jug of sound old ale and a huge tome of sound old divinity on the table before him, for the occasional refreshment as well of the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... cosmopolitan. After a few minutes' down-cast musing, he lifted his eyes and said: "I have long thought, my dear Charlie, that the spirit in which wine is regarded by too many in these days is one of the most painful examples of want of confidence. Look at these glasses. He who could mistrust poison in this wine would mistrust ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the ocean's brink upon, Like unto people musing of their way, Whose body lingers when the heart hath gone; And lo! as near the dawning of the day, Down in the west, upon the watery floor, The vapor-fogs do Mars in red array, Even such appeared to me ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... partial eyes; which would be a matter of open laughter to the knights of the Court. Besides, if they laughed at him, they would laugh at her for choosing him. And then wounded vanity came in to help wounded pride; and she sat over the cold embers till almost dawn of day, her head between her hands, musing sadly, and half wishing that the irrevocable yesterday ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... caused the pulse of Mrs Forster to accelerate. They might be her husband and her son. It was the first time that the spare bed had been ordered. Reflection, however, convinced her that her hopes were strung upon too slight a thread; and, musing on the improbability of not having ascertained during a year the fact of her master having so near a relative—moreover, her son was not in existence—she sighed, and dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Before ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was musing also, calculating results and combinations; but at length he said, in a low tone, "Is she gone?—Have you ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Freddy, musing; "Mrs. Trottles must be seventy-two if she is a day; 'pon my word, Lucy, you're the youngest-looking woman of your age I ever 144met with; if I had not heard my mother say it myself, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... former position, and she sat for some time musing over his question and answer, till a familiar waymark put all such thoughts to flight. They were passing Deepwater Lake, and would presently be at aunt Miriam's. Fleda looked now with a beating heart. Every foot of ground was known to her. She ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... for coolness stand. And sheep for breezes seek the lofty land, A youth whom AEsop taught that every tree, Each bird and insect, spoke as well as he, Walk'd calmly musing in a shaded way, Where flowering hawthorn broke the sunny ray, And thus instructs his moral pen to draw A scene that obvious in the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Musing thus, what wonder that he vowed then and there, under the starlight, to pray and work for her till the new life should illumine her heart. Little dreamed Christine, as she slept that night, that the first link of a chain which might bind her ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... useful appendage to the cultivation of dukes, his true business in life. This was the plain English view, and Mr. Taylor was no doubt right enough in thinking it good, practical common sense. Therefore when he saw Lucian loitering and sauntering, musing amorously over his manuscript, exhibiting manifest signs that he fine fury which Britons have ever found absurd, he felt grieved at heart, and more than ever sorry that he had not been able to send the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... same impression strikes both minds at once. From the sister's it is quickly reflected in words of exquisite delicacy and simplicity; in the brother's it germinates, and reappears, it may be months or years afterwards, as the nucleus of a mass of thought and feeling which has grown round it in his musing soul. The travellers' encounter with two Highland girls on the shore of Loch Lomond is a good instance of this, "One of the girls," writes Miss Wordsworth, "was exceedingly beautiful; and the figures of both of them, in grey plaids falling to their feet, their faces ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... reverie stirred reflection of other men, for already she had suitors in plenty. Upon one of them her musing lingered. He had brought to her gifts of the friendly smile, of comradeship, of youth's debonair give-and-take. She did not try to analyze her feeling for Winthrop Beresford. It was enough to know that he had brought into her existence ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... asked Mr. De Vere; and John replied, "The fun of seein' him cotch it;" and he pointed to the doctor coming slowly up the walk, his hands behind him and his head bent forward in a musing attitude. ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... more, where would he be? And the Bugis Dain who is waiting for you down the river there, captain, is the very man who chased you up here when you first came." Brown observed nonchalantly that it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the same detached, musing air Cornelius declared himself acquainted with a backwater broad enough to take Brown's boat past Waris's camp. "You will have to be quiet," he said as an afterthought, "for in one place we pass close behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... strange," said Droulde, musing over this extraordinary occurrence, and still more over Anne Mie's strange excitement in the telling of it. "I never knew I had a hidden enemy. I wonder if I shall ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the old country, the few and the rich were unjust, cruel, wicked; it was so in Ireland. Here the vices of the few are ingrafted on the many, and, like the small-pox, they do not become weaker, but stronger, by universal propagation. I wish I never saw you, America," said he, musing, his head resting against the wall; "I wish I was in the grave with my two sisters and mother, rather than here to witness the slavery, corruption, and vice of America." The remainder of his musings ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... chamber, cave and ruin, 50 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; I was not heard—I saw them not— When musing deeply on the lot 55 Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming,— Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; I shrieked, and clasped my ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... sat musing over his cigarette his eyes fell upon a mirror before him, and in it he saw reflected a table at which four men sat at cards. Presently one of them rose to leave, and then another approached, and Tarzan could see that ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... voice brought him back from his musing. "Well, Charley," he sung out cheerily, "I've got together the things we can't well spare and distributed them between the canoes. I reckoned that was where you wanted 'em. What's the next ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... crimes that he had committed in the attainment of the power which he now feared he was about to lose forever, harassed his mind and tormented his conscience, especially at night. "He took ill rest at nights," says one of his biographers, "using to lie long, waking and musing, sore wearied with care and watch, and rather slumbered than slept, troubled ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Mediterranean and turning the common-place walks of the hotel garden below into silvern paths of mystery. But Eliot remained unmoved by the exquisite beauty of the scene. It hardly seemed to penetrate his consciousness. He was musing with a grim, sardonic humour on the strange chance which had brought him, after nearly three months' solitary wandering through Europe, to the identical hotel at Mentone where Tony Brabazon and his uncle happened to be staying. It seemed as though fate had deliberately mocked ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Thence musing onward to the sounding shore, The lone enthusiast oft would take his way, Listening, with pleasing dread, to the deep roar Of the wide-weltering waves. In black array, When sulphurous clouds roll'd on the autumnal day, Even then he hasten'd from the haunt of man, Along the trembling ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... he be," rejoined my friend, in a sort of musing soliloquy; while, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he kept pulling his "goatee" ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... his room, as the afternoon wore away; because, for some reason or other, or, quite as likely, for no reason at all, he did not air himself and his thoughts, as usual, on the hill; so he was sitting musing, thinking, looking into his mysterious manuscript, when he heard Aunt Keziah moving in the chamber above. First she seemed to rattle a chair; then she began a slow, regular beat with the stick which Septimius had left by her bedside, and which startled him strangely,—so that, indeed, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... castles in Spain that little by little took on a considerable importance in his life. His constructions were at first ephemeral, replaced every day by new ones. They became progressively more consistent.... When he had well entered into his imaginary role, he often succeeded in continuing his musing in the presence of other people. At college, whole hours would be spent in this way; often he would see and hear nothing." Married, the head of a prosperous business house, he had some respite; then he returned to his former constructions. "They commenced by being, as before, not very durable ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of philosophy or poetry. It lasts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... as I sat musing in the piazza, with my book unopened on my lap, I heard Boy's clear voice ringing in happy, musical peals of laughter that drew me to him. On the edge of a deep hole, in a corner of the compound, sat Moonshee, an effigy ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... our musing, comes man's spirit interfusing Thought of poet and of hero with the landscape and the sky; And this shore, no longer lonely, lives the life of romance only: Gauls and Moors and Northern Sea-Kings, all are gliding, ghost-like, by. So with Nature man is sharer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... or a glimpse of that literary hell from which he had just escaped and to which he was soon to return. He changed his tone and his subject with amazing versatility, from the bitterest satire to idyllic sweetness, or to a pleasant kind of clever naivete which is truly his own. We see him musing among the firs and the pine-trees of his native Provence, or riding on the top of the diligence under the scorching sun and listening, in a Sterne-like fashion, to the conversation which took place between the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... us To the friends that dwell afar off; 30 Cannot send a secret message, But the bearer learns our secret, May pervert it, may betray it, May reveal it unto others." Thus said Hiawatha, walking 35 In the solitary forest, Pondering, musing in the forest, On the welfare of his people. From his pouch he took his colors, Took his paints of different colors, 40 On the smooth bark of a birch-tree Painted many shapes and figures, Wonderful and mystic ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... closed upon her, and I remained in a kind of half stupor; my month's unpaid bill, my public-house scores, my destitute home; these and a thousand things connected with my situation, kept me musing in no very comfortable frame of mind, when the latch again clicked, the door opened, and through the half gleam of one flickering flame, I just caught the glimpse of a form, that in the next instant, cold and wet, sunk lifeless in my arms. It was Mary. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... thoughts were passing through his mind he had risen hastily from the chair in which he had been musing. He opened his secretary and sitting resolutely down, began a letter to Doctor Moran. He poured out his heart and desires, and then he read what he had written. It would not do at all. It was a love letter and not a business ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even for that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing—a dark thing—a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight took me so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the very first," continued Lord Chetwynde, in a musing tone, which seemed more like a soliloquy than any thing else. "There was the estate, saddled with debt handed down from my grandfather to my father. It would have required years of economy and good management to free it from encumbrance. But my father's ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the Alps, and either then or upon his homeward journey visited Bologna, Venice, and Mantua. He passed through Rome and, unknown to either, may have met Gibbon in the Eternal City into whose mind, some weeks before, 'as I sat musing among the ruins of the Capitol while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter,' had started the idea of writing the Decline and Fall. In the city he met Andrew Lumsden, the Secretary of Prince Charles Edward, but we are not informed if the young Jacobite of five, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... her rich evening costume, then donning a warm flannel wrapper, she seated herself before the glowing grate, clasped her hands around her knees, and, gazing upon the bed of red-hot coals, she fell to musing. ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon |
