"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drifting across the country, getting lost in valleys where it piled up into fleecy mounds, getting caught in tree-tops where it fluttered like tattered banners. Every now and then, with the suddenness of our approach, we would startle an aged shepherd, muffled and pensive as an Arab, strolling slowly across moorlands, followed closely by the sentinel goats which led his flock. The day had been strangely mystic. Time seemed a mood. I had ceased to trouble about where I was going; that I knew my ultimate destination was sufficient. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... have less complacency in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was the regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work setting ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... nature smiled in mockery of the bloody tragedy which was so soon to follow. I mingled with the crowd at the eastern portico of the Capitol, and was so fortunate as to hear and see all that took place,—the high officials who surrounded the President, his own sad and pensive face, his awkward but not undignified person arrayed in a faultless suit of black, the long address he made, the oath of office administered by Chief Justice Taney, and the dispersion of the civil and military functionaries to their homes. It was not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... fields with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... in me, the more you'll oblige me: but your doubts will only beget cause of doubts. And with this ambiguous saying, he saluted me with a more formal manner, if I may so say, than before, and lent me his hand; and so we walked toward the house, side by side, he seeming very thoughtful and pensive, as if he had already repented him of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... handsomer than any other woman on the train, and seemingly unaware of it as she leaned her elbow upon the dusty window-sill and gazed out in pensive introspection upon the bleak land where glaciers had trampled and volcanoes raged, each of them leaving its waste of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-weel relatives went to the theatre to be stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a sacred pleasure from awful language of this kind in the pulpit. There is not much that we should call doctrine, no pensive or consolatory teaching, no appeal to souls in the modern sense. The effect aimed at is that of horror, of solemn preparation for the advent of death, as by one who fears, in the flutter of mortality, to lose some peculiarity of the skeleton, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... pastoral trash may taste defend Your pleasant Leasowes, and the human race! The Gentle Shepherd's day has had an end, Nor even could melodious Shenstone here (False and inflated, we must all allow), Excite one glowing thought or pensive tear Unless indeed of wrath or pity now: Yet dearly can I love these tumbling hills With roughly wooded winding glens between, Set with clear trout pools link'd by gurgling rills And all so natural and calm and green, That served to enervate your ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... subtly silence strays Amongst the winds, between the voices, Mingling alike with pensive lays, And with the music that rejoices, Than thou art present ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song: Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the glory of my rising sun, Lightly ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... have struck Dr. Seignebos very forcibly; for he remained silent for at least ten long seconds, wiping his gold spectacles with a pensive air. Had he really done harm to Jacques de Boiscoran, while he meant to help him? But he was not the man to be long in doubt. He replied ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... forgotten magazines, and remained apart with Swedenborg. I loafed in the fertile dust and quiet among old prints, geological specimens, antlers, pewter, bed-warmers, amphorae, and books. The proprietor presided over the dim litter of his world, bowed, pensive, and silent, suggesting in his aloofness not indifference but a retired sadness for those for whom the mysteries could be made plain, but who are wilful in their blindness, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possessed, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee's a jest; Emblem of hell, nursery of vice, Thou crawling university of lice; When wretches numberless to ease their pains, With smoke and all delude their pensive chains. How shall I avoid thee? or with what spell Dissolve the enchantment of thy magic cell? Ev'n Fox himself can't boast so many martyrs, As yearly fall within thy wretched quarters. Money I've none, and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... water, on the rocks that line the lake shore, was a damsel—a rather good-looking one, as well as he could judge at the distance of a hundred yards. She was leaning on her left elbow and looking out over the lake in rather a pensive, dreamy attitude. Of course, young ladies don't ordinarily get up before dawn to go out to Druid Hill Park for the purpose of sitting alone beside the broad sweep of city water, and Edwin naturally felt some surprise at the novelty of the sight. Besides, she was inside the high iron railing, and ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... be a little pensive. Then his tones would have a greater depth and gentleness, and his sympathy was very sweet, although she felt a little guilty because she was in no need of it. She could stifle ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... this there is a spire, On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire The fiddle and its spoils, the case, In manner of a trophee place. 1165 That done, they ope the trap-door gate, And let CROWDERO down thereat; CROWDERO making doleful face, Like hermit poor in pensive place. To dungeon they the wretch commit, 1170 And the survivor of his feet But th' other, that had broke the peace And head of Knighthood, they release; Though a delinquent false and forged, Yet be'ing a stranger, he's enlarged; 1175 While his comrade, that did no hurt, Is clapp'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... familiar bounds! That classic house, those classic grounds, My pensive thought recalls! What tender urchins now confine, What little captives now repine, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... nonchalance. The tree happened to be almost directly in front of the Nixon gate. Not to seem actually employed in shadowing the house, he decided to pose with his back to the premises, facing down the street, twisting his whiskers in a most pensive manner. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... mayonnaise dressing, French fried potatoes and cream puffs from the mess-tent of a roundup outfit. During the next week it fell to the lot of the Happy Family, however. When the salads and the cream puffs disappeared suddenly and the smile of Jakie became pensive and contrite, the Happy Family, acting individually but ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... me a very happy fellow, Miss Lake?' he said, with a rather pensive glance of enquiry into that young lady's eyes, as he ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pensive during a moment of unspeakable torture for Fraisier. Vinet, an orator of the Centre, attorney-general (procureur-general) for the past sixteen years, nominated half-a-score of times for the chancellorship, the father, moreover, of the attorney ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... axe, the pitchy pine falls low, Sharp wedges cleave the beechen core in twain, The mountain ash comes rolling to the plain. Foremost himself, accoutred as the rest, AEneas cheered them, toiling with his train; Then, musing sadly, and with pensive breast, Gazed on the boundless grove, and thus his ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... of music which Manley thoroughly detested. That was the "Traumerei." Therefore, she played the "Traumerei" slowly—as it should, of course, be played—with full value given to all the pensive, long-drawn notes, and with a finale positively creepy in its dreamy wistfulness. Val, as has been stated, could be very ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander Adown some trottin' burn's meander, An' no think lang: Oh, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary and knelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. She whispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with a start that the words were meaningless, that she was saying ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... sat opposite the king, at a separate table among his brothers. Little by little his look grew fixed, his brow pensive. He was fancying that Andre might have supped in this very hall on the eve of his tragic end, and he thought how all concerned in that death had either died in torment or were now languishing in prison; the queen, an exile and a fugitive, was begging pity from strangers: ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... certainly should not be looked at. But even setting aside these excesses, in the picture galleries of Holland there is to be found nothing that elevates the mind, or moves it to high and gentle thoughts. You admire, you enjoy, you laugh, you stand pensive for a moment before some canvas; but coming out, you feel that something is lacking to your pleasure, you experience a desire to look upon a handsome countenance, to read inspired verses, and sometimes you catch yourself murmuring, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... bonnet and pinned it to the roof of the coach, and looked fresh and pretty in a silk handkerchief, which she had tied round her head, probably to serve as a nightcap during the drowsy length of the journey. Opposite to her was a middle-aged man of pale complexion, and a grave, pensive, studious expression of face; and vis-a-vis to Philip sat an overdressed, showy, very good-looking man of about two or three and forty. This gentleman wore auburn whiskers, which met at the chin; a foraging cap, with a gold tassel; a velvet waistcoat, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and nodded, whereupon Grant led the others upstairs to wash. From the bathroom he looked out over a darkening landscape. Doris's dormer window was open. She was leaning on the sill, but he could not tell whether or not her eyes were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little man's characteristics which ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... and saw no mercy for him in the world to come. His mother came running up stairs, and in the heat of passion locked me into my old cell, where I remained in close confinement for some days. But William could not dispense with my company; accordingly I was sent for. I found him very pale and pensive; however, I faithfully told him, that the imaginations of the thoughts of the heart are only evil, and that continually. He said he lately began to feel that; he had tried to make it better, but could not. ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... preparations, a pensive, dark, little figure. If you could have seen him there he would have looked to you like a ten-inch man amidst common nursery things. A great rug—indeed it was a Turkey carpet—four hundred square feet of it, upon ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... proposed simply to discharge the complaint; but the plumes which they had dropped, Pitt soon placed in his own beaver. He broke out on liberty, and, indeed, on whatever he pleased, uninterrupted. Rigby sat feeling the vice-treasureship slipping from under him. Nugent was not less pensive—Lord Strange, though not interested, did not like it. Everybody was too much taken up with his own concerns, or too much daunted, to give the least disturbance to the Pindaric. Grenville, however, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... dogs, which howls every time it hears a pianny. It's some left-over vestiges of that life when I'm a dog which sets me to bawlin', that a-way, whenever the Mockin' Bird girl sings. I experiences pensive sensations, sim'lar to what comes troopin' over a gent, who's libatin' alone, on the heels ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said, he left them, and return'd no more.— But rumours hung about the country-side, That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, The same the gipsies wore. Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, On the warm ingle-bench, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the fight, but stood As a sepulchral pillar stands, unmoved Between their traces;[8] to the earth they hung 525 Their heads, with plenteous tears their driver mourn'd, And mingled their dishevell'd manes with dust. Jove saw their grief with pity, and his brows Shaking, within himself thus, pensive, said. Ah hapless pair! Wherefore by gift divine 530 Were ye to Peleus given, a mortal king, Yourselves immortal and from age exempt? Was it that ye might share in human woes? For, of all things that breathe or creep the earth, No creature lives so mere a wretch as man. 535 ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... upon the Great Stone Face. He spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only that the Great ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of his taste of Court life. The fresh fact—of which Grancey informed him—that Cyrene had been carried off to Versailles by the Princess (which he interpreted to mean by the Abbe) only enriched with a pensive strain, and allowed him to lend an undivided attention to, the fascinating scenes which surrounded him, full of rich life and colour like the splendid pictorial tapestries adorning ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... descended, Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore, To solitary Saturn bore; His daughter she (in Saturns raign, Such mixture was not held a stain) Oft in glimmering Bowres, and glades He met her, and in secret shades Of woody Ida's inmost grove, Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. 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 ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... afternoons, a remarkable stillness in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down. I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not sad. It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October is one of the finest months of the year, and that we have many warm, bright, still days yet before us. Of course we know ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... at play from her seat by the window. She was strangely still and pensive. I had the feeling that she was watching me all the time, and that there was a shadow of anxiety in her lovely eyes. She smiled at our pranks, and yet there was ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Ah!" A pensive smile rewarded him. "The business was still in its infancy, monsieur; yet to-day I have the smartest clientele in Paris. I might remove to the rue de la Paix to-morrow if I pleased. But, I say, why should I do that? I say, why ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... furtive glance would show him Marian's angel face, fairer and paler and more pensive than ever before—a strong counter-current of love and admiration approaching to worship, would set in, and he would look upon her as a fair saint worthy of translation to heaven, and upon himself as a designing but foiled conspirator, scarcely one degree above the most atrocious villain. ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... mind, flash on the mind, flash across the mind, float in the mind, fasten itself on the mind, be uppermost in the mind, occupy the mind; have in one's mind. make an impression; sink into the mind, penetrate into the mind; engross the thoughts. Adj. thinking &c. v.; thoughtful, pensive, meditative, reflective, museful[obs3], wistful, contemplative, speculative, deliberative, studious, sedate, introspective, Platonic, philosophical. lost in thought &c. (inattentive) 458; deep musing &c. (intent) 457. in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... settles the question; my miniature had no such addition; and yet I believe that sweet and pensive countenance to be the face of my own beloved mother, and of no ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... raw, undilooted water! That feather broke the back uv the camel. The oath give me inflamashen uv the brane and the water inflamashen uv the stumick, and for six long weeks I lay, a wreck uv my former self. Ez I arose from that bed and saw in a glass the remains uv my pensive beauty, I vowed to wage a unceasin war on the party wich caused sich havoc, and I hev kept ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... the first time of death. And in how many years, continues the prince, does this fate befall man? and must he expect death as inevitable? Is there no way of escape? No means of eschewing this wretched state of decay? The attendants reply as may be imagined; and Josaphat goes home more pensive than ever, dwelling on the certainty of death and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... in portraying truly the being of whom I am thus privileged to hold the likeness in my memory, if the reader fancies her to have nurtured her pensive disposition at the expense of a just value for real life, or a full development of womanly feelings. It was a peculiarity of her beauty, to my eye, that, with all her earnest leaning toward a thoughtful existence, there did not seem to be one vein beneath ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... philosophy at the service of his piety. He had intelligence, good sense, ripe reflection; and he never forgot his origin; his dress, his equipages, his furniture, all were of the greatest simplicity. His air and his deportment were so also. He was tall, dark, and thin; had an aspect pensive, slow, and somewhat mean; with very fine and expressive eyes. He deplored the signal faults that he saw succeed each other unceasingly; the gradual extinction of all emulation; the luxury, the emptiness, the ignorance, the confusion of ranks; the inquisition ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... friends into a deep-seated belief in their integrity. Even after such depravity as chasing the Allan girl's pet cat, stealing a neighbor's dog-salmon, or attacking an inoffensive Cocker Spaniel, he had seen Tom so meek and pensive that no one could suspect him of wrong-doing who had not actually witnessed it; and he had seen the Woman, when she had actually witnessed it, become a sort of accessory after the fact, and shield Tom from "Scotty's" just wrath, ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... yet, methinks, when wisdom shall assuage The griefs and passions of our greener age, Though dull the close of life, and far away, Each flower that hailed the dawning of our day, Yet o'er her lovely hopes that once were dear, The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe, With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill, And weep their falsehood, though ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... of the United States decides to go off its collective rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked, Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about all ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... spinning world. The days went by like shadows, The minutes wheeled like stars. She took the pity from my heart, And made it into smiles. She was a hunk of sculptor's clay, My secret thoughts were fingers: They flew behind her pensive brow And lined it deep with pain. They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks, And drooped the eye with sorrow. My soul had entered in the clay, Fighting like seven devils. It was not mine, it was not hers; She held it, but its struggles Modeled ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... or Ethelinde of them all ever sent such loads of trumpery to market as I shall, or made such wealth as I will do. I dare say Lady Penelope, and all the gentry at the Well, will purchase, and will raffle, and do all sort of things to encourage the pensive performer. I will send them such lots of landscapes with sap-green trees, and mazareen-blue rivers, and portraits that will terrify the originals themselves—and handkerchiefs and turbans, with needlework scallopped exactly like the walks on the Belvidere—Why, I shall ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... is that you find such people so fickle and uncertain in their spirits; now on the mount, then in the valleys; now in the sunshine, then in the shade: now warm, then frozen; now bonny and blithe, then in a moment pensive and sad, as thinking of a portion nowhere but in hell. This will cause smiting on the breast; nor can I imagine that the Publican was as yet farther than thus far in ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... when the likeness flashed upon Lynde suddenly, as it had done in the grove the previous day, that it now had the power to startle him. At the present moment it did not even seriously annoy him. In an idle, pensive way he noted the coincidence of the man leading the mule. The man was Morton and the mule was Mary! Lynde smiled to himself at the reflection that Mary would probably not accept the analogy with very good grace if she knew about it. This carried him ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... or some description of a toupee. Active wit, however despicable when compared with intellectual, is yet surely better than the insignificant click-clack of modish conversation," casting his eyes towards Miss Larolles, "or even the pensive dullness of affected silence," changing their direction ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the table before she brushed the snow from her shoulders and leggings and untwisted and shook out her nubia. Her woolen cap was pulled far down over her ears, and her mother, as she watched her, did not see the grave eyes and pensive face until the little girl halted beside the biggest brother's chair to warm her hands at ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... say,' she answered. 'That is my secret. Do not seek to penetrate it. Who knows what horrors you might discover if you probed too far?' She laughed, but she laughed alone. The Prince remained pensive—as it were brooding. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander, Adown some trottin' burn's meander, And no thick lang; Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder A heartfelt sang.'" ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... A pensive youth in Ballybofey was deeply engaged with a scrap of ballad literature, not by any means without literary merit. For and in consideration of a Saxon sixpence I became the proprietor of the lay, which is being circulated by thousands throughout Ireland. Those who uphold ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... truth, he never was afraid; His country's weal, his country's laws obeyed; A pensive calm reigned on his noble brow, While in his eye ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... Why so pensive, Peri-maiden? Pearly tears bedim thine eyes! Sure thine heart is overladen, When each breath is fraught with sighs. Say, hath care life's heaven clouded, Which hope's stars were wont to spangle? What hath all thy gladness shrouded?— Has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... flies! the vessel flies, that bears away To distant shores my Daphne, fair as May. Guard her, ye loves! be lull'd each ruder gale; Let Zephyrs only fill the swelling sail; Ye waves flow gently by the vessel's side, While pensive she surveys you idly glide; Ah! softly glide, prolong her reverie, For then, ye Gods! 'tis then she thinks of me. When near the nodding groves that shade the shore, To her, ye birds, your sweetest warbling pour; No sounds ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... with black gorges which make flare out plainer the bronze-gold of their slopes. Not far off, the enchanted lakes slumber. It seems that an emblazonment fluctuates from their waters, and writhing above the crags which imprison them drifts athwart a sky sometimes a little chill—Leonardo's pensive sky of shadowed amethyst—again of a flushed blue, whereupon float great clouds, silken and ruddy, as in the backgrounds of Veronese's pictures. The beauty of the light lightens and beautifies the over-heavy opulence of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng; Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thy annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; Boast of the aged! lesson of the young! Which sages venerate and bards adore, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and down the West, The sun had rolled in his unrest; While gorgeous clouds of gold and red, Reflected back the splendor fled; And twilight—pensive nun, to pray, In silence drew her veil of gray. The last bright gleam was waxing pale, And low night winds began their wail, When near a ruined house, that stood Within a grove of tulip wood, Young Lennard paused and gazed awhile, With clouded ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... duoninsulo. Penitence pento. Penitent, a konfesanto. Penitent penta. Penitentiary pentfarejo. Penknife trancxileto. Pennant flageto. Penny penco. Penniless senmona. Pension pensio. Pensioner pensiulo. Pensive pensa, pensema. Pentagon kvinangulo. Pentecost pentekosto. Penultimate antauxlasta. Penurious avara. Penury malricxeco. Peony peonio. People popolo, homoj. Peopled homhava. Pepper pipro. Pepper-box piprujo. Pepper-caster piprujo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... The artist sat pensive for a few moments, wondering at the ways of women, his sympathies unaccountably enlisted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... these expensive tastes involved him in pecuniary difficulties. George Vertue, the eminent engraver, in one of his commonplace-books, now preserved in the British Museum,[62] thus feelingly refers to the embarrassed circumstances of the Earl:—'My good Lord, lately growing heavy and pensive in his affairs, which for some late years have mortify'd his mind.... This lately manifestly appeared in his change of complexion; his face fallen less; his colour and eyes turned yellow to a great degree; his stomach wasted and gone; and a dead weight presses continually, without ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... is dear—'tis virtue balm'd in love; Yet e'en thy name a pensive sadness brings. Ah! wo the day, our hearts were doom'd to prove, That fondest love but points ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... childhood's home, Aunt Ruth and I, and sunny-hearted May. She was a fair and most exquisite child; Her pensive face was delicate and mild Like her dead mother's; but through her dear eyes Her father smiled upon me, day by day. Afar in foreign countries did he roam, Now resting under Italy's blue skies, And now with Roy in Scotland. And he sent Brief, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... many years, half a lifetime perhaps, after the event occurred. I fancy his feeling would be perhaps something as mine is. When I think of my friends in the world of that former day, and the sorrow they must have felt for me, it is with a pensive pity, rather than keen anguish, as of a sorrow long, long ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... minutes with any human being, except Frampton or his father, and whether deep reflections or arrant nonsense came out of his mouth, seemed an even chance, though both alike were in the same soft low voice, and with the same air of quaint pensive simplicity. He was exceedingly provoking, and yet there was no being ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pensive mood, he was passing the park of Lavardens when he heard some one calling him. Looking up, he saw the Countess of Lavardens and her son Paul. She was a widow; her son a handsome young man, who had made a bad start in the world and now contented himself by spending ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... countenance, but pale and melancholy. One seems to have been born in this solitude, so perfectly is she at her ease in it; for her easy carriage shews that she has not retained the slightest recollection of the world and its vain pleasures. The other, silent and pensive, has too much candour and innocence for you to suppose that repentance has conducted her into solitude, but you would suppose that she still cherishes some painful regrets. Both have the most engaging politeness, and highly-cultivated minds. An excellent library, ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... selfsame, dear, pensive face, those eyes, benignly and sweetly mild, and that heart-dissolving voice, have escaped so many storms, so many dangers? Was it love for me that led you from the extremity of the world? and have you, indeed, brought back with you a heart full ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... pensive,—that, indeed, is his ordinary humour. Mr. Floyd, who has been these five days at the Court of his Royal Highness, told a mistress he has there, that when he leaves her now, he will take his leave of her perhaps for the last time:—in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... had a fresh, fair, bonnie face, framed in hair of a golden brown, and I knew her for Maura Merle, my old schoolfellow, the lady of Whichello Towers. The other was darker, taller, and the very dark blue eyes had a pensive expression, she could have posed as a study for Milton's Il Pensoroso, and I did not recognise her for an instant, and then ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... passed was essentially Oriental. The straggling hedges of enormous cactus, the rows of plumy eucalyptus-trees, the budding figs and mulberries, gave it a semi-tropical touch and along the highway we encountered fragments of the leisurely, dishevelled, dignified East: grotesque camels, pensive donkeys carrying incredible loads, flocks of fat-tailed sheep and lop-eared goats, bronzed peasants in flowing garments, and white-robed women ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... live; for they had all glutted themselves with the murder of the poor man, and that they ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Denis. It happened to be so completely untrue. Gombauld might have some slight ground for his reproaches. But Denis—no, she had never flirted with Denis. Poor boy! He was very sweet. She became somewhat pensive. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... hills made of a luminous bluish smoke, and sky only a more luminous and liquid kind, and the olives but a more solid specimen, of the mysterious silvery substance of the world. The marvellous part of it all, and quite impossible to convey, is that such days are not pensive, but effulgent, that the lines of the landscape are not blurred, but exquisitely ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... not if I no better sped, Since I the Muses thus have injured. I pensive for my fault, sate down, and then Errata through their leave, threw me my pen, My Poem to conclude, two lines they deign Which writ, she bad return't to them again; So Sidneys fame I leave to Englands Rolls, His bones do ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... at Manitou I soon stumbled upon feathered strangers. What was this little square-shouldered bird that kept uttering a shrill scream, which he seemed to mistake for a song? It was the western wood-pewee. Instead of piping the sweet, pensive "Pe-e-e-o-we-e-e-e" of the woodland bird of the Eastern States, this western swain persists in ringing the changes hour by hour upon that piercing scream, which sounds more like a cry of anguish than a song. At Buena Vista, where these ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... she repeated in an accent of alarm. She whispered to the others. All three eyed me suspiciously, while I stood looking as pensive and suffering as I could. Then after confabulating together for a little, they all swept into the seat behind mine, and I heard them speculating in low tones as to whether it was epilepsy or catalepsy or convulsions that ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... it all, you know him, Jim," he continued, dropping the tone of pensive reminiscence into which he had momentarily allowed himself to fall. "That pretty gal that sings in the Baptis' ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... pretexts for daily excursions past the Clematis House, always arrayed in the most fetching street costumes. When on the third day she encountered Justin, that gentleman responded gallantly to her pensive tender reproach. His was no Jericho heart, to demand a seven-day siege. He had found Persis Dale unexpectedly interesting, but Annabel was unexpectedly pretty, and a liking for pickles does not preclude a ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... threw himself into the arms of the Queen, crying out, "Grand-Dieu, mamma! will it be yesterday over again?" A few days after this affecting exclamation, he went up to the King, and looked at him with a pensive air. The King asked him what he wanted; he answered, that he had something very serious to say to him. The King having prevailed on him to explain himself, the young Prince asked why his people, who formerly loved him so well, were all at once angry with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... no answer, and retired quite pensive, convinced, not of all Mazarin had told him, but of one thing which he took care not to mention to him; and that was, that it was necessary for him to study seriously both his own affairs and those of Europe, for he found them very difficult and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and her own eyes looked away. And the silence was so deep and so sweet! Neither had yet said to the other a word of love. And in that silence both felt that they loved and were beloved. Sophy! how childlike she looked still! How little she is changed!—except that the soft blue eyes are far more pensive, and that her merry laugh is now never heard. In that luxurious home, fostered with the tenderest care by its charming owner, the romance of her childhood realised, and Lionel by her side, she misses the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... oft hath sighed, And pensive wept the Countess' fall, As wandering onward they've espied The haunted towers of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the wings of thought to those remote forests, fully realising, "Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis, ut" etc., etc. Then I can feel again the silence and the gloom that pervade those immense and wonderful woods. The few sounds of birds and animals are, generally, of a pensive and mysterious character, and they intensify the feeling of solitude rather than impart to it a sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes in the midst of the noon-day stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one, coming ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... followed behind her, closed doors and windows, went upstairs again to close the door of the landing-place and found Rouletabille seated on his bed, his arms crossed, not appearing to have any desire for sleep at all. His face was so strangely pensive also that the anxiety of Matrena, who had been able to make nothing out of his acts and looks all day, came back upon her instantly in greater force than ever. She touched his arm in order to be sure that ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... were finding their way into the sitting room when the guests entered, Miss Sherwin looking pretty and pensive in her big apron, Miss Moore as flyaway and merry ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... I stood in the street of Observation I saw myself surrounded by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and I saw floating before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields and the pensive harmony of the evening. "No," I said, "science can not console me; I can not plunge into dead nature, I would die there myself and float about like a livid corpse amidst the debris of shattered hopes. I would not cure myself of my youth; I will live where there is life, or I will at least ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... cold. There was no stream to sing up through the pines, and no wind in the pines to answer should the stream call. Nothing seemed to be stirring save the pensive ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... pensive and serious beyond his years, might be traced the different characteristics of mind and heart which eventually made up the texture of his later manhood, the yearning desire for retirement, the habit of sober reflection, the trait of gentle sadness, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... nurse a kitten with a blue ribbon round its neck; say that you like chocolate-creams; open your eyes very wide, and suck the tip of one finger occasionally. Let your manner generally vary between the pensive and the mischievous; always ask for explanations, especially of things which cannot possibly be explained in public. Do not attempt this pose unless your figure is mignon and your complexion pink. Do not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... suggestive season. How deeply, Mr Dunshunner, we ought to feel the pensive progress of autumn towards a soft and premature decay! I always think, about this time of the year, that nature is falling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... down among grapevines covered with ripe clusters, they heard a woman's voice which called, or rather sang in pensive notes: ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... but it retards the progress of the plot; it dissipates and diffuses our sympathies; the interest we should take in the fate and prospects of Manuel and Caesar, is expended on the fate and prospects of man. For beautiful and touching delineations of life; for pensive and pathetic reflections, sentiments, and images, conveyed in language simple but nervous and emphatic, this tragedy stands high in the rank of modern compositions. There is in it a breath of young tenderness and ardour, mingled impressively with the feelings ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... March as a barber, powdering the wigs of the blossoming almond trees, and a valet, lacing up the rosebuds in their corsets of green velvet. Whatever he touches he leaves artificial, "enameled," yet charming. The verses added in the present edition are more pensive, even sombre. A life given to art wholly, without patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare the greenest old age. There is a long and beautiful poem, "Le Chateau du Souvenir," which he fills, not exactly with Charles Lamb's "old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... come to reflect that there are only a few planks between you and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it makes you feel sort of pensive." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... but pensive, quite near at hand, ready to replenish the bowl with honey (Brock was especially fond of it), but with his eyes cocked inquiringly, even eagerly, in the direction of an upstairs window across the ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper" derives a pensive sorrow from "old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." But to Scott the battle is not far off, but a vivid and present reality. When he visited the Trosachs glen, his thought plainly was, "What a place for a fight!" And when James looks down on Loch Katrine his first reflection ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ancient as the sun; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her. She was not her nieces' confidante—perhaps no one so much older could have been; but their father, from whom they derived not a little of their adventurous spirit, was silently cognisant of much of which she took no note. Next to her nephew, the docile, pensive Anne was her favourite. Of her she had taken charge from her infancy; she was always patient and tractable, and would submit quietly to occasional oppression, even when she felt it keenly. Not so her two elder sisters; they made their opinions known, when ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... novelist, both essentially empirical, become more highly valued and more widely cultivated. As for the lengthy tales devoted to Tristan and to "l'Empereur magne," we know that their day is done, and we think of them with all the pensive tenderness we cannot help feeling for the dead, for the dim past, for a race without posterity, for childhood's cherished and fast-fading dreams. Thus in the same age when Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones came to their kingdom, the poets Chatterton, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... in the foliage of the yellowing trees, a tone of sadness in the blending of subdued colours—the painter had suggested that the place was deserted. But the truth was unmistakable. An air of loneliness and pensive sorrow breathed from the picture; a sigh of longing and regret. It was haunted by sad, sweet memories of some untold ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the pent-up longing of Kingsley's tenderly regretful words and Nevin's wistful setting, while the violin sang a subdued, pensive obligato. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... bend with pensive mien, And throbbing bosom o'er that sable bier, To which yon melancholy group is seen In mute affliction slowly drawing near, Whilst weeping genius, pointing to the sky, In silent anguish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... Persephone of whom Landor tells us, the sweet pensive Persephone around whose white feet the asphodel and amaranth are blooming, he will sit contented 'in that deep, motionless quiet which mortals pity, and which the gods enjoy.' He will look out upon the world and know its secret. By contact with divine things he will become ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde |
