"Wistfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same strength and intensity he had merely projected himself as an invisible guest under the Duchess' roof—if his feat had been wholly, as perhaps it was in part, a feat of mere wistfulness and longing—then I should have felt really sorry for him; and my conscience would have soundly rated me in his behalf. But no; if the wretched creature HAD been invisible to me, I shouldn't have thought of Braxton at all—except with gladness that he wasn't here. That he was visible ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... acme of agreeableness), Chirac put his hand on the hand of Sophia as it rested limp on the littered table. Accidentally she caught his eye; she had not meant to do so. They both became self-conscious. His thin, bearded face had more than ever that wistfulness which always softened towards him the uncompromisingness of her character. He had the look of a child. For her, Gerald had sometimes shown the same look. But indeed she was now one of those women for whom all men, and especially ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... At the wistfulness in his voice the girls felt the tears rise to their eyes, and to save them from a breakdown Betty crisply ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... this fellow seemed as light of body as he was of hand. He sat now watching Strann with the utmost gravity. He had very large brown eyes of a puzzling quality; perhaps that was because there seemed to be no thought behind them and one caught the mystery and the wistfulness of some animals from ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... years older than when Donald had seen him last, sat in an easy chair by the window, gazing with lack-luster eyes out across the bight. He was hopelessly crippled with rheumatism, and his sea-blue eyes still held the same lost-dog wistfulness. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... in its narrative of incredible adventures and more than Spartan hardships to assure the future reader that, "ye peale of his laugh was as clear and tuneful as ye fox horn with which our Virginia gentry were wont to go afield with horse and hound." There had possibly been a touch of wistfulness in that mention of a renounced life of greater affluence and pleasure for hard ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... bosom was effectively supplemented by another in her hair, showing brilliantly against its rich blackness. She stopped when about three paces away from the sleeping man and watched him with a wonderful tenderness. Her lips quivered sweetly—her lovely eyes shone with a soft wistfulness,—she looked indeed, as Morgana had said of her, "quite beautiful." Instinctively aware in slumber that he was not alone, Seaton stirred—opened his eyes, and ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... completely and gazed at her in patient thought. "Linda," he said finally, "I have never heard anything that stirred me so much; not what you said, my dear, but the recognition in your voice." A wistfulness of love for her enveloped him; an ineffable desire as vain as the passion she struggled to give him in return. She smiled in an ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hazardous undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something that he was pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an air of wistfulness. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... The wistfulness of the fair little face touched the general's gallant soul to the quick. "'Pon my word," he declared. "If you care as much as that for their friendship, you shall have it. I'll conduct a campaign into the enemy's quarters, and capture it ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and sharp and shabby! When they kept switches on two nails behind the door,—when they wore ugly clothes pinned together! But Jolly's eye caught the wistfulness on Morry's little, peaked, white face, and a lie was born within him at the sight. In a flash he understood things. Pity came to the front and braced ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... without doubt a note of wistfulness. "I would I could say as much for myself." That regret was as audible to Chayne as though it had been uttered. But he closed his ears to it. He began to talk eagerly of his plans. There ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... out to-night; he will be leaving soon"—there was a touch of wistfulness in her voice. She sat for a little time sadly turning round and round the plain gold ring on her left hand. "If he had threatened anything else but to desert me," she went on again presently, "I could go to him; but it's no use in ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... the child asked, without wistfulness. She was a good child, David Bolling decided,—a sporting child, willing evidently to play when it was her turn, even when she didn't understand the game at all. It was certainly a new kind of game that she would be so soon expected ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... treason if a thread of silver strayed In tress of singing-girl or nautch-dancer; And every dawn the dying rose was plucked, The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed For said the King, "If he shall pass his youth Far from such things as move to wistfulness, And brooding on the empty eggs of thought, The shadow of this fate, too vast for man, May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow To that great stature of fair sovereignty When he shall rule all lands—if he will rule— The King of kings and ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... take a chance," said Cameron's mother, looking at the eager faced girl with a cautious wistfulness. "What could we do if night came and we ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... the defile at her back, her hands clasped over her knee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sun was ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Her lashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama at her feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from the intimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was the silence which held her in a spell as still as the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... feeling, old chap," he said sympathetically. "I get a dash of the same thing sometimes—generally in the springtime. It begins with a sort of wistfulness, a sense of expansion follows, you go about all the time with your head in the clouds. You want to collect all the beautiful things in life and express them. Oh, I know all about it. It generally means a girl. Where were you ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... incongruous, and we feel sorry that they are not in their true sphere. The child who stands, half-clad, before the hearth-fire, in the painting called the "Little Cottager," has the delicate features of a true aristocrat. No cottage boy this, with shapely hands and large, melancholy eyes. His wistfulness is so touching that we would fain snatch him from his surroundings, and set him down amidst the soft luxuries which ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... stumbles forward to her knees, and the girl stoops down to raise her. One guesses the rest. They will be sobbing together in a minute, the girl's face buried in the other's shoulder. All you are to see is just the wistfulness,—"My dear! my dear!" And then the Virgin, full of Grace, but a shy girl in her teens for all that, hides her hot cheeks and cries her little wild heart to quietness. Some of it is in Albertinelli's fine picture, but not all. All of it—and ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... though his plaint Brings tears of wistfulness; Still must he grieve and mourn, forlorn and faint, ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... Wistfulness was in every line of her face and figure, from the small white-shod foot that rested upon the pedal to the glorious hair that shimmered and shone but still held its tangled lights safely in its silken strands. The long line from shoulder to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... its place came a pathetic look of wistfulness as she raised her face to mine and, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... know not. None of us at court knows. Master Dyer saith—but surely that one is not worthy—" She ceased to speak, nor knew there had been in her tone both pain and wistfulness. Presently she laughed out, with the facile gayety that one in her position must needs be practised in. "Ah, sir, tell me her name! Is she of ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... smiled at her with the odd wistfulness his smile always took on when he spoke to Barbara. To Bangs, Barbara had become a temple at whose portal he removed his earth-stained shoes. "You want us to look after Laurie," he added, quietly. "Well, you bet we're going ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... tremulously sensitive, yet not vain, for he was neither afraid nor ashamed to expose his ignorance, his amazing lack of experience. He had a greater trouble, one that I had not fathomed. Sometimes there came over his face a look of importunate wistfulness and distressed perplexity, and he seemed on the point of breaking out with something that he wished to tell me—or to ask me, for it might have been a question—but he always kept it back. Keredec's training seldom lost ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... seen the Coliseum by moonlight," she reported plaintively, adding with eager wistfulness, "And did you buy violets on the Spanish Stairs? And throw a penny into the Trevi fountain to ensure your return? And do you remember the street that turns off left, the Via Poli? From there you come quick to ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... so little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... and I think she's—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn't get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said it, and it struck me all at once that I'd been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her own ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... is in that longing look of women's eyes for far-off sails! That gaze, so eager, so steadfast, that it would almost seem as if it must conjure up the ghostly shape of glimmering canvas from the mysterious distances of sea and sky, and draw it unerringly home by the mere force of intense wistfulness! And those gentle eyes, that were never to see the light of another sun, looked anxiously across the heaving sea till twilight fell, and then John's messenger, Emil, arrived—Emil Ingebertsen, courteous and gentle as a youthful knight—and reassured ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... ills of our brief troubled life here. But his mind seemed preoccupied. These future joys did not take that hold upon him that she earnestly desired. His eyes seemed to grow dim in tender, tearful wistfulness, rather than become inspired with immortal hopes. At ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... been lying in bed for some little time and commiserating with himself over his sad fate, the door opened and Betty, with the wistfulness quite gone from her face, came in. And such a Betty! Her brown hair was bundled away under one of Cyril's battered straw hats, and thankful indeed had she been that she had so little hair to ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... because it interfered with her duties at home in an unpleasant and inconvenient way, she would sit with them hour after hour in the day-time, and wait on all their caprices with the patient tenderness of a mother. Children she always eyed with strange wistfulness, as if she longed to kiss them, but didn't know how; yet no child was ever invited across her threshold, for the yellow cur hated to be played with, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... said Tira, her eyes darkening as she recurred to the baby. "If he cries, 'twon't do no hurt up there. Well!" She seemed to remind herself that there was much to say. "I must be gittin' along with my story." She looked at him in a most moving wistfulness, and added: "I ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... was a vision of sheathed loveliness. The dark, long-lashed eyes looked out at Kirby with appealing wistfulness. When she moved, the soft lines of her body took on a sinuous grace. From her personality there seemed to emanate an enticing ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... desperation looked down at her, and saw her face worn into sweet wistfulness by her illness, her dilated eyes and lips parted and quivering ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... happiness which lightened up her features and brightened her eyes as she drew towards the conclusion, they would have wondered what joyful information could have so entranced and delighted the girl who entered the carriage, although with a serene and peaceful countenance, yet with a certain plaintive wistfulness in the shadows of her blue eyes, which betokened no exemption from the ordinary fate of mankind. But now! what unspeakable joy, what ecstatic delight seemed to infuse fresh life and vigour to the fragile, graceful form! For a few moments she crossed her hands on her bosom, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... with girlish wistfulness in the blue depths of her eyes, with the something tragic in the lines of her face that little Patience's death had written there irradicably, with poverty speaking from every fold of the blouse and skirt, yet with all the indescribable charm of girlish beauty at fifteen, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Henry de Montfort, "but that an offer of friendship might have won him to a better life. It seemed that in his speech was a note of wistfulness. I wish, father, that ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suggestive, he left a single essay of high genius, a fantastic historical work, a few books of school exercises. A privately printed volume of Letters and Journals reveals the extraordinary quality of his mind, its delicacy, its beauty, its wistfulness, its charm. There remains but the little volume of verse which is here presented, which stands apart from the poetical literature of the age. We see in these poems a singular and original contribution to the poetry of the century. The verse is in its general characteristics of the school of Tennyson, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... reins of government had been taken out of his hands. The young pastor could not know that Duncan Polite's influence had soothed his wrath. He sat beside the old man and chatted away genially, while Splinterin' Andra watched him solemnly and with a certain wistfulness in his stern face. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... of Blake though he was never far away. He wandered miserably about the house and garden, smoking endless cigarettes, and invariably asking her with a piteous, dog-like wistfulness whenever they met if there were nothing that he could do. There never was anything, but she had not the heart to tell him so, and she used to invent errands for him to make him happier. She herself did not go beyond the garden for ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... door of it was open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... one door to the kingdom of heaven, there is many an entrance to scientific divinity. There is the gate of Free Inquiry as well as the gate of Spiritual Wistfulness. And although there are exceptional instances, on the whole we can predict what school the new-comer will join, by knowing the door through which he entered. If from the wide fields of speculation he has sauntered ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... a day at last when thought and recollection began to struggle back—when she had strength to lie awake and think. More than once Trix caught the dark eyes fixed in silent wistfulness upon her—a question in them her lips would not ask. But Miss Stuart guessed it, and one ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... betrayed to her own sex the latest touch of Paris stood a little way back from it, and gazed fixedly at it. The pose of her head, her whole attitude, expressed a quiet dejection; without seeing her face one could know its air of pensive wistfulness. Ferris resolved to indulge himself in a near approach to this unwonted spectacle of interest in his picture; at the sound of his steps the lady slowly turned a face of somewhat heavily molded beauty, and from low-growing, thick pale hair and ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... That poetic and fervid statement of Mrs. Jameson, that Burne-Jones is the avatar of Raphael, contains the germ of truth. The dream-women of Burne-Jones have the same haunting and subtle spiritual wistfulness that is to be seen in the Madonnas of Raphael. Each of these men loved a woman—and each pictured her again and again. Whether this woman had an existence outside the figment of the brain matters not: both painted her as they saw ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... plain slip of bright calico, which had four-inch roses, very briery and each with a gaudy butterfly poised upon the topmost petals running over it in an inextricable tangle. Beaded moccasins were on her feet, and her eyes were frightened eyes, with the wistfulness of a timid animal. Yet she did not seem to be ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... His clothes were torn and caked with mud; here and there I saw they were soaked with blood. His face looked haggard and drawn, too, but in his eyes was such a look as I had never seen before. The old wistfulness and yearning were gone; he no longer had the appearance of a man grieving because he had lost his past. Joy, realization of something wonderful, a great satisfaction, all revealed themselves in his eyes, as ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the contract, spread out on the table. He pretended to read it, but was too agitated to do so. The little purple characters danced in the glow of the lamp. Upon his right shoulder he could feel Dolly's chin; it rested there tenderly, with wistfulness, in prayer. Mixed with his excitement was a vague sadness, a sadness, somehow, as though he were saying farewell to someone. But he had already gone through the crisis; to Dolly's heart-rending cry upon the dietary inadequacy of pine-nuts, he had yielded his whole being in supreme sacrifice. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... would remember the old people's tales of self-sufficingness, when they shot or raised their own meat, grew their own vegetables, were their own blacksmiths and carpenters, made their own shoes—yes, and spun the cloth of the clothes they wore. And something of the wistfulness in Tom's face she could see as she recollected it when he talked of his dream of taking ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... was, he thought. How perfect in her direct and simple dignity. Yet there had crept into her tone a wistfulness which broke his heart. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings of past ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... at the interminable spin of the landscape with a certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what skill and patience their ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... however he may put on wistfulness and tenderness like petticoats, and sensibilities like pearl ornaments. Your sensitive little big-eyed boy, so much more gentle and loving than his harder sister, is male for all that, believe me. Perhaps ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... between his own. But most of all he loved to see Harris bending over him, moving about him, and when Lilian came and gave him drink and touched his fevered head, his glittering eyes would soften and follow her with such a world of wistfulness as though they would speak the longing of his heart. Then he would look from her to Harris, and from Harris back to her, in a way that sent the blushes surging to her forehead, and the sight of those blushes set that young soldier's ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the midst of Autumn. Her lips, her eyes, her hair; her touching confidence; above all—quite unbelievable—her love. Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy. But on the wings of fancy this child would fly far, too far—all wistfulness and warmth beneath that light veneer of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him or not. A glance at him as he approached told her that he himself was evidently uncertain if she would choose to consider their experience of the previous day as equivalent to an introduction, and yet she noticed a certain wistfulness of expression which suggested the desire to be permitted to doff his hat to her. To acknowledge by a simple inclination of her head the existence of a man whom she was likely to pass every day seemed the natural thing to do, however unconventional; ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... his with a hungry wistfulness. "What I was meaning, your Lordship, was that if he had been spared, he'd have done things on his own and gone ahead, the same as he always did. So I, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... again, "here we are." His eyes met Mary V's with a certain shyness, a wistfulness and a daring quite unusual. "Get ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... had turned abruptly, glancing over at the city with a strange wistfulness. It was over in a moment. He resumed the slow, controlling walk beside him. They went on in silence into town, and when they did speak, it was on indifferent subjects, not referring to the last. The Doctor's heat, as it usually did, boiled out in spasms on trifles. Once he stumped his toe, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... was all the more in the thoughts of each. The revelation of Brian's love revealed also to Erica much in his character which had hitherto perplexed her simply because she had not seen it in the true light. There had always been about him a wistfulness bordering on sadness which had sometimes almost angered her. For so little do even intimate friends know each other, that lives, which seem all peaceful and full of everything calculated to bring happiness, are ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... worth," he said tensely, "all the pain I have ever known." Then as he led her on he spoke again with an odd wistfulness. ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... had just opened and the influx of guests promised a successful season, yet there was a regret and a wistfulness in Mr. Cone's brown eyes as they scanned the register, for in the long list there was no name of any member of The ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... her eyes about the room as if from the extremity of martyrdom or the wistfulness of some deep thought. Yet when she spoke it was with a different expression, an expression that would have served for an observer as a marked illustration of that disconnectedness of her parts which frequently was laughable ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... want," said Henry Vail, looking with the same tender wistfulness into his friend's eyes. "If I'd wanted a missionary I shouldn't have come to you. If I'd wanted a Sunday-school teacher I could have found twenty better; and as for tract distributing and Bible reading, you couldn't do either if you'd try. What I want ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... to be idealistic." There was a faint note of wistfulness in Nan's voice. "Why should everything that is beautiful be invariably termed 'idealistic'? Oh, there are ten thousand things I'd like altered in this ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... stared at the woman, as her abrupt reply reached my ear. Though trembling for the consequences of her boldly spoken wish, Jean did not shrink from my astonished gaze; and when I saw the wistfulness of that wan face, the smile died on my lips, checked by the tender courage which had prompted the utterance of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... two lines rang out bold and clear. Then again the wistfulness of the refrain played upon his heart as if it had been an instrument of strings, till the tears came into his eyes at the wondrous sorrow and yearning with which one voice, the sweetest and purest of all, replied, ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness that was touching in so fine a man. "Wouldn't it be rather a pull sometimes to have—a—to haven?" He hung fire; he wanted me to help him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldn't—I didn't know. So he brought it out awkwardly: "The REAL thing; a gentleman, you know, or a lady." I ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... What mystery surrounded her? I felt, by some strange intuition, that there was a mystery, and that that curious wistfulness in her glance betrayed itself because, though accompanied by her father, she was nevertheless in ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... his wife looking after him with an odd wistfulness in her eyes. She was seeing him in a new light which made her feel strangely uncertain of herself also. Was it possible that all these years of misunderstanding, which she had regarded as inevitable, might have ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... "aesthetes" made, these lovers of Egyptian dancers and Babylonian masks, is that they suppose the simplicity of Lamb's subjects debar him from the rare effects. Ah! They little know! He can take the wistfulness of children, and the quaint gestures of dead Comedians, and the fantasies of old worm-eated folios, and the shadows of sundials upon cloistered lawns, and the heartbreaking evasions of such as "can never know love" and out of these things he can make a music as piteous and lovely as Ophelia's ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... night so long, Eric! But—thank you! I was beginning to think you were a prig, but I believe you're a saint!" The wistfulness left her eyes, and she smiled mischievously. "In moments of emotion how all our habits and practices break down! 'My dear child,' 'My dear child,' 'D'you think I can't see?' 'My dear ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... thought she had succeeded. The old servant drew himself stiffly erect. In his eyes shone the loyal pride of more than fifty years' honest service. Almost at once, however, the pride died away, and the wistfulness returned. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... quickly, and took up a position in the prow, where I leant with careless grace upon the hitcher, in an attitude suggestive of agility and strength. I arranged my hair with a curl over the forehead, and threw an air of tender wistfulness into my expression, mingled with a touch of cynicism, which I ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... It has been awfully interesting. And I am awfully obliged to you about the allowance." On the threshold of the office he halted. "Mother," he said,—and his voice was generous even to wistfulness; "Mother, that cradle ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Wistfulness was in Dade's eyes when he looked at her; as though he wanted to ask if she also were relieved at seeing him. But there was the man behind the lattice where the vines were thickest; the man who was young and whom she had found a pleasant companion. Also there was ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... up at her and saw her looking at him with just the faintest wistfulness. He understood perfectly, he said to himself: she was still a little unhappy at not being allowed to send the letter herself. What a good ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... divulged to any one else the story of that last year of struggle against love which had ended in her unconditional surrender to it. To her it was as something bitter-sweet, to be locked in her memory for all time. Yet the wistfulness of Arline's appeal ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... case been of intent ignored and allowed to pass by, but never once did she doubt the motive which prompted such neglect. From the moment of their meeting the consciousness of his love had enveloped her. He might set a seal on his lips, but he could not control his eyes, and the wistfulness of that glance ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... said the Baron simply, with half a bow. "And Hugh Bethune, now—well, well! I am proud that he should mind of his old friend in the tame Highlands. Good Hugh!"—a strange wistfulness came to the Baron's utterance—"Good Hugh! he'll wear tartan when he has the notion, I'm supposing, though, after all, he was no Gael, or a very far-out one, for all that he was in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... come and go across him. True or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them—the wistfulness of exiles conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... indifferent. Was he falling in love? Had he been asked the question, he would honestly have answered that he was about the last person in the world to form a romantic attachment. There was no kind of sentimental wistfulness in his nature; his imagination had no poetical trick of investing the face and form of any passably good-looking girl with a halo of rainbow-hues; even as a lad his dreams had concerned themselves more with the possibility of his becoming a great musician than with his sharing ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... cheap pencils imploringly toward him—and then, with a stifled cry, Jimmie Dale leaned forward. The eyes that lifted to his for an instant were bright and clear with the vigor of youth, great eyes of brown they were, and trouble, hope, fear, wistfulness, ay, and a glorious shyness were in their depths. And then the voice he knew so well, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... a hint of wistfulness, and said no more. The child Olga would have argued the point. The woman Olga held ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... depths of His gracious personality, which the disciples had experienced, and implies, 'Surely you, who have been beside Me, and known Me so closely, have reached a deeper understanding.' It has a tone of the same wistfulness and wonder as that other question of His, 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?' For their sakes, He seeks to draw out their partly unconscious faith, that had been smouldering, fed by their daily experience of His beauty and tenderness. Half-recognised ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... prosperity of the king. The king should always make unto the righteous gifts of all enjoyable articles in abundance. He should certainly dispel the fear of famishing which those men may have.[327] There are no men more sinful than those upon whose food children look with wistfulness without being able to eat them duly. If within thy kingdom any learned Brahmana languishes with hunger like any of those children, thou shalt then incur the sin of foeticide for having allowed such an act. King Sivi himself had ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the Time and the Place, the pang of love's aching void and the rapture of reunion blend in one strain of haunting magical beauty, the song of an old man in whom one memory kindles eternal youth, a song in which, as in hardly another, the wistfulness of autumn blends with ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... a music of piercing sweetness runs with a sudden cry along his blood. But by and by he comes to learn that he has made a comical mistake about this wonder. With his head bent low in worship, he had not seen the wistfulness of her gaze on him; and one day, lo! it is she who presses close to him with the timid appeal of a fawn. Indeed, she has all this time been to him as some beautiful woodland creature might have seemed, breaking for the first time upon the sight of primitive man. Fear, wonder inexpressible, worship, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... different," said Ann, touched by the boyish wistfulness of his eyes. "She clings to you. And she's as shy and unspoiled as the day you brought her here. This flurry of admiration to her means nothing at all. She's ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... note to her room and placed them on her purse to the tune of her snoring, looked at her with a certain wistfulness for the mothering he had never received ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... at his friend reading the letter and saw the books on the table. Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as promptly as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight of food. An impulsive stride, with one lurch to right and left of the shoulders, brought him to the table, where he began affectionately handling the books. He glanced at the titles ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... and fearless, lad!" continued the trapper, looking up into the eyes of his companion, with a wistfulness that bespoke the delight he received in listening to the praises of one, whom it was so very evident, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were spent in a little village two or three miles from Honolulu, on the coast, where we used to go now and then for a day's fun. It was called—let me get it right—it was called Tormo Tonitui—and there were pleasure-gardens there and the most fascinating girls." His eyes took on a far-away wistfulness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... Chad's also splendid. They're ALL splendid!" he declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and sank down in a chair with that inimitable noiseless grace which made every attitude of hers a study for an artist, and waited for his next words; while he, standing opposite to her, bent his eyes upon her face with a certain wistfulness ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... would have been the end." She trembled in the memory, and he patted her hand. "I don't know why a man like you lives off here in this wild place, but thank God, you do live here! Though," she added with wistfulness, twisting her soft mouth, "though I can't ever quite see why God should care much for a Sylvie Doone." She touched the lids of her closed eyes. "I wonder why it doesn't worry me more not to be able to see. Now that the pain's gone, I ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... carriage Phoebe looked at David. The appealing wistfulness of her face touched him. He patted her arm reassuringly and whispered to her, "Don't you worry. It'll come out all right. Mother Bab ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... better dressed and better looking than were those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors; and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness, and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wistfulness tinged Marjorie's voice as she said slowly. "I don't know. I haven't asked her. I ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... her hand on my shoulder. She was looking at me with an expression of wistfulness, and a big tear was trickling down her cheek. I threw myself on my knees and tried to speak, but that was still impossible. I could do no more than mutter the word to-morrow ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... again seeing the woman who had so indiscreetly married him. Yet, somehow, Mary could not believe that her husband would yield to such paternal coercion. Rather, she was sure that he would prove loyal to her whom he loved, through every trouble. At the thought a certain wistfulness pervaded her, and a poignant regret that this particular man should have been the one chosen of fate to be entangled within her mesh of revenge. There throbbed in her a heart-tormenting realization that there were in life possibilities infinitely ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... only fifty dollars of the original six hundred left, and the poorhouse was looming once more on the old man's sight. He sighed. An expression of patience grew on the kind old face. He felt it to be a great pity that six hundred dollars could not be made to go farther. And there was a wistfulness in the glance he cast upon the boy. Elnathan was, as yet, only half awake. The little room and the taste of honest independence had done their best. Were they ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... when a child playing on the beach, and had injured herself irremediably. She lived with her maid in a small lodging, and being often confined to her room for days, nearly every visitor was welcome. Mike liked this pallid and forgotten little woman. He found in her a strange sweetness—a wistfulness. There was poetry in her loneliness and her ruined health. Strength, health, and beauty had been crushed by a chance fall. But the accident had not affected the mind, unless perhaps it had raised it into more intense sympathy with life. And in all his various passions and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... about the rent!" Expeditiously as she spoke she reached for her hip pocket and brought out a roll of bills that fairly took Barton's breath away. "If there's one thing in the world, you know, that I've got, it's money," she confided perfectly simply. "So you see, Mr. Barton," she added with sudden wistfulness, "there's almost nothing on the face of the globe that I couldn't have—if I only had some place to put it." Without further parleying she proffered the roll of ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... rather thankful you're not, dear," commented Billie with a look which quickly brought an answering light to his eyes. Yet, behind her remark there was a certain wistfulness which ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... like it now. How did you get over it?" The black eyes glistened with eagerness and the little face was full of wistfulness. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... to expect anything special from now on?" asked the skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... accustomed. So it was true. By what they had suffered, apart, by what they had tested and rejected, they had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be accepted. No wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that which had been given. And resolved ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the sunshine beyond, from the beauty and the wistfulness of April. What was there in this man that convinced her in spite of everything that Benham ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... hire 'a man like Willis' to extract them from your scarlet cushions? Potentates have grand viziers. Mr. Willes would make a delicious grand vizier," she reflected, with a kind of wistfulness. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the determination in her face that was Gwendoline's characteristic; and perhaps the varying expressions passing over it, and so transparent to those who knew her, formed her chief charm. There was a wistfulness in her dark blue eyes, and a look of expectation that one longed to see fulfilled; and her dreamy preoccupied manner often made her friends wonder if she spent all her time ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... sheen of her clinging gown and the glint of the heavy pearls drooping from her high throat to her waist. These caught the eye, but failed at length to hold it, for even as I looked the smile faded, the mockery turned to wistfulness. So I thought, and looked again—to see the wistfulness: the smile had gone, the pearls seemed heavier. Was it a trick of the artist? had he seen what I saw, or thought I saw? or was it that imagination which by now I might have learned to suspect and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... upon their own jobs? He suspected that it was all a feverish anodyne to still some inward unease. Since they must (not being fools) be aware that these antics were mere subtraction of time from their business, the obvious conclusion was, they were not happy with business. There was some strange wistfulness in the conduct of Big Business Dogs, he thought. Under the pretence of transacting affairs, they were really trying to discover something that had ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley |
