"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heaven. When the ten lepers were cleansed, and one returned to lavish love on his healer, that healer, while he enjoyed the single penitent's devotion, permitted a sigh to escape his lips, articulated in the sad pensive question, "Where are the nine?" I love the Lord for uttering that complaint. It proves to me that he counts it no intrusion when we burst in upon him with our glad thanksgiving. In the bold in-bursting of this woman; in her premeditated anointing, and unpremeditated ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... abodes of the living, and showed all the little hillocks and the burial-stones, white marble or slate, and here and there a tomb, with the pleasant grass about them all. A single tree was tinged with glory from the west, and threw a pensive shade behind. Not far from where it fell was the tomb of my parents, whom I had hardly thought of in bidding adieu to the village, but had remembered them more faithfully among the feelings that drew me homeward. At my departure their tomb had been hidden in the morning mist. ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pictures of the Alma-Tadema school—not, of course, from the brush of the master himself, who is impeccable in such details, but fair works of decent imitators—in which Caia or Marcia leans gracefully in her white stole on one pensive elbow against a marble lintel, beside a courtyard decorated with a Pompeian basin, and overgrown with prickly pear or "American aloes." I need hardly say that, as a matter of plain historical fact, neither cactuses ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... last with a mind that had gained largely in tranquility and had lost correspondingly in morbid romantic exaltation. She was pensive, the next day, and subdued; but that was not matter for remark, for she did not differ from the mournful friends about her in that respect. Clay and Washington were the same loving and admiring brothers now that they had always been. The great secret was new ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... silent ten 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
... say," exclaimed Agnes, lifting her fine dark eyes to Mrs. Gordon's sweet, though pensive face, "that unpretending church, those earnest worshippers, and, above all, that simple, faithful discourse, affected me far more deeply than any heard from the lips of the most eloquent divine, in a gorgeous edifice crowded with the elite of the city, and where ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... Berna. Through a mass of grimacing, greed-contorted faces gradually there formed and lingered her sweet and pensive one. We were in a strange costume, she and I. It seemed like that of the early Georges. We were running away, fleeing from some one. For her sake a great fear and anxiety possessed me. We were ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... harmony was delightful; but the soft cooing of the turtle dove and the plaintive note of the lovelorn nightingale alone caught her attention. To these she would listen for hours together, reclined on a mossy bank, and fancy their pensive strains the language of her beloved. Such was her daily employment, nor would she quit the garden till forced by her attendants to take shelter from the falling dews of night. We now return to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... spirit of the year seemed to have entered into Pearl. She was as wistful as the day, as pensive as the sighing wind. She arrived early at her destination. The sun lay warm in her little bower of encircling pines and she sat down on a fallen log to await Hanson's coming. He could not take her by surprise for, through a little ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... now she was four-and-twenty, was only drank by those who knew her face at least. Her complexion was mellowed into a paleness, which certainly took from her beauty; but agreed, at least Harley used to say so, with the pensive softness of her mind. Her eyes were of that gentle hazel colour which is rather mild than piercing; and, except when they were lighted up by good-humour, which was frequently the case, were supposed by ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... bench, before the fire, sat a lady, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a thin, coloured muslin gown, the most inappropriate garment for the rigour of the season, but, in all probability, the only decent one that she retained. A subdued melancholy looked forth from her large, dark, pensive eyes. She appeared like one who, having discovered the full extent of her misery, had proudly steeled her heart to bear it. Her countenance was very pleasing, and, in early life (but she was still young), she must have been eminently handsome. Near her, with her head bent down, and shaded by ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Gray; and, if I sometimes wonder at such moments whether I shall find those realms as fair as they appear, I am suddenly reminded that the night air may be noxious, and descending, I enter the little parlor where Prue sits stitching, and surprise that precious woman by exclaiming with the poet's pensive enthusiasm; ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... is a joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;—I can feel With all around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,—and yon quiet bird, That ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... few moments she stood there in the open with pensive eyes following the movements of scurrying, toddling legs, many of them encased in the minutest of buckskin, chap-like pantaloons and the tiniest of beaded moccasins. It was a sight that yielded her a tenderness of emotion that struggled ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... considerable number of them were in company, scarcely a day passed without some overtures being made for contests of this kind, and it was often very unpleasant to me to see the object of the contest sitting in pensive silence watching her fate, while her husband and his rival were contending for his prize. I have, indeed, not only felt pity for those poor wretched victims, but the utmost indignation, when I have seen them won, perhaps by a man whom they mortally hated. On these occasions, their ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... when busy crowds retire To take their evening rest, The hermit trimm'd his little fire, And cheer'd his pensive guest: ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... control imagination, or both are fruitless. Those melancholy ruins, those grand temples of religion, the immortal forms and hues that glorify palace and chapel, square, mausoleum, and Vatican, the dreamy murmur of fountains, the aroma of violets and pine-trees, the pensive relics of imperial sway, the sublime desolation of the Campagna, the mystery of Nature and Art, when both are hallowed by time, the social zest of an original brotherhood like the artists, the freedom and loveliness, the ravishment of spring and the soft radiance of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... while into the tenderness and passion of the Liebestraume, the one thing perhaps that, loving, he knew to the end; swept through the downward cadenza with exquisite accuracy and feeling, and forgot the rest. With the girl's soft pensive eyes upon him he could have forgotten anything; he even forgot that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... stealing from half-blown bowers, Bathed the young cowslip in her sunny showers, Pensive I travell’d, and approach’d the plains, That met the bounds of Severn’s wide domains. As up the hill I rose, from whose green brow The village church o’erlooks the vale below, O! when its rustic form first met my eyes, What wild emotions swell’d ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... imposing under arms. True, Jacques does not hold his gun very valiantly. He is a melancholy lad. But we must not blame him for that; dreamers can be just as brave as those who never dream at all. His little brother Etienne, the tiniest mite in the regiment, looks pensive. He is ambitious; he would like to be a general officer right away, ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... be ranked as the seat of the Unitarians, as Baltimore is that of the Roman Catholics, and Philadelphia that of the Quakers.... No axiom is more applicable to the pensive, serious, scrutinizing inhabitant of the New England States than this: 'What I do not understand, I reject as worthless and false;' so said one of the most learned men of Boston to me. 'Why occupy the mind with that which is incomprehensible? Have we not enough of that ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... first magnum. She was indeed a very pretty girl of the Scotch cast of beauty, that is, with a profusion of hair of paley gold, and a skin like the snow of her own mountains in whiteness. Yet she had not a pallid or pensive cast of countenance; her features, as well as her temper, had a lively expression; her complexion, though not florid, was so pure as to seem transparent, and the slightest emotion sent her whole blood at once to her face and neck. Her form, though under the common size, was remarkably elegant, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... have said 'unchanged.' There was one great change in the sweet face. You remember my telling you that one of my girl-friend's greatest charms was her bright sunny happiness—she never seemed gloomy or depressed or dissatisfied, seldom even pensive. But in this respect the face I sat there gazing at was utterly unlike Maud Bertram's. Its expression, as she—or 'it'—stood there looking, not towards me, but out beyond, as if at some one or something outside the doorway, was of the profoundest sadness. Anything so sad I ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... steeds ethereal; But with a motion inconceivable Departed and was there. Before the throne Of Ades, first he hailed the long-sought queen, Stolen with violent hands from grassy fields And delicate airs of sunlit Sicily, Pensive, gold-haired, but innocent-eyed no more As when she laughing plucked the daffodils, But grave as on fulfilling a strange doom. And low at Ades' feet, wrapped in grim murk And darkness thick, the three gray women sat, Loose-robed and chapleted with wool and flowers, Purple narcissi round ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... and one of them, the lively brunette who had taken a part in the seguidilla, plucked some sprays of jasmine which reared their pointed leaves and white blossoms in front of the window, and began to entwine them in the hair of her companion—a pale and somewhat pensive beauty, in whose golden locks and blue eyes the Gothic blood of old Spain was yet to be traced. Presently she was interrupted in this fanciful occupation by a voice within the room calling upon her to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... me an alien and a thief: One morn of autumn lords it o'er the rest, 80 When in the lane I watched the ash-leaves fall, Balancing softly earthward without wind, Or twirling with directer impulse down On those fallen yesterday, now barbed with frost, While I grew pensive with the pensive year: And once I learned how marvellous winter was, When past the fence-rails, downy-gray with rime, I creaked adventurous o'er the spangled crust That made familiar fields seem far and strange As those stark wastes that whiten endlessly 90 In ghastly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... themselves into totally different beings the moment one speaks to them. As the author did one evening, after peering absently through the window of a candy-store down near the railroad arch below Charing Cross, and seeing her sitting pensive behind the stacks of merchandise. She was very glad to see a familiar face and recognised the claim of the breakfast-hour with a tolerant smile and a cheerful nod. It is very easy, while talking to Mabel, to understand ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... to the remnants 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 ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... very sweet, but rather pensive this morning," said Mr. Romaine, noticing a shadow on the bright and beautiful face of Jeanette, whose color had deepened by the plain remarks of her cousin Belle. "What is ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... popular scientific works. He fancied he was labouring at his education. At times, he forced his wife to listen to certain pages, to particular anecdotes, and felt very much astonished that Therese could remain pensive and silent the whole evening, without being tempted to take up a book. And he thought to himself that his wife must be a woman of ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... two honored urns O'er graves not far removed. The one records The 'genius of a Poet,' whose fitter fame Lies in the volumes which his facile pen Filled with the measure of redundant verse: Before this urn the oft frequented sod Is flattened with the tread of pensive feet. The other simply bears the name and age Of one who was 'a Merchant,' and bequeathed A fair estate with numerous charities: Before this urn the grass grows ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... storekeeper returned to his seat on the mackerel kit, and was accosted by a pensive neighbor in high boots who sat upon the upturned end of a case of brogans. "You didn't make no sale that ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... despatch, has rented an expensive villa overlooking Lake Zurich. Just the thing for an ex-pensive monarch. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... to come, and so charmed when you asked us, for we haven't seen you this age, darling," added Blanche, the pensive one, smoothing her blond curls after ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... gaze upon this gorgeous sight, Nor feel his bosom chain'd by deep delight, This hour when beauty wears her richest dye, And love o'erflows charmed ocean, earth and sky; Till fancy, dreaming in her lovely bower, Hears far off strains of deep, o'erwhelming power, And, lifting up her pensive orbs above, Spies Angels winging through yon vault of love, And says that "they are wafting souls forgiven On their bright pinions, to yon nameless Heaven." On such an eve, so peaceful and so bright, Two loved ones flee beyond yon failing light, No more to droop within this ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... inquirers the origin of the names and properties of certain plants; a Girl's Farewell to the River Lee, by Charles Swain, is plaintively interesting; Seven and Seventeen, by Mrs. S.C. Hall, is clever and lively, and full of home truth; the Sailor's Wife is a pensive ballad-tale of the sea, by M. Howitt, and likely to linger on the mind of childhood; the First Weavers, by the Rev. C. Williams, is as ingenious in its way as Professor Rennie's Bird or Insect Architecture: it enumerates many interesting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... a thin-faced, yellow-haired youth, rather above the middle size, comely and well shapen, with straight, lithe figure and eager, boyish features. His clear, pensive gray eyes, and quick, delicate expression, spoke of a nature which had unfolded far from the boisterous joys and sorrows of the world. Yet there was a set of the mouth and a prominence of the chin which relieved him of any trace of effeminacy. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pensive mood, just now," said De Valette; "when I last saw you, I could scarce have believed a cloud would ever cross the sunshine of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... beautiful effusions of poetry; 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 of gray-haired ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the burden of a mother's place; Miles, with his proud, overbearing look, a boy who had had especial claims on her care and guidance; Joan, beautiful and daring, ignorant of nothing so much as of her own ignorance; Pat, of the pensive face and reckless spirit; and last but not least, Pixie, her baby—dear, naughty, loyal little Pixie, whom she must leave to the tender mercies of children little older than herself! The dim eyes brightened, the thin hand stretched out and gripped ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... minstrels to wake the morn and to sing the vespers of a sweet summer evening. A flood of song wakes us at the earliest daylight; and the shy and solitary Veery, after the Vesper-Bird has concluded his evening hymn, pours his few pensive notes into the very bosom of twilight, and makes the hour sacred by his melody. But after twilight is sped, and the moon rises to shed her meek radiance over the sleeping earth, the Nightingale is not here to greet her rising, and to turn her melancholy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was very loath to grant this boon, but he let me go sometimes, perhaps to get a sample of my conduct. I don't remember ever doing anything at these times which could have displeased him; I was particularly careful about it, since I saw him sad, pensive, and afflicted owing to the misfortune which had befallen him, and soon be began to accord me his confidence, which I was most ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Bocardo!" said the brigand leader after a moment of pensive silence, in which he appeared to reflect upon the proposals of his astute associate, "we shall get ourselves into trouble, if we carry on in this fashion. It may end in our being hunted down like ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... very likely to play the tyrant, he thought. If he were not mistaken, she had wearied of him and regretted her bondage—the old story. Thinking thus, and strolling through the rooms with casual glances at a picture, he discovered his acquaintance, catalogue in hand, alone for the present. Her pensive face again answered to his smile. They drew back from ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... or two, and for some moments remains silent— pensive. Perhaps she is thinking of a sailor saved from sharks after falling among them, and more still of the man who saved him. Whether or no, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... office Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a short, fair, faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a pensive mustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate Matthews' darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the local wire was very meager indeed. The Austrians were shelling Belgrade, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... when about to write any thing of importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I have a grand design, I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Something pensive, spell-bound, and but half real, something cloistral or monastic, as we should say, united to this exquisite order, made the whole place seem to Marius, as it were, sacellum, the peculiar sanctuary, of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces, possesses, lulls to sleep the ships with white sails. He is all things to all oceans; he is like a poet seated upon a throne—magnificent, simple, barbarous, pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable, unfathomable— but when you understand him, always the same. Some of his sunsets are like pageants devised for the delight of the multitude, when all the gems of the royal treasure-house are displayed ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Sanin promptly darted out into the street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder's hand, and made him cease playing and move away. When he came back, Gemma thanked him with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber's, in which Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. Then she asked Sanin whether he knew 'Freischuetz,' whether he was fond of Weber, and added that though she was herself ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... completely new to it, his eyes attentive, his deportment grave, but easy. M. le Duc, sage, measured, but encircled by I know not what brilliancy, which adorned all his person and which was evidently kept down. M. le Prince de Conti appeared dull, pensive, his mind far away perhaps. I was not able during the sitting to see them except now and then, and under pretext of looking at the King, who was serious, majestic, and at the same time as pretty as can ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the idle play of the waves, that chased each other to the foaming beach and in good-nature tossed about the cat-boats and schooners and set the white sails shimmering and dipping in the changing lights. And Evelyn, drinking in the beauty and the peace of it, no doubt, was more pensive than joyous. Within the last few months life had opened to her with a suddenness ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... called pensive—in which the soul of a human being, and especially of a woman, dominates outwardly and expresses its presence so strongly, that the intangible essence seems more apparent than the body itself. This was Cytherea's expression now. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Raymonde singled out her victim. Cynthia was standing slightly apart from her Form, consuming thick bread and butter with an air of pensive melancholy, and twisting a pet bracelet that adorned her wrist. Raymonde strolled ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the shadows in a way those of the setting sun do not. Then the sunlight is whiter and newer in the morning,—not so yellow and diffused. A difference akin to this is true of the two seasons I am speaking of. The spring is the morning sunlight, clear and determined; the autumn, the afternoon rays, pensive, lessening, golden. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... with profound reverence. Still more fantastic, a paralysed branch produced a living human hand, which in the accompanying engraving is ornamented with an immaculate cuff, and that hand presented a bouquet to Sophia. By reason of these matters the doctor became pensive. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... conventional system fell, how wild ran speculation and sentiment in the copious and superficial Voltaire and the vague humanities of Rousseau! When an era of military despotism supervened upon the reign of license, how destitute of lettered genius seemed the nation, except when the pensive enthusiasm of Chateaubriand breathed music from American wilds or a London garret, and Madame de Stael gave utterance to her eloquent philosophy in exile at Geneva! "Napoleon eut voulu faire manoeuvrer l'esprit humain comme il faisait manoeuvrer ses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... knowest thou that hast not tried. What hell it is in suing long to bide; To loose good dayes that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent. ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... lament in a pensive and apologetic sort of way, "Yes, I have a great weakness for fine books." The very presence of this mis-called weakness, however, is unmistakable proof of great mental strength, and those who suffer from it may find solace in the fact that the giants of commerce, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... morning of the return of Aladdin's palace, the sultan went, by break of day, into his closet to indulge his sorrows. Absorbed in himself, and in a pensive mood, he cast his eyes towards the spot, expecting only to see an open space; but perceiving the vacancy filled up, he at first imagined the appearance to be the effect of a fog; looking more attentively, he was ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... ripple of his merriment with the children had passed he turned to me with a face now serious and pensive, and said: "Ah, so many things familiar to us are strange to you ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... that of settled and fixed despair. Emily went to her room, and to her bed, which she did not leave for some days; when she again appeared in the family she was calm and sweet as ever, but a shade more pensive. ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that 'the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character.' We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. 'Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard.' He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... little field-mouse dreams of harm, Snuggled away from harm beneath the weeds; The violet, sleeping on the clover's arm, Wakes, and is cold with thoughts of dreadful deeds; The pensive people of the water-reeds Hark with a mute ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... correspondence; but his own Lines to William Wordsworth—lines "composed on the night after his recitation of a poem on the growth of an individual mind"—contain an even more tragic expression of his state. It was Wordsworth's pensive retrospect of their earlier years together which awoke the bitterest pangs of self-reproach in his soul, and wrung from ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... her children at school, at Philadelphia and Princeton, remained pensive, and wrote the following lines in the Indian tongue, on parting from them, which. I thought so just that I made a ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Mrs. Darrell and Mr. Stormont strolled upon the terrace. My dear girl had a sort of restless manner to-day, and went from one occupation to another, now sitting for a few minutes at the piano, playing brief snatches of pensive melody, now taking up a book, only to throw it down again with a little weary sigh. She seated herself at a table presently, and began to arrange the sketches in her portfolio. While she was doing ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... saw two faces just arrived. One was perfectly charming, delicate, pensive, shaded by beautiful dark hair, and eyes soft as velvet, like those lovely flowers, the heartsease, in which shine out the golden petals. The other, of mature age, seemed to have the former one under ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tower, a gentleman of his acquaintance got access to him, and found him very pensive and melancholy concerning the prevailing defections amongst many of the ministers of Scotland, and, having lately got account of their proceedings at the general assembly held at Glasgow, anno 1610, where the earl of Dunbar had an active hand in ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Italian passion, craved one of those modest and meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only in painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited fancy by the living picture before him, he naturally passed to a profound admiration for the principal figure; Augustine seemed to be pensive, and did not eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw up the shape of her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural effect. The artist involuntarily compared her ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... DORA (pensive for once). I suppose it is very dreadful to be old! But then (brightening again), what should we do without our dear old friends, and our ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... rich. Most of the flagstones were broken, and the altar was almost simple enough to please a Calvinist. It was the simplicity, not of intention, but of poverty. Are such churches—lost amidst the pensive trees, or bathed by the tender evening light upon the vine-clad hillside—doubly hallowed, or is it the poetry of old memories and ideal pictures stored away behind a multitude of newer impressions that moves us like the wind-blown strains of half-forgotten melodies as we ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the soldiers were pensive and thoughtful; but the mass were marching to their funerals with boyish outcries, apparently anxious to forget ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... that I se you sadde and hevy more than nous deux, mais pource que uous uoy pensive et ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... Cambio at Perugia; when he masquerades meditative fathers of the Church as Socrates and haggard anchorites as Numa Pompilius; most ludicrous of all, when he attires in scantiest of—clinging antique drapery his mild and pensive Madonnas, and, with daintily pointed toes, places them to throne bashfully on allegorical chariots ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... feel most forcibly the powers of BEAUTY; as, if they are really poets of nature's making, their feelings must be finer, and their taste more delicate than most of the world. In the cheerful bloom of SPRING, or the pensive mildness of AUTUMN; the grandeur of SUMMER, or the hoary majesty of WINTER, the poet feels a charm unknown to the rest of his species. Even the sight of a fine flower, or the company of a fine woman (by far the finest part of God's works below), have sensations for the poetic heart that the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... prithee why so pensive? I have had the pleasantest Adventure this Afternoon, going to the Bank to receive Mony; in Pater-Noster-Row I saw two of the loveliest Sempstresses the Trade e'er countenanc'd; I went into the Shop, struck up a Bargain, whipt over to the Castle, where we eat four Crabs, top'd ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... forlorn marches of the last fortnight silence had for the most part fitlier expressed our emotions; or, if we sang, the melodies were pensive and often sad. But now all was changed. We saw that our painful trials were rapidly drawing to a close, and it is only the truth to say that we rejoiced with ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... Sampati's counsel led, Brave Hanuman, who mocked at dread, Sprang at one wild tremendous leap Two hundred leagues, across the deep. To Lanka's[32] town he urged his way, Where Ravan held his royal sway. There pensive 'neath Asoka boughs He found poor Sita, Rama's spouse. He gave the hapless girl a ring, A token from her lord and King. A pledge from her fair hand he bore; Then battered down the garden door. Five captains ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... passed on, and left their trace, Of graver care and deeper thought; And unto me the calm, cold face Of manhood, and to thee the grace Of woman's pensive beauty brought. More wide, perchance, for blame than praise, The school-boy's humble name has flown; Thine, in the green and quiet ways Of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ancient staircase leads to an upper chamber of which we shall presently speak; and on the newel-post of this staircase stands one of the curiosities of St. Hospital—a pelican carved in oak, vulning its breast to feed its young. Brother Copas, lifting a pensive eye from his plate, rested it on this bird, as though ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Why so pensive, Rachael?" she asked cheerfully, pressing a button that lighted the circle of globes about the dressing-table mirror, and seating herself before it. But under her loose locks she sent a keen and concerned look ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise; Ay me! whilst thee the shores ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... brain was racing through the old puzzles in the old ways, Nelly was thinking of something quite different. Her delicate small face kept breaking into little smiles with pensive intervals—till at last ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... like Yearning and Aufweedersehen or Absence, with their pensive autumn fragrance and soft colors, add much to the beauty of the October garden. Yearning, however, though a beautiful flower, should be well trimmed and kept within bounds, as it has a tendency to become wild when left to itself, in which state it ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... as well as of storing up the produce of harvest for the needs of winter. Old people turn out and sun themselves in that calm St. Martin's summer, without fear of 'the heat o' th' sun, or the coming winter's rages,' and we may read in their pensive, dreamy eyes that they are weaning themselves away from the earth, which probably many may never see dressed in her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... myself. I have received to-day a succession of unaccustomed influences. I have been dragged about by an impertinent locomotive; I have been induced to dine heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps to the limit of my measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am naturally thoughtful, studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is for me an unfaded morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at pleasure, and read within its tube legends written in dusted gold. But the Present to the true philosopher is also—In fact, I never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... brother, Louis, was of nearly the same age with Hortense. He was a young man of fine personal appearance, very intelligent, of scholarly tastes, and of irreproachable character. Though pensive in temperament, he had proved himself a hero on the field of battle, and he possessed, in all respects, a very noble character. Many of the letters which he had written from Egypt to his friends in Paris had been intercepted by the British cruisers, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... confined, I learn to smooth and harmonise my mind, Teach every thought within its bounds to roll, And keep the equal measure of the soul. Soon as I enter at my country door My mind resumes the thread it dropt before; Thoughts, which at Hyde Park Corner I forgot, Meet and rejoin me, in the pensive grot. There all alone, and compliments apart, I ask these sober questions of my heart. If, when the more you drink, the more you crave, You tell the doctor; when the more you have, The more you want; why not with equal ease Confess as well your folly, as disease? The heart ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... 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
... wanderings. His cheek-bones, a trifle high, asserted their place above the softly concave cheeks. His mouth was closed and the lips were slightly compressed; the chin small, gracefully turned, not weak,—not strong. His eyes were abstracted, deep, pensive. His dress told much. The fine plaits of his shirt had sprung apart and been neatly sewed together again. His coat was a little faulty in the set of the collar, as if the person who had taken the garment apart and turned the goods had not put it together again ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... apprentices or pupils in that time learning to become figuli, but the one whom Raffaelle liked the most (and Pacifica too) was one Luca Torelli, of a village above in the mountains,—a youth with a noble, dark, pensive beauty of his own, and a fearless gait, and a supple, tall, slender figure that would have looked well in the light coat of mail and silken doublet of a man-at-arms. In sooth, the spirit of Messer Luca was more made for war and its risks and ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... replied with a pensive smile stealing over her fine intellectual features. "Have no fear for me on that score, for depend upon it, with so much natural beauty to interest, it will be my own fault, if I suffer myself to be buried alive. What ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... prancing of horses returning uptown or down to the Washington Square district. In contrast the side street, with its austere rows of brownstone houses, each with its area and flight of steps, its spaced gas lamps, its deserted roadway, seemed very still and quiet. Carroll was in a tired and pensive mood. She held her head ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... folio under the table-cloth, I looked at myself in the mirror, combed my hair upwards (I imagined this to give me a pensive air), and descended to the divannaia, [Room with divans, or ante-room] where the table stood covered with a cloth and had an ikon and candles placed upon it. Papa entered just as I did, but by another door: whereupon the priest—a grey-headed old monk ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... forehead, and then flowed into a half-a-thousand rippling, crinkling, capricious undulations. And her skin had the sensitive colouring, the fineness of texture, that are apt to accompany red hair when it's yellow, yellow hair when it's red. Her face, with its pensive, quizzical eyes, its tip-tilted nose, its rather large mouth, and the little mocking quirks and curves the lips took, with an alert, arch, witty face; a delicate high-bred face; and withal a somewhat sensuous, emotional face; the face of a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... in a measure, form and model himself upon Messer Homerus, when he suddenly became aware that he was wasting his periods upon empty air—for of us where we lurked he knew nothing. Turning round, he saw where Dante stood pensive, and called to him sharply, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... their light false voices into the summer of the leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as of roses. Masks and arrows are everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive gestures and reluctance—false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the soul of the century—ankles and epigrams ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... was remarkable for her fine personal endowments. A tall, well-developed form, a round, sweet face, and that peculiarly soft, melodious voice which belongs to the women of her people, would have attracted the attention of a stranger, while the pensive expression of her countenance irresistibly drew the hearts of all towards her, and prompted the wish to know more of her history. As I received it from her friend, Mrs. Paquette, it was ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... more in accord with her pensive mood, lighting the bunch, however, with one red rose. The question of Hilda was not settled, but she yielded as many an older woman has yielded—to the sweetness of tribute—to man's impulse to make things right not by justice but by the bestowal of ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... the mist at morn arose From Katrine's silvery wave, A form of aspect ominous, With pensive ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... standing on the bank of the River Goltva, waiting for the ferry-boat from the other side. At ordinary times the Goltva is a humble stream of moderate size, silent and pensive, gently glimmering from behind thick reeds; but now a regular lake lay stretched out before me. The waters of spring, running riot, had overflowed both banks and flooded both sides of the river for a long distance, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the dress should be simple, loose and sashed; 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... loneliness upon her now—just at first—that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... was over the woman retired to the cabin, and appeared pensive. Between eight and nine in the evening, the captain, who was attended by the captain of the Alfred, came on board; Rodney immediately ran to him, and informed him that Green had made an assault upon her. The captain, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... forward to lay her mittens on 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
... of a boy is easily read. 'Tis a mystery the most profound. Mark what blunders parents constantly make as to the nature of their own offspring, bred, too, under their eyes, and displaying every hour their characteristics. How often in the nursery does the genius count as a dunce because he is pensive; while a rattling urchin is invested with almost supernatural qualities because his animal spirits make him impudent and flippant! The school-boy, above all others, is not the simple being the world imagines. In that young bosom are often stirring passions as strong as our own, desires not less ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... she weeps, and her flowerets bend, drooping, to the earth. Mild is her mien, and the tint of modesty is on her cheek. She smiles, whilst the tear still trembles in her eye, like placid resignation bending over the tomb of a departed friend. She is a pensive maiden, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... her mother's portrait—"all sorts of nonsense, making yourself miserable, reproaching yourself that you do not teach me to vocalise, a thing which you know nothing about, or lamenting that you are not rich enough to send me abroad, where I could be taught it." Then, with a pensive note in her voice which did not escape ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... leave behind A numerous offspring of your dainty kind; And when fate calls, have nothing to repent, But die like flow'rs, virtuous and innocent. Then all your fellow flow'rs, both fair and sweet, Will come, with tears, to deck your winding-sheet; Hang down their pensive heads so dew'd, and crave To be transplanted to ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple, care-free dressing of it at ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Edward strove hard to quell the melancholy feeling which had lately arisen in his mind on account of the constant foreboding that Ferdinand expressed of his own early death. "No," thought Edward, "his pensive turn of mind and his wild imagination cause him to reproach himself without a cause for my sorrow and his own departure. Oh, no, Ferdinand will not die early—he will not die before me. Providence will not leave me alone ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... story, Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell, Of morning's firm resolves, the vanish'd glory, Hope's honey left within the withering bell And plants of mercy dead, that ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... messengers of death. They hover in silvery thin expanse, they sail laughingly white with a golden rim, they stand at rest in yellow, red, and bluish tints; they creep up slowly and darkly threatening like murderers, they rush with a headlong roar like mad horsemen, they hang sad and pensive at equal heights like melancholy hermits. They have the forms of blessed isles and the forms of blessing angels; they are like threatening hands, fluttering sails, a flight of cranes. They float between ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... may foretell the hour, (By sure prognostics,) when to dread a shower. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... he speaks of the statues and monuments of brave men, and such as had well deserv'd of the publick, erected by the Romans even in their highways; since doubtless, such noble and agreeable objects would exceedingly divert, entertain, and take off the minds and discourses of melancholy people, and pensive travellers, who having nothing but the dull and enclosed ways to cast their eyes on, are but ill conversation to themselves, and others, and instead of celebrating, censure their superiors. It is by a curious person, and industrious friend ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... whether that primitive ecclesiastical song was accompanied by instruments. As to the inward chant, by which the faithful "made melody in their hearts," and which was but the overflowing of those tender, ardent, pensive souls, it was doubtless executed like the catilenes of the Lollards of the Middle Ages, in medium voice. In general, it was joyousness which was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... thinn'd, As he to Midian march'd adown the hills." Thus near one border coasting, still we heard The sins of gluttony, with woe erewhile Reguerdon'd. Then along the lonely path, Once more at large, full thousand paces on We travel'd, each contemplative and mute. "Why pensive journey thus ye three alone?" Thus suddenly a voice exclaim'd: whereat I shook, as doth a scar'd and paltry beast; Then rais'd my head to look from whence it came. Was ne'er, in furnace, glass, or metal seen So bright and glowing red, as was the shape I now beheld. "If ye desire to mount," He ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... same loving reverence which he gave to Chaucer. Minor poets like Sidney, Drayton, and Daniel paid tribute to his inspiration; Milton was deeply indebted to him, especially in Lycidas; and many of the pensive poets of the seventeenth century show traces of his influence. "Spenser delighted Shakespeare," says Mr. Church; "he was the poetical master of Cowley, and then of Milton, and in a sense of Dryden, and even Pope." Giles and Phineas Fletcher, William Browne, Sir William Alexander, Shenstone, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... bit 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
... opiates my soul gradually settled into a sort of pleasing pensive melancholy. Has it not been said, that melancholy is a characteristic of genius? I make no pretensions to genius: but I am persuaded that melancholy is the habitual, perhaps the natural state of those who have the misfortune to feel ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... 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 a face she hated, And a face I feared to see. I ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... she had been the most interesting of their friends and her situation at that moment an irresistible appeal to their sympathy. Nona Vincent was the heroine of the play, and Mrs. Alsager had taken a tremendous fancy to her. "I can't TELL you how I like that woman!" she exclaimed in a pensive rapture of credulity which could only be balm to the ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... playing in the fine gravel at her feet, pausing every now and then to study her mother's eye with a furtive gravity, while the hat fell back and made a still more fantastic combination than before with the pensive little face. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 from some minor fruit-eating animal, set upon by a carnivorous ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... Winsett's, after all, contained still less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views usually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... coming back down the hill, picking our way among the graves, a pensive Chinaman stopped us to ask our assistance in finding him a lucky spot in which to bury his father, who died a year ago but was still above ground. He was sorry to hear that we could not pretend to any knowledge of such things. He was of an inquiring mind, for he then asked us if ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... their place they put on you like anythink." He flung all his worldly possessions into the empty bed-place, gauged with another shrewd look the risks of the proceeding, then leaped up to the Finn, who stood pensive and dull.—"I'll teach you to swell around," he yelled. "I'll plug your eyes for you, you blooming square-head." Most of the men were now in their bunks and the two had the forecastle clear to themselves. The development of the destitute Donkin aroused interest. He danced all in ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... such peaceful solitude, surrounded by mangroves, with no other drawbacks to her felicity but snakes and alligators, haunted my imagination. I trusted she was young, and lovely, and heart-broken; a pensive lay nun who had retreated from the vanities and deceits of the world to this secluded spot, where she lived like a heroine upon the produce of her flocks, with some "neat-handed Phillis," to milk the cows and churn the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Simms, and went away pensive. He was in rebellion against the strange ways grown men have of discharging their duties as citizens—a rather remarkable thing, and perhaps a proof that Jim Irwin's methods had already accomplished much in preparing Newton and Raymond for citizenship. He had ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection—when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness—who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it, even for the ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... she learned from their pages to form false and extravagant notions concerning it. She used to build castles in the air, was subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Volpatte changed, with his leggings, his shouldered blanket, and his face of a Mongolian tatooed with dirt; nor Tirette, although he has been worried for some time by blood-red streaks in his eyes—for some unknown and mysterious reason. Farfadet keeps himself aloof, in pensive expectation. When the post is being given out he awakes from his reverie to go so far, and then retires into himself. His clerkly hands indite numerous and careful postcards. He does not know of Eudoxie's end. Lamuse said no more to any one of the ultimate ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the lines and gradations of unsullied snow: if, passing to the edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower Alps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little round openings pierced in it, and through these emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower[31] whose small dark, purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after its ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... his name: He was deep-eyed, light and slender, shy of mien and slight of frame. Like a laughing brook she skipped to and fro along the strand; He was grave, like nodding fern-leaf, gently by the breezes fanned, Which in silence, Pensive silence, Grows upon the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... forehead was smooth and low; the nose, though prominent and bold in outline, of exceeding delicacy in detail; the mouth and lips full, a little inclined to be arch, though the former appeared as if it might at times be pensive; the teeth were even and unsullied; and the chin was small, round, dimpled, and so carefully divested of the distinguishing mark of the sex, that one could fancy nature had contributed all its growth to adorn the neighboring cheeks and temples. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... out his hand lazily, took the flowers, smelt them carelessly, and began to turn them around in his fingers, looking up with thoughtful importance. Akulina gazed at him. There was so much tender devotion, reverent obedience, and love in her pensive eyes. She at once feared him, and yet she dared not cry, and inwardly she bade him farewell, and admired him for the last time; and he lay there, stretched out like a sultan, and endured her admiration with magnanimous patience and ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev
... vales of tears Destin'd to march, our doubtful steps we tend, Tir'd of the toil, yet fearful of its end: That from the womb, we take our fatal shares, Of follies, fashions, labours, tumults, cares; And at approach of death shall only know, The truths which from these pensive numbers flow, That we pursue false joy, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... say she well deserves it; she looks as if she did," said the Diva, with a pensive air, and a dash of melancholy in her voice. "I have often wondered," she continued, after a moment's pause, "whether you others, grand signori, ever ask yourselves, when you bestow such regards as you speak of on a poor artist—I know who she is, merely ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope |
