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More "Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his life Mr. Foster passed in New York. During all that time, his efforts, with perhaps one exception, were limited to the production of songs of a pensive character. The loss of his mother seems to have left an ineffaceable impression of melancholy upon his mind, and inspired such songs as "I dream of my Mother," "I'll be Home To-morrow," "Leave me with my Mother," and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... novice had made this proposition, Mrs. Weldon remained pensive. Her repugnance to the idea of a separation, even short, was very serious. Might it not happen that the shipwreck of the "Pilgrim" would soon be known to the Indian tribes who frequented the sea-shore, either to the north or to the south, and in case some plunderers of the wrecks thrown ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... it contained; but 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
... reply; he stood looking down, pensive and resigned—tired, perhaps, now that the anxieties of the last few ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... exciting vicissitude as that of Louis Philippe. His life covers the most eventful period in French history. The storms of 1789 consigned his father to the guillotine, his mother and brothers to imprisonment, and himself and sister to poverty and exile. There are few romances more replete with pensive interest than the wanderings of Louis Philippe to escape the bloodhounds of the Revolution far away amidst the ices of Northern Europe, to the huts of the Laplanders, and again through the almost unbroken wilds of North ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... passglas[30] above his head, called aloud, "Come here, honest cooper and Meistersinger, come here and drain this glass with me, your Master Martin." Reinhold had to do as he was bidden. Returning to his place, he whispered into Frederick's ear, who was looking very pensive, "Now, you must sing—sing the song you sang last night." "Are you mad?" asked Frederick, quite angry. But Reinhold turned to the company and said in a loud voice, "My honoured gentlemen and masters, my dear brother Frederick here ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... secluded alleys, the gentle knolls, the glades, the spacious meadows of the park, recall at every step the younger Pliny's incomparable picture of his Tuscan villa. 'Placida omnia et quiescentia.' 'A spirit of pensive peace broods over the whole place, making it not lovelier only, but more salubrious, making the sky more pure, the atmosphere ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... they ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches that ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to Moll very gravely, and yet tenderly, for some while, Dawson and I going into the house to see what we could make of it; and then, telling us we should see him no more till the next day, he left us. But for some time after he was gone Moll sat on the side of the well, very pensive and wistful, as one to whom the future was opened for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... in which little Louisa and her father then were. The distress of the poor birds seemed to afflict the tender-hearted maid very much, which her father perceived as soon as she entered his chamber. "What is it makes you look so pensive now," said her father, "since it is but a few minutes ago when you were so remarkably cheerful?"—"O my dear papa!" said Louisa, "all those sweet birds, that sung so charmingly but a day or two ago, are now come into ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... near setting, and its rays, which still gilded the tree-tops, left the wood below pensive and melancholy. The house stood in a solitary place on the edge of the forest, half a mile from Poissy; and these two things had their effect on my mind. I began to wish that we had brought with us half a troop of horse, or at least two or three gentlemen; and, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... please: "Ye ken hoo I hate tae be workin'," says he; "But noo I can play in the street for bawbees, Wi' baith o' ma legs taken aff at the knee." And though I could see he wis rackit wi' pain, He reached for his whistle and stertit tae play; And quaverin' sweet wis the pensive refrain: 'The floors o' the forest are a' wede away'. Then sudden he stoppit: "Man, wis it no grand Hoo we took a' them trenches?" . . . He shakit his heid: "I'll—no—play—nae—mair——" feebly doon frae his hand Slipped the wee ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the milk-white blossoms and the red; And now, with noon long past, and that bright day Growing aweary, on the sunny way They wandered, crowned with flowers, and loitering, And weary, yet were fresh enough to sing The carols of the morn, and pensive, still Had cast away their doubt of death and ill, And flushed with love, no ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... a burlesque imitation and degradation of something serious. In his song, "Those Evening Bells," Moore wrote in pensive mood,— ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... once the young girl raised her head, and happened to look in his direction, and saw the pensive figure of the chevalier through the glass. It appeared evident to her that the young man remained there for her, and that it was at her he was looking. Then a bright blush spread over her face. Still she pretended she had seen nothing, and bent her head once more ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... me call Fidelio mine. Ah, wretch! what anguish yet thy soul must prove! For thou canst hope to lose thy care in love; And when Fidelio meets thy tearful eye, Pale fear and cold despair his presence fly. With pensive steps I sought thy walks again, And kissed thy token on the verdant plain; With fondest hope, through many a blissful hour, We gave our souls to Fancy's pleasing power. Lost in the magic of that sweet employ, To build ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Chrysostom in his own see of Constantinople. What daisies sprinkle the walks of Cowper, if we take his Task for a companion through the lanes of Weston! Under the thick hedges of Horton, darkening either bank of the field in the September moonlight, Il Penseroso is still more pensive. And whoever would feel at his heart the deep pathos of Collins's lamentation for Thomson, must murmur it to himself, as he glides upon the stealing wave, by the breezy lawns and elms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... wrong? Might he not, indeed, be considered a martyr, in some sort, to his own admirable impulses? I can see clearly enough where the contributor was astray in this reasoning, but I can also understand how one accustomed to value realities only as they resembled fables should be won with such pensive sophistry; and I can certainly sympathize with his feeling that the mariner's failure to reappear according to appointment added its final and most agreeable charm to the whole affair, and completed the mystery from which the man emerged and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the supreme genius which takes some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot and gross personages, and shooting it through with threads of variegated meditation, produces a masterpiece of penetrative reflection and high pensive suggestion as to the deepest things and most secret parts of the life of men. But to the general these finer threads are indiscernible. What touches them in the Shakesperean poetry, and most rightly touches them and us all, are topics eternally old, yet of eternal freshness, the perennial ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... sweetest," she said, and her voice was full and tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could she tell why ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... 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. What old days and sunny eves at Budmouth ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... bounds! That classic house, those classic grounds My pensive thought recalls! What tender urchins now confine, What little captives now repine, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wait for you, father," Mrs. Donaldson said, in a sweet, pensive voice. "What do these ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... after Helen had finished he studied the fire and thoughtfully poked the red embers with his stick. His face was still and serene, untroubled and unlined, but to Helen his eyes seemed sad, pensive, expressive of an unsatisfied yearning and wonder. She had carefully and earnestly spoken, because she was very curious to hear ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... to know of her own existence; there was about her a simplicity to which he had felt himself rise only in the presence of the spirit about some lonely mountain-top or in the heart of deep woods. Her gaze was not vacant, not listless, but the pensive look of a sensitive child, and Clayton let himself fancy that there was in it an unconscious love of the beauty before her, and of its spiritual suggestiveness a slumbering sense, perhaps easily awakened. ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her... In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh—at ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... unfortunate William dined for the last time, and the mark of the bullets on the wall in a little whitewashed space which bears a Dutch inscription reminding one that here died the father of his country. The corporal showed me where the assassin had fled. While I was looking round, with that pensive curiosity that one feels in places where great crimes have been committed, soldiers were ascending and descending; they stopped to look at me, and then went away singing and whistling; some near me were humming; others were laughing loudly in the courtyard. ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... Been. I felt that he wuz in fancy rowin' a boat up our creek in a red coat and green hat with yeller feathers mebby, carryin' sister Submit Tewksbury or sister Gowdey, sailin' towards his own Exposition of St. Josiah. There wuz a sad pensive look on his liniment that belonged to ruined hopes and ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... through his work but one is conscious that at bottom he is profoundly pessimistic and disenchanted. The gaiety of Turgeniev is winning and unforced; his sentiment natural and never "staled or rung upon." The pensive detachment of a sensitive and yet not altogether unworldly spirit seems to be the final ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... his couch he lies In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon the inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then his heart with pleasure fills, And ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north, whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the silent depths of her young heart far more than she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... and looked round; the dark lake lay near me now, a little to the left. It was not large; it may have covered some ten or twelve acres; but it added to the melancholy of the scene. Near the centre of it was a small island, with two old ash trees, leaning toward each other, their pensive images reflected in the stirless water. The only cheery influence in this scene of antiquity, solitude, and neglect was that the house and landscape were warmed with the ruddy western beams. I knocked, and my summons resounded hollow and ungenial in my ear; and the bell, from far away, returned ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Lord William Howard entered, and, seeing the queen pensive, whispered something to her in English; then turning to us, he asked if we knew what he had said? The queen bade him not tell, but he paid no attention to her. He told us he had said he hoped soon to see somebody ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... but more graceful and beautiful form of the cypress. The cypress is silence personified. It stands wrapt in its own thoughts. One can hardly see it without asking, "What ails thee? Is it for the past you mourn?" Yet, pensive as it looks, its unconscious grace fills ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... and the Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... 'Tis most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, And sits as safe as in a senate-house; For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... cold sepulchral stone Some name arrests the passer-by; Thus, when thou view'st this page alone, May mine attract thy pensive eye! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... while the war was proceeding without, and these troubles within, Niccolo Barbadoro desirous of inducing him to consent to the ruin of Cosmo, waited upon him at his house; and finding him alone in his study, and very pensive, endeavored, with the best reasons he could advance, to persuade him to agree with Rinaldo on Cosmo's expulsion. Niccolo da Uzzano replied as follows: "It would be better for thee and thy house, as well as for our republic, if thou and those who follow thee in ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... distinguish time. The story is of a female dog, though named Wylie, which was purchased by Dr. Brown when he was a young man, from an old shepherd who had long been in his employment. Wylie was brought to his father's, "and was at once taken," he says, "to all our hearts; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved in all respects like a lady.... Some months after we got her, there was a mystery about her; every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but in vain; she was always ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... scuffle 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, without any ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... 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
... 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 that half ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on the low temple-roof, while we four Obstacles disported ourselves on different parts of the high pylon. The two Nubians wished to play a betting game with a kind of Egyptian Jack-stones, and it was not desirable that the pensive lady should behold them doing it. Observing the graceful figure of Mrs. East silhouetted against the sky's eternal flame of blue, and at the same time noticing that she could not see the waiting boat, Sir Marcus got his inspiration. He knew that the four Obstacles were somewhere about the temple. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... prepared for this, and felt that she had the necessary, courage, and she hoped to find in this last visit some amelioration of the bitter sorrow she endured. While speaking thus, her sad and beautiful countenance was calm and pensive. We then started, M. Cretu giving his arm to his cousin. The duchess's carriage followed at a distance, empty; and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... 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 rides the stream, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair hanging in braids down her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she was dreaming, while her agile fingers ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... morning. It was now fourteen days since she and I had first met, and in that time I had found in her thrice that number of moods. She could be as gay and sweet as the morning, as dark and vengeful as the storms that came up of afternoons, pensive as the twilight, stately as the night,—in her there met a hundred minds. Also she could be childishly frank—and tell ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Do you see how pensive she is, with her cheek resting on her hand? I am sure she is thinking ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... she went about somewhat pensive, as though a troublous thought were on her; and when, three days thereafter, she met the wood-mother, she spake to her even as they parted, and said: Mother, much wisdom hast thou learned me, and now this at ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Europe death is not glorified to the foliage as in our own land), in the purple of the ripening grapes, and in the tawny grass of the pastures, there was autumn enough to touch our spirits, and while it hardly affected the tone of the landscape, to lay upon us the gentle and pensive spell of its presence. Of all the days in the year I would have chosen this to go pilgrim to the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... perceived that Schemselnihar's confidant came oftener to Ebn Thaher than usual, and that he was constantly with the prince of Persia, whose sickness was known to every one, though not the cause. This had awakened the jeweller's suspicions, and finding Ebn Thaher very pensive, he presently judged that he was perplexed with some important affair, and fancying that he knew the cause, he asked what Schemselnihar's confidant wanted with him? Ebn Thaher being struck with this question, would have dissembled, and told him, that it was on some trifling ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... bright spring morning offered a respectful "Howdy" to Anderson Crow, whose only recognition was a slow and imposing nod of the head. Once only was he driven to relinquish his pensive attitude, and that was when an impertinent blue-bottle fly undertook to rest for a brief spell upon the nickel-plated star. Never was blue-bottle ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... conjure up the image of her: scraps of memory and brief anecdotes. In their fleeting light they gave a glimpse of her shy, gracious gestures, her grave, young smile, the pensive, wistful grace that was so natural to her. Christophe would listen without a word and let the light of the unseen friend pierce to his very soul. In obedience to the law of his own nature, which everywhere and always ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... tender, silvery day, fair, mild, pensive, with light shadows and a capricious sun. There had been a storm of rain the night before, and it was as if Nature had repented of her wildness, and sought forgiveness by all sorts of winsome arts, insinuating invitations, soft caresses, and melting ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... somewhat pensive, and disposed For contemplation rather than his pillow: The Gothic chamber, where he was enclosed, Let in the rippling sound of the lake's billow, With all the mystery by midnight caused; Below his window waved (of course) a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Ptolemais, and Caesarea proclaimed that he was at length in the Holy Land. Barons and common people swell the number of these pilgrims. The haughty knight, who has committed unpunished murders, and the pensive saint, wrapt in religious ecstasies, rival each other in humility and zeal. Those who have no money sell their lands. Those who have no lands to sell throw themselves on Providence, and beg their way for fifteen hundred miles among strangers. The roads are filled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... may," said Edward, although he felt that such would not be the case, having been accustomed to much better clothes when at Arnwood than what were usually worn by secretaries; and this remembrance brought back Arnwood in its train, and Edward became silent and pensive. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... that the most brilliant display of them soothes the observer, instead of exciting him. And I know not whether it be more a moral effect or a physical one, operating merely on the eye; but it is a pensive gayety, which causes a sigh often, and never a smile. We never fancy, for instance, that these gayly-clad trees might be changed into young damsels in holiday attire, and betake themselves to dancing on the plain. If they were to undergo such a transformation, they would surely arrange ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... In pensive mood sat Nancy Bell; Of Joshua thought not she, But of a hearty sailor lad Across ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... cried, "To waste alone my years!" While o'er a streamlet's flow'ry side She pensive hung, and watch'd the tide That ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... wearied with the long day's excitement, were disposed in graceful abandon under its glow. Senci sat with Ta-meri's head in her lap, and three or four drowsy little girls were tumbled about her feet. Only Io was wide awake, and even her sweet face wore a pensive air. Kenkenes had retired to the stern, where, under the high up-standing end, stood a long wooden bench. The young sculptor had flung himself on this, and with the whole of the boat and its freight within range of his vision, he listened ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the painter and the plasterer. The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive, listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and desolate old place a spurious air of motion and ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... spurred on her horse, saying to her people, "Ho there! Don't let him kill her." But when the seneschal's lady arrived close to them, she turned her horse's head quickly and the sight she beheld prevented her from hunting. She came back pensive, and then the lantern of her intelligence opened, and received a bright light, which made a thousand things clear, such as church and other pictures, fables, and lays of the troubadours, or the domestic arrangements ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Thou whom nature created at once to flatter the pride of man, and to reduce it to despair by thine unapproachable greatness! Thy shade rose before me, bright and colossal, and the cataract of ages fell foaming at thy feet! Pensive and silent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... among the pensive woods The spirits of first flowers awoke and flung From buried faces the close fitting hoods, And listened to your piping till they fell, The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell, The wind-flower, and the ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... of the jubilant throng, Jesus appeared, clad in a long garment of gray, over which was cast a flowing robe. His face was composed and pensive. His long black hair and beard surrounded features somewhat swarthy from the rays of the hot sun, and he rode on the side of the ass's colt that seemed almost too small to support ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... most beautiful creature that I ever beheld," continued the General, in a pensive tone, after some silence. "She was tall and slight, with all that litheness and grace of movement which is peculiar to Indian women, and yet she seemed more European than Indian. Her face was small and oval, her hair hung ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Their hopes, their faith, their tender love, Faith that sustain'd, and hope that strove, Is sacred joy; to heave a sigh, A debt to poor mortality. Funereal rites are clos'd; 'tis done; Ceas'd is the bell; the priest is gone; What then if bust or stone denies To catch the pensive loit'rer's eyes, What course can poverty pursue? What can the poor pretend to do? O boast not, quarries, of your store; Boast not, O man, of wealth or lore, The flowers of nature here shall thrive, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... a barber at Rome, could imitate to a nicety almost every word it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterwards the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and melancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it, as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... thousand pleasant sounds of birds in hedges, of wind in the boughs, of brooks trotting merrily under the rustic bridges. And this fresh nature is peopled by girls eternally young, natural, gay, or pensive, standing with eager feet on the threshold of their life, innocent, expectant, with the old ballads of old France on their lips. For the story is full of those artless, lisping numbers of the popular French Muse, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... would but interrupt some tale of scandal, or some description of a toupee. Active wit, however despicable when compared with intellectual, is yet surely better than the insignificant click-clack of modish conversation," casting his eyes towards Miss Larolles, "or even the pensive dullness of affected silence," changing their ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... be my last evening on earth," thought the prisoner. "Ere the sun set again, I may have entered into eternal rest." A deep sense of holy peace stole into the maiden's heart, though the expression of her beautiful countenance was pensive as she meditated on the future. "I shall no more join in worship with my brethren below; but perhaps, while they gather together in secret, with perils around them, my eyes shall see the King in His beauty, shall behold the land that is very far off. And will not He for ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I'm ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... did Rowland daily roam, And of him little did his brothers see, He knew no pleasure in the gates of home, But pensive strolled beside the surging sea, Delighting in its vast sublimity, And in the thunders of its mighty roll, While all his love flowed forth in poesy, That love that fed the fountain of the soul: In her his youthful hopes were ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... members of their family in an excited state of hilarity. The youngest daughter was mimicking Jimmy perfectly, and had her brothers and sister in fits of laughter. Their father could not refrain from joining in the fun, but the mother was quiet and pensive, and got rather huffed when her husband chided her in his good-humoured way with being indifferent to the happy surroundings. Poor woman, she was troubled about Jimmy's prayer, and thought it irreligious to be joyous in the midst of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my sofa, his black hair tumbled on the cushion, his pale profile as clear and sharp against the light as though slashed out with ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the spacious rooms melted into a tender hearing that feared to move lest the spell be broken and the artist leave the instrument. Men who did not know how lonesome they had been and who had missed the refinements of home more than they knew, blessed the player with their pensive listening, thanked fortune they were still alive and had chances of fighting through to get home again. And after playing ceased the British officer talked quietly of his home and the home folks and Americans ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... king was really a handsome or impressive-looking man: a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hair and beard,—these are the literal facts. It is the painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... poor and had neither house nor land to support a family. Napoleon struggling with all his energies against combined England and Austria, and with all the cares of an army, on the march to meet one hundred and twenty thousand foes, crowding his mind, with pensive sympathy won the confidence of his companion and elicited this artless recital of love and desire. As Napoleon dismissed his guide, with an ample reward, he drew from his pocket a pencil and upon a loose piece of paper wrote a few lines, which he requested the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... not to the pensive fair one that a timid companion appealed for comfort, when a temporary damming of the stream pressed those who led, back upon those who followed. She stretched out an en-treating hand toward the girl ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... dead, Burde Olive fair— Her mother's image—grows apace, And oft she throws in pensive care A glance upon that crape-veiled face: She wonders what may be beneath. But fears to lift the veil to know; Her father with his latest breath Forbade it, on the pain of woe, Till she to eighteen years had grown, With woman's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... But victory still sitteth on our perch, And yet we ratify in pensive tones. Let joy now reign, let vain regrets depart, And for small favors thank the God ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... are peach, soft and creamy," said Snorky with a pensive look. "But we should set an example you know, old top, and all that sort ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... except by proudly referring to the chariot-races copied from the ancients in which he had borne a part, which was more than some folks with long legs could say. Gentlemen never did that sort of thing, nor did they twit their best friends with their misfortunes, Thorny would remark, casting a pensive glance at his thin hands, longing the while to give Ben a good shaking. This hint would remind the other of his young master's late sufferings and all he owed his dear mistress, and he usually ended the controversy by turning a few lively ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... man about thirty-eight years of age, short, fair-haired, and with high shoulders; his eye a clear blue, now bright, but oftener with a pensive expression, and with nobility stamped unmistakably on his ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... had lived in a Normal school had had somewhat wider experiences. She entered at the age of 14 and experienced the usual loneliness and unhappiness of a new pupil. One day as she was standing pensive and alone in a corner of the room, a companion—one who on her arrival had been charged to show her over the college—ran up to her, "embracing me, closing by mouth with a kiss, and softly caressing my hair. I gazed at her in astonishment, but experienced a delicious sensation of supreme comfort. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... closely for signs of reduction and decided he might possibly be half a pound thinner than when she saw him last. Slim sighed and looked pensive and Sahwah had hard work to keep ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... authorised by the regular canons of orthodoxy, discouraged this talk; and being offended at its continuation, he watched an opportunity to give the gentleman a blow of reprehension. So, when the poor speculatist, with a serious metaphysical pensive face, addressed him, 'But really, Sir, when we see a very sensible dog, we don't know what to think of him;' Johnson, rolling with joy at the thought which beamed in his eye, turned quickly round, and replied, 'True, Sir: and when we see a very ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... was a tall and slim young man, some five-and-twenty years old, of so rare and delicate a beauty, that it seemed that some Greek statue, or rather one of those pensive and pious knights whom the old German artists took delight to paint, had condescended to tread awhile this work-day earth in living flesh and blood. The forehead was very lofty and smooth, the eyebrows thin and greatly arched (the envious gallants whispered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... as when it is being skilfully abused. As a society parasite, Corky had learned that it is easier to fool a man who has brains than it is to fool one who hasn't any at all. He had come in contact with both varieties, and he knew. And as for women, one can always fool them by looking pensive. They cannot bear it. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... things to worry them, I suppose," rejoined Sall, with a pensive look at the ground. "I wonder what sort of things worry them most? It can't be dressin' up grand, an' goin' out to great parties, an' drivin' in lovely carriages. Nobody could be worried by that, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... on this cutting subject. Though I hear of it from every mouth, yet I pretend 'tis all falsehood and malice. Yet Lady Betty will have it that there is more in it than I will own; and that I know my brother's wickedness by my pensive looks. She will make a vow, she says, never to marry ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... what the world might hear: Of softest manners, unaffected mind, Lover of peace, and friend of human kind: Go, live! for heav'n's eternal year is thine; Go, and exalt thy mortal to divine. And thou, blest maid! attendant on his doom, Pensive hast follow'd to the silent tomb, Steer'd the same course to the same quiet shore, Not parted long, and now to part no more! Go, then, where only bliss sincere is known! Go, where to love and to enjoy are one! Yet take these tears, mortality's ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... lady, "The Society Contralto," in evening dress, who sang the sentimental songs, and carried the sheets of music at which she never looked, pleased McTeague less. Trina, however, was captivated. She grew pensive over ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... plenty of colored folk—mainly women and girls; and almost without exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and cut—a glaring and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... He, pensive, leans against a tree, A leafy evergreen, The boughs, the moonlight, intercept, And hide him like a screen He starts—the tree shakes with his tremor, Yet nothing near him pass'd; He hurries up the garden alley, In strangely ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... muse over the stately ruin of Trifels besides. The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago, could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished, now, to the last stone. There have always been ruins, no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names and the important date of their visit. Within a hundred years after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave the usual general flourish with his hand and said: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... drear Midnight assembles her shades, And Silence pours sleep from her throne, Pale, lonely, and pensive, I steal through the glades, And sigh, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the least inclined of any of the circle to be pensive and sombre, he now seemed occasionally to contend with shadows of some kind. He was far from being habitually gloomy, but his moods were not to be depended upon; sometimes a turn of the conversation would seem to alter him; sometimes a word which he himself might utter; sometimes a silence, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... craintive Ouvre au Soleil son palais enchante; Rappelle-toi, lorsque la nuit pensive Passe en revant sous son voile argente; A l'appel du plaisir lorsque ton sein palpite, Aux doux songes du soir lorsque l'ombre t'invite. Ecoute au fond des bois Murmurer une ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... always retiring and pensive, and seldom sought out by those who admired gayer damsels, was sitting apart in the embrasure of a window, whence, through an opening in the trees of the garden, she could catch a distant glimpse of the blue waters of the river where it joined the sea, which separated ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... touched to fine issues as that of an angel or a saint! All these reflections rushed through his mind in an instant, and it was almost a wonder that he did not blurt some of them out at once. But Lesley went on speaking in a quiet, pensive way. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... an air of authority and of attention, so new that I was struck with it. M. le Duc, gay and brilliant, appeared quite at his ease, and confident. The Prince de Conti, astonished, absent, meditative, seemed to see nothing and to take part in nothing. The Keeper of the Seals, grave and pensive, appeared to have too many things in his head; nevertheless, with bag, wax, and seals near him, he looked very decided and very firm. The Duc de la Force hung his head, but examined on the sly the faces of us all. Marechal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... began to love the little girls, and after a time they became the pets of the establishment. While the locks of the other children were cut close to the head, Isabel still possessed her long and flowing tresses. Day by day her exquisite beauty deepened into health again, and the pensive cast which grief had given to her features rendered them ideal as ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... 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
... Prince looked at her with pensive eyes. At that moment Katharine Howard came to the ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... worsted occupation at the servant who entered with a rather snappish expression of countenance, was guilty of no particularly hypocritical assumption in at once suffering her features to relax into a sweetly pensive smile upon learning that there was a gentleman to see her in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... pensive reverie, as she walked to the Abbey, Vernon being as usual more occupied by the inhabitants of the hedges and ditches than by his companion; but once arrived at the Abbey, there was no time for sadness. Bessie was on the threshold to welcome her, and the whole Knoll family were ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... hold! is this the Plots last Murd'ring Blow, The dire divorce of Soul and Body? No. The mangled Snake, yet warm, to Life they'll bring, And each disjoynted Limb together cling. Then thus Baals wise consulting Prophets cheer'd Their pensive Sons, and ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... realize how much you have promised. It was certain that I must pay the expenses of his illness, and it was equally certain that I should not have enough money to pay my college bills as well; the whole thing made me very pensive. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... evident surprise, and doubt of the honesty of the change in her manner, caused Arabella very acutely to feel its dishonesty. She looked at Cornelia with envy. The latter lady was leaning meditatively, her arm on a side of her chair, like a pensive queen, with a ready, mild, embracing look for the company. 'Posture' seemed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but just went about her daily round of labours in a quiet, pensive way, striving by every means to lighten her mother's burden and to help her brother to the path which their father before them had ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Solitary Reaper" derives a pensive sorrow from "old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." But to Scott the battle is not far off, but a vivid and present reality. When he visited the Trosachs glen, his thought plainly was, "What a place for a fight!" And when James looks down on Loch Katrine his first reflection ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... dark with her father she sank into pensive silence. She was thinking of Nicholas having to trudge on foot all those miles back after his exertions on the sward. Mr. Everard, arousing himself from a nap, said suddenly, 'I have something to mention to 'ee, by George—so I have, Chris! You ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... just in her nineteenth year when her father died. Her features were regular, her expression lovely, her complexion, before trouble nipped the roses of her cheeks, full of the country's freshness. She had tender eyes, profoundly overshadowed by long, pensive lashes; in the sweet lines of her very delicate mouth a trace of quiet pride was prettily blended with thoughtfulness, and a just-forming smile that was always melancholy. Her feet were little, and her hands were soft and white; nor had toil and sorrow, and the weariness, and indifference ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... banned Foes and false friend. Pleased by his daughters' tale, At once he stretched his huge yet aimless hands In welcome towards his guests. Beside him stood His mate of forty years by that strong arm From countless suitors won. Pensive her face: With parted youth the confidence of youth Had left her. Beauty, too, though with remorse, Its seat had half relinquished on a cheek Long time its boast, and on that willowy form, So yielding now, where once in strength upsoared The queenly presence. Tenderest grace not less Haunted ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... replied Philippe. "Have you become devot? Whence this sudden change? Consider; 'tis no hardship to meet such ladies as Madame de Sabran, or Madame de Prie—designer though I fear De Prie is for the domestic felicity of the youthful king—nor indeed my good friend, La Parabere, somewhat pale and pensive though she groweth. And what shall I say for Madame de Tencin, the spirituelle, who is to be with us; or Madame de Caylus, niece of Maintenon, but the very opposite of Maintenon in every possible way? Moreover, we are promised the attendance of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... face to him, without any start of surprise, with no brightening change in its pensive expression,—an expression rare to the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... forgive," she said. "Don't you know that though the man always takes the blame, it's always the girl's fault. A man can't get himself into trouble by just sitting still and looking pensive, but a girl can. From the moment Evelyn sat on that bench under the cedar she had only one thought. It was to see if she could ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared. Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy which had betrayed her secret during ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... was rarely beautiful, and the love which the pensive tenant of the villa disdained, the Pharaoh would willingly have purchased at a great price. In exchange for the priest's daughter he would have given Twea, Taia, Amense, Hont-Reche, his Asiatic captives, his vases of gold and silver, his necklaces of gems, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song: Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the glory of my rising ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his lips half open with surprise, Glance from the gloomy story, and with glee Light on the fairer fables of the gods. Thus we may sport at leisure where we go Where, loved by Neptune and the Naiad, loved By pensive Dryad pale, and Oread The spritely nymph whom constant Zephyr wooes, Rhine rolls his beryl-coloured wave; than Rhine What river from the mountains ever came More stately! most the simple crown adorns Of rushes and of willows interwined With here and there a flower: his lofty brow Shaded ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... the Thistle, the Leek, the Broom of the Plantagenets, become noble by association.—F. W. Robertson. 10. Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the night.— Beecher. 11. In that calm Syrian afternoon, memory, a pensive Ruth, went gleaning the silent fields of childhood, and found the scattered grain still golden, and the morning sunlight fresh and fair.—Curtis. [Footnote: In Ruth of this sentence, we have a type of the metaphor called Personification—a ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... with their scarcely more beautiful voices. I am half persuaded that his song becomes different at this season. As he sits and sways on the top of a cypress and looks down on a rich and eatable world, he seems to have cast every note of pensive sadness out of his being and to sing aloud the rapture of a happy stomach. He is no longer the singer of elegy but of ecstasy. He is as unlike his old simple, friendly, appealing, pathetic self as a beggar who has come into a fortune. He actually ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... log-cottage where he was born, and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... little girl, without losing the sadly pensive air which she had that morning, "oh, that!—my brother Arrochkoa, I suspected it, it was sure! A pelota player like you, you should know, was made to please him, in his mind there is nothing ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... elsewhere. She looked sad and pensive. Only from time to time she nodded across the dish towards her little Peter, and when he got up and came and laid his head in her lap, she gently smoothed his fair hair from his brow, and then she ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... saw was the tall and slender form of a young girl whose hands were clasped in front of her, and whose eyes were fixed on the ground in a pensive, not to say sorrowful, attitude. Clear as was the moonlight, at least in the intervals of the moon's passage through the broken clouds, her features were not plainly visible; but her every movement was instinct with grace. What ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed, And secret passions laboured in her breast. Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss, Not ancient ladies when refused a ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Europe. She hastened to Paris, when the allied sovereigns were there, and obtained an interview with the Russian tzar. Alexander was by nature of a devotional turn of mind, and the terrific scenes through which he had passed had given him a meditative and pensive spirit. He listened eagerly to the suggestions of Madame Krudoner, and, aided by her, sketched as follows the plan ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... along the ridge toward Deerfoot Gulch in silence. She had taken her sunbonnet off, and was enjoying the cool of the evening. He carried the rifle over the crook of his arm, and watched her pensive face. The poor little chipmunk lay stiffening in the cleft of the rock, forgotten. The next morning a prying jay discovered him and carried him away. He was only a little chipmunk after all—a very little chipmunk—and nobody and nothing missed him in all the wide ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... wake mamma!' 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 ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... were 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 we had seen ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive arbour, my attention was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise at some paces distant. I looked all around without distinguishing anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my astonishment, I beheld two snakes of considerable length, the one ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked, read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to do in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in currying and brushing down ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... mournful 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
... carried upstairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvae gradually emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel, and, lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... had come to me, buried in scientific speculations and denied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light through a sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almost irksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedly enthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories was boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... comprehends the true charm of the Rhine who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of the imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time. Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the infinite cycles of decay. He who would ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that seemed pensive and sad there was a lovely, delicate fawn, which rested, with her head drooping, at the foot of a rose bush, on the summit of the little green mound which was the centre of this delightful spot. Perhaps the lovely creature is after being weaned from the udder of its affectionate dam; or, perhaps, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... 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 ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and I have found in my self, That the very sitting by the Rivers side, is not only the fittest place for, but will invite the Angler to Contemplation: That it is the fittest place, seems to be witnessed by the children of Israel, [Psal. 137.] who having banish'd all mirth and Musick from their pensive hearts, and having hung up their then mute Instruments upon the Willow trees, growing by the Rivers of Babylon, sate down upon those banks bemoaning the ruines of Sion, and contemplating their own ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... justice" to the poems of Montgomery. Lais is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than Venus. No emotion has hurried the painter's hand or confused his eye this time. In vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. He knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker's coast. No faltering; no turning back. He can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. He is a painter now; not a lover. ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... heart-breaker," he said to himself as he went toward the bunk-house, "a genuine, full-grown vampire, part intentional an' part because it's in her—but she's a pure-bred—" He grew pensive and silent, a look of gentleness came to his face, followed quickly by an expression of extreme humility. "Oh, hell," he exclaimed aloud, "what's th' use!" Entering the building the Ramblin' Kid seated himself at the table at the end ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... sleeping ear, 'Awake, Demetrius, Awake, and follow me to better fortunes.' Surpris'd I start, and bless the happy dream; Then, rousing, know the fiery chief Abdalla, Whose quick impatience seiz'd my doubtful hand, And led me to the shore where Cali stood, Pensive, and list'ning to the beating surge. There, in soft hints, and in ambiguous phrase, With all the diffidence of long experience, That oft had practis'd fraud, and oft detected, The vet'ran courtier half reveal'd his project. By his command, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... hear The rustling of the summer grove, And view those angel features near, Which first awoke the heart to love. How sweet it is, in pensive mood, At windless midnight to recline, And fill the mental solitude With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... Pensive nun devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... threshold vocal with their cries, Half tears, half laughter, mingled sport and strife, Like two flowers knocked together by the wind. Or of the elder two—more anxious thought— Breasting already broader waves of life, A conscious innocence on either face, My pensive daughter and my curious boy. Thus do I dream, while the light sailors sing, At even moored beneath some steepy shore, While the waves opening all their nostrils breathe A thousand sea-scents to the wandering wind, And the whole air is full of wondrous sounds, From sea to strand, from ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... that Golden—that 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
... lovely night," he said in low and pensive tones, very unlike those he generally used. "I remember when I was a ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... ashamed to admit the aversion inspired by the wounded man, so sorely wounded that he was unable to see what was going on around him. His hatred was a form of cowardice, terrifying in its persistence. How pensive were Marguerite's eyes if she took them off her patient for a few seconds! . . . She had never looked at him in that way. He knew all the amorous gradations of her glance, but her fixed gaze at this injured man was something entirely different, something that he had never ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Intendant Bigot; her bold, voluptuous beauty seemed well fitted to be the presiding genius of his house. The walls bore many other paintings of artistic and historic value. The King and Queen; the dark-eyed Montespan; the crafty Maintenon; and the pensive beauty of Louise de la Valliere, the only mistress of Louis XIV. who loved him for his own sake, and whose portrait, copied from this picture, may still be seen in the chapel of the Ursulines of Quebec, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... not, I suppose, at the moment thinking of anything more original to say. He departed in a pensive mood. ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for its activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must not be confounded with other ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... a man of his own age, and hearing things that were very pleasant to hear about his latest work, and yet, as he leaned back in his chair and looked across at Katharine Normaine, whose own expression was a little pensive, he sighed. It was a great deal—he told himself it was nearly everything—to have what he had now in the line of effort which he loved and had chosen. It was not so good as the work itself, of course, but the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Rubaiyat of the astronomer-poet of Persia, Omar Khayyam, who wrote about the beginning of the twelfth century. His Rubaiyat is a little volume of quatrains, about five hundred in all, distinguished for wit, satirical power, and a vein of melancholy, sometimes pensive, sometimes passionate. These characteristics of Omar's poetry have made it widely known ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... he ever had, poor fellow," said the lady, with a pensive smile. Then, seeing an expression of astonishment on the doctor's face, she added, quickly, "They are ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... early, at the President's suggestion they took a walk before sunrise about the great camp, inspecting the field, the artillery, the quarters, and all the appurtenances of the army. Lincoln was in a pensive mood, and scarcely a word was spoken. Finally, just as the sun was rising, they reached a commanding point; the President stopped, placed his left hand upon Mr. Hatch's shoulder, and slowly waving his right in the direction of the great city of tents, seriously inquired: ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... vines, and carries the memory back to that first day of April planting. To bring in a basket, however scanty, of those odds and ends and range them side by side on the kitchen table affords a gratification that is not entirely material, I believe, for there is a sort of pensive sadness in it that I have been told ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... excitement which, as is well known, are wont at intervals to pass over this fervidly imaginative people. Some representative person—ingenious, philosophic, and ardent for the public good—had conceived in a bright moment a thought destined to stir with zeal the pensive leisure of millions. This genius owned, or edited, a weekly paper already dear to the populace, and one day he announced in its columns a species of lottery—ignoble word dignified by the use here made of it. Readers of adequate culture were invited to exercise ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... she slept. "The whirl-pool," she murmured, "sweet mosses." Next day she was lost in reveries, plucking pensive hyacinths, or gazing intently ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the sculptor left for Rome. On the way Aurelius was pensive and taciturn, staring attentively at everything—the men, the ship, the sea, as though trying to retain something. On the high sea a storm burst upon them, and all through it Aurelius stayed on the deck and eagerly scanned the seas looming near and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... sever'd from his side, The most sincerely lov'd, and loving bride, In space confin'd, the muse forbears to tell; Deep was her anguish, but she bore it well. His pain was equal, but his virtue less; He thought in grief there could be no excess. Pensive he sat, o'ercast with gloomy care, And often fondly clasp'd his absent fair; Now, silent, wander'd thro' his rooms of state, And sicken'd at the pomp, and tax'd his fate; Which thus adorn'd, in all her shining store, A splendid wretch, magnificently ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... COLLINS [pensive] No, maam: it didnt come natural. My wife had to break me into it. It came natural to her: she's what you might call a regular old hen. Always wants to have her family within sight of her. Wouldnt go to bed unless she knew they was all safe at ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Pensive beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blond hair hang almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei. So the waiter brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden. The orchestra on the stage is playing "Oh, Rachel." The youngsters have exchanged ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... these 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 ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... a pensive skip in between steps as they moved through the gloomy corridor past rain-beaten windows. "It wasn't like Gertrude to burst out like that just because Sara came late to our domestic evening, but it did spoil the fudges and the game ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... was a respectable yeoman, and he himself, succeeding to good farms under the Duke of Buccleuch, became too soon his own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. His poetical talent, a very fine one, then showed itself in a fine strain of pensive poetry, called, I think, The Lonely Hearth, far superior to those of Michael Bruce, whose consumption, by the way, has been the life of his verses. But poetry, nay, good poetry, is a drug in the present day. I am a wretched patron. I cannot go with a subscription-paper, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Bradford is that of a long life as serene and happy as it was blameless and delightful to others. It was a life of affection and many interests and friendly devotion; but it was not that of a recluse scholar like Edward Fitzgerald, with the pensive consciousness of something desired but undone. George Bradford was in full sympathy with the best spirit of his time. He had all the distinctive American interest in public affairs. His conscience was as sensitive to public ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... sociable together, nevertheless. Dolby was large and ruddy, full of life and strength and spirits, a tireless and energetic talker, and always overflowing with good-nature and bursting with jollity. It was a choice and satisfactory menagerie, this pensive poet and this gladsome gorilla. An indelicate story was a sharp distress to Stoddard; Dolby told him twenty-five a day. Dolby always came home with us after the lecture, and entertained Stoddard till midnight. Me too. After he left, I walked the floor and talked, and Stoddard ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... let slip the sacred observance of any old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony.—In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the vessel flies, that bears away To distant shores my Daphne, fair as May. Guard her, ye loves! be lull'd each ruder gale; Let Zephyrs only fill the swelling sail; Ye waves flow gently by the vessel's side, While pensive she surveys you idly glide; Ah! softly glide, prolong her reverie, For then, ye Gods! 'tis then she thinks of me. When near the nodding groves that shade the shore, To her, ye birds, your sweetest warbling pour; No sounds be heard, but such as gently sooth, And be, O sea, thy azure ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... this," said Lalor, with a vaguely pensive air, "it has ever been my lot to be calumniated, my motives suspected. But I have indeed deserved other things—especially from you, Irma, whom (though your senior in years, and during the minority of my ward Sir ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... feeding them when the G.F.S. girl arrived, and as Mysie came to a halt in delight at the aspect of a young one that had just crept out into public life, the sister was called to the window. She was a great deal younger and more of the present day in style than her sister, and had pensive-looking grey eyes, with a somewhat bored languid manner as she shook hands ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... precursor of approaching dissolution. To this had succeeded a sort of lethargic sleep, from which it was not easy to arouse her, so that she could be made to take any notice of what was passing around her. But now she awoke, clear and collected; and, glancing round the room, with a sort of pensive animation, met and answered the inquiring and solicitous look of her son with an affectionate smile. Presently her wandering eye rested on some objects of the landscape, glimpses of which she had caught through one of the small ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the silver bow! by thy pale beam, Alone and pensive, I delight to stray, And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream, Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way; And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast: And ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Thiers, and "The History of the Girondins" by Lamartine, as well as some 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 ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... pause. One man was reading in fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the natives choza de, another the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the moment after breakfast—and took a train to Beaulieu. At the young man's hotel he sent in his card, and was told that this Monsieur had already gone out for the day. His mood of marching straight up to the guns thus checked, he was left pensive and distraught. Not having seen Beaulieu (they spoke of it then as a coming place), he made his way up an incline. That whole hillside was covered with rose-trees. Thousands of these flowers were starring ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fifteen years of age when he came to me, and his mind was so much filled with curiosity that every moment he was asking me questions. Then he would listen with a pensive air; and, without a murmur, he would run to fetch whatever I wanted—more nimble than a kid, and gay enough, moreover, to make even a patriarch laugh. He was a son ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... she would be a little pensive. Then his tones would have a greater depth and gentleness, and his sympathy was very sweet, although she felt a little guilty because she was in no need of it. She could ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... red extinguish their tremulous glow—softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset's sheen, the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now blushed to red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence—flowed with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with the resinous, cloyingly sweet ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Miss Laura sat in silence—a pensive silence. She, too, remembered the time gone by, but unlike her mother's life, her own had only begun as the good times were ending. Her mother, in her youth, had seen something of the world. The daughter of a wealthy ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... satisfactorily make out what he meant by them. One of them—she who holds the distaff—has her mouth open, as if uttering a cry, and might be fancied to look somewhat irate. The second, who holds the thread, has a pensive air, but is still, I think, pitiless at heart. The third sister looks closely and coldly into the eyes of the second, meanwhile cutting the thread with a pair of shears. Michael Angelo, if I may presume to say so, wished to vary the expression of these three sisters, and give each a different ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dark-eyed, imperious creatures, who espoused all his beliefs and echoed his defiance of the world. What sense of humour had as yet found place in his nature was exercised to the full at the expense of the lackadaisical lover in life and in fiction, and now he felt there was something absurdly pensive in this phenomenon of his own. He satisfied himself that he was not in love with Lucy, but here were the marked characteristics of the fond and fatuous hero—the obtruding face of the beloved, idealized and transfused with a sickly ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... ruin! But even these sportive imitations, wrought by man in emulation of what time has done to temples and palaces, are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions, have grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result of all is a scene, pensive, lovely, dreamlike, enjoyable and sad, such as is to be found nowhere save in these princely villa-residences in the neighborhood of Rome; a scene that must have required generations and ages, during which growth, decay, and man's intelligence wrought kindly together, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lordship pensive, those dreamy blue eyes of his intently studying Miss Bishop's face for all their dreaminess; his mind increasingly uneasy. At length Miss Bishop looked at him, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... summer evening I broached the matter to them both. It was the pensive hour of twilight, and Donald had been telling me with thrilling eloquence of a service he had once attended in St. Peter's Church, Dundee, when the saintly M'Cheyne had cast the spell of eternity about him. When he had got as nearly ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... in establishing. He held, however, that it should be extended to races, that extension being also a corollary of the principle underlying the new international ordering. He would therefore move the insertion of a clause proclaiming the equality of races and religions. At this Colonel House looked pensive. Nearly all the other opinions were ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... above, some boatful of pensive hearts are singing. So calm is the evening that the cadences come distinctly to us, and almost the words can be plainly caught. In a lull of their song, faint sounds of another arrive from far away. Rising and falling, now heard and now not, plaintive and recurring, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... of the nine MUSES (q. v.); she is represented as in a pensive mood, with her forefinger on her mouth; she was the inventress of the lyre and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... How long before—?" She started to ask, how long before she was married, but caught herself. "What did he look like? He must have been good-looking, or you would not be so pensive." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... in a pensive way; "you're a good patient fellow. But he said it was very hard for a man to be thrown out of work for six months for getting in ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... tempest beat— The spoils of autumn rustling at our feet, And Nature wept to see her own decay. The pliant poplar bent beneath the blast; The moveless oak stood warring with the storm, Which bow'd the pensive willow's weaker form; And naught gave token that thy love would last, Save the mute eloquence of forcing tears; Save the low pleading of thy ardent sighs, The fervent gazing of thy glowing eyes; A firm assurance, spite of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... inspiration of the place; Well then,—from pastoral trash may taste defend Your pleasant Leasowes, and the human race! The Gentle Shepherd's day has had an end, Nor even could melodious Shenstone here (False and inflated, we must all allow), Excite one glowing thought or pensive tear Unless indeed of wrath or pity now: Yet dearly can I love these tumbling hills With roughly wooded winding glens between, Set with clear trout pools link'd by gurgling rills And all so natural ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Captain Trimblett with a pensive air. She was beginning to regard his diffidence and shyness as something abnormal. Hints of the most helpful nature only seemed to add to his discomfort, and she began to doubt whether he would ever muster up sufficient resolution to put ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... Ministrants of delight! Inspirers of kindly emotions and the holiest meditations! Sweet teachers of the serenest wisdom! So beautiful and bright, and graceful, and fragrant—it is no marvel that ye are equally the favorites of the rich and the poor, of the young and the old, of the playful and the pensive! ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave, old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if it thought to itself, "I'm getting old but I'm highly respectable; that's a comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if it brooded solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... saw A pensive gentleman of middle age, That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe Pendent beneath his chin—a double one— (Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath, For he had mingled in the Morris dance And rested blown; but damsels in their teens, All decorous and decorously ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... aspect of affairs," wrote the friend. "I was at Mr. Willet's, and saw Miss Markland. The whole family were particularly gracious to her. It was her first appearance in any company since her father's failure. She looked pensive, but charming. In truth, my friend, she is a girl worth the winning, and no mistake. I think her lovely. Well, I tried all the evening to get an introduction to her, but failed, being a stranger. Fortunately, at a late hour, I saw her leave one of the elegant parlours alone, and go out upon ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... man, low, sinewy, thin, with black hair showing lines and patches of silver. His keen, thoughtful, dark eye marked the nervous and melancholic temperament. A mild and pensive humility of manner seemed to brood over him, like the shadow of a cloud. Everything in his dress, air, and motions indicated punctilious exactness and accuracy, at times rising to the point of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... was this grand sense of duty when you left home in a rage without 'by your leave' to father or mother?" Miles could make no reply. He had a tendency to silence when this friend spoke, and returned to barracks in a pensive mood, just in time, as Armstrong said, to save ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... and husband's death, with my sweet son's, (With whom I buried all affections Save grief and sorrow, which torment my heart,) Forbids my mind to entertain a thought That tends to love, but meditate on death, A fitter subject for a pensive soul. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... a universal toast; her health, 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 fine gentlemen to want fire. Her air and manner ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... study for some great sculptor's equestrian masterpiece. In a land where all rode well, his was superb horsemanship. The cape of his grey coat was lined with scarlet, his soft wide hat had a black plume; he wore long boots and white gauntlets. The three beneath the beech saluted. He spoke in a pensive and musical voice. "A prisoner, Cuninghame? Where did you get him?—Ah, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... never made a pig for I," sobbed the little maid, with her head dolefully inclined to her left shoulder, and her oval face pulled to a doubly pensive length. "I axed my vather to let me get him a posy, and a said I might. And I got un some vine Bloody Warriors, and a heap of Boy's Love off our big bush, that smelled beautiful. And vather says a can have some water-blobs off our pond when ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... you. Herein he is distinguished from his preceptor VELASQUEZ. That great master, by his courtly habits of intercourse, contracted a more proud and swelling character, to which the simple and chaste pencil of MURILLO never sought to aspire. A plain and pensive cast, sweetly attempered by humility and benevolence, marks his canvass; and on other occasions, where he is necessarily impassioned or inflamed, it is the zeal of devotion, the influx of pious inspiration, and never the guilty passions which he exhibits. In short, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... yon demi-mondaine there, Idly toying with a flower, Smiling with a pensive air . . . Well, her smile is but a mask, For I saw within her muff Such a wicked little flask: ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... and serious maid I'd always take for deep impressions. Mind The adage of the bow. The pensive brow I have oft seen bright in wedlock, and anon O'ercast in widowhood; then, bright again. Ere half the season of the weeds was out; While, in the airy one, I have known one cloud Forerunner of ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... returning to our "Flying Dutchman" overture, we find that after the introduction by the wild calls by the trombones and the string accompaniment, we gradually drift into a somewhat pensive mood; so in the story, for the next few pages we find more or less quiet reading. Gradually, however, this quiet mood in the music gives way to rolls on the kettle-drums announcing a grand climax; finally the music becomes wilder and wilder until at last the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... was decidedly "interesting." Young ladies would have thought him so, with his pale face and pensive air, which, seeing that the Byron fever had not yet attacked the youths of Cairnforth, appeared to his simple audience a melancholy quite natural and not assumed. And his delicacy of health was a fact ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... dame, Camillus nothing of the kind supposed. Though she incessantly by looks disclosed, That something unrevealed disturbed the soul, And o'er her mind had absolute control. Whatever presents Constance might receive, Still pensive sighs her breast appeared to heave: Her tints of beauty too, began to fail, And o'er the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... beautiful, and the love which the pensive tenant of the villa disdained, the Pharaoh would willingly have purchased at a great price. In exchange for the priest's daughter he would have given Twea, Taia, Amense, Hont-Reche, his Asiatic captives, his vases of gold and silver, his necklaces of ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... offering to him, the highest wonder of the world. In solitude did the heavenly heart unfold to a flowery chalice of almighty love, bent towards the holy countenance of the father, and resting on the happily-expectant bosom of the lovely pensive mother. With divine ardour did the prophetic eye of the blooming child look forth into the days of the future, towards his beloved, the offspring of the race of God, careless for his day's earthly destiny. The most child-like spirits, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... with preposterous red umbrellas, a group of curled-up human lumps brooded over by an aquiline individual caparisoned with brass like a horse, his head wrapped picturesquely in a shawl. Benham surveyed these last products of the "life force" and resumed his pensive survey of the coast. The sea was deserted save for a couple of little lateen craft with suns painted on their gaudy sails, sea butterflies that hung motionless ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... stealthy and indefatigable plunderer, has followed him, discovered his traces, pursued them as I have done, raised the stone, and descending before me, has left me nothing." He remained motionless and pensive, his eyes fixed on the gloomy aperture that was ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... These hands are hard," replied the poet, gaily exhibiting his swarthy palms; "they have tugged at other than the cordage of a lyre. I, who used to burden the passing clouds with many a pensive sentiment, now ask of them what weather they predict. I, who was wont to give a thousand utterances to the winds of heaven, enquire from what point of the compass they are blowing. I, who could never behold the ocean without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... when it dies by strangulation at the hands of the professional wrecker. The pale student will not be a wholly unsympathetic reader. Great swindles have ere now made great reputations, and lawyers may surely be permitted to take a pensive ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... traveller oft hath sighed, And pensive wept the Countess' fall, As wandering onward they've espied The haunted ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,[062] 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, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... while a settled calm rested upon her face, and she seemed as if she were listening to the holy tones of some loved voice; then taking it away from her ear, she would gaze upon it with a look of deep fondness and pensive ...
— Child's New Story Book; - Tales and Dialogues for Little Folks • Anonymous
... which one of the ladies perceiving, said, "Madam, the solitude of this place will affect you in the beginning, but whenever you begin to feel the pleasures and amusements you may enjoy, you will quit those pensive thoughts. We, at present, beg the honour of you to dine with us to-day, and henceforward three days in a week." I returned them suitable thanks in general terms, and so went to dinner, in which the most exquisite and savoury dishes, of various kinds, were served up with the most delicate ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... strolling along the green meadow, with a garland of gowans about her neck. Imagination, indeed, cannot heighten the image of the dead whom we love; but even if it could, there was no standard of ideal beauty in her father's mind beyond that of her own. She had been beautiful; but her beauty was pensive: a fair yet melancholy child; for the charm that ever encompassed her was one of sorrow and tenderness. Had she been volatile and mirthful, as children usually are, he would not have carried so far ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... footstep, a grave new presence on financial sidewalks, a neat garb slightly out of date, a gently strong and kindly pensive face, a silent bow, a new sign in the Rue Toulouse, a lone figure with a cane, walking in meditation in the evening light under the willows of Canal Marigny, a long-darkened window re-lighted in the Rue Conti—these were all; a fall of dew would scarce have been more quiet than was the return ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... 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 God's heaven and the poor earth as fair symbols ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... astonishing Success, and he chose not to contemplate me as the Husband of Beauty and Lofty Station, whose Shoes he in his Modesty and Worth, felt unworthy to unlatch. Therefore he withdrew that very day from Paris, and would embrace the Opportunity of going into pensive Retirement and rural Contemplation, in his native Kingdom; where his Sister would join him when she could do so ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... fair— Her mother's image—grows apace, And oft she throws in pensive care A glance upon that crape-veiled face: She wonders what may be beneath. But fears to lift the veil to know; Her father with his latest breath Forbade it, on the pain of woe, Till she to eighteen ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... with her rays: Or when along thy breast securely float Evening's angelic clouds.... When we are gone From every object dear to mortal sight, As soon we shall be, may these words attest How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone Thy visionary majesties of light, How in thy pensive ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... young girl raised her head, and happened to look in his direction, and saw the pensive figure of the chevalier through the glass. It appeared evident to her that the young man remained there for her, and that it was at her he was looking. Then a bright blush spread over her face. Still she pretended she had seen ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... were running through her mind as they sat there side by side isolated from the main herd of passengers, each silent, watching through the open rail the foaming water as it rushed past. Jefferson had been casting furtive glances at his companion and as he noted her serious, pensive face he thought how pretty she was. He wondered what she was thinking of and suddenly inspired no doubt by the mysterious power that enables some people to read the thoughts of others, he ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... heard persons 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 ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... very few minutes he scorned himself, and was possessed by a pensive wonder that one so tragically fated as he could resent an old man's gibe. Aaron misunderstood him. Was that any reason why he should not feel sorry for Aaron? He crossed the hallan to the kitchen door, and stopped there, overcome with ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... outstretched wings, a figure suggestive of gladness, hope and the dawn of high adventure, is a fitting symbol of the sunrise. He seems "a-tiptoe for a flight" on the summit of his column; his profile against the sky is superb. On the opposite column "The Setting Sun," a young woman with pensive face, shaded by her hair and drooping wings, sinks to rest. These figures stand on translucent shafts that are pillars of light in the evening. They bear garlanded capitals and rise from double fountain bowls bound together by rising and falling jets and sheets of water. The column bases ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... it was pleasant, Georges proposed that they take a stroll along the boulevards. He was very tender, very careful of her, and laughed joyously while she remained pensive and grave. ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... chubby-faced, chubby-legged infant a few months older; charming studies of a little girl with great black eyes and delicate features; then of a tall, slender slip of a maiden, decidedly foreign-looking; then of a sweet and pensive face, with great dark eyes, long, beautiful curling lashes, and very heavy, low-arched brows, exquisitely moulded mouth and chin, and most luxuriant dark hair; then others, still older, in every variety of dress,—even in ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the big arm-chair, Would spin for us yarns unending, Your voice and accent and pensive air With ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... Hatteras remained pensive. The doctor succeeded in recalling the unfortunate man to life, but not to consciousness; he neither saw, heard, nor spoke, but at ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... of the table was seated, or rather lounged, a slender, elegant-looking young man, with dark, languid eyes, sallow complexion, and features wearing that peculiarly pensive expression often communicated by dissipation; an expression which, we regret to say, is sometimes found more pleasing than it ought to be in the eyes of the gentle sex. Habited in a light summer riding-dress, fashioned according to the taste of the time, of plain and unpretending material, and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... this passage in his history, the Padre Marini bid me good night, and we prepared to sleep. I went to the boat, where, stretching myself at the bottom, with my face turned towards the glittering canopy above, I remained pensive and reflecting upon the narrative of the monk, until ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of health. He was what we could call, for that day and region—the Middle West of the early fifties—a man of unusual refinement. I suppose this was temperamental with him largely; but he had cultivated tastes, too. I remember him as a peculiarly gentle person, with a pensive cast of face, and the melancholy accomplishment of ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... expectation had passed away, and in its place was 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
... night; but she also dreaded the dawn. Denis, sunburnt, athletic, efficient at everything he undertook, Denis ironical, pensive, independent, Denis revealed anew to her in a way she had least expected, was obviously either humouring a ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and could scarcely understand her, she was so different from the pensive lady, shrinking from rude contact with the world, that he had expected to meet. He did not realize that there was not a particle of weak sentimentality about her, and that, since now pride was gone, her energetic spirit would make her as truly a leader in scenes like these as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Doningdale, with a pensive air, "this place is greatly endeared to me. Here his Majesty Louis XVIII., when in England, honoured me with an annual visit. In compliment to him, I sought to model my poor mansion into an humble likeness of his own palace, so that he might as little as possible miss the rights he ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... while Poppy felt all right; but presently she grew rather pale, and began to look rather pensive. She stopped running, and walked slower and slower, while her eyes got dizzy, and her hands and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... overdone assumption of indifference. Before they had risen from the table, Rann joined them, and the conversation branched at once into impersonal topics. Diggs told a story or two, at which Rann roared appreciatively, while Vaden fingered his coffee spoon in pensive abstraction. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... particular appeal lay in her eyes. They seemed to be quite marvelously deep and clear, so darkly gray that they looked black in certain lights, and they were so shadowed and pensive that sometimes they gave the image of actual sadness. For all the isolation of her home she was no stranger to romance; but the romance that was to be seen, like a gentleness, in her face was that of the great, shadowed forest in ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... at the apparent ease of his rescue, had sought information. But little enough had been forthcoming. Leslie Standing had only smiled in his pensive fashion. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... have been 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
... head, like Genevieve in the ballad, to look me in the face, her eyes filled with tears—crystal, happy drops, which dimmed not their brightness. But her face was pale, with a pensive pallor like that of the Gloire de Dijon rose; only now excitement had suffused her cheeks with the tints of that same rose—that red so unlike the bloom on other faces in vanished days; so tender and delicate and precious ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... murder of the poor man, and that they ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches that ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... sun. Our few exclamatory words revealed the mutuality of the thoughts in which we rested from our common sufferings. When language failed silence as faithfully served our souls, which seemed to enter one another without hindrance; together they luxuriated in the charms of pensive languor, they met in the undulations of the same dream, they plunged as one into the river and came out refreshed like two nymphs as closely united as their souls could wish, but with no earthly tie to bind them. We entered ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... of welcomes, and many an honest hand was extended to him. Up until then there were two individuals who observed Kathleen Cavanagh closely, and we must ourselves admit that both came to the same conclusion. Its was clear that during the whole evening she had been unusually pensive, if not actually depressed, although a general observer would have seen nothing in her beyond the natural sedateness of her manner. The two in question were Kate Hogan and Dora M'Mahon. On Bryan's arrival, however, the color of her cheek deeped into a richer beauty, the eye ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... supper by Boethus the Epicurean, with a great many more of the sect, as it usually happens when learned and inquisitive men meet together, the remembrance of the comedy led us to this inquiry,—Why we are disturbed at the real voices of men, either angry, pensive, or afraid, and yet are delighted to hear others represent them, and imitate their gestures, speeches, and exclamations. Every one in the company gave almost the same reason. For they said, he that only represents excels him that really feels, inasmuch as he doth not suffer the misfortunes; which ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
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