"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... pensive, rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her—to herself quite spectacular—deposition ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... 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 |
