"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight of the Dead Sea presently, bowling past the Inn of the Good Samaritan and beginning to descend into the valley, twelve hundred feet below sea level, that separates Palestine from Moab. The moon shone full on the water, and it looked more wan and wild than an illustration out of Dante's Inferno. There was no doubt how the legends sprang up about birds falling dead as they flew across it. It was difficult to believe that anything could be there and not die. It was a vision of the land ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... the task of thralls Who had to rear these inner suburbs, Piling the sad Victorian walls Where each wan window ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... dew gathering on the Hegumen's pallid forehead, and observed his failing voice. He stooped, took the wan hand from the laboring breast, and kissed it; then turning about quickly to go for the needed restoration, he found himself face to face with the young Greek whom he rescued from Nilo in the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... some of the evidences of strain which deform the faces and exhaust the minds of so many virtuosos. The traveling salesman seems to thrive upon miles of railroad travel as do the crews of the trains, but the virtuoso, dragged from concert to concert by his showman, grows tired—oh, so tired, pale, wan, listless and indifferent! At the beginning of the season he is quite another person. The magnetism that has done so much to win him fame shines in his eyes and seems to emanate from his finger-tips, but the difference in his physical being at the end of the season is ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... two, you know, and they looked wan and hungry. About three hours after, I was cantering my pony down Swanbrook Lane—the grass there is so soft and green, that you cannot hear his feet, while I can hear every grasshopper that chirps—suddenly, I heard a child's voice singing ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... he takes five hours to do it in; no more, and no less. P'r'a'ps I might get him up sooner if I used the whip; but how would you like any one to use a whip on you when you was picking apples or counting baskets of strawbys into a wan?" ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... Major. You wan't old enough for the Mexican War, was you? No, of course not. But I was there and this here fightin' agin such odds puts me in ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... leaving you forever. Henceforward you must fret away much sunlight by interminably shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases wherewith to rid ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... in de dark ages, w'en de whaleships war de pi'neers ob commerce, 'n day wan't no worryin', poofity-plukity steamboats a-poundin' along, 'nough ter galley ebery whale clean eout ob dere skin, dey war plenty whaleships fill up in twelve, fifteen, twenty monf' after leabin' home. 'N er man bed ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... to speak,—but ere His tongue could hurry forth his fear, Had Douglas marked the hectic strife, Where death seemed combating with life; For to her cheek, in feverish flood, One instant rushed the throbbing blood, Then ebbing back, with sudden sway, Left its domain as wan as clay. 'Roderick, enough! enough!' he cried, 'My daughter cannot be thy bride; Not that the blush to wooer dear, Nor paleness that of maiden fear. It may not be,—forgive her, Chief, Nor hazard aught for our relief. Against his sovereign, Douglas ne'er ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... til our Ladies even the Nativite, upon which even by strong assaute the towne was wonne. And than the kyng leide strong sege to the castel, which was yolden to hym. And while he was abidyng at Cane, he sent the duke of Clarence with other lordes to Baieux, and bisegid and wan it. And the same yere the kyng bisegid Argentyne, bothe towne and castell, which were yolden to hym. Also the kyng wan many castelles and townes, and strong abbeis long ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... black torrents and desolate moorlands, through pallid sunlight and grim primeval forests, and become drenched with them. The instrumentation is all wet grays and blacks, relieved only by bits of brightness wan and elusive as the northern summer, frostily green as the polar lights. The works are full of the gnawing of bassoons and the bleakness of the English horn, full of shattering trombones and screaming violins, full of the sinister rolling of drums, the menacing reverberation ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... by a most apparent effort that he roused himself to reply to her remarks. Mrs Rendell would have felt repelled by his coldness of manner, had it not been for one redeeming point—his unaffected interest in her children! The wan face brightened into a smile at the mention of Nan's name, and he begged that the girl might be allowed to come over to see him "often—as often as possible," in a tone of unmistakable sincerity. Mrs Rendell assented graciously; ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Shiva, wound with darting snakes About their sun-tanned necks and hollow flanks, One palsied foot drawn up against the ham. So gathered they, a grievous company; Crowns blistered by the blazing heat, eyes bleared, Sinews and muscles shrivelled, visages Haggard and wan as slain men's, five days dead; Here crouched one in the dust who noon by noon Meted a thousand grains of millet out, Ate it with famished patience, seed by seed, And so starved on; there one who bruised his pulse With bitter leaves lest palate should ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... her own head might have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to see. Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not refuse again. She will not ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... pain, on beds of woe, Where stricken heroes languish, Wan faces smile and sick hearts grow Triumphant over anguish; While souls that starve in lonely gloom Flush green with odorous praises, And all the lowly pallets bloom With ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... foe, deluded by whose say, To the forbidden fruit Eve raised her hand, Turned his wan eyes on Charlemagne one day, When he the good Rinaldo absent scanned; And seeing what foul rout and disarray Might at that time be given to Charles's band, Of all the Saracens the choice and flower Marshalled in arms ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... there comes an end to summer. The flowers dropped from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, eyed curiously the wan, wistful face of Judge Hyde's wife pressed up to the pane of the south window, its great restless eyes and shadowy hair bringing to mind some captive bird that pines and beats against the cage. Her husband absent from home long and often, full of affairs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was not wholly laid aside though; in the early morning, and in the evening, and often late into the night, the thin, wan fingers were busy about their task; but the middle of the day was snatched like an hour of sleep in the midst of pain—garnered up like a fountain of sweet waters in the wilderness; for then it was that little Jessie came for her Latin lesson, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... moment a change had come. The moon had got round, and was fronting her from the west, and she saw that her face was altered, that she had grown pale, as if she too were wan with fear, and from her lofty place espied a coming terror. The light seemed to be dissolving out of her; she was dying—she was going out! And yet everything around looked strangely clear—clearer than ever she had seen anything before: how could the lamp be shedding more light when she herself ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... give me a rose—a huge, hybrid, opulent rose, the product of a dozen forcing processes—and I will love you a new way. As the flowers say good-by, I will say goodnight. Shall I burn them? No, for they would smoulder. And if I left them here alone, to-morrow they would be wan. There! I have thrown them out wide into that gulf of a street twelve stories below. They will flutter down in the smoky darkness, and fall, like a message from the land of the lotus-eaters, upon a prosy ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... lasts forever; and in three months Neil Semple was in his office again, wan and worn with fever and suffering, and wearing his sword arm in a sling, but still decidedly world-like and life-like. It was characteristic of Neil that few, even of his intimates, cared to talk of the duel to him, to make any observations on his absence, or any inquiries about ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... were dying and withering, this her sun having been removed from her, bloomed again and at once, its light being restored. You would scarcely have recognised the beaming little face upon Amelia's pillow that night as the one that was laid there the night before, so wan, so lifeless, so careless of all round about. The honest Irish maid-servant, delighted with the change, asked leave to kiss the face that had grown all of a sudden so rosy. Amelia put her arms round the girl's neck and kissed her with all her heart, like ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at last His body she had found. She kissed, without a tear or word, The wan face ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with me,' said the King. 'Go back, and do my command; spare not, but throw it in.' But again Sir Bedivere's heart failed him, and he hid the sword, and returned to tell the King he had seen nothing but the wan water. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... God; it is well that ye should bow in meekness to His will, in readiness to His wisdom. Ye are learning the lesson speedily, as docile children should; and be assured of high reward from the Teacher who hath set it you. Poor Charles! white and wan, thy cheek is grown transparent with anxiety, and thy blue eye dim with hope deferred: poor Emmy, sick and weak, thou weariest Heaven with thy prayers, and waterest thy couch with thy tears. Yet, a little while; this discipline ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms—sixty feet—it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... down 'cause de mules ain't had nothin' ta eat an' most ob dem died. We git in sich a bad fix some ob de people died. When it seem lak we wuz all gwine die, a planter come along de road an' he stopped ta find out what wuz de matter. Wan he heard our story an' who our master wuz he git a message to him ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... fares my friend? methinks you look not well; Your eyes are sunk, your cheeks look pale and wan: What ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... breeding towns, as fast as you breed roe-deer; Example, but not meddling. See that hollow— I knew it once all heath, and deep peat-bog— I drowned a black mare in that self-same spot Hunting with your good father: Well, he gave One jovial night, to six poor Erfurt monks— Six picked-visaged, wan, bird-fingered wights— All in their rough hair shirts, like hedgehogs starved— I told them, six weeks' work would break their hearts: They answered, Christ would help, and Christ's great mother, And make them strong when weakest: So they ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... which is becoming or graceful. Port, manner of movement or walk. At-tire', dress, clothes. Tar'-nish, to soil, to sully. Av'a-lanche, a vast body of snow, earth, and ice, sliding down from a mountain. Vouch-safes', yields, conde-scends, gives. Wan'ton, luxuriant. Net'ted, caught in a net. Fledge'ling, a young bird. Rec-og-ni'tion, acknowledgment of ac-quaintance. Pre-con-cert'ed, planned beforehand. Cai'tiff (pro. ka'tif), a mean villain. Thral'dom, bondage, slavery. Scan, to examine closely. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... last ouk, as I gaed out To flit a tether'd ewe and lamb, I met, as skiffin' ower the green, A jolly, rantin' Highlandman. His shape was neat, wi' feature sweet, And ilka smile my favour wan; I ne'er had seen sae braw a lad As this young ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... The water, the wan water, [Antistrophe 2. Lapped him, and his head Drooped in the bed of slaughter Low, as one wearied; Woe for the edged axe, And woe for the heart of hate, Houndlike about thy tracks, O conqueror desolate, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... there's nothing stopping you. G'wan and have your talk. I can't get away. The old dragon wanted to have a talk with me, too, this morning. So did the housekeeper. Everybody does." And he polished ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Esther found Mrs. Barker's dismay quite enough to deal with. Indeed, the good woman was at first overwhelmed; and sat down, the first time she was taken to the house, in a sort of despair, with a face wan ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... in the bonds of his own thought, Whence very death can take off nought, Nor sleep, with bitterer dreams than death, What though thy thousands at thy knees Lie thick as grave-worms feed on these, Though thy green fields and joyous places Are populous with blood-blackening faces And wan limbs eaten by the sun? Better an end of all men's races, Better the world's whole work were done, And life wiped out of all our traces, And there were left to time not one, Than such as these that fill thy graves Should sow in slaves ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... must do without you now, Stir you no more anyhow To yearning concords taught you in your glory; While, your strings a tangled wreck, Once smart drawn, Ten worm-wounds in your neck, Purflings wan With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con Your present ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the death of his wife, whose end had been hastened by the sudden and complete disappearance of her darling sister Esther, the wan colourlessness of his face had been intensified; his stern enthusiasm, once latent, had become visible; his heart, tenderer than ever towards the victims of the misery around him, grew harder towards the employers, whom he believed to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... greeting at the stile so often named. One was a thorough specimen of a Manchester man; born of factory workers, and himself bred up in youth, and living in manhood, among the mills. He was below the middle size and slightly made; there was almost a stunted look about him; and his wan, colourless face gave you the idea, that in his childhood he had suffered from the scanty living consequent upon bad times and improvident habits. His features were strongly marked, though not irregular, and ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... There was a little, white face as wan and pale as the early daylight, with an aureole of dark red curls around it, staring at him through the broken window frame of the old log cabin that he had seen deserted a dozen times in his hunting ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... had lashed the poor, frail baby to my girdle with the scarf of knotted silk I wore about my neck, and, wan and exhausted, he lay upon my shoulder tranquilly as any Indian papoose might do on its mother's breast. A branch of sea-weed floated past as I looked down—some gracious mermaid's gift, perhaps, extended by her invisible fingers to greet ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... "he looks singularly wan—his features seem writhen as by a palsy stroke; and though he was talking so fast while we came along, he hath not opened his mouth since we ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... but yer see da said dat I stole de hogs what I barbecued. De proof wa'nt good, an' I think dat da done wrong in ackin' upon sech slim testimony. Da said dat I cotch de hogs in a corn fid'. I know dat wan't true, 'case it was a wheat ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... in my time, as you d' know; an' if either wan had been rich enough to leave me a pianner, I'd ha' married three more. . . . What tickles me is you men with your talk o' spoort. Catchin' fish for a business I can understand: you got to do that for money, which is the first thing in life; an' ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... last, Techelles! no, for I shall die. See, where my slave, the ugly monster Death, Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear, Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart, Who flies away at every glance I give, And, when I look away, comes stealing on!— Villain, away, and hie thee to the field! I and mine army come to load thy back With souls of thousand mangled carcasses.— Look, where he goes! but, see, he ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... the rear seat, already were on their feet. Jack stood beside Frank, peering into the shadows behind. The moon was in its first quarter, low down and shed only a faint radiance. But even by the wan light, it could be seen that something dire had happened to the car of the bandits. It stood sideways across the road, leaning drunkenly to one side. And to the ears of the boys came groans from a number of dark ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... the doctor was preparing to leave, Rajendra and Auddy appeared at the door. The resentment in their faces changed into sympathy as they glanced at the physician and then at my somewhat wan countenance. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Electra, pressing her face against the frame, looking out into the moaning, struggling night, striving to read the mystic characters dimly traced on the ash-grey hurrying clouds as the reckless winds parted their wan folds. She shrank away from the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... one knows to be justifiable; the taunt of the poor servant who wants her wages; the gradual relinquishment of habits which the soft nurture of earlier, kinder years had made second nature; the wan cheeks of the wife whose malady demands wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations demand decency; the neglected children, who are learning not be the children of gentlefolk; and, worse than all, the alms and doles of half-generous ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... upon me, that touching scene in the great man's life, when he lay upon his couch, surrounded by his family, and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the phantoms of his own imagination—Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson—all the familiar throng—with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... floor, her face still wan, her attitude unconsciously tragic. But as the child, clinging to Rose-Marie's hand, came over to her side, she ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... these arid valleys; and that Greek Muse who made Arethusa and Maenalus ring with her divine accents, still sings for my ears upon the barren mountain and in the place of the dried-up spring. Yes, Madame, when our globe, no longer inhabited, shall, like the moon, roll a wan corpse through space, the soil which bears the ruins of Selinonte will still keep the seal of beauty in the midst of universal death; and then, then, at least there will be no frivolous mouth to blaspheme ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... dusty felt hats or peaked caps, with shaggy beards or faded scarfs around their throats. Here and there, too, was a woman of comely face and figure, but for the most part it was a collection of crones, prematurely aged, with weird, wan, old-world features, slip-shod and draggle-tailed, their heads bare, or covered with dingy shawls in lieu of bonnets—red shawls, gray shawls, brick-dust shawls, mud-colored shawls. Yet there was an indefinable touch of romance and pathos about the tawdriness and witch-like ugliness, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... November, there might be one chance out of a hundred of our reaching Manhattan and the Dutch, who might or might not give us refuge. She had willed to flee, and we were upon our journey, and the one chance had vanished. That wan, monotonous, cold, and clinging mist had shrouded us for our burial, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and yet have lost faith in ourselves; only the most foolish believe in our raison d'etre. We look out instinctively for places of enjoyment, gayety, and happiness, and yet we do not believe in happiness. Though our pessimism be wan and ephemeral as the clouds from our Havanas, it obscures our view of wider horizons. Amidst these clouds and mists we create for ourselves a separate world, a world torn off from the immensity of all life, shut up within ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... advanced slowly towards him I noticed he was pale, that he looked wearied and wan, that he had grey whiskers and moustache, that he wore a bluish cloth cap with a faded gold band on a red ground round it, and that he had on a red-sleeved waistcoat, and a pair of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... I caught myself up, but the girl offered me the pardon of a beautiful wan smile. "So Ray himself declares. He says ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit. The creature varies like a nervous woman, whom you know only when you know all the aspects of her beauty. She has high spirits or low, she is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to the weather or the hour. She is always interesting and almost always sad; but she has a thousand occasional graces and is always liable to happy accidents. You become extraordinarily ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... wallflowers and southernwood that filled the entering air with sweetness. A room with thin-legged chairs, with cupboards whose lozens gave view to punch-bowls and rummers and silver ladles, a room where the two brothers would convene at night while John was elsewhere, and in a wan candle light sit silent by the hour before cooling spirits, musing on other parlours elsewhere in which spurs had jingled under the board, musing on comrades departed. It was hung around with dark pictures in broad black frames, for ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... slant west sunshine Made the wan face almost fair, Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder, And the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... up. Atter dey tuk me out ob de house, I wuked in de fiel' lak de urthurs. Long 'fore day break, we wuz standin' in de fiel's leanin' on our hoes waitin' fer daylite en waitin' fer de horn ter blow so we would start ter wuk. Ef'n we wan'ed ter go ter any place we had ter hab a pass wid our Marster's name on hit en ef you didn' hab hit, you got tore ter pieces en den you Marster tore you up w'en you ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... devil-ray," was the reply, "an' the're twenty, thirty feet 'cross sometimes. They looks lak a sting ray. Ah don' wan' to see 'em." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... came and Ned began to bestir himself, he missed the cheery "Good-morning" of his companion, who was not able to lift his head from his pillow of palmetto. His wan smile went to Ned's heart, and the boy had to busy himself with the fire to hide his emotion. Every hour of that day he watched over the invalid, and from time to time tempted him with bits of broiled bird, heron soup and sips of hot tea made from leaves of the sweet bay. Ned's acquaintance ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... with a mighty leap, cleared the wall. Hermod rode straight to the gloomy palace, dismounted, entered, and in a moment was face to face with the terrible queen of the kingdom of the dead. Beside her, on a beautiful throne, sat Balder, pale and wan, crowned with a withered wreath of flowers, and close at hand was Nanna, pallid as her husband, for whom she had died. And all night long, while ghostly forms wandered restless and sleepless through ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Dardnells, and ses he, 'What's the use of wastin' brave throops here? We'll lave the English to clane up the threnches,' and on that they packs the Irish off and marches thim thousands of miles intil Siberia. Ah! 'twas the dhrop thim Germins got when they came shtrugglin' along wan day and run up aginst the ould Tinth agin. There was tarrible slaughter that day, and the inimy bruk in great disorther, and is now trying to escape down the Sewers into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... use. So far as I could see, r'inca'nation was jist plain error and follerin' after false gods, and I told Doc so. Anyhow, I knowed there wan't nothin' like it in the Methodist Church, an' I jist up and let Doc know I wouldn't marry anybody that believed such stuff. Doc reckoned to change my mind, but my argument was jist plain 'I won't!' and that settled it. I believe a man and wife ought to ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... The wan and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose and his colourless eyes ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... light shining on his white, wan face. "Thank you, Mr. Montague, he said. "It is very good of you. It is a help, at least, to hear a word of sympathy. I—I ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... own dear mother," said Arthur, as he took his candle. He was not crying, and there was almost a little wan smile on his face as he said it, making him look very different from the bright, joyous boy who generally threw his arms around her neck with an embrace, which was most emphatic as well as affectionate. ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... before her, wan and white-lipped as if her emotions were burned out. Presently she began to talk again ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his eyebrows were scarcely marked; his upper eyelid, flabby and overhanging, like the membrane which shades the eyes of reptiles, half concealed his small, sharp, black eye. His thin lips, absolutely colorless, were hardly distinguishable from the wan hue of his lean visage, with its pointed nose and chin; and this livid mask (deprived as it were of lips) appeared only the more singular, from its maintaining a death-like immobility. Had it not been for the rapid movement of his fingers, as, bending ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... even on Glashgar, in the skin-coat of the beast-boy, had she seen him so like an angel. And in his eyes was that which triumphed, not over dumbness, but over speech. It brought the rose-fire rushing into her wan cheeks; she hid her face on his bosom; and, under the dingy red flame of the lamp in the stony street, they held each other, as blessed as if they had been under an orange tree haunted with fire-flies. For they knew each the heart of the other, and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... his poor ould eye begun to water. 'Twas one weak eye he had that was weepin' all the time. 'I've got out of the habit of reg'lar aitin',' he says. 'It don't take much to kape me goin'.' 'Niver desave yourself, sor! 'T is betther feed three hungry men than wan "no occasion."' His appetite it grew on him wit' every mouthful. There was a boundless emptiness to him. He lay there on the bench and slep' the rest of the evening, and I left him there wit' a big fire ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... her head when her mother spoke. She had not been shedding tears. Perhaps she might have looked less terribly wan and woeful if she ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... thus prepared his audience, looked silently into the fire for another half-hour, until the room was dark, and all the tutor could see was a wan hand fidgeting uneasily on the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... The wan face on the bed moved Philip deeply. Tenderness filled his heart, and a great sense of alienation, for the dying woman spoke a tongue he had forgotten. Their two worlds were divided by a gulf which affection could not bridge. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Orange lodges in regiments. The lodges, he said, had been formed under warrants granted for that purpose by the Duke of Cumberland, who was the grand-master of the Orange body, and a field-marshal. It was true the wan-ants had not the name of his royal highness upon them; but he found it difficult to imagine that he was ignorant of the existence of Orange lodges in the army. Mr. Hume moved a string of eleven resolutions upon this subject. Mr. Patten, the chairman of the committee ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... trick-fashion of the dance, the rollicking music stopped right off short in the middle of a note, the lights went out, the dancers fled precipitously to their seats, and out of the arbored gallery of the orchestra a single swarthy-faced male singer stepped forth into the wan wake of an artificial moon, and lifted up a marvelous tenor voice in one of those weird folk-songs of the far-away that fairly tear the listener's heart out of his body—a song as sinisterly metallic as the hum of hate along a dagger-blade; a song as rapturously surprised ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... to him with a fascinated gaze; it was as if he expressed things for her and relieved her spirit by making them clear and coherent. Her eyes managed, each time, to be dry again, and now a somewhat wan, ironical smile moved her lips. 'Mamma knows what she wants—she knows what she will take. And ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to the stars, and asking them where was the woman that had been she, and where was her own dear love and unalterable affection? I could see that she wept often, and that the tears ran down her white wan face all pinched by suffering, and that she supplicated the night in tender words to bring back to her what had gone away—what had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... her passage through Paris in 1792 on her way to Germany, when she saw her former patroness Marie Antoinette, whom she remembered in all the glory of her youth, popularity, and loveliness, seated in an open chariot, pale, wan, and grief-stricken, surrounded by a guard of troopers with drawn swords and hooted at by a mob of howling sans-culottes. Better far to be a mimic queen than to be hurled from the most radiant and splendid place in European royalty, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... accompany him to Trullyabister "on business." Dr. Holtum, Harry Mitchell, and Fred followed Mr. Adiesen to his study, for the purpose of inspecting some of its treasures. Aunt Osla insisted upon Signy's retirement to a sofa—for the child still looked wan and nervous. Yaspard carried off Tom and Bill to Noostigard, where Gloy had gone immediately after breakfast to tell the Harrisons all the astonishing news. Thus the lawn at Moolapund was cleared of the large human party which had assembled there—the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... tales of saints in my breviary," soliloquized Mary of Scotland; and in the streaming moonlight, as she spoke, a faint outline gathered, lips and eyes of solemn peace, a crown of blood-red roses pressing thorns into the wan temples that dripped sanguine streams, and in the halo above the wreath a legend, partially obscured, that ran, "Utque talis Rosa nulli ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... As he looked about him right and left, lo! his eyes fell on a young man, who was carrying a tunic and crying it for sale at fifteen dinars: so he considered him and saw him to be like his brother Sa'id; and indeed it was his very self, but he was wan of blee and changed for long strangerhood and the travails of travel, so that he knew him not. However, he said to his attendants, "Take yonder youth and carry him to the palace where I lodge, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... hours of waiting, of aching immobility, of dull agony of mind, the interior of the van was becoming slowly visible.... She had listened to the lessening fury of the wind: the rain had ceased. The wan light of early day came through the cracks in the planking. Bobinette could see the bear waking up: it turned, yawned: suddenly it fixed its eyes ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... are all to buy: The wan look, the hollow tone, The hung head, the sunken eye, You can have them for ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... traveller who visited the tomb of Chinghiz is M. C. E. Bonin, in July 1896; he was then on the banks of the Yellow River in the northern part of the Ordo country, which is exclusively inhabited by nomadic and pastoral Mongols, forming seven tribes or hords, Djungar, Talat, Wan, Ottok, Djassak, Wushun and Hangkin, among which are eastward the Djungar and in the centre the Wan; according to their own tradition, these tribes descend from the seven armies encamped in the country at the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... th' citie for th' throuble that's comin' on about th' mine, y' onderstand? He's wan o' th' men t' be ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... upon the same thing, and to give the very same warning. Some years afterwards, when he was taken up in 1715, and committed to the Tower upon suspicion of treasonable practices, which never appeared, his friends said to him that his fortune wan now fulfilled, the Hanover House was the white horse whereof he was admonished to beware. But some time after this, he had a fall from a white horse, and received a blow by which he lost the sight ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... 1766 to 1123. Of those five, the latest piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Ku. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not have ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... efforts to talk and appear interested in what was going on around her. She was afraid her keen-eyed Aunt Maria would see that she was unhappy. But alone with Georgina who shared her secret, she relapsed into a silence so deep it could be felt, responding only with a wan smile when the child's lively chatter seemed to force an answer of some kind. But to-day when Georgina came to the table she was strangely silent herself, so mute that Belle noticed it, and found that she was being furtively ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... first touch of dawn came into the sky, that unnatural wind ceased, in a single moment; and I could see no sign of the hand. The dawn came slowly, and presently the wan light filled all the room, and made the pale glare of the Electric Pentacle look more unearthly. Yet, it was not until the day had fully come, that I made any attempt to leave the barrier, for I did not know but that there was some ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... shut on them, and they fled in terror from the board of old. Than these no deadlier portent nor any fiercer plague of divine wrath hath issued from the Stygian waters; winged things with maidens' countenance, bellies dropping filth, and clawed hands and faces ever wan with hunger. . ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... observation of humanity than Allan possessed would have seen the story of Major Milroy's life written in Major Milroy's face. The home troubles that had struck him were plainly betrayed in his stooping figure and his wan, deeply wrinkled cheeks, when he first showed himself on rising from his chair. The changeless influence of one monotonous pursuit and one monotonous habit of thought was next expressed in the dull, dreamy self-absorption ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... black hollows. The clear Galaxy Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful, Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth And harmony of planet-girded Suns And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel, Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men, Or other things talking in unknown tongues, And notes of busy life in distant worlds Beat like a far wave on my ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the Sabbath morn. But such a Sabbath! The day seemed all wan with weeping, and gray with care. The wind dashed itself against the casement, laden with soft heavy sleet. The ground, the bushes, the very outhouses seemed sodden with the rain. The trees, which looked stricken as if they could die of grief, were yet tormented ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... her drowsy ears. Brief time it was, 'till, with bewildered eyes, She saw her fairies vanish in a mist, Floating away in music, while she stood Alone, far down the mountain opposite The side that with such toil she just had climbed. She stood alone—and where? the roses shrank From her wan cheeks to view her new distress,— Before her a dark chasm, and above her A crowd of close and overhanging rocks, All dripping, black, and hopelessly down-leant. A glimmering hope now broke upon her ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... night but meself," he went on. "It's awful to think of every wan inside their houses an' me wanderin' about be me lone. It isn't wan ghost but twinty I might meet betune this an' the cross-roads, let alone fairies and pookas. Won't I just welt the divil out o' the oul' goat when I ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... he watched by her bedside until the crisis was passed. He would fan her fevered brow, moisten her parched lips, chafe her hot, burning hands, smooth her tumbled pillow, and when at last he succeeded in soothing her into a troubled slumber, he would sit by her and gaze on her wan face with an earnestness which seemed to say that she was his all of earth, his more than all of heaven. Julia too was all attention. Nothing tired her, and with unwearied patience she came and went at her father's bidding, doing a thousand little offices pertaining to a ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... you like?' she says, and Danny ups and says, 'Chockaluts and candy men and taffy and curren' buns and ginger bread,' and she had every wan of them." ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with dark circles under them, and ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... "Try it wid wan eye instid," said he, putting on a brogue to match her own. She laughed and escaped, and, later, read the letter, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... morning, when he returned to Hendlip, he was met by two wan, gaunt men, whose countenances showed privation and suffering. They gave their names as William Andrews ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Great Learning were preserved. No text of these Books was given, and Hsi-ho tells us that in the reign of Chia- ching [1], the most flourishing period of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1522-1566), when Wang Wan-ch'ang [2] published a copy of the Great Learning, taken from the T'ang edition of the Thirteen Ching, all the officers and scholars looked at one another in astonishment, and were inclined to supposed that the Work was a forgery. Besides ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... contend with the cross-currents of the China Sea. As the only lady passenger I had very comfortable quarters, and the kindest attention from French officers and Annamese stewards. The second afternoon there came a welcome diversion when the boat put into Kwang-chou-wan, two hundred miles southwest of Hong Kong, to visit the new free port of Fort Bayard, the commercial and military station which the French are creating in the cession they secured from China in 1898, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Moncrieff, Archie, and myself were called into the dying man's apartment, and heard him make the fullest confession of all his villainy, and beg for our forgiveness with the tears roiling down his wan, ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... sunrise Macdonald entered the house, wan and haggard, for he had not been to bed all night. Besides the hours that he had spent with his patients he had been busy in the Fort all night. He had to make an autopsy of the dead man, and, as the only officer available, investigate the crime, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it, were ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the trebly crimsoned field Terrible words are thunder-tost; Full of the wrath that will not yield, Full of revenge for battles lost! Hark to their echo, as it crost The Capital, making faces wan: End this murderous holocaust; Abraham ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... day and the hour for you to strike. Some of us, disguised as beggars and merchants, will go into Seoul. We will destroy the railway, we will kindle flames in every port, we will destroy Chinkokai, kill Ito and all the Japanese, Yi Wan-yong and his underlings, and will not leave a single rebel against our Emperor alive. Then Japan will bring out all her troops to fight us. We have no weapons at our hands, but we will keep our own patriotism. We may not ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... refracted from a high damp-stained wall outside, came in trembling, as if the fever which had shaken everything else had shaken even it,—there lay, in an old egg-box which the mother had begged from a shop, a little, feeble, wan, sick child. With his little wasted face, and his little hot worn hands folded over his breast, and his little bright attentive eyes, I can see him now, as I have seen him for several years, looking steadily ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the ever-changing April days. When May came, lightsome footed, o'er the lea, Accompanied by kind Aunt Ruth and Roy, I bade farewell to home with secret joy, And turned my wan face eastward to the sea. Roy planned our route of travel: for all lands Were one to him. Or Egypt's burning sands, Or Alps of Switzerland, or stately Rome, All were familiar as ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... long after nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... best essay in a county contest. She was asked to read it to the school and though she begged to be excused, her teacher insisted. She slept little and ate little during the days before it must be read and on the morning when the school assembled to hear it looked pale and wan. It was with very evident effort that she walked to the front of the platform. Her lips opened but no voice came. Her sister thought she was going to faint but she pulled herself together and was able to read in a thin scared voice which could not be heard ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... slepen so that no man may yow wake. Who sey ever or this so dul a man?" "Ye, freend," quod he, "do ye your hedes ake For love, and lat me liven as I can." 550 But though that he for wo was pale and wan, Yet made he tho as freshe a countenaunce As though he shulde have led the ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... removable school; may it purmernate dis whole lan' an' country!" At another meeting, after the workers had finished a session, some of the leading colored farmers were called on to speak. One of them opened his remarks with the words: "I ain't no speaker, but I jes wan' a tell you how much I done been steamilated by dis my only two ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... cullud pusson ter do is ter p'ramberlate ter de Linkum lines. Ki! I doan wan' what drap outen OUR sogers' pockets. I kin git Virginny leaf widouten runnin' 'mong de spooks arter it. De place fer a big fine is whar de brush is tick and de Linkum men crawl away so dey woan be tromp on. Who knows but I kin fine a place whar a ginral hide hisself? Ob cose if he hab ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... day, balmy and gloriously bright, found four people seated together in the spacious, sunny morning-room of a great house on Belleair Avenue. A young man, pale and wan as from a long illness, but with a new steadiness and clarity born of suffering in his eyes; a girl, slender and black-robed, her delicate face flushing with an exquisite, spring-like color, her eyes soft and misty ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... by little dispersed. It was about midnight when we left. The stars were still buried in mist; the moon which was almost at the edge of the horizon, lit up the night with a sort of wan daylight. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Andy Flinn, laughing. "Three nights did he play the same joke, and then they got on to him. Wan officer do be sneakin' up to the loft, while the rist pretended to be huntin' around downstairs. He discovered the sthring, cript downstairs again, wint out on the sly, and, be the powers, followed it to the fince. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the women of the after-palace, hearing the cries of the horses, birds, and beasts, their hair dishevelled, their faces wan and yellow, their forms sickly to look at, their mouths and lips parched, their garments torn and unwashed, the soil and heat not cleansed from their bodies, their ornaments all thrown aside, disconsolate and sad, cheerless in face, raised their bodies, without any grace, even as the feeble little ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... and an early end; and she drew from all things around her something to feed the pensive character of her thoughts. The stillness of noon; the holy and eloquent repose of twilight, its rosy sky and its soft air, its shadows and its dews,—had equally for her heart a whisper and a spell. The wan stars, where, from the eldest time, man has shaped out a chart of the undiscoverable future; the mysterious moon, to which the great ocean ministers from its untrodden shrines; the winds, which traverse the vast air, pilgrims from an eternal home to ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wan cheek as his voice became still; but he went on with his task of obliteration till every trace of the crest and shield disappeared from the emblazoned lid. After this he returned to the heart of the town and passed through a number of small and lonely streets, glancing eagerly, but askance, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... now unroped, and a halt was called for a bite and sup. It was daylight; a cold wan light among a circle of peaks and shafts, overtopped by the Mont Blanc, still thousands of feet above them. The guides were apart, gesticulating and consulting, with many shakings of the head. Seated on the white ground, heavy ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... of Holy Thorn, a broad and fair foundation, one of the two set up in the forest by the Countess Isabel, Dowager of March and Bellesme, Countess of Hauterive and Lady of Morgraunt in her own right. Where the Wan river makes a great loop, running east for three miles, and west again for as many before it drives its final surge towards the Southern Sea, there stands Holy Thorn, Church and Convent, watching over the red roofs of Malbank hamlet huddled together across the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... their midst is a little child, With ragged shoes and a brimless hat, Not bigger than Hop-O'-my-Thumb, at most, And wan and thin at that. ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... the bar of justice, A creature wan and wild, In form too small for a woman, In features too old for a child; For a look so worn and pathetic Was stamped on her pale young face, It seemed long years of suffering Must have left that ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... tol' you wan day, two, t'ree mont' ago," Poleon remarked, with apparent evasion, "'bout Johnny Platt w'at I ketch on de Porcupine ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... face had looked wan and pale, now it was suffused by a warm glow that was not that of the ruddy early morning sun. For the hope had risen strongly in her breast that, in spite of all, the terrible affliction would be lightened, and ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... "Wan thing is sure," said Barney; "nivver a cintipade is loikely to get inther our beds, fer we make 'em up ache noight, so we'd see th' craythers ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish |
