"Brooding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... movable bench. He hung his coat on a peg and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and began to whistle cheerily, like a man who enjoys his work, as he threw open the stove door and poked in some sticks of fuel. A brooding warmth filled the place, and the wood made a pleasant ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... was said as they made their way back to town. Old man Norris did not open his mouth, but looked dejected and sad, as if he was brooding over what would happen to him when he arrived at his destination. He was plainly uneasy, and probably wished they ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... resign in her husband's favor as far as her general practice was concerned, but should have a private practice of her own, specializing in skin diseases and facial blemishes. She could never be idle again, and if it had not been for the brooding shadow of war and her constant anxiety for her husband, she should look back upon those two years of hard medical practice and usefulness as the most ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... action of body or mind, for coldness toward his Saviour. And almost to the end of his days he was, occasionally, visited by seasons of spiritual gloom and depression, which, no doubt, were chiefly, if not solely, the result of physical causes. It was an error that grew readily out of the brooding introspection and self-anatomy which marked the religious habit of the times. The close connection between physical causes and morbid or abnormal conditions of the spiritual life, was not as well understood then as it is now. Many things ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... long time I sat brooding, while the candle which Eli had brought burnt lower and lower, and finally went out. The darkness stirred new thoughts within me. Hitherto I had not troubled about Granfer Fraddam's ghost haunting the cave. The wind which wailed its way up through the cave till it found ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... fitting companion for the buffoons and jesters among whom he was too often compelled to sit in the palaces where he accepted bounty. He could not always win respect by the power of his dark and {29} piercing eyes, for he had few advantages of person and disdained to be genial in manners. Brooding over neglect and injustice, he grew so repellant that Cane was secretly relieved when thoughtless, cruel levity drove the poet from his court. He never cared, perhaps, that Dante, writing the concluding cantos of ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Tozer, who by dint of brooding over it all the day had come to a white heat, and was no longer to be controlled. "Mr. Northcote, sir, you're a minister, and you don't understand business no more nor women do. Money's money—but there's more than money here. There's my name, sir, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... mountains, which are bog in many places, are scored with drains to dry up the bog holes and give the sheep a sure footing. I did not see many sheep on the hill or many cattle on the deserted farms. It is an awfully lonesome place; desolation sits brooding among the broken-down walls. My guide, a lonesome-looking man, enlivened our way by remarks like these: "This was a widdy's house. She was a well-doin' body." "Here was a snug place. See, there's the remains of a stone porch that they built to break off the wind." "That was Jamie Doherty's, he ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... principiis obstare [Lat.]; veniente occurrere morbo [Lat.]. Adj. preparing &c v.; in preparation, in course of preparation, in agitation, in embryo, in hand, in train; afoot, afloat; on foot, on the stocks, on the anvil; under consideration &c (plan) 626; brewing, batching, forthcoming, brooding; in store for, in reserve. precautionary, provident; preparative, preparatory; provisional, inchoate, under revision; preliminary &c (precedent) 62. prepared &c v.; in readiness; ready, ready to one's band, ready made, ready cut and dried: made to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... for brooding over it then. My altimeter registered only two hundred and fifty metres, and the French lines were far distant. If the motor failed I should have to land in German territory. Any fate but that. Nevertheless, I felt in the pocket of my combination, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... interesting objects than the women; their countenances and hues were very varied, according to the part of the African coast from which they came; some were soot-black, having a certain ferocity of aspect that indicated strong and fierce passions, like men who were darkly brooding over some deep-felt wrongs, and meditating revenge. When any one was ordered, he came forward with a sullen indifference, threw his arms over his head, stamped with his feet, shouted to show the soundness of his lungs, ran up and down the room, and was treated exactly like ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... uttered—words meant to convince him of my own innocence in the matter; and this they achieved, at least in part. He flashed me a look of sudden suspicion, it is true; but it faded almost as soon as it shone from his brooding eye. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... details of his opulence—Pemberton could spare him none of them—evidently fed the boy's appreciation of all his friend had given up to come back to him; but in addition to the greater reciprocity established by that heroism he had always his little brooding theory, in which there was a frivolous gaiety too, that their long probation was drawing to a close. Morgan's conviction that the Moreens couldn't go on much longer kept pace with the unexpended impetus with which, from month to month, they did go ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... To use life is life's proper end: Let death come when it will, and where!"— "You prattle on, as babes that spend Their morning half within the brink Of the bright heaven from which they wend; But what I am you dare not think. Thick, brooding shadow round me lies; You stare till terror makes you wink; I go not, though you shut your eyes. Unclose again the loathful lid, And lo, I sit beneath the skies, As Sphinx beside the pyramid!" So Death, with solemn rise and fall Of voice, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... capable of winning the deep and lasting affection of men also. Perhaps it may not always be safe to trust implicitly the fine phrases of his correspondents; for there can be no doubt that Swift inspired fear as well as love. Revengefulness is the great and hateful blot on his character; his brooding temper turned slights into injuries, gave substance to mere suspicion, and once in the morbid mood he was utterly reckless of the means of vengeance. His most playful scratch had poison in it. His eye was equally ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... he sat alone before the fire in the cabin brooding until he was filled with savage hatred of Philip. He would think of all sorts of impossible means of eliminating this Spaniard from Claire's life; then Philip would come in, talk to him, seem so very normally friendly as man to man, that his reason mastered his ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... life. I'm really uncertain, yet, as to the best attitude." Imogen was listening to this with some gravity of gaze. "Do take that last position we decided upon, Imogen. And do you, Mary, take the place of the faltering old Oedipus for a moment. Look down, Imogen; yes, a strong, brooding ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... people laughing at over there? There's no sign of brooding melancholy down in your corner," shouted Mme. Verdurin. "You don't suppose I find it very amusing to be stuck up here by myself on the stool of repentance," she went on ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... his task. He told me that above us, deep in the bowels of these mountains, were the more refined legislative halls of Satan; while below us, at varying and terrible depths, lay scattered many a brooding station where the lowest laws of Hell ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... In Helbeck's heart? But in the inmost shrine of that heart she felt the brooding of a majestic and exacting power that knew her not. Her jealousy—her fear—grew day ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... usual, brother! Brooding on fancy's eggs. God did not send The light that all day long gladdened the earth, Flashed from the snowy peak, and on the spire Transformed the weathercock into a star, That you should gloom within stone walls all day. At dawn to-morrow, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... was the silence and loneliness, the feeling that ourselves only, of all the world, were in that beautiful mysterious place. Had I had prayers to say, I should have said them, sure that some sort of a God was brooding on the waters and suspicious perhaps, at the back of my mind, that where the black cliffs upreared ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... orbits of two planets (see Fig. 27). Then try inscribing and circumscribing squares, hexagons, and other figures, and see if the circles thus defined would correspond to the several planetary orbits. But they would not give any satisfactory result. Brooding over this disappointment, the idea of trying solid figures suddenly strikes him. "What have plane figures to do with the celestial orbits?" he cries out; "inscribe the regular solids." And then—brilliant idea—he remembers ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... which it had caused him. During the whole summer month for which he had now been in attendance as Mr. Beasley's clerk, the arrival of the mail had constituted his chief interest. And because that for which he had been hoping had failed to come, his thin face had grown more worried, and the brooding look was more constantly in ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... secret compromise, into a by-road, leading only to family objects, universal mutiny must now follow. The general will of the priesthood has thus far quelled and overruled the individual will; but that indignant recusants amongst that order are muttering and brooding we know, as well from the necessities of human nature, as from actual letters already beginning to appear in the journals. Under all these circumstances, a crisis is to be dreaded by the central body of Repealers, which body is doubtless exceedingly small. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Forgive and forget if she has displeased you, and don't exhaust yourself by brooding over it. Come, dear, and let us soothe ourselves with a little music. I want to hear that new song again, though I can never hope to ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... day has been all confusion and wretchedness. How can I write about it?—and yet, I must write. Anything is better than brooding ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... alone, apart from the rest. It was plain to be seen that he was brooding over the painful event of the morning. Gretchen had grown cheerful again, but the bitter expression on the young Indian's face seemed to deepen in intensity. Mr. Mann saw it. To quiet his agitation, he began his teaching by going to him and sitting down beside him on the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... bringing welcome coolness. Hilda slept quietly through its turmoil and swishing torrents—slept on into the twilight, until Aunt Sheba seemed a shadow herself. But there were darker shadows brooding ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... second act the fishermen, who have been brooding in silence over the tyranny of their foes, begin to assemble. Pietro, Masaniello's friend, has sought for Fenella in vain, but at length she appears of her own accord and confesses her wrongs. Masaniello is infuriated and swears to have revenge, but ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... He paused in brooding silence. "They are up to their old tricks again." His eyes were steely blue now. Hilary pressed his hand in silence. They were welded ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... individuals of successive generations, but the very structure of the individuals themselves. It is by the study of heredity that we shall learn to understand the individual. For instance, experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of the brooding instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not enter, into the composition of the individual, and which is quite distinct from the capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite distinction suggested, for the case of the fowl, between two really distinct things which, for several years ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... arrival, Tom was thoroughly beaten down and wretched, notwithstanding his efforts to look hopefully forward, and keep up his spirits. His usual occupations were utterly distasteful to him; and, instead of occupying himself, he sat brooding over his late misfortune, and hopelessly puzzling his head as to what he could do to set matters right. The conviction in which he always landed was that there was nothing to be done, and that he was a desolate and blighted being, deserted of gods and men. Hardy's presence ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... hand Joe went with shambling steps toward the place where Jim sat absorbed in his work. A brooding silence seemed to lie over the shop and even outside in the street all noises suddenly ceased. Old Joe's gait changed. As he passed behind the horse on which Jim sat, life came into his figure and he walked with a soft, cat-like ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... land was not merely of sun-glaring breadth. Sometimes, on a cloudy day, the wash of wheatlands was as brown and lowering and mysterious as an English moor in the mist. It dwarfed the far-off houses by its giant enchantment; its brooding reaches changed her attitude of brisk, gas-driven efficiency into a melancholy that was full of hints of ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Noel Ordway. She had met him almost at once after moving to Cannes. She moved to Cannes practically on the advice of the distinguished stranger who continued to follow her with eyes of brooding concern. That is, what he said amounted to advice. It was, in a measure, to show him that she appreciated an interest in which there was an element that touched her profoundly that ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... come, and he had fallen into a brooding memory of things gone by, when a sudden succession of quick knocks fell on his ear. He started—strangely affected. Neither of his companions took notice of it, though it was now past one o'clock. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... live down to it. Not only were witches held in respect and fear, but she might be able, through evil arts, to plague the race that had worked her husband to death in the mines, and now had killed her only son. She kept still more at home, brooding, planning, yielding farther and farther to the evil suggestions that her repute as a voodoo priestess offered to her, yet keeping one place in her heart even warmer than before,—the place ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... quite amused at his unwarranted choler, and while he stumped indignantly up and down I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was—the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... unhappy, frequently irritated, Ellen became at length very ready to take offence, and nowise disposed to pass it over or smooth it away. She seldom showed this in words, it is true, but it rankled in her mind. Listless and brooding, she sat day after day, comparing the present with the past, wishing vain wishes, indulging bootless regrets, and looking upon her aunt and grandmother with an eye of more settled aversion. The only other person she saw was Mr. Van Brunt, who came in regularly to meals; but he never ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... drew near the spot where the one-sided fight had taken place. He had apparently been brooding over the matter, wondering if the mate of his victim could have come upon the scene of the tragedy and sensing what had happened, was lurking thereabouts, bent on exacting a terrible revenge in payment for the untimely demise of ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... His mind was brooding on his wrongs and sorrows; for Katie had quietly whispered him to take care and not fall off, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... with mystery, a radiant glow wherein objects seemed to start forth with a new significance; here the ragged hole of a tree, gnarled, misshapen; there a wide-flung branch, weirdly contorted, and there again a tangle of twigs and strange, leafy shapes that moved not. And over all was a deep and brooding quietude. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held, still hold, their secrets; but they do not seek for yours. The terrific temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men, crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose. The brown children of the Nile, the toilers who sing their antique songs by the shadoof and the sakieh, the dragomans, the smiling goblin merchants, the Bedouins who lead your camel into the pale recesses ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... were frightened at this cloud. "It is Isis with the moon in her arms," said one. "Nay, it is the mother goddess Nout brooding upon the world," answered another. And though they only spoke softly, in that awful silence their voices reached Tua on the throne, and for the first time her face changed, for on it came a cold, ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... of the Storm Country," with the same wild background, with its half-gypsy life of the squatters—tempestuous, passionate, brooding. Tess learns the "secret" of her birth and finds happiness and love through her boundless faith ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... than ever. With her, because he thought she was brooding over the case of the old man; and with himself, because he thought she was right, and was ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brooding minutes followed. Then Bunting returned to say the pennant was there, a fact he had quite overlooked in his former observations, confounding the narrow flag in question with the regular pennant of the king. This short red pennant denoted that the communication was verbal, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and incomparably direct touch that is peculiar to Greek, as in the verses by Antipater of Sidon,[7] that by some delicate magic crowd into a few words the fugitive splendour of the waning year, the warm lingering days and sharp nights of autumn, and the brooding pause before the rigours of winter, and make the whole masque of the seasons a pageant and metaphor of the lapse of life itself. Or a later art finds in the harsh moralisation of ancient legends the substance of sermons on the emptiness of pleasure and the fragility of loveliness; ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... and it is there precisely that generation, follows generation without essential progress, and no one ever remakes himself on a better plan. It is perhaps the duller races, with a long childhood and a brooding mind, that bear the hopes of the world within them, if only nature avails to execute what she has planned ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was a testimony that she had been worthy of their love and reverence. The same face, cast in a masculine mold, was repeated in Eric; the chestnut hair grew off his forehead in the same way; his eyes were like hers, and in his grave moods they held a similar expression, half brooding, half ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sitting alone over the embers of the fire, where he had sat all night in sad meditation, after an evening of jest apparently none the less hilarious for his total abstinence. There was no scope for this brooding now, and in a sense the time of his severest trial cannot have been the saddest time of Lincoln's life. It must have been a cause not of added depression but of added strength that he had long been accustomed to face the sternest aspect of the world. He had within his own mind ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Jacob Jones, who made himself quite unhappy for some weeks, brooding over the matter. He never once dreamed of the real cause of his not having had an equal share in his young friend's good fortune. He had not the most distant idea that his employer felt nearly as much regard ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... she could make him understand; why not, then, when he stood within five hundred? This idea possessed her; these limitations of nature made her mad. She refused to accept them. Night by night, lying brooding in her bed, while Cicely slept in peace at her side, she threw out her strong soul towards the soul of her old lover, Thomas Bolle, commanding him to ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... not how he found himself once more on the steps above the square. Below him his state carriage stood in the same place, flanked by the regiment of cavalry. Down the narrow streets he saw the brooding cloud of people, and the sight roused his blood. They were his enemies now—he felt the warm hate in his veins. They were his enemies, and he would face them openly. No closed chariot guarded by troops—he would not have so much as a pane of glass between ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... while Bideabout remained motionless, looking at the letter before him on the table. Mehetabel did not venture to approach or address him. She watched him with anxiety, not knowing in which direction the brooding rage within him would break forth. He was now like a thunder-cloud charged with electricity and threatening all with whom he came ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the hoarse waves of Severn are screaming aloud, And Penline's lofty castle involv'd in a cloud, If true, the old proverb, a shower of rain, Is brooding above, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... to me. "What made you think it was Trehayne?" he asked. This was better. I looked at Dawson, who was brooding in his chair with his thoughts far away. He was still seeing those eyes fading out under the glare of the electrics between the steel decks ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... gain by the degradation of their fellows or who had been ground so low that they would cut each other's throats for a crust or who, in their blind ignorance, misunderstood what it all meant. And there were wild reports afloat of resistance brooding in Queensland and of excited meetings in the bush and of troops being sent to disperse the bushmen's camps. Why did they endure these things, Nellie thought, watching and waiting, as impotent to aid them as she was to save the baby dying now ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... day old Tubal Cain Sat brooding o'er his woe; And his hand forbore to smite the ore, And his furnace smouldered low. But he rose at last with a cheerful face, And a bright courageous eye, And bared his strong right arm for work, While the quick flames ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... secular, aristocratic or democratic, civil or militarist predominantly. One or other will be most powerful, and the body of the race will by reflex action affect its soul, even as through heredity the inherited tendencies and passions of the flesh affect the indwelling spirit. Our brooding over the infant State must be dual, concerned not only with the body but the soul. When we essay self-government in Ireland our first ideas will, in all probability, be borrowed from the Mother of Parliaments, just as children before they grow to have a character of their ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... Wherry, there had been such a creak and for the moment, he recalled vividly, there had been no wind. Then, disturbed by Dick's utter collapse, he had carelessly dismissed it. Now with his brain dangerously edged by the whiskey and his mind brooding intently over a series of mysterious and sinister adventures which had enlivened his summer, he rose and stealing catlike to the door, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... second evening after Michael's departure, she was seated in his room, brooding, when suddenly she heard a peculiar ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... hurt your health, and still more certainly, you will go to work fretfully and impetuously. If you have a busy life, the more reason to learn to be tranquil. Calm is forced on you now, and if you give way to useless nervous brooding over the work you are obliged to lay aside for a time, you have no right to hope that you will either have judgment or ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sunday afternoon, and I found myself alone in the house, the family and servants at church, and a brooding stillness that presaged the approach of a storm, settling over all. At that time I was a dreamy, romantic, long-haired youth with all sorts of notions about the artistic temperament, carelessness in dress, and painting miniatures for a living. They told me I had some talent, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... represent may have been the gods of Homer, but they were the Homeric gods transformed by the creative imagination of a more reflective age, and purified by a poetic, if not a philosophic, idealism. But while AEschylus suggests "a deeply brooding mind, tinged with mysticism, grappling with dark problems of life and fate,"[2] and so was, in some ways, remote from the clarity and definition of sculptural form, Sophocles "invests the conceptions of popular religion with a higher spiritual ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... will run better thus:—"The Honourable Augustus Bouverie no sooner perceived himself alone, than he felt the dark shades of melancholy ascending and brooding over his mind, and enveloping his throbbing heart in their—their adamantine chains. Yielding to the overwhelming force, he thus exclaimed, 'Such is life—we require but one flower, and we are offered ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... that she lay under God's curse, and by and by her weak thoughts connected this curse with her father's displeasure. If she could move her father to relent, it might be lifted from her. And so after many weeks of brooding she found ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brought her and the Widow Constance's Barbara up the river in his boat, would be going back with the tide. She was not loath to leave: the green meadow, the gaudy Maypole, and the music were good, but the silence on the river, the shadow of the brooding forest, the darting of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... climax of trouble that had been brooding sullenly for a week. In annual town-meeting Smyrna and Vienna had voted to change over the inter-urban highway so that it would skirt Rattledown Hill instead of climbing straight over it, as the fathers had laid it out in the old days ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... grown so distasteful to him, that the very sight of the servant whose business it was to clean the rooms produced a feeling of exasperation. To such a condition may monomaniacs come by continually brooding over one idea. For the last fortnight, the landlady had ceased to supply her lodger with provisions, and he had not yet thought of demanding an explanation. Nastasia, who had to cook and clean for the whole house, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... portion of his life at Bologna, Cardan seems to have lived comparatively alone, and to have spent his weary leisure in brooding over his sorrows. He began his long rambling epilogue to the De Libris Propriis, and, almost on the threshold, pours out his sorrow afresh over Gian Battista's unhappy fate. After affirming that Death must necessarily ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Sir Joseph was brooding and shaking his head. He seemed to start as he saw Marie Louise. But he smiled on ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... men immunity from danger on payment of a tax. Thus men cease protecting themselves, and so in the course of time lose the ability to protect themselves, because the faculty of courage has atrophied through disuse. Brooding apprehension and crouching fear are the properties of civilized men—men who are protected by the State. The joy of reveling in life is not possible in cities. Bolts and bars, locks and keys, soldiers ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... forest, and give them names their hearts loved in the old home land beyond the sea! They did not consult Linnaeus, nor any musty Latin genealogy of Old World birds, at the christening of these songsters. There was a good family resemblance in many cases. The blustering partridge, brooding over her young in the thicket, was very nearly like the same bird in England. For the mellow-throated thrush of the old land they found a mate in the new, of the same size, color, and general habits, though less musical. The blackbird was nearly the same in many respects, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... in sullen silence, and Arnold, who had been brooding over his private grievances, ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... turned Round through the vast profundity obscure; And said, 'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds; This be thy just circumference, O World!' Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth, Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound Covered the abyss; but on the watery calm His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread, And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth, Throughout the fluid mass; but downward purged The black, tartareous, cold, infernal dregs, Adverse to life; then founded, then conglobed Like things to like; the rest to several place Disparted, and between ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... all things it had been His soul's most perfect bliss to gratify. Wherefore, to make atonement, in some sort, For this one wrong he deemed that he had done The woman—this one crossing of her will— He knelt him down under the brooding shade Of a huge oak, and vowed 'fore heaven a vow: To wit, that Lucia never afterward Should in his hearing utter forth a wish For aught of earthly but himself would see That wish fulfilled, if such fulfilment were An end that mortal man could ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... then obscure sect of the Rosicrucians, some of whom he had perhaps encountered in his travels in Germany, he imagined that, by means of the philosopher's stone, he could summon these kindly spirits at his will. By dint of continually brooding upon the subject, his imagination became so diseased, that he at last persuaded himself that an angel appeared to him, and promised to be his friend and companion as long as he lived. He relates that, one day, in November 1582, while he was engaged in fervent prayer, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... forth the wild hill story, told in marvelous harmonies. The rapt young face gave no sign of embarrassment, for Jinnie was completely lost in her melodious task. Above the dimpled chin that hugged the brown fiddle, Theodore King could see the brooding genius of the girl, and longed to bring a passionate lovelight for himself into the glorious eyes. The intensity of the music established in him an unconquerable hope—a hope that could not die as long as life was in him, as long as life was in ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... strange her power! her varied strains Thrill with a magic spell the human heart. She wakens memory—brightens hope—the pains, The joys of being at her bidding start. Now to her trumpet-call the spirit leaps; Now to her brooding, tender tones it weeps. Sweet music! is she portion of that breath With which the worlds were born—on which they wheel? One of lost Eden's tones, eluding death, To make man what is best within him feel! Keep open his else sealed up depths of heart, And ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... was now brooding over the Susquehanna, and the autumn leaves were being tinged with red. The struggle of the year 1778 seemed over and Brant decided to spend the winter at Niagara. Accordingly he set out with a band of warriors ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... no time for brooding, for he was working hard at his lessons with the village Priest; and as to little Daria, she had quickly adapted herself ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... steamships; for, once the ice had moved north, there was no further obstacle to their coming, and the harbor was soon livened with puffing tugs, unwieldy lighters, and fleets of smaller vessels. Where, but a short time before, the brooding silence had been undisturbed save for the plaint of wolf-dogs and the lazy voices of natives, a noisy army was now at work. The bustle of a great preparation arose; languid smoke-wreaths began to unfurl above ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Though the outside was smoked, the inside was sweet and palatable, and neither was disposed to be fastidious. The preparation of the meal took considerable time, but they had abundance of that, and occupation prevented their brooding over their solitary situation. ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... first time she had ever watched with the sick, and she found it a very solemn thing. Yet with all the solemnity and gloom brooding over her, she felt inexpressible gratitude that she was not haunted by the spectral illusions of her childhood. Reason was no longer the vassal, but the monarch of imagination, and though the latter often proved a restless and wayward subject, it acknowledged the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... him visions that had been hitherto unknown to faculties occupied by no other images than those of rivalry, turbulence, and strife. Scenes called into being by Antonina's lightest and hastiest expressions, now rose vague and shadowy before his brooding spirit. Lovely places of earth that he had visited and forgotten now returned to his recollection, idealised and refined as he thought of her. She appeared to his mind in every allurement of action, fulfilling all the duties and enjoying all the pleasures that she had proposed to him. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... mine so much that I fell to brooding on the superior image of my charmer. The result was, I could not keep away from her. I managed to get home with leaden limbs. Next day I was back ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... impatient of the pinchings of poverty. Neither was constitutionally disposed to work hard and patiently for an honest competence. The celebrated "Female Pills" formed the philosopher's stone which released them from this condition of chafing discontent and brooding unrest. From what source a knowledge of the ingredients requisite for the composition of a pill for such a diabolical purpose was derived, or whether, indeed, the pill was effective or diabolical at all, remains a mystery, inasmuch as none of her medicine seems to ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... reindued with their full amenities. Ruskin would have been pleased. So indeed was I; but that railway-car (in which, it romantically struck me, I myself might once, might frequently, have travelled) was still upmost in my brooding mind. To what manner of wretched end was it destined? No end would have seemed bad enough for it to Ruskin. But I was born late enough to acquiesce in railways and in all that pertains to them. And now, since the success of motor-cars (those far greater, because unrestricted, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... words, whispered with a tremble of the lips that had been so firm when the hot iron burned, recalled that other Father who is always near, always tender and helpful; and, folding his hands, Rob said the heartiest little prayer he ever prayed, there on the hay, to the soft twitter of the brooding birds. It did him good; and wisely laying all his fear and doubt and trouble in God's hand, the boy felt ready for whatever was to come, and from that hour kept steadily before him the one duty that was plain—to be brave and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... life, after he retired to Germany, was spent in industry, if not in peace and quietness. He could not fail to be cast down by the utter failure of his English partnership, and the loss of the fruits of his ingenious labours. But instead of brooding over his troubles, he determined to break away from them, and begin the world anew. He was only forty-three when he left England, and he might yet be able to establish himself prosperously in life. He had his own head and hands ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... sentiments, and character seemed to have so much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener consciousness of the latent anguish brooding ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... A grey seal had been heard speaking with tongues off Siggness, and speaking ill words, said the fishermen who saw the beast. A white reindeer had appeared on Sunfell, and the hunter who followed it had not been seen again. By day, too, there was a brooding of hawks on the tide's edge, which was strange at that season. Worst portent of all, the floods of August were followed by high north-east winds that swept the clouds before them, so that all day ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... knew into what a complex plot he was drifting. In the secret soul of his protector, Don Alonzo, there burned a great anger against the weak and licentious king. He and his father, Count Julian, and Archbishop Oppas, his uncle, were secretly brooding plans of wrath against Don Rodrigo for his ill treatment of Don Alonzo's sister, Florinda. Rumors had told them that an army of strange warriors from Africa, who had hitherto carried all before them, were threatening to cross the ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... there at the Springs, and look at that smoke wall hanging over the water, and wonder what goes on up there. And at night there's the red glow, very faint and far. That's all. I've been doing nursing at the hospital to help out and to keep from brooding. I wouldn't be down here now, only for a list of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be obtained quicker if some one attended to it personally. I'm taking the ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... attached to him, and was allowed considerable freedom of speech in consequence of his value and fidelity, thought fit to remonstrate. He attributed his master's lowness of spirits entirely to his brooding over the accident, and said one morning when he had brushed the clothes and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that bitter, bitter feeling which I venture to call the dynamite disposition, and which is found in every part of the civilised world; in Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled England. A brooding, morose, concentrated hatred of those who possess any kind of substance or comfort; landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta, a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance; a monomania of battering, smashing, crushing, such as ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... sky there was something that wearied, in the brooding clouds, something that saddened. It penetrated the freezing city cut by the freezing river, the splendid city with its towers and domes, its quays and bridges and its thousand spires. It entered the squares, it ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... tree top, brooding over the fight which he had just witnessed, until the deepening shadows warned him that it was time to seek repose. Turning on his side he laid his head on his pillow, while a soft breeze swayed the tree gently to and fro ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... off his brooding when he reached New York, and was the old, alert, bubbling Jimmy when he reached his firm's headquarters, where he was prepared to wrangle with the auditor over items on his expense list, demand better samples ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... Out of the brooding darkness was born the first timid blush of the morn. It sprang to life along the serried edge of the Medicine Bow, a broadening band of blood-red light. For one instant it seemed that some titan ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... incredibly a fool he was incredibly steadfast too, and a steadfast fool is a good tool to retain for simple work. He had, too—the boy—a valuable hatred for Culpepper that he allowed to transfer itself to Katharine herself: a brooding hatred that hung in his blue eyes as he gazed downwards at the barge floor or spat at the planks of the side. Its ferocity was augmented by the patches of plaster that stretched over his skull and ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... idea of conquest. One revelation was confirmed by another, and, as the evidence of Aztec wealth multiplied the proofs of internal disaffection throughout the {136} empire stimulated the confidence of the brooding conqueror. Disloyalty among the Totonacs, treachery that only waited an opportunity in Texcoco, an ancient tradition of hate in Tlascala, and the superstition that obscured the judgment and paralyzed the action of the despotic ruler—these were ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was the night Wherin the Prince of light His raign of peace upon the earth began: The Windes with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kist, Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While Birds of Calm sit brooding on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... sleeps on the heathery mountain-side, the next displays the splendor of a queen in palaces and fairy-like villas; her sorely tried and hapless lover, Stenio, the poet, who pours forth odes to his own accompaniment on the harp, and lingers the night long among Alpine precipices brooding over the abyss; Trenmor, the returned gentleman convict and Apostle of the Carbonari, whose soul has been refreshed, made young and regenerated at the galleys; and the mad Irish priest, Magnus, are impossible personages, inviting to easy ridicule, and neither wisdom nor folly from ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the Torre Ananias, up to the lantern story where the keeper was looking over the sea and brooding. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... and then drifted out across the incandescent shales to the beautiful lake beyond. The water lay like shimmering glass. In the distance the wooded slopes of the San Lucas mountains rose like green billows. Brooding silence spread over the scene. It was Nature's hour of siesta. In his own heart there was a great peace—and a strange expectancy. He seemed to be awaiting a revelation of things close at hand. In a way he felt that he had accomplished his purpose of coming to Simiti ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... over the rail of the schooner gazing down at the beautiful flashing water, and thinking of home. It was Sunday there, too, he remembered; and he could almost hear the sweet-toned bells solemnly chiming, and see the atmosphere of Sabbath peace brooding over field and village, and feel the serious gladness of the time. The folks were getting ready for church. There was his father, shaved and clean, in his black stock and somewhat threadbare, but still respectable, best coat. And there was Helen, bright and blooming, with her bonnet on, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of the latter's power. While I pondered gloomily, the sitting (so to call it) came to an end. Perhaps my unwelcome appearance somewhat contracted it. My grandfather lapsed into his chair, his chin on his chest, brooding. Excitement died in him almost visibly, like the flickering down of a spent fire. Instead of eighty, he looked a hundred and eighty, and his face was as lifeless as ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... rather Leslie did not himself know, and if the others did he'd be sure to find it out. It would make him conspicuous, maybe worry him and set him brooding over himself, so I'm trusting you to keep it secret. And, in any case, what better amusement could you have? The regular exercise in this perfect air will be as good for you girls ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... The boy stood awhile brooding. 'Well, I take my risk of it,' he cried. 'I believe it's treason to my sovereign—I believe there is an infamous punishment for such a crime—and yet I'm hanged if ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mother," said the Doctor with a teasing smile as he handed her a quart cup of oats from the bin. "Oh, I know what you're talking about," answered Mother, as she scattered a little grain in front of each nest and prepared to leave in peace and quiet the brooding mothers. "It's this woman's rights and wrongs question. I've been so busy doctoring Providence Road pains and trying to make a good, proper husband outen you for some nice girl, what some other woman have been putting licks on to get ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... looking up. Yet again, said He, observe and look; so they gave heed, and perceived that the hen did walk in a fourfold method towards her chickens. 1. She had a common call, and that she hath all day long. 2. She had a special call, and that she had but sometimes. 3. She had a brooding note. And 4. She had ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... time, were sullenly brooding over the wrong which they conceived had been done them. One day Champlain was secretly informed of a plot among his men to murder him and deliver Quebec into their hands. He acted with his usual cool determination. Through the ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Pete's brooding eyes brightened as Doris came in with a tray. She had thought that he had rather have his dinner there. "I noticed that you did not come down with the others," ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... word to another, administers a glass of her punch or lemonade to a third, hands out an apple or an orange to a fourth, or a book or game to a fifth, and relieves the hospital of the gloom which seemed brooding over it. But not in these ways alone does she bring comfort and happiness to these poor wounded and fever-stricken men. She encourages them to confide to her their sorrows and troubles, and the heart that, like the caged ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... came along leisurely,—one tall and compact, with a slow, firm step, the face grave, the eyes glancing over beyond the hills. Irene Lawrence shut her lips with a touch of displeasure. Was she to miss the satisfaction that had been brooding in her mind for the last hour, for the accomplishment of which she had driven through this dusty, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... despondency is perhaps common to men in proportion to their natural dispositions to faith and veneration. With them, it comes from keen sympathy with undeserved sufferings—from wrath at wickedness triumphant—from too intense a brooding over the great mysteries involved in the government of the world. Scepticism of this nature can but little injure the frivolous, and will be charitably regarded by the wise. Schiller's mind soon outgrew the state which, to the mind of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... position in the world—how little time has it required to disconnect me from them all, not merely in act, but recollection! It is with an effort that I recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I dread to be left alone all day. You may laugh at me, but I feel as if something terrible were hanging over me—or you. The spiritual oppression is like the physical presentiment sensitive temperaments suffer when a thunder-storm is brooding, but not ready to break. Yet I can refer my ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... as if they reflected in a manner on the pure essence of her little ones. The four had retired, with much movement and noise, under imperfect control of the small Irish governess whom their aunt had hunted out for them and whose brooding resolve not to prolong so uncrowned a martyrdom she already more than suspected. Their mother had become for Kate—who took it just for the effect of being their mother—quite a different thing from the mild Marian of the past: Mr. Condrip's ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... this spirit of the sandy wastes; this is the voice of the desert, though the muezzin cries from the high turrets of the city. Indeed one is driven to repeating oneself about the repetition, so overpowering is the impression of the tall horizons of those tremendous plains, brooding upon the soul with all the solemn weight ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Salina, forsaken spouse of the gay Lysander Sprowl, she too, after sulkily brooding over her misfortunes all day, was glad enough to have any intelligent person come in and break the monotony of her sad life in ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... was that in childhood he had learned that here he was beyond his father's land, or that some early sense of loneliness in the place had been developed by a brooding fancy into a fixed feeling, I cannot well say; but certainly, as often as he came—and he liked to visit the spot, and would sometimes spend hours in it—he felt like a hermit of the wilderness cut off from human society, and was haunted ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... points of lesser light enameled the night mantle, matching the many camp fires of the great gathering. The wind blew soft and low. Night on the prairie is always solemn, and to-night the tense anxiety, the strained anticipation of more than two thousand souls invoked a brooding melancholy which it seemed even ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... race of life; and yet you remain at ease, dreaming over the past. Awake, young man, ere yet your day is done; and address yourself to your work with renewed energy, look forward to your future instead of brooding over the past, and be assured you will acquire wisdom, friends and every other needful blessing." With these words the aged man disappeared and the student awoke. His fire had gone out and his lamp burned but dimly. He rose, replenished ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... vivacious or sunny disposition—always a little in shadow, as it seems to me now, given to brooding and to dwelling upon the more serious aspects of life. How little she knew of all that has been done and thought in the world! and yet the burden of it all was, in a way, laid upon her. The seriousness of Revolutionary times, out of which came her father ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own juice stewed Zarathustra,—then did shadows and doubts fly ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... whispered Addison. "And see that head and long, pointed beak, just over the top of it! The old hen heron is brooding." ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... secondary interest. He laid his head against the chair back in his favorite attitude for uninterrupted thought, and stared into the fire. In this way he had stared out into the night of the Dakota prairie; at first brooding in discontent because things were not as he would have them, then drifting into dreams of what he would like; then weaving his dreams together and creating a something complete in itself. So had he created ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... with gay, curious Spanish ladies from surrounding ranches, piquant eager senoritas with vivacious gestures of small hands and fluttering fans; senoras plump and placid, slower in their movements and with brooding eyes. They wore their laciest mantillas, silkiest gowns and daintiest footwear to impress the alien invader. And, beside their equipages, like outriders in the cortege of a queen, caballeros and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... that senses the beginning of the end. He turned in panic. They couldn't be over half a mile away. In a panic of indecision he turned first east then west, then facing due south he hesitated a moment to take one last look at the clear open skies, and with a muffled prayer plunged into the brooding depths of ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... burdened with the calumny of having chosen to invent the crimes and violence of her dramatis personae. Not so, alas! They were but reflected from the passion and sorrow that darkened her home; it was no perverse fancy which drove that pure and innocent girl into ceaseless brooding on the conquering force of sin and the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... The Nipe squatted, brooding, in his underground nest, waiting for the special crystallization process to take place in the sodium-gold alloy that was ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dip below the rim of our vast, flat world until half past seven. Then there was an hour of delightful, lingering twilight, when the stars began to show in tiny points of light; by nine o'clock the brooding silence of the Mongolian night had settled over all ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older people—Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen—the summer proved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Gradually there formulated itself a suspicion—which grew into a conviction—that the alterations in the Cathedral had something to say in the matter. The widow of a former old verger, ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James |
