"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But the pensive droop slowly disappeared as she harkened to the valiant words of Zachariah. It was not until Kenny's servant lifted his voice in praise of his own deeds at Phineas Striker's that she became acutely aware of the close proximity of the speakers. Gradually she surrendered to the spirits of mirth ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... that place. It seemed very little hurt, though the vegetation that had apparently choked the great open space was singed to a black fluff, among which lay thousands of calcined bones of man, horse, ass, and camel, for all was distinct in the bright, yet so pensive and forlorn, moonlight, which was that Eastern moonlight of pure astral mystery which illumines Persepolis, and Babylon, and ruined cities of the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... now in her fifteenth summer,—a tall, graceful girl, with a sweet, delicate face. She was still pale and slender, for she had not quite outgrown the effects of the old sorrow, starvation, and exposure. Her face often wore an expression of pensive sadness, unsuited to her years,—a faint shadow of her unhappy childhood still lingering about her,—but it was always ready to brighten into cheerful smiles at a kind word ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... I had listened to the conversation of these two men on philosophy and philosophers, which made a tremendous impression on me. I remember that Weiss was an absent-minded man, with a hasty and abrupt manner of speaking; he had an interesting and pensive expression which impressed me immensely. I recollect how, on being accused of a want of clearness in his writing and style, he justified himself by saying that the deep problems of the human mind could not in any case be solved by the mob. This maxim, which struck me as being ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... number of them were in company, scarcely a day passed without some overtures being made for contests of this kind, and it was often very unpleasant to me to see the object of the contest sitting in pensive silence watching her fate, while her husband and his rival were contending for his prize. I have, indeed, not only felt pity for those poor wretched victims, but the utmost indignation, when I have seen them won, perhaps ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... great golden transparencies the lowered shades in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... pace or two, and for some moments remains silent— pensive. Perhaps she is thinking of a sailor saved from sharks after falling among them, and more still of the man who saved him. Whether or no, she ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... were a dim and fractured memory in the retrospect as I next saw them. It needed all the sunshine of my September day to unsadden them, not from the rainy gloom in which I had left them then, but from the pensive associations of the years between. Yet such sunshine as that can do much, and I found it restoring me to my wonted gayety as soon as we got out of our four-wheeler after our drive from the Thames Embankment ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... weighty Motives however, oblig'd them to keep their Intimacy private; but Love cannot be conceal'd, Discretion and Tenderness being seldom found together. Zeokinizul perceiv'd that the young Bassa, who till then had talked loudly against Love, was become more pensive than usual. He himself had too much Experience not to guess the Source of this Alteration. He mildly banter'd him upon it, and diverted himself with raillying him for a Sensibility, which he often had boasted he would ever resist. There was no Way for the young Bassa to ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... on for some time without producing any material effect on the relative situation of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... screaming in its channels; and a step or two beyond I became aware of a gush of light upon the darkness. It fell from Flora's window, which she had flung open on the night, and where she now sat, roseate and pensive, in the shine of two candles falling from behind, her tresses deeply embowering and shading her; the suspended comb still in one hand, the other idly clinging to the iron stanchions with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feathered refugees alighted in the yard belonging to the house in which little Louisa and her father then were. The distress of the poor birds seemed to afflict the tender-hearted maid very much, which her father perceived as soon as she entered his chamber. "What is it makes you look so pensive now," said her father, "since it is but a few minutes ago when you were so remarkably cheerful?"—"O my dear papa!" said Louisa, "all those sweet birds, that sung so charmingly but a day or two ago, are now come into the yard starving ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... ye powers divine, And only let me call Fidelio mine. Ah, wretch! what anguish yet thy soul must prove! For thou canst hope to lose thy care in love; And when Fidelio meets thy tearful eye, Pale fear and cold despair his presence fly. With pensive steps I sought thy walks again, And kissed thy token on the verdant plain; With fondest hope, through many a blissful hour, We gave our souls to Fancy's pleasing power. Lost in the magic of that sweet employ, To build gay scenes and fashion future joy, We saw mild Peace ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... sad; here come the children leaping from the boat; they've "caught few fish," but a great deal of sunshine, (judging from their happy faces.) God bless the little voyagers, all; the laughing Agnes, the pensive Emma, the dove-eyed, tender-hearted Mary, the rosy Bell, the fearless Harry. In the green pastures by the still waters, may the dear ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... gentlemen. In the Assembly they called themselves Moderates, and opposed every energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumours of Montero's victory, they showed a subtle change of the pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune with an effrontery to which the poor man could only respond by a dazed smoothing of his beard and the ringing of the presidential bell. Then, when the downfall of the Ribierist cause became confirmed ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... tumbling lazily downstairs before him, opened the door, and ushered him into the street. With a sad and pensive air, he retraced ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... he felt both admiration and jealousy. He was ashamed to admit the aversion inspired by the wounded man, so sorely wounded that he was unable to see what was going on around him. His hatred was a form of cowardice, terrifying in its persistence. How pensive were Marguerite's eyes if she took them off her patient for a few seconds! . . . She had never looked at him in that way. He knew all the amorous gradations of her glance, but her fixed gaze at this injured man was ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it was difficult to buy up a whole people. In a commonwealth, where the People was sovereign, and the persons of the magistrates ever changing, those little comfortable commercial operations could not be managed so easily as in civilized realms like France and England. The old Leaguer thought with pensive regret, no doubt, of the hard, but still profitable bargains by which the Guises and Mayennes and Mercoeurs, and a few hundred of their noble adherents, had been brought over to the cause of the king. He sighed at the more recent memories of the Marquis de Rosny's embassy in England, and his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with profound reverence. Still more fantastic, a paralysed branch produced a living human hand, which in the accompanying engraving is ornamented with an immaculate cuff, and that hand presented a bouquet to Sophia. By reason of these matters the doctor became pensive. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Stormont strolled upon the terrace. My dear girl had a sort of restless manner to-day, and went from one occupation to another, now sitting for a few minutes at the piano, playing brief snatches of pensive melody, now taking up a book, only to throw it down again with a little weary sigh. She seated herself at a table presently, and began to arrange the sketches in her portfolio. While she was doing this a servant ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... States decides to go off its collective rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked, Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Pope, I was on the point of calling him) threw his superb viaduct across the deep ravine which divides it from Albano. At the risk of seeming to fantasticate I confess that the Pope's having built the viaduct— in this very recent antiquity—made me linger there in a pensive posture and marvel at the march of history and at Pius the Ninth's beginning already to profit by the sentimental allowances we make to vanished powers. An ardent nero then would have had his own way with ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... consequently in two hundred and forty days or eight months it would run into the moon with its buffers, and break up the quarters of that Robinson Crusoe who (and without any Friday) is the only policeman that parades that little pensive appendage or tender to our fuming engine of an earth. But the English law—oh frightful reader, don't even think of such a question as its relation in space and time to the Roman law. That it would stretch to the fixed stars is plain, but to which of them,—don't now, dear ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... dreary as possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector of the Episcopal Church at Stillwater, and a society swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a couple of his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the rector was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly sort; and the swell from Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed. The women were much better, as they always are; the two Miss Kingsburys of Philadelphia, staying at the Seashell House, two bright and engaging girls. ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pensive and grave as he said, "It is very hard on the women, certainly, that our race should have degenerated so, for I believe in my conscience they are as clever and wicked, and appreciate temptation as much as ever." (The gusto with which he said this is indescribable.) "There is the Bellasys, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... communication. He then added, "Tell Madame la Marquise that my wife is very clever and very intriguing. I adore her, and should run distracted were she to be taken from me." I lost not a moment in acquainting Madame with the affair, and gave her the letter. She became serious and pensive, and I since learned that she consulted M. Berrier, Lieutenant of Police, who, by a very simple but ingeniously conceived plan, put an end to the designs of this lady. He demanded an audience of the King, and told him that there was a lady ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... Two of these pensive wanderers were Marcia Van Clupp and Lord Algernon Masherville,—and Lord Algy was in a curiously sentimental frame of mind, and weak withal, "comme une petite queue d'agneau afflige" He had taken ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... good looks, but she would in time. She was improving every day, and many pronounced her handsomer than before her sickness, for where there had been, perhaps, a superabundance of color and health there was now a pensive, subdued beauty, preferred by some to the more glowing, dashing style which had formerly distinguished Edith Hastings from every one else in Shannondale. Something like this he said to her, but Edith only laughed and continued ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... castle joined Benefico, he declared to them in what manner their deliverance was effected; and, as a general shout of joy resounded through the neighbouring mountains, Fidus, lifting up his eyes, beheld in the midst of the multitude, standing in a pensive posture, the fair disconsolate. Her tender heart was at the instant overflowing in soft tears, caused by a kind participation of their present transport, yet mixed with the deep sad impression of a grief her bosom was full fraught with. Her face, at first, was almost hid by her white ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... the other end the night was calm and the sky star-spangled. The walk out exhilarated him; his exasperation was over. He ran lightly down the leaf-strewn steps of the old garden and looked in at the window. Mary was seated at the fire. She looked pensive, pretty and a little sad. He whistled and she smiled up. "Hooray!" she said, "I'd nearly given you up." She slipped round and had the door open before he could get out his key and drew him in. She ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... slaves we have happened to buy; and their life is but feeble; they hold themselves shyly aloof, ever watching for a chance to escape. But the reasons we have deserved stand faithfully by us; they are so many pensive Antigones, on whose help we may ever rely. Nor can such reasons as these be forcibly lodged in the soul; for indeed they must have dwelt there from earliest days, have spent their childhood there, nourished on our every thought and action; and tokens ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of her brow. I could see her dancing-partners surprised at her frequent absence of mind; she still followed the whirl, but she no longer led it. Under pretext of fatigue, she would leave suddenly and abruptly her partner's arm, in the midst of a waltz, to go and sit in some corner with a pensive and even a pouting look. If there happened to be a vacant seat next to mine, she threw herself into it, and began from behind her fan some whimsical and disjointed conversation like ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... but retired sad and pensive to his own home, where he spent the night in pondering what was best for him to do; for there was no likelihood he should be able to defend himself against the power of the king's son; therefore he at length concluded he would ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... and at length Tony, thinking she was tired, sat down on a door-step, and took her upon his knee, to tell her his dream of the wonderful broom which swept beautifully all by itself. Dolly grew more and more pensive after hearing this, and sat silent for a long time, with her small head resting thoughtfully upon her hand, as she looked ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... postponed the fulfilment of his word. At last, weary of beseeching him, she devised a speech which she trusted might have the desired effect. Accordingly, when the monarch came to see her one day, he found her in a pensive mood, playing with her pretty boy; and the lad, being presently set upon his feet, he promptly tottered down the room, whereon she cried out to him, "Come here, you little bastard!" Hearing this word of evil ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the likeness flashed upon Lynde suddenly, as it had done in the grove the previous day, that it now had the power to startle him. At the present moment it did not even seriously annoy him. In an idle, pensive way he noted the coincidence of the man leading the mule. The man was Morton and the mule was Mary! Lynde smiled to himself at the reflection that Mary would probably not accept the analogy with very good grace if she knew about it. This carried him to Rivermouth; ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... some delicacy here and there, now and then a touch of real, if by no means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... to the first-floor, we found Mr. Barton sulkily awaiting us, handcuffed to one of the constables, and watched by Polton with pensive disapproval. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... over the old picturesqueness, the old gloom, and the grassy wayside of former days. She sate by the window on the little settle, sadly gazing out upon the gathering shades of night, which harmonised well with her pensive thought. Mr. Bell slept soundly, after his unusual exercise through the day. At last he was roused by the entrance of the tea-tray, brought in by a flushed-looking country-girl, who had evidently been finding some variety from her usual occupation of waiter, in assisting this ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... castles, And ash-trees bowed into tents; For the garden, though ancient and pensive, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... chine, to wear The factious gown, and tire his client's ear And purse with endless noise. Trophies of war, Old rusty armour, with an honour'd scar, And wheels of captiv'd chariots, with a piece Of some torn British galley, and to these The ensign too, and last of all the train The pensive pris'ner loaden with his chain, Are thought true Roman honours; these the Greek And rude barbarians equally do seek. Thus air, and empty fame, are held a prize Beyond fair virtue; for all virtue dies Without reward; and yet by this fierce lust ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... into his life in full sway, the man now imagined he saw creeping from under the flower petals and from behind the tall trees, the tiny inhabitants of Jinnie's fairyland. Then he turned his eyes toward her, and as he watched the lithe young figure, the pensive face lost and rapt in the lullaby, Theodore came to the greatest decision of his life. He couldn't live without Jinnie Grandoken! No matter if she was the niece of a cobbler, no matter who her antecedents were—she was born into the world for him, and all that ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... pleasing young person, pretty to look at, with her soft olive complexion, and languid pensive eyes, obliging and intelligent; and the change from the dry, authoritative Miss Winter was so delightful, that unedifying contrasts were continually being drawn. Blanche struck up a great friendship for her at once; Mary, always docile, ceased to be piteous at her lessons, and Ethel moralised ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Epicurean, with a great many more of the sect, as it usually happens when learned and inquisitive men meet together, the remembrance of the comedy led us to this inquiry,—Why we are disturbed at the real voices of men, either angry, pensive, or afraid, and yet are delighted to hear others represent them, and imitate their gestures, speeches, and exclamations. Every one in the company gave almost the same reason. For they said, he that only represents ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... said, and her voice was full and tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could she tell ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... very bright and practical one, notwithstanding those few hard lines, looked pensive for a moment. Then its habitual expression of cheerfulness returned to it, and when she entered the house Frances Kane looked as practical and business-like a woman as could be found anywhere in the whole ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... meet ours with a frank yet modest gaze. Again the same girl rests from her labors, sitting on a stone, lost in revery. Another sweet child is the girl seated by a well, with a broken pitcher lying on the ground beside her. Her hands are clasped on her knee, as she bends slightly forward in a pensive attitude, her large eyes full of childish pathos. Cajolery also belongs to this set, and is so named from the caresses with which a little girl begs some favor of an older sister, whose merry eyes show that she fully understands the secrets of ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with a pattern of cornflowers, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Vague against the shining sky, Where light yet throbs and confuses the eye, Then see it again, white and clear, As slowly, poisdly it falls by The dark green foliage and floats near. But Celia, apart, is pensive and must sigh, And Anais but faintly pursues the game. An encroaching, inner flame Burns in their hearts with the acrid smoke of unrest; But gaiety runs like quicksilver in Rose's breast, And Phillis, rising, Walks by ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... inauspiciously ushered in all former espousals. The bride had recovered her bloom and beauty, while the melancholy which had seemingly settled for ever upon the open brow of the bridegroom, had now given place to a pensive shade that only added interest to his expressive features; and, as in simple state, after the completion of the sacred rites, the youthful pair walked, arm in arm, amongst their thronging and admiring tenants towards the Hall, many a fervent prayer was breathed that the curse of the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Normandy, with William the Conqueror, and some of us possess the spirit of our ancestors the French. I do for one. A pleasant spirit it is. Vive la Bagatelle, is the maxim. A light heart may bid defiance to fortune. And yet, Erskine, I must tell you, that I have been a little pensive of late, amorously pensive, and disposed to read Shenstone's Pastoral on Absence, the tenderness and simplicity of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the tooth-ache, he feels most acute pain while nobody pities him. In that situation am I at present: but ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... that the poet is without his measure of feeling; but it is rather the pensive feeling of a Jaques, the dainty interest of a Matthew Arnold, than any surge of emotion. The poet seems to me to encourage his brain to feel—to give it that passing luxury with a ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... to the high tree-tops, nodding and fanning in the night breeze like coquettish dames in an eastern ball-room. Everywhere—at the river bank, where our tents stood, above the long grass, and in the forest—clear, faint and delicate, like the bloom of a fair woman's cheek, or the pensive theme of some dream fugue, or the sweet notes of some far-off, floating harmonies, was an odor of hidden flowers. A trader's nature is, of necessity, rough in the grain, but it is not corrupt with the fevered joys of the gilded cities. Even we could ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... angel, with the jasmine wreathed, Wherefrom the sweetness over brow and lips, And luminous white eyelids tremulously slips, A visible essence from thy beauty breathed,— The pure and pensive marvel of thy face is sheathed In tresses softer than the bloom of night, Wherefrom the dampness on thy forehead drips With dews from out God's meadows infinite,— Thy face, itself, a lily filled with light:— ...
— The Angel of Thought and Other Poems - Impressions from Old Masters • Ethel Allen Murphy
... God is better than our God. These you behold before you are the chief warriors of my dominions. We supplicate you to pray to your God to send us rain, for our fields are parched for the want of water." De Soto, who was a reflective man, of pensive temperament and devoutly inclined, responded: "We are all alike sinners, but we will pray to God, the Father of Mercies, to show his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... straight ahead of him, his gray eyes pensive, the short pipe shifted to the corner of his mouth. Finally he glanced down amusedly at ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Durazzo sat opposite the king, at a separate table among his brothers. Little by little his look grew fixed, his brow pensive. He was fancying that Andre might have supped in this very hall on the eve of his tragic end, and he thought how all concerned in that death had either died in torment or were now languishing in prison; the queen, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... (1) pending, impending, independent, pendulum, perpendicular, expenditure, pension, suspense, expense, pensive, compensate, ponder, ponderous, preponderant, pansy, poise, pound; (2) pendant, stipend, appendix, compendium, propensity, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... weaknesses and his vanities, of which he scarcely dares to think any longer. The descriptions he often gives of himself—such as, 'a dreamer' (songe-creux), 'soft' (molle), 'heavy' (poisante), 'pensive,' and so forth [32]—prove that he cannot have arrived at a pure enjoyment of life. He questions the happiness of being a husband and father. We shall touch upon his views as regards woman, and many other peculiarities of his, in the passages of ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... back to Altamont whilst Hatteras remained pensive. Thanks to his attentions, the doctor succeeded in recalling the unfortunate man to life, but not to feeling; he neither saw, heard, nor spoke, but he lived. The next day Hatteras said to ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... professors to encounter such tremendous sacrifices. As the heathen bystanders gazed on the martyrdom of a husband and a master, and as they observed the unflinching fortitude with which he endured his anguish, they often became deeply pensive. They would exclaim—"The man has children, we believe—a wife he has, unquestionably—and yet he is not unnerved by these ties of kindred: he is not turned from his purpose by these claims of affection. We must look into the affair—we ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... case should befall him, he will then, perhaps, as I have often done, when standing in pensive recollection at little Jane's grave, make an application of these lines, which are inscribed on a grave-stone erected in the same ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... calendar of recorded time—sponge it out, in short—and get back to yesterday afternoon." She made no reply to this. "Don't you think it was a very pleasant picnic, Miss Pasmer?" he asked, with pensive respectfulness. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of ageless Nature. No! The probings of Justice could never reach the whole truth. And even Justice quailed at its own probings when the mother-child was passed up from Tod's side into the witness-box and the big laborer was seen to look at her and she at him. She seemed to have grown taller; her pensive little face and beautifully fluffed-out corn-brown hair had an eerie beauty, perched up there in the arid witness-box, as of some small figure from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and sudden moans Shook 'mong blue flags. Waked, vague unrest And tender yearning rose within her breast, And longing love, that she ne'er more might still. When late upon her parting day smiled chill, Pensive she gazed upon the darkling land, With lingering feet o'er-passed the shining strand, And silent sat on an o'erhanging ledge, The sea o'erlooking. Far the horizon's edge Athwart her gaze a rim of blue hills cleft, Whereat she sighed. "So rose, ere I them left, So smiled, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... in aimless mood, Pondered the tomb-stone legends, quaint and rude, Wherein the pensive dreamer might divine A tragic history in every line; For so does fate, with bitterest irony, Epitomize fame's immortality, Perpetuating for all after days Mute lamentations and unnoted praise. And Gawayne, reading here and there the story Of fame obscure and unremembered ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... his was the sorrow of disappointed, selfish ambition. Jeremiah lamented the fall and desolation of Jerusalem: and his plaintive accents were inspired by genuine patriotism and religion. Observe his venerable figure in the Sixtine chapel; there he sits pensive and disconsolate, with his legs crossed, his wearied head resting upon his hand, and his eyes rivetted on the ground, as if nothing could engage his attention but the woes of the daughter of Sion[55]. Then listen ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... still among them, despite the furnace through which they have passed.(493) But the banished were without doubt the best of the nation, and now they had "dreed their weird," gone through the fire, been lifted out of the habits and passions of the past, and chastened by banishment—pensive and wistful as exile alone can ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... examples in which the two principal colours may be employed effectively, I may cite the Bacchic air, "O vin, dissipe la tristesse," and the pensive monologue, "Etre, ou ne pas etre," both from the opera Hamlet, by Ambroise Thomas. The forced, unnatural quality of the first calls for the use of a clear, open, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Kate's joy, and Kate's joy was subdued by sympathy with Charley's sorrow; so that, after the first effervescing burst, they settled down into a calm and comfortable state of flatness, with very red eyes and exceedingly pensive minds. We must, however, do Charley the justice to say that the red eyes applied only to Kate; for although a tear or two could without much coaxing be induced to hop over his sun-burned cheek, he had got beyond that ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the islands, up thoroughfares, across the reaches of the sea, they played a little game of selecting the right cottage from the little white farm-houses dotted along the shores, and said, "We'd take this or that, and we'd do thus and so with it—and live this way!" Then they would laugh, and grow pensive, as if the land with its smoke wreaths had suddenly drifted past their eyes, reminding them of the future. 'You are bound with invisible cords,' a voice said. 'You have escaped in fancy, but to-morrow you will find the world wagging ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... when very young are nice-looking without being beautiful, very supple and pensive, and with expressive eyes. They lack the unsteady, insincere countenance of the men, and have reposeful, placid faces, with occasional good features. There is a good deal of character in their firmly closed lips, the upper lip being slightly heavy but well-shaped. The inside of the mouth is ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... this sudden change? Consider; 'tis no hardship to meet such ladies as Madame de Sabran, or Madame de Prie—designer though I fear De Prie is for the domestic felicity of the youthful king—nor indeed my good friend, La Parabere, somewhat pale and pensive though she groweth. And what shall I say for Madame de Tencin, the spirituelle, who is to be with us; or Madame de Caylus, niece of Maintenon, but the very opposite of Maintenon in every possible way? Moreover, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... outstretched wings, a figure suggestive of gladness, hope and the dawn of high adventure, is a fitting symbol of the sunrise. He seems "a-tiptoe for a flight" on the summit of his column; his profile against the sky is superb. On the opposite column "The Setting Sun," a young woman with pensive face, shaded by her hair and drooping wings, sinks to rest. These figures stand on translucent shafts that are pillars of light in the evening. They bear garlanded capitals and rise from double fountain bowls bound together by rising and falling jets and sheets of water. The column bases ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... of Britain's pensive sons, Though still thy name be found, Though royal Thames where'er he runs ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... poor soon-perished child! Why did her innocent virginity Follow Desire within his arrowy wild? She dies pursuing the cruel ecstasy That keeps as mortal wounds for them that find. Serene her pensive body lies at last Like a mown poppy-flower to sleep resigned, Softly resigned. The wildwood things aghast, With pitiful hearts instinctive, sweet as hers, Approach her now: love, death, and virgin grace, Blue distance, and the ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... and went away pensive. He was in rebellion against the strange ways grown men have of discharging their duties as citizens—a rather remarkable thing, and perhaps a proof that Jim Irwin's methods had already accomplished much in preparing Newton and Raymond for citizenship. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... of tossed wistaria bloom Foam up in purple turbulence, Where twining boughs have built a room And wing'd winds pause to garner scents And scattered sunlight flecks the gloom, She broods in pensive indolence. ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... folded hands he stands in a pensive mood]. The Executive Committee is expecting its chairman. And I know of a professor who alone ought to pay an extra thousand for a letter he wrote. [To the others.] Gentlemen, briefly speaking, I will do it. On behalf of the society, ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... and, Jane, there seems no doubt about Dal. How pleased I shall be if it comes off under my wing! The American girl is simply exquisite, and so vivacious and charming. And Dal has quite given up being silly—not that I ever thought him silly, but I know YOU did—and is very quiet and pensive; really were it any one but he, one would almost say 'dull.' And they roam about together in the most approved fashion. I try to get the aunt to make all her remarks to me. I am so afraid of her putting Dal off. He is so fastidious. I have promised Billy anything, up to the half of my kingdom, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... as the seat of the Unitarians, as Baltimore is that of the Roman Catholics, and Philadelphia that of the Quakers.... No axiom is more applicable to the pensive, serious, scrutinizing inhabitant of the New England States than this: 'What I do not understand, I reject as worthless and false;' so said one of the most learned men of Boston to me. 'Why occupy the mind with that which is incomprehensible? Have ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... chubby-legged infant a few months older; charming studies of a little girl with great black eyes and delicate features; then of a tall, slender slip of a maiden, decidedly foreign-looking; then of a sweet and pensive face, with great dark eyes, long, beautiful curling lashes, and very heavy, low-arched brows, exquisitely moulded mouth and chin, and most luxuriant dark hair; then others, still older, in every variety of dress,—even in fancy costume, such as the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... under," opined the amiable Donkin to the forecastle. "If you don't teach 'em their place they put on you like anythink." He flung all his worldly possessions into the empty bed-place, gauged with another shrewd look the risks of the proceeding, then leaped up to the Finn, who stood pensive and dull.—"I'll teach you to swell around," he yelled. "I'll plug your eyes for you, you blooming square-head." Most of the men were now in their bunks and the two had the forecastle clear to themselves. The development ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... had borne a part, which was more than some folks with long legs could say. Gentlemen never did that sort of thing, nor did they twit their best friends with their misfortunes, Thorny would remark, casting a pensive glance at his thin hands, longing the while to give Ben a good shaking. This hint would remind the other of his young master's late sufferings and all he owed his dear mistress, and he usually ended the controversy by turning ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Commanded by the grateful King Tidings of Rama's spouse to bring. Then by Sampati's counsel led, Brave Hanuman, who mocked at dread, Sprang at one wild tremendous leap Two hundred leagues, across the deep. To Lanka's[32] town he urged his way, Where Ravan held his royal sway. There pensive 'neath Asoka boughs He found poor Sita, Rama's spouse. He gave the hapless girl a ring, A token from her lord and King. A pledge from her fair hand he bore; Then battered down the garden door. Five captains of the host he slew, Seven sons of councillors o'erthrew; ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... conversion to Catholicism was but to dream. Pondering thus, he naturally regarded with indulgence the beautiful and gentle Gothic maiden delivered into his power by a scheming Roman ecclesiastic. After his conversations with Veranilda, he had a pensive air; and certain persons who observed him remarked on it to each other, whence arose the rumour that Totila purposed taking to wife this last descendant of the Amals. Whatever his temptations, he ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... might I give advice to you, Whom in my fear I love so well; From men of pensive virtue go, Dread Beings! and your empire show On hearts like ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... moments she stood there in the open with pensive eyes following the movements of scurrying, toddling legs, many of them encased in the minutest of buckskin, chap-like pantaloons and the tiniest of beaded moccasins. It was a sight that yielded her a tenderness of emotion that struggled ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... scarcely to know of her own existence; there was about her a simplicity to which he had felt himself rise only in the presence of the spirit about some lonely mountain-top or in the heart of deep woods. Her gaze was not vacant, not listless, but the pensive look of a sensitive child, and Clayton let himself fancy that there was in it an unconscious love of the beauty before her, and of its spiritual suggestiveness a slumbering sense, perhaps easily awakened. Perhaps he might ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... the little dogs bred for ladies' laps are the curls of a mother's darling; the pendant love-locks of the old, old maid who, despite of changeful fashions, clings to those memorials of the pensive beauty of her youth, are repeated in solemn mimicry by the dachshund trotting at her heels; but the sensible fur cap of the dignified Newfoundland reminds us of the cold regions from which his forefathers ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the girls knew no English, but they whispered; they could not write little notes, so they kept passing different objects, to which Gipsy and Italian promptly attached a meaning. Scolding them helped not. It was "a pensive sight." ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... sermons of Chrysostom in his own see of Constantinople. What daisies sprinkle the walks of Cowper, if we take his Task for a companion through the lanes of Weston! Under the thick hedges of Horton, darkening either bank of the field in the September moonlight, Il Penseroso is still more pensive. And whoever would feel at his heart the deep pathos of Collins's lamentation for Thomson, must murmur it to himself, as he glides upon the stealing wave, by the breezy lawns and elms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... the country, getting lost in valleys where it piled up into fleecy mounds, getting caught in tree-tops where it fluttered like tattered banners. Every now and then, with the suddenness of our approach, we would startle an aged shepherd, muffled and pensive as an Arab, strolling slowly across moorlands, followed closely by the sentinel goats which led his flock. The day had been strangely mystic. Time seemed a mood. I had ceased to trouble about where I ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... going, he strolled out the moment after breakfast—and took a train to Beaulieu. At the young man's hotel he sent in his card, and was told that this Monsieur had already gone out for the day. His mood of marching straight up to the guns thus checked, he was left pensive and distraught. Not having seen Beaulieu (they spoke of it then as a coming place), he made his way up an incline. That whole hillside was covered with rose-trees. Thousands of these flowers were starring the lower air, and the strewn petals of blown and fallen roses covered the light ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with magic, methinks, And the future was given to her gaze; For an obelisk marked her abode, and a sphinx On her threshold kept vigil always. She was pensive and ever alone, nor was seen In the haunts of the dissolute crowd; But communed with the ghosts of the Pharaohs, I ween, Or with visitors wrapped in ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... my last evening on earth," thought the prisoner. "Ere the sun set again, I may have entered into eternal rest." A deep sense of holy peace stole into the maiden's heart, though the expression of her beautiful countenance was pensive as she meditated on the future. "I shall no more join in worship with my brethren below; but perhaps, while they gather together in secret, with perils around them, my eyes shall see the King in His beauty, shall behold the land that is very far off. And will not He for whom ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... strange, but nothing more certain, than the different influence which the seasons of night and day exercise upon the moods of our minds. Him whom the moon sends to bed with a head full of misty meaning the sun-will summon in the morning with a brain clear and lucid as his beam. Twilight makes us pensive; Aurora is the goddess of activity. Despair curses at midnight; Hope blesses ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... She remained pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma, then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow of melancholy ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... skill to bear upon it. Guided, and yet soothed by her velvet rein, Rosa really seemed to become more steady. She was assuredly more thoughtful, and there was no better sign of Cupid's advance upon the outworks of a girl's heart than reverie. If her fits of musing were a shade too pensive, the experienced eye of the observer descried no cause for discouragement in this feature. Rosa was a spoiled, wayward child, freakish and mischievous, to whom liberty was too dear to be resigned without a sigh. By and by, she would wear her shackles as ornaments, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... student treads The sylvan haunts, exultingly leaps forth To hail the coming of the genial spring, Shedding around from her green lap the buds, In winter's rugged casket long enshrined, To form the chaplet of the infant year.— Young pensive moralist!—'tis sweet to muse On beauties which escape the vulgar eye, To talk with Nature 'mid her woodland paths, And hear an answering voice in every breeze.— You court her beauties with a lover's zeal; You hear her ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... one day, in a pensive mood, along a crowded thoroughfare, where active men jostled each other in the pursuit of business. There was life and hope in their eyes, and vigor in their limbs. It is not on the streets that one is likely to meet ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay color, and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... expression. Her auburn hair played carelessly in the wind, and her features, though not of classic outline, were radiant with life. Her eye was one of the finest I have ever seen—rich, deep-toned, and eloquent, speaking volumes in each varying expression, and generally suggestive of pensive emotion. Irving was about eight years her senior, and this difference was just sufficient to draw out that fond reliance of female character which he has so beautifully set forth in the sketch of 'The Wife.' The ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song: Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heard persons lament in a pensive and apologetic sort of way, "Yes, I have a great weakness for fine books." The very presence of this mis-called weakness, however, is unmistakable proof of great mental strength, and those who suffer ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper |
