"Pensiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Isabel!" Corrie approved, pensiveness cast aside. "Come up to them, Gerard. I hear her tooting for ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... entitled "The Village Curate," which is a record of his thoughts and impressions in his Burwash days. One could hardly say that "The Village Curate" would bear reprinting at the present time; we have moved too far from its pensiveness, and an age that does not read "The Task" and only talks about Crabbe is hardly likely to reach out for Hurdis. But within its limits "The Village Curate" is good, alike in its description of scenery, its reflections and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... eyes reluctantly from the brooding peace of mountain and sky, wondered a little at her pensiveness; wondered also where her thoughts—if mere flittings of the mind are entitled to be so called—had ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... last something of its happy girlish delight—that debonnaire cheerfulness which usually characterized it. A shadow seemed to be hanging over her—a shadow, which, although it marred in no way her fresh young beauty, added a deepened pensiveness to her great somber eyes, and seemed to broaden the fringing black ring round the gray pupils. This year the girl had more to grapple with than the mere ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... tear him in pieces. Forster, likewise, after this fact, being a man formerly addicted to hospitality, company, mirth, and music, was afterwards observed to forsake all this, and with much melancholy and pensiveness (some say with madness) pined and drooped away. The wife also of Bald Butter, kinsman to the Earl, gave out the whole fact a little before her death. Neither are these following passages to be forgotten, that as soon as ever she was murdered, they made ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... subject so interesting to me as my collegiate course I seldom reflect without melancholy; not a harsh and dark brooding, but a soft and tender pensiveness which ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... lichens with slow oozing weep; Where cypress and the darker yew start wild; 5 And, 'mid the summer torrent's gentle dash Dance brighten'd the red clusters of the ash; Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds beguil'd, Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep; Till haply startled by some fleecy dam, 10 That rustling on the bushy cliff above With melancholy bleat of anxious love, Made meek enquiry for her wandering lamb: Such a green mountain 'twere most sweet to climb, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... elegiac mood, though he meant to drive away his cares later in the evening by the "Falernian system." He felt the exodus in the air. Another spring drawing to its close—everybody scattering! He was filled, too, with that peculiar pensiveness which troubles complex people when they have done a kindly act. Virtue ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a dissemblingly observing glance, and while apparently unconcerned, notes all. The girl's face wears an expression of sad yet almost hopeful pensiveness. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... reconciling herself. Then, after an instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But you haven't found ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... our good friend, Mr. Desmond, to whom we had taken a great liking, was about to sail for an indefinite absence in foreign lands. Though the mother-in-law's presence was less oppressive than formerly, there was now a pensiveness, an air of departed glory about it, that was not cheerful. There was danger of settling down to a humdrum sort of life, free from strife, perhaps, but at the same time devoid of that buoyancy which should make the home of a young ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... recollection? And yet, why torment myself thus? She loves me—that I cannot doubt; and surely her approaching change of condition, and the separation from her father which it must sooner or later entail, are sufficient to account for an occasional pensiveness on the part of a young and susceptible girl. In vain do I seek for any other probable cause of her melancholy. At times I fancy that she has some disclosure or confession to make to me, which she has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Some of thy pensiveness serene, Some of thy never-dying green, Put in this scrip of mine, That griefs may fall like snowflakes light, And deck me in a robe of white, Ready to be an angel ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... present time,' Mr Boffin assented, with his former pensiveness, as he took his seat upon his settle. 'I hope good may be coming of it in the future time. Towards which, what's your views, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of mind all his own," Saint Gregory of Nazianzus was a fair humourist, and Saint Basil was a wit. "Pensive playfulness" is Newman's phrase for Basil, but there was a speed about his retorts which did not always savour of pensiveness. When the furious governor of Pontus threatened to tear out his liver, Basil, a confirmed invalid, replied suavely, "It is a kind intention. My liver, as at present located, has given me nothing ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... from the living-room, nodded to Overland. Her pensiveness had departed. Her cheeks were flushed. "Oh, Collie! Saddle Boyar—" she began, but Overland coughed disapprovingly. He did not wish Tenlow and Saunders to suspect that the led horse was ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... (I wonder what they imagine feudalism to be?) 'Down with the Goths and Paralytics.' I suppose the Senores Gamacho and Fuentes knew what they were doing. They are prudent 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 ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... aged soul, and pure adoration went up to the Giver of every good from its altar. He lifted his gaze to the cerulean blue above him, and dwelt upon his future, with a glow of hope upon his heart—then he turned to the past, and his beaming expression gradually mellowed into pensiveness: in thought, he travelled through the long vista of years which he had left behind him, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... self-poised genius. The Mozart sonata for violin and piano is exceedingly interesting in all its three movements, light and airy in its general character,—except in the andante, which is touched with pensiveness,—and not striking very far down in its suggestions, but full of fresh beauty and consummate in its symmetrical grace. In the happiest contrast with the sonata was the wonderful D-minor quartette of Schubert. No better illustration of the marked divergence between the modes ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... being,—but with a taste as true to the Beautiful, with a soul as sensitive to the Sublime! In Evelyn's presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home! Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast! Of late she has assumed a new charm in my eyes,—a certain pensiveness and abstraction have succeeded to her wonted gayety. Ah, Love is pensive,—is it not, Cleveland? How often I ask myself that question! And yet, amidst all my hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond! How can that innocent ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shall find Wordsworth, who seems above all others, except Burns, to have had a catholic ear for the whole multitude of natural sounds, not only refusing the character of melancholy to the nightingale's song, but placing it below the stock-dove's, because it is deficient in the pensiveness and seriousness which mark the note ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... during the days of the French Directory. Had the Alchemist remained profoundly ignorant as to the identity of the old man, he must still have observed with interest, features which were equally characterised by the pensiveness of the student and the paleness of the valetudinarian. He knew, however, instinctively, as he had done upon the two preceding occasions, that he beheld a personage of illustrious memory. And he knew rightly, for it was Milton. While the great plague was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... with the growing and still budding beauty of Lisette, who was certainly, in outward appearance, the loveliest of the family; then Caliste, too, with her long dark eyelashes, and her look of proud pensiveness, was very charming. In short, the worthy man looked first on one fair girl and then on another in high delight, and concluded by heartily embracing the little Mimi playfully, scolding her for pushing by him so hastily, and then, in the same breath, declaring ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment—and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally—than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored by the colic. A little whiskey then; and as a little gave so much ease, she would try a great deal. The result ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... a shade of pensiveness. There had been two sides to the watermelon question. Peter and he had not always been able to find ripe watermelons, early in the season, and at times there had been painful consequences, the memory ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... gentleman's words proved true. The days passed like bright smiles, in which, however, lurked the pensiveness of autumn. Slowly failing maples glowed first with the hectic flush of disease, but gradually warmer hues stole into the face of Nature, for it is the dying of the leaves that causes the changes of color in ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... not very promptly answered. The stranger stood still, regarding him intently for two of three minutes with a look of peculiar pensiveness and abstraction, the heavy double fringe of his long dark lashes giving an almost drowsy pathos to his proud and earnest eyes. Soon, however, this absorbed expression changed to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... its rights again and laid claim to absolute dominion in its kingdom, and regret that it had lain so long deprived of its own, gave rise to a tearful pensiveness, which added zest to restitution. It was convalescence, but followed at once by another complaint. Feeling swung from one extreme to ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... mind was at ease for a good hour to come, so she sat quiet and peaceful. Lucy, too, was at peace. Her eye was clear; and her color coming back; she was not bursting with happiness, for there was a sweet pensiveness mixed with her sweet tranquillity; but she looked every now and then smiling from her work up at Mrs. Wilson, and the dame kept looking at her with a motherly joy caused by her bare presence ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... feeling had been to her but too much like what it was to Cowper; I mean, of course, in a far milder form. Without rendering her a prey to those horrors that defy concealment, it subdued her mood and bearing to a perpetual pensiveness; the pillar of a cloud glided constantly before her eyes; she ever waited at the foot of a secret Sinai, listening in her heart to the voice of a trumpet sounding long and waxing louder. Some, perhaps, would rejoice over these tokens ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... good man," agreed Johnnie with sudden pensiveness. "They've all been mighty good to me ever since I've been here; but I believe Mr. Stoddard has done more for me than any one else. He not only lends me books, but he takes time to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... jest the same thing," reflected Captain Leezur aloud, with a pensiveness that still had nothing of unavailing regret in it, "ef I'd been a mind tew; and had a monniment put up over me like one o' these here No. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... that they would now recall his victory over Peter, and sat down nearer. But the disciples were silent and unusually pensive. Images of the road they had traversed, of the sun, the rocks and the grass, of Christ lying down under the shelter, quietly floated through their heads, breathing a soft pensiveness, begetting confused but sweet reveries of an eternal movement under the sun. The wearied body reposed sweetly, and thought was merged in something mystically great and beautiful—and no one ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... 'it will be the end of me too.' This thought tranquillised her, and enabled her to seem indifferent. Besides no one troubled her much; Anna Vassilyevna was taken up with her swollen face; Shubin was working furiously; Zoya was given up to pensiveness, and disposed to read Werther; Nikolai Artemyevitch was much displeased at the frequent visits of 'the scholar,' especially as his 'cherished projects' in regard to Kurnatovsky were making no way; the practical chief secretary was puzzled and biding his time. Elena did not ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard at distant intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene, impressed on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city deserted, the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all elevated my mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a column, my elbow reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... by virtue of his exceeding leanness. He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop's cheeks or the suspiciously excessive ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini |
