"Reflective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her own thought coming back upon her with a reflective force, and a thrill at her heart at Frank Scherman's words. Had these two only planned tableaux and danced ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... lad of sixteen, William Penn went up to the University, he found to his surprise that Oxford was the home of Thomas Loe. There the good man had already suffered imprisonment for conscience sake. The personality of the Quaker appealed to the reflective temperament of the young student, whilst the good man's sufferings for his convictions awoke his profoundest sympathies. To the horror of his father, he ardently espoused the persecuted cause, involving himself in such disfavor with the authorities ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... change themselves for us into grotesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the Elysian fields, although we do not disclose the true opinion of our hearts, because we think it more advisable to keep the people in outward decency by means of these images. Or if we are less reflective, and ourselves fettered by the bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to the true plebeian level, by believing that which, so understood, would be foolish fable; and by finding, in those purely spiritual indications, nothing but the promise of a continuance, to all eternity, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... In this reflective mood thoughts arose in their minds. They grasped at them, fearing to lose them; and metaphysics came back again—came back with respect to the rain and the sun, the gravel in their shoes, the flowers on the grass—with respect to everything. When they looked at the candle burning, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... with more than usual solemnity fixing upon the offender a gaze severe yet pitiful and reluctant, as one who foresees for another a fate deserved indeed, and yet too terrible to contemplate. Perhaps before that astute and reflective mind there rose a vision of the gallows nine years later to be erected by his own order, whereon John Billington, deliberate murderer of John Newcomen, should expiate his crime and open the gloomy record of capital ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the sympathy, nevertheless, and renewing and increasing with the pulsations of a compassion that she took for her reflective survey. The next time she saw Dartrey Fenellan, she was assured of him, as being the man who might be spoken to; and by a woman: though not by a girl; not spoken to by her. The throb of the impulse precipitating speech subsided to a dumb yearning. He noticed her look: he was unaware of the human ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... school or tendency developed its own mores to treat the problems of life in its own way. An ascetic policy never is a primary product of the "ways" in which unreflecting men meet the facts of life. It is reflective and derived. It is a secondary stage of faith built on experience and reflection. It is, therefore, dogmatic. It must be sustained by faith in the fundamental pessimistic conviction. It never can ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... development of the Negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, led me to furnish something to meet a felt need. If the Negro slave desired his native land before the Rebellion, will not the free, intelligent, and reflective American Negro turn to Africa with its problems of geography and missions, now that he can contribute something towards the improvement of the condition of humanity? Editors and writers everywhere ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... driver and fireman were not upon it. He knew, however, that they could not be far off—probably looking after something connected with their train—and that they would be back immediately; he climbed up to the foot-plate and sat down on the rail. He there became reflective, and recalled, with some degree of amusement as well as satisfaction, some of the more recent incidents of his vocation. He smiled as he remembered how, not very far from where he sat, he had on a cloudy evening got into a horse-box, and boring a hole in it with a gimlet, applied his ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... is by our reflective and reasoning powers, with which we seem to be exclusively endowed, that we know that it is injurious, first to others and then to ourselves, to resist the social instinct which governs us, and which we call JUSTICE. It is our reason which teaches us that the selfish ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... it constitutes almost the only well-marked point of distinction between these and actions that are done upon reflection. But from this it must again follow that some principle lies at the root of instinct other than that which underlies reflective action, and this can only be looked for in a determination of the will through a process that lies in the unconscious, {115a} to which this character of unhesitating infallibility will attach itself in ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... as it lies around them, a great problem is presented in this Goethe; a singular, highly significant phenomenon, and now also means more or less complete for ascertaining its significance. A man of wonderful, nay, unexampled reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of reflective, serious and cultivated men, invites us to study him; and to determine for ourselves, whether and how far such influence has been salutary, such reputation merited. That this call will one day be answered, that Goethe will be seen and judged of in his real character among us, appears ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... meanwhile, had become more strained. The sudden flinging up of the former's arms had had the worst effects on the animal's nerves. Spike, the croucher on all-fours, he might have tolerated; but Spike, the semaphore, inspired him with thoughts of battle. He was growling in a moody, reflective manner. His eye was full ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... that he truly and touchingly, i.e., poetically, describes. Wordsworth, indeed, never carried a pedlar's pack, nor did Byron ever command a pirate ship, or Coleridge shoot an albatross; but there were times and moods in which their thoughts intently realised, and identified themselves with the reflective wanderer, the impetuous Corsair, and the ancient mariner. They felt their feelings, thought their thoughts, burned with their passions, dreamed their dreams, and lived their lives, or died their deaths. In relation to his creations, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... atheism and materialism; not the genuine villain of Shakspeare and Nature, who employs his reasoning powers in creating new schemes and devising new means, and conquers remorse by avoiding it,—by fixing his hopes and fears on the more pressing emergencies of worldly business. So reflective a miscreant as Franz could not exist: his calculations would lead him to honesty, if merely because it was the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... laws of mind admit only of a gradual communication of knowledge. It was necessary, therefore, that men should be first stored with elementary principles, then advanced to axioms and syllables, and afterwards introduced into the fellowship of the mystery of Divine truth. Hence any reflective mind, pondering upon the dealings of God with men, will discover a progressive development of revelation, adjusted with careful adaptation to the preparedness of different ages of mankind. In the first ages God spake to men ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... reflective tone in which this was spoken appeared to amuse Andy prodigiously, and he drew a little behind, and shook so as apparently to run a great risk of failing off his horse, while Sam's face was immovably composed into ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... absolute as they are simple, the political system also becomes absolute and lasting; without improving, it is true, but also without the constant changes which bring misery with revolution to thoughtful, reflective, and systematic nations. What a frightful amount of misfortunes has not logic, as it is called, brought upon the French! It was in the name of logical and metaphysical principles that the fabric of society was destroyed a hundred years ago, to make room for what was then ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... it's all right wid him. Things allus do come right, some time," she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... he responded, wondering whether she could hear the tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... art paints its objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us only successively the relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, its elements ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... sensation as of writhing grim figures of snakes in one's boots, and the intervening rusty rim of the hat that was not in the original prospect takes a snake-like—But stay! Is this the rim of my own hat tumbled all awry? I' mushbe! A few reflective moments, not unrelieved by hiccups, mush be d'voted ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... free to act and free to talk. Yet in our hearts we feared none but Rupert, and the doubt was not whether we could do the thing so much as whether we should. For in moments of excitement and intense feeling a man makes light of obstacles which look large enough as he turns reflective eyes on them in ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of death, and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter. If they were too often ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be so d——d rough with the stranger, considering he's saved the coach a very bad smash," suggested a reflective young journalist in the next seat. "He talks as ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... speak and act more from immediate impressions than from reflection and meditation. They are therefore more social and communicative; more fond of society, and of places of public resort and amusement. An Englishman is more reflective in his habits. He lives in the world of his own thoughts, and seems more self-existent and self-dependent. He loves the quiet of his own apartment; even when abroad, he in a manner makes a little solitude around him by his silence and reserve; ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... do, and so represent experience that we for the first time make it ours, they had only a loose and troubled possession. They beheld or took part in great events, but there was no answerable commotion in their reflective being; and they passed throughout turbulent epochs in a sort of ghostly quiet and abstraction. Feeling seems to have been strangely disproportioned to the occasion, and words were laughably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such as it was. Juvenal ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more than half the night in chatting. There was nothing above mediocrity in the look or manner of the youth; his descriptions of what he had seen were unmarked by any thing glowing or picturesque; his observations did not evince either a quick or a reflective mind, and yet, over this mass of commonplace, enthusiasm for his leader had shed a rich glow, like a gorgeous sunlight on a landscape, that made all beneath ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... reflective. It occurred to her that she, also, had been no favorite of his. She changed the subject. We talked on what had happened in Surrey, and commenced a discussion on my wardrobe, when we were summoned to tea. Temperance brought Arthur to the table half asleep, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... cultivating the thinking powers; as frequent occasions occur, in which the incidents of the narrative, and the conversations arising from them, are intended to awaken and engage the reasoning and reflective ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... says, lounging over on one foot reflective like, "nobody could be a-viewin' the sea with that lovin', ownership look unless he'd bossed her a bit.... If I'm right, Admiral, ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... tone of his poetry renders it attractive to many persons. He gives expression to the sad, reflective moods that are apt, especially in time of suffering or disappointment, to come to most of us. The moral sense of the American people is strong; and sometimes a comforting though commonplace truth from Nature is more pleasing than the most exquisite but superficial description ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... saw in place of the bureau which stood opposite to him, and of the Oriental china which was the detective's special pride, and on which his eyes seemed to be fixed, some vision of the past which was far more real than the unsubstantial present. Presently he went on talking in a reflective undertone: ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... his own tattered condition, and passed a reflective hand over the stubble on his chin. In a few days his face would resemble a scrubbing-brush. In that mournful moment he would have exchanged even his pipe and tobacco-box—worth untold gold—for shaving tackle. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure rainbows all about the firmament of man's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... conspicuous writer in the Quarterly Review but, as his enemies thought, a renegade bought by pensions. It is, I hope, needless to defend him against this charge. He was simply an impatient man of generous instincts and no reflective power, who had in his youth caught the revolutionary fever, and, as he grew up, developed the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... of the cabin, mended the fire in the tiny sheet-iron stove. His first precaution was to drain his pocket flask, which had somehow come through unscathed, and, as he peeled away his clinging garments in the flickering light, he telephoned the Tuscarora House for a change of clothing. In the reflective half-hour before the coming of the messenger he felt a genuine regret that Graves had gone his own way. The affair had dropped already into humorous perspective, and it seemed to him that, had they stood side by side in this cabin, every barrier must have ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... second evening I gave Vohrenlorf the slip, and went out on the Boulevards alone. In great cities nobody is known; I enjoyed the luxury of being ignored. I might pass for a student, a chemist, at a pinch, perhaps, for a poet of a reflective type. My natural manner would seem no more than a touch of youth's pardonable arrogance. I sat down and had some coffee. It was half-past ten, and the pavements were full. I bought a paper and read a paragraph about ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... was the reflective rejoinder. "We used to be fairly chummy in the old Ann Arbor days, Evan, and yet I never, until a few days ago, knew or guessed that Senator Blount was ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... beginning the sequence of his life; he passed through each event not for himself, not from any karmic compulsion, but solely for the upliftment of reflective human beings. His four reporter-disciples-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John-recorded the ineffable drama for the benefit of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Lazarus, and He wasn't even His brother," she answered in a reflective voice, then by way of defending herself added inconsequently: "I was watching two Hottentot ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the Chinese New-year in Canton a drab and sober event in comparison. He hated Flora Desimone, as all Nora's adherents most properly did, but with a hatred wholly reflective and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... give up the pleasures of society, and remain almost alone in her apartment, than to submit to a yoke she was not disposed to bear. This species of exile increased my attachment to her, by that natural inclination which excites me to approach the wretched, I found her mind metaphysical and reflective, although at times a little sophistical; her conversation, which was by no means that of a young woman coming from a convent, had for me the greatest attractions; yet she was not twenty years of age. Her complexion was seducingly fair; her figure would have been majestic ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... further in essence, than we have done! How different our attitude to our fellows; and how lowly our attitude to God! Such sorrow would sober us, would deliver us from our lusting after the gauds of earth, would make us serious and reflective, would bring us to that 'sad, wise valour' which is the conquering ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... character, and with this perception came a broader and deeper realization of her greatness as an actress. Her real self now became more complex than his wildest imagined ideal of her. That this sweet and reflective girl should be the actress was as difficult to understand as that The Baroness should be at heart a good woman. For five minutes he hardly heard what she said, so busy was his mind readjusting itself to this abrupt ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... words, drew his elbows from the table, and shot a keen, inquiring glance at his friend, which, however, fell promptly before the latter's unconscious gaze and was succeeded by one of reflective melancholy. Then, with a slight sigh, he raised his glass to the lamp, and while peering abstractedly through the ruby, "The story of turning my back upon my house," he said musingly, "shaking its very dust off my feet, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... business, he rose and left the court. Evidently the barrister to whom he was talking had observed to what this change of demeanour was due, for he looked first at me in the dock and next at Sir John Bell as, recovering his pomposity, he made his way through the crowd. Then he grew reflective, and pushing his wig back from his forehead he stared at the ceiling ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... grave look of early thoughtfulness, Seen often in some little childish face Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace (Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!) The unnatural sufferings of the factory child, But a staid quietness, reflective, mild, Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes, Sense of life's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... thing to see the young eagle in somber dream, the man of unhesitating action becoming introspective. Floods of intent business men, gay young girls, and grizzled old farmers in groups of twos and threes, streamed by, dimly shadowed in his reflective eyes. All these people had purpose and reward in their lives; he alone was a stray, a tramp, with no one but old Kintuck to draw him to any particular ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... which Dickens and Thackeray were the greater lights was Bulwer Lytton,—versatile; subjective in genius; sentimental, and yet not sensational; reflective, yet not always sound in morals; learned in general literature, but a charlatan in scientific knowledge; worldly in his spirit, but not a pagan; an inquisitive student, seeking to penetrate the mysteries of Nature as well as to paint ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... intimate acquaintance with the resourceful individual whom the "boys" called Gentleman Jack, he would have been disquieted by that laugh. It was an axiom among those who knew him well, that when Gentleman Jack chuckled in the reflective way, he generally had something ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... I have rarely known a woman so entirely fascinating as Miss Landon; and this arose mainly from her large sympathy. She was playful with the young, sedate with the old, and considerate and reflective with the middle-aged. She could be tender and she could be severe, prosaic or practical, and essentially of and with whatever party she happened to be among. I remember this faculty once receiving an illustration. She was taking lessons in riding, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the Negative character of the age is distinctive. There has not before appeared a race like that of civilized Europe at this day, thoughtfully unproductive of all art—ambitious—industrious—investigative—reflective, and incapable. Disdained by the savage, or scattered by the soldier, dishonored by the voluptuary, or forbidden by the fanatic, the arts have not, till now, been extinguished by analysis and paralyzed by protection. Our lecturers, learned in history, exhibit the descents ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... confidence be cultivated? Mainly by cultivating the habit of turning first to self when reflective thought is required. It is presupposed that we must consult the library and the world about us for raw facts of various kinds, for historical events, scientific data, views of men, descriptions, etc.; but when our own thought is wanted on a topic with which we are somewhat ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... thet way myself," returned the short guide, scratching his head in a reflective manner; "but Cale, he thinks the other way; an' Cale, he sure knows more about foxes in a day than I wud in a year. Wall, we done heard as haow he hed made a contrack with this company fur a number o' years, tew act as manager o' ther farm. It's ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... information she communicated, indeed, was so valuable and important that she could not trust the air with it, but whispered the most important portions in a confidential tone. Among the crowd, Cerinthy Ann's theological admirer was observed in deeply reflective attitude; and that high-spirited young lady added further to his convictions of the total depravity of the species by vexing and discomposing him in those thousand ways in which a lively, ill-conditioned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... steadfast. Then as the subjects are primary, so the feeling with which Burns regards them is primary too—that is, he gives us the first spontaneous gush—the first throb of his heart, and that a most strong, simple, manly heart. The feeling is not turned over in the reflective faculty, and there artistically shaped,—not subtilized and refined away till it has lost its power and freshness; but given at first hand, as it comes warm from within. When he is (p. 205) at his best you seem to hear the whole song ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Itylus, his parents' darling joy! Whom chance misled the mother to destroy; Now doom'd a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy. So in nocturnal solitude forlorn, A sad variety of woes I mourn! My mind, reflective, in a thorny maze Devious from care to care incessant strays. Now, wavering doubt succeeds to long despair; Shall I my virgin nuptial vow revere; And, joining to my son's my menial train, Partake his counsels, and assist his reign? Or, since, mature in manhood, he deplores His dome dishonour'd, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... he DOES!" drawled one of the men,—a weird, withered fellow with a scraggy beard and a reflective turn ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... as of admiration came over the stern old face. Whether he really felt the justice of the hit I know not, but he was evidently pleased at the manner in which it was delivered, and it was with a deeply reflective and not displeased air that he ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... features, and a very intellectual expression"—(im hoechsten Grade gisntreich.) In his manner there was something remarkably calm and cool, almost phlegmatic. He spoke with great slowness and deliberation, but often with much point, and a great deal of reflective wit. He was thus a thorough German in his temperament; so at least as Englishmen and Frenchmen, of a more nimble blood, delight to picture the Rhenish Teut, not always in the most complimentary contrast with themselves. As it is, his merit shines forth only so much the more, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... reverence, and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air uttering sharp chirrups of terror,—and, leaning on his spade, he paused ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... conceptions of different persons vary as to every object of knowledge; but the perceptions and conceptions of the same persons as to the same object vary at different times. Nay, more, at the same time one sense conveys impressions which another sense may negative, and not infrequently the reflective faculty negatives all the impressions derived from the senses, and forms a conception entirely unlike that which would have taken shape through the organs of sense. The soul that seeks to know, is thus in constant agitation. But happiness consists in imperturbableness of spirit, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs: and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law and luxury, commend us to the lovely Gertrude of Wyoming. His face and person were rather on a small scale; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... quiet and reflective in his manner, his genial, open-hearted disposition soon made the young officer of Marines a general favourite with every one on board the Triton. The captain of the frigate, one of those gallant old seamen who had distinguished themselves under Nelson ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... And the author of this tape extrapolated from there. A normal telepathic reception will be accompanied, by a slight feedback. A completely black body, however, will neither radiate nor feed back. It merely absorbs energy and, unless it's super-imposed on a reflective background, it leaves no trace. Since nothing in nature other than a telepathic mind can reflect telepathy, no background would survive for long." ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... as part of the fairy-story into which Destiny had pitchforked us. He belonged to Hynds House, so to speak, and there one might meet him upon common ground. But sometimes when I happened to glance up I would find him watching us with those reflective eyes that were so full of light and at the same time so inscrutable. And then he would smile, his Dionysiac smile that made him all at once so far off and so foreign that I knew, with a sinking heart, that he didn't belong at all; that this beautiful ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... day-dreams of romance, but in the depths and amongst the mazes of science, it was but seldom that these men of the study and the library found leisure and nerve to escape from seclusion, and to take their share of the duties of active life in which their less reflective brethren were feverishly engaged. And when they attempted the competition, their failure was signal. They presented an extraordinary exhibition of awkward genius and blundering sagacity, and exposed themselves at once to the painful ridicule of those whose calling and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... remarkable thing about it was its air of antiquity and the solemnity of its peace. It did not, indeed, strike the spirit with that religious awe which is apt to fall upon us as we gaze along the vaulted aisles of great cathedrals, but it appealed perhaps with equal strength to the softer and more reflective side of our nature. For generation after generation that house had been the home of men like ourselves; they had passed and were forgotten, but it remained, the sole witness of the stories of their lives. Hands of which the very bones had long since crumbled into dust had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... thoughtlessness stood up, and in a harsh voice said: "I am the great prince of heedlessness whose duty it is to prevent a man taking reflective heed of his state; I am chief of the incessant hell-flies who utterly amaze men, ever dinning in their ears concerning their possessions or their pleasures, and never willingly allowing them a moment's ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... wealthy father, who, though enriched by trade, had come of an old Border race, he had had the best education money could procure. More fortunate still in the endowments of nature, he was well formed, strong, active, and blessed with perfect health; while mentally he was intelligent and reflective, thoughtful rather than brilliant, and by temperament profoundly calm. He had never got into scrapes or committed extravagance. He was the despair of managing mammas and fascinating young married ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... in the region of sublime and lofty thought; but his muse was not one-sided, or in any sense monotonous. Poems of a calm, reflective character flowed gracefully from his pen; and, when occasion called for the one or the other, he revealed rich veins of satire and humor. One great secret of his literary success, both as a poet and preacher, lay in the simplicity ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... banquet on the first night, with six hundred ex-soldiers present. The gentleman who sat next me was Mr. X. X. He was very hard of hearing, and he had a habit common to deaf people of shouting his remarks instead of delivering them in an ordinary voice. He would handle his knife and fork in reflective silence for five or six minutes at a time and then suddenly fetch out a shout that would make you jump out of the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... movements. Nor is there a return to the original form, without the Scherzo. To judge from the headings, the "slow" movement is absent. In truth, by way of cursory preamble, the chronic vein of Cesar Franck is so ingrainedly reflective that there never can be with him an absence of the meditative phrase. Rather must there be a vehement rousing of his muse from a state of mystic adoration to rhythmic ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... They've worn holes in all the cane-seated chairs, they've scuffed up the whole house, and I haven't been able to sit down anywhere down-stairs for three months without sitting on some dam boy; but they don't even know we're alive! Well, thank the Lord, it's over—after to-night!" His voice became reflective. "That Baxter boy was the worst, until he took to coming in the daytime when I was down-town. I COULDN'T have stood it if he'd kept on coming in the evening. If I'd had to listen to any more of his talking or singing, either the embalmer ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... bows and parted; the sprucer wayfarer whether from the indulgence of a reflective mood, or from an habitual indifference to things and persons not concerning him, ceased to notice his fellow-solitary, and rather busied himself in sundry little coquetries appertaining to his own person. He passed ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... left him little opportunity for reading. But he took in much knowledge at first-hand by observation, which was perhaps better; and as he hit against all sorts of minds, he became in time somewhat reflective and philosophical. Through daily view of the yellow water, and perhaps the glare of the bright sun on it, or the sight of so much nankeen cloth, or the yellow faces about him, perhaps,—or whatever the cause or causes,—Swan certainly altered in his personal appearance, as the years ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... readiness and grace in the reception of her guests might be, in some way, referable to lately reported events. That, and the fact the young girl was—as the saying is—"all eyes"—eyes calm, fathomless, reflective, which yet, when you happened to enter their sphere of vision, covered you with a new-born gentleness. Mrs. Horniblow caught herself growing lyrical—thinking of stars, of twin mountain lakes, the blue-purple of ocean. A girl in love is blessed with just such eyes—sometimes. Whereupon, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... apparently as reflective as either of his companions. But his thoughts were only occupied in bringing to perfection the plan, which ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... led to his serious reflection upon them. Cousin even goes so far as to say that the Pensees of Pascal would never have been published in that form had not the Maxims enjoyed such favor. Pascal often visited Port-Royal and naturally followed the general reflective tendency of its society. His Discours sur les Passions de l'Amour possibly originated at the salon of Mme. de Sable, because the subject of which that work treated was one much discussed there. La Rochefoucauld was in the habit ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Presbyterianism. It was the pride and crown of a town which stood in prosperous contentment upon the verge of cityhood. Its history was great and honourable; its traditions warlike and evangelical; its people intelligent and intense. Its vast area was famed for its throng of acute and reflective hearers, almost every man of whom was a sermon taster, while its officers were the acknowledged possessors of letters patent to the true ecclesiastical nobility. In my student days, medals and scholarships were never quoted among the trophies of our divinity men if it could be justly said ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... have continued to abate until it disappeared, as such antipathies often disappear, under the familiarities of prolonged intercourse, without any immediate appeal to my amour propre, I know not; but every reflective mind, conscious of being accessible to antipathies, will remember that one certain method of stifling them is for the object to make some appeal to our interest or our vanity: in the engagement of these more powerful feelings, the antipathy ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... at mention of his name, and put to his credit much that was not creditable, was perhaps not strange. He, like his neighbors, had many selves, and each in its turn—the scholar, the man of pleasure, the indolent, kindly, reflective self, the self of pride and cool assurance and stubborn will—took its place behind the mask, and went through its allotted part. His self of all selves, the quiet, remote, crowned, and inscrutable I, sat apart, alike curious ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... three men, two of them strangers to Mary, but the third she recognized as one of the teachers in her old "school"—a thoughtful looking man well past middle age, with a long grey moustache and reflective eyes. "Mr. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Self is the agent in the independent activity which is preceded by the Self's reflection; and, in the second place, that it is the material cause also, since the words 'May I be many' intimate that the reflective desire of multiplying itself has the inward ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... With verdant light the modest emeralds glow, Blue sapphires glare, and rubies blush, below; Light piers of lazuli the dome surround, 400 And pictured mochoes tesselate the ground; In glittering threads along reflective walls The warm rill murmuring twinkles, as it falls; Now sink the Eolian strings, and now they swell, And Echoes woo in every vaulted cell; 405 While on white wings delighted Cupids play, Shake their bright lamps, and shed ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... with vivid lustres glow For human weal, and melt at human woe; Late as YOU floated on your silver shells, 300 Sorrowing and slow by DERWENT'S willowy dells; Where by tall groves his foamy flood he steers Through ponderous arches o'er impetuous wears, By DERBY'S shadowy towers reflective sweeps, And gothic grandeur chills his dusky deeps; 305 You pearl'd with Pity's drops his velvet sides, Sigh'd in his gales, and murmur'd in his tides, Waved o'er his fringed brink a deeper gloom, And bow'd his alders o'er ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... that it was not a surprising thing when I looked up one summer morning to see a small bird hopping about the grass a yard or so away from me. The surprise was not that he was there but that he STAYED there—or rather he continued to hop—with short reflective-looking hops and that while hopping he looked at me— not in a furtive flighty way but rather as a person might tentatively regard a very new acquaintance. The absolute truth of the matter I had ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sphere of education their functions may lie, there is to be seen among them a really inspiring amount of searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their profession. The renovation of nations begins always at the top, among the reflective members of the State, and spreads slowly outward and downward. The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at present show in striving to enlighten ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... seemed above the object that engaged his attention, and he was always equal, without an effort, to the solution of the highest questions, even when there existed no precedents to guide his decision. In the perfection of the reflective powers, which he used habitually, he had ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... an alien in Dublin had persisted all the time that he had lived there. The Dublin people were gregarious and garrulous, and he was solitary and reflective. Marsh and Galway had taken him to houses where people met and talked without stopping, and much conversation with miscellaneous, casually-encountered people bored Henry. He had no gift for ready talk and he disliked crowds and ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... people of this description possess a high order of intellectual endowments, the unhealthy element seems to impart force and piquancy to their mental manifestations, and thus increase the embarrassment touching the true character of their mental constitution. When the defect appears in the reflective powers, it is often regarded as insanity, though not more correctly than if it were confined to the emotions and feelings. The man who goes through life creditably performing his part, but feeling, all the while, that everybody with whom he has any relations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... light of the explorer, the pioneer. The words of this song appealed to him as the finest poetry. It meant all that was fine and hopeful and buoyant in American life, to him—but on my mother's sweet face a wistful expression deepened and in her fine eyes a reflective shadow lay. To her this song meant not so much the acquisition of a new home as the loss of all her friends and relatives. She sang it submissively, not exultantly, and I think the other women were of the same mood though their faces were less expressive to me. To all of the pioneer ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... very plastic intelligence, a good deal led and swayed by immediate circumstances; but at bottom very sanely related to life, and so possessing a latent faculty for controlling its destinies; not much cultured, not profound, not deeply passionate; not particularly reflective though copious in utterance; a personality which of itself, if under no pressure of pecuniary need, would not be likely to give the world any serious sign ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... led me to this place," said Shiraz in his low, reflective tones. "I seek for a little prayer-mat and a few bowls of brass for my food; likewise, a bed for myself, and a bed of lesser value for my companion. Hast thou these ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... said Polly, in a reflective tone; "or else they don't give down their milk. I understood you to say, Dotty, that ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... his thoughts and the ravin of his envy would have provided interesting bases of speculation for the reflective magistrate, since, if, according to the metaphysician, thoughts are things, he committed ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... the motion and color of living things. It was not the mere sensuous magnetism of powerful physical nature; but it excited the higher intellectual sympathies, which in turn awoke and captivated the reasoning and reflective organs, that found themselves delightfully conducted along a natural and logical course, that led them unconsciously to inevitable conclusions and convictions, ere the danger was perceived, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the sergeant for his interference, and with the lad walked to our store—but after we were clear of the crowd the boy appeared to be in a reflective mood, and scarcely exchanged a dozen words with us; and even when we told him that he should live with us for the present, and share our hard beds, his gratitude did not appear to be overpowering, and he hung his head as though he was not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... always been in some measure of a philosophic and reflective turn, grew immensely contemplative, at times, in the smoking-box, and was accustomed at such periods to debate in his own mind the mysterious question of Sophronia's parentage. Sophronia herself supposed ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... game, but more palpably. The meal was nearly over when he seemed possessed of a new idea of how his object might be accomplished. He tilted back his chair with a reflective air, and looked steadily at the clock standing against the wall opposite to him. He said sententiously, 'Few faces are capable of expressing more by dumb show than the face of a clock. You may see in it every variety of incentive—from the softest ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... intelligent observer. It was a July night, near 11 p.m., moonless and cloudy, yet the earth was visible, and under these circumstances his simple narrative becomes of scientific value. He accurately distinguished the reflective properties of the face of the diversified country he traversed. Over Battersea and Wandsworth—this was in 1826—there were white sheets spread over the land, which proved to be corn crops ready for ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... now suddenly made known to them, that it was possible for a person unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This general fact was appreciable by those who would forget, and never could have understood, the particular arguments ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Poppy, in a reflective tone; "they are all in the dining-room as snug as possible over their high tea. They have shrimps for tea, and a wonderful new kind of paste that Aunt Flint brought in to-day. It's called Gentlemen's Relish, and eats well on hot toast, and I made a lot. Oh, my! won't the ladies go in for it! Though ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... her playing this afternoon," Hugh said a moment later in a quiet reflective tone. "What do the gossips really say about her, Dorise? All this is interesting. But there are ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... grew, the more thoughtful and reflective he became. He went to the schools and the philosophers and gained every kind of learning, so that the emperor died of joy and came to life again. The whole realm was proud of having a prince so wise and learned, a second King Solomon. But one day, when the ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... not defiled I may be under the spell. Look at his anklets! Who ever heard of a corpse appearing during the night amongst the logs with gold anklets on its legs? There is witchcraft there. However," added Mahmat, after a reflective pause, "I will have the anklet if there is permission, for I have a charm against the ghosts and am ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... reaches us from the street beyond of "Le Vengeur," "Le Cri du Peuple," "Le dernier ordre du Comite du Salut Public," and we detect curls of smoke about the Arch of Triumph, which remind us that the bombardment still goes on. A reflective sentry at the door of the cabinet de travail begged me to remark the portraits set round above the doors. "Those are the Empress's favourite ladies," he informed me; "are they not salopines, one would say, of the period of Montespan? And those ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... affectedly meek outstretching of her nose, she consented to recognize some oats in the feed-box—without looking at them—and was formally installed. All this while she had resolutely ignored my presence. As I stood watching her, she suddenly stopped eating; the same reflective look came over her. "Surely I am not mistaken, but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here!" she seemed to say, and shivered at ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... The reflective pieces are certainly of more interest now (though they seem to have satisfied the poet less) than the gallery of airy fairy Lilians, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... must be to erase his hated name from the earth. As Faith grew up, his anxieties on her account diminished, but that only left him the wider scope to dwell upon wild imaginations and make himself more the subject of his thoughts. Of a grave and reflective cast of mind, he had even from his early years respected the duties of religion, and now he turned to it for consolation. But the very sources whence he should have derived comfort and peace were fountains of disquiet. His diseased mind seemed incapable of appropriating to itself ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... stimulus directly into hereditary conduct along race-old motor pathways for purposes that often enough the individual does not recognize and may even rebel against; that instinct is without reflection, but that purpose, which is an outgrowth of instinct guided and controlled by intelligence, is reflective and self-conscious. Purpose seeks the good of the individual as understood by him and is often against the welfare of the race, whereas instinct seeks the good of the race, often against the welfare of the individual. Intelligence is the path of the stimulus or need cerebrally ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... horse approached, and the snakelike Hottentot raised his head ever so little and peered out with his beady black eyes through the straw-like grass stems. They fell on Muller's cold face. It was evident that he was in a reflective mood—in an angrily reflective mood. So absorbed was he that he nearly let his horse, which was also absorbed by the near prospect of a comfortable stall, put his foot in a big hole that a wandering antbear had amused himself on the ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... make up his mind whether he might continue playing or return, beaten by November, to the clubhouse. In the end, with numb fingers, he picked up his ball, and walked slowly back over the empty course. The wind, now, was behind him, and increasingly comfortable he grew reflective: ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and more reflective cast than Mr. Lincoln's. He had all the points of a diplomatist, ingenuity, subtlety, adroitness. He was temporizing over the natural antipathy of the North to war and the probable transient nature of the secession feeling in the South. At that very moment ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... human figures, in the modelling of their drapery, the study of their expression, and their grouping into balanced compositions, we may form some notion of the magnitude of Raphael's performance. It is, indeed, probable that all attempts at reflective analysis of this kind do injustice to the spontaneity of the painter's method. Yet, even supposing that the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" or the "School of Athens" were seen by him as in a vision, this presumption ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... up in the royal library at Munich. The first represents Albert V., Duke of Bavaria, the founder of the library, and a great patron of science. Of course, he is presented in middle-age costume; his head is bare, his face reflective, and his right hand supports his chin,—an image of repose, after a work is accomplished. The other statue is of King Louis (of Lola Montes memory), in royal robes, the left hand resting on his sword, and his right ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Verena's genius was a mystery, and it might remain a mystery; it was impossible to see how this charming, blooming, simple creature, all youth and grace and innocence, got her extraordinary powers of reflexion. When her gift was not in exercise she appeared anything but reflective, and as she sat there now, for instance, you would never have dreamed that she had had a vivid revelation. Olive had to content herself, provisionally, with saying that her precious faculty had come to her just as her beauty and distinction (to Olive she was full of that quality) had come; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... his quarrel with his father and his college had, in fact, represented a moment of energy, of comparative success, which never recurred. It was as though this outburst of action and liberty had disappointed him, as if some deep-rooted instinct—cold, critical, reflective—had reasserted itself, condemning him and his censors equally. The uselessness of utterance, the futility of enthusiasm, the inaccessibility of the ideal, the practical absurdity of trying to realise any of the mind's inward dreams: these were the kind of considerations ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thoughtful. There occurred to him various objections to this rather fanciful argument. Still, he said nothing. He was naturally chary of words; it was so interesting to listen to other people! And at this particular period he was more than usually reflective and absorbent. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Reflective Faculties. (34) Comparison. (35) Causality. The judgment of the phrenologist is determined by the size of the brain in general, and by the size of the organs that have been formulated, and these are estimated by certain arbitrary rules ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... change took place in the lively, fun-loving boy. He seemed to lose his gay spirits and become reflective, silent and reserved. This condition of mind never left him, but grew into a deeper ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... the same reflective voice, "I agree with you, I let him pass as a gentleman. But I repeat, Why did you bring them here when with one more word it would have been so easy—" and ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... actually a giant balloon eight thousand feet in diameter, one-half "silvered" with a greenish reflective surface inside that reflected only that light that could be utilized by the ruby rods at its long focal center; and that absorbed the remainder of the incident solar radiation, dumping it through to its black outside surface, and on into the vastness of space. This half of the big balloon was ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... as if to speak to him, and each time she dropped again her head in reflective silence. She did not talk to this young man as she might to any number of her more intimate acquaintances. Even the very silence was magnetic. Further utterance would dispel the charm. That she would enlist in his service she knew as well as she knew her own existence, but that he should ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... most backward savages make a perhaps half-conscious distinction between their mythology and their religion. As to the former, they are communicative; as to the latter, they jealously guard their secret in sacred mysteries. It is improbable that reflective "black fellows" have been morally shocked by the flagrant contradictions between their religious conceptions and their mythical stories of the divine beings. But human thought could not come into explicit clearness of consciousness without producing the sense of shock and surprise at these contradictions ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... that the faithful found the old priest at nine o'clock sunning himself at the front door of the sacred edifice, smoking a reflective cigarette and exchanging the time of day with passers-by or such as had ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... and Egyptians," he went on, after a moment's reflective pause, "gave the Hebrews their account of the creation of the universe, the fall of man, the flood, and many other bits of mythical lore. And into these stories the Hebrews read the activity of their God, and drew from them deep moral lessons. Egypt gave the Hebrews at least a part ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the line; it only needs time to make, as we say, its connections. The massive pastiche of Vincigliata has no superficial use; but, even if it were less complete, less successful, less brilliant, I should feel a reflective kindness for it. So disinterested and expensive a toy is its own justification; it belongs to the heroics ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... level of the sea, and climbed on until blood flowed from his eyes and lips. For nearly five years he pursued his investigations in the new world, accompanied by the intrepid Bonpland. Nothing escaped his attention. He was the best intellectual organ of these new revelations of science. He was calm, reflective and eloquent; filled with a sense of the beautiful, and the love of truth. His collections were immense, and valuable beyond calculation to every science. He endured innumerable hardships, braved countless dangers in unknown ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... appeared reflective, but there was a bond of confidence between the two, and the reserve that characterizes the Briton is much less ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... longer circulate A pious token for their current coin, To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate, Fair feminine and masculine shall join Upon an upper plane, still common mould, Where stamped religion and reflective pace A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold Rounds to horizon for their soul's embrace. Then shall those noblest of the earth and sun Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea. But not till Nature's laws and man's are one, Can marriage of the man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of self-government, an intelligent cognizance of public affairs and a reflective insight into the fundamental principles of liberty, has been totally neglected in our land. And if the events of these years shall really teach our people to think—I care not how erroneously at first, for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... military man is that he studies too much, reads too much history, is over reflective. If, instead, he would look about him more he would notice that things are changing. Someone has told the British military man that Waterloo was won upon the playing fields of Eton. So he goes to ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... not value them highly, but I would not have traded them for the pork-barrel and the ham-barrel and all the other barrels and benches reserved from Uncle Joe's collection. 'Lias Mullins, inspecting them, became reflective: ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... summer's sun. It was Aminta's favorite retreat, and thither she came in the morning to paint her sisters, the white Bengal roses, the red cactus and the graceful clematides, which surrounded her charming retreat. There in the evening, pensive and reflective, the young girl suffered her glance to stray over the vast horizon of the sea gilded by the sun's expiring rays. On the day we speak of, Maulear found her reading, or rather seeming to read, for her book rested on her knee, her ivory brow supported by her hand. Her eyes, lifted up to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Ushant was an old man, of strong natural sense, who had seen nearly the whole terraqueous globe, and could reason of civilized and savage, of Gentile and Jew, of Christian and Moslem. The long night-watches of the sailor are eminently adapted to draw out the reflective faculties of any serious-minded man, however humble or uneducated. Judge, then, what half a century of battling out watches on the ocean must have done for this fine old tar. He was a sort of a sea-Socrates, in his old age "pouring out his last philosophy and life," as sweet Spenser has it; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... of human experience set forth, especially in the second clause of this text, directs our gaze into dark places, into which it is not pleasant to look, and many of you will accuse me of preaching gloomily if I try to turn a reflective eye inwards upon them, but no one will be able to accuse me of not preaching truly. It is impossible to enumerate all the cords that make up the net in which our own evil doings hold us meshed, but let me ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had begun to feel the need of accepting the unchangeable. At other times the reality became an infamy again and the unchangeable an imposture, and he gave himself up to his angry restlessness till he was weary. But on the whole he fell into a rather reflective mood. Without in the least intending it or knowing it, he attempted to read the moral of his strange misadventure. He asked himself, in his quieter hours, whether perhaps, after all, he WAS more commercial than was pleasant. We know ...
— The American • Henry James
... Bouillon had a warmth of expression and a confidence of manner which captivated those who heard him. His valor, his keen perception in the field, the profundity of his political views, his knowledge of the affairs of Europe, his reflective and decided character, all rendered him one of the most capable and imposing men of his time-the only one, indeed, whom the Cardinal-Duc really feared. The Queen always listened to him with confidence, and allowed him to acquire a ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... presented in a more acute form the issue of national life or death. The stand of the heroic Greeks at Thermopylae denying passage to the hosts of Persia was not more vital to the cause of civilization than this storied defense of Verdun. The reflective writer can but notice that in every campaign of the war, when further success of the German armies meant victory, it was as if an unseen Power decreed "thus far and no further." It was so at Verdun. The French ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... his boat, the Merry Maid, and hoisted his sail. In a few minutes he was skimming gaily down the bay. The wind was fair and piping and the Merry Maid went like a bird. Natty, at the rudder, steered for Blue Point Island, a reflective frown on his face. He was feeling in no mood for Victoria Day sports. In a very short time he and Ev and Prue must leave Blue Point lighthouse, where they had lived all their lives. To Natty it seemed as if the end of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when we bear in mind Dr. Johnson's own estimate of his musical knowledge together with his having derived pleasure from listening to the sounds of the bagpipes. If a performance on those droning instruments was in the Doctor's mind when he said that the reflective powers need not be exercised in performing on a musical instrument, there might be some truth in the observation. The labour of thinking, however, cannot be dispensed with in connection with playing most musical instruments, and least of all ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart |
