"Train of thought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must have been somewhere," and Milly's active little brain now started another train of thought, ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... Grey assimilated this train of thought. Disregarding the suggestions of the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, he did nothing to exercise a moderating influence upon Russia and thereby further the success of the conversations between Vienna and St. Petersburg. On the other hand, he proceeded ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... wondering what had led her upon this train of thought, why she had pursued it, and what reason she had for the pain it gave her. A step rustled among the distant last-year's leaves; there in the shadowy wood, where she did not dream of concealing her thoughts, where it seemed that all Nature shared her confidence, this step ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... and, besides the relief to my spirits, I no longer suffered under the burden—so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions—of thinking one doctrine true and the contrary doctrine morally beneficial. The train of thought which had extricated me from this dilemma seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render a similar service to others; and it now forms the chapter on Liberty and Necessity in the concluding Book ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to a train of thought, and Basil seemed suddenly to adopt some new resolution. Leaving the fork where he had perched himself, he climbed higher up the tree; and, selecting one of the longest and straightest branches, commenced cutting it off close to the trunk. This was soon ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... began to collect these valuable furs, a new train of thought was suggested to us—when and how we should bring them ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... The train of thought pleased her, and soothed in some way an indefinable rasping sense of the general futility of all feeling and all striving. Surely she, with her young-old heart, her world-worn memories, and her youth that never was, should know ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... by no means as purely selfish as his immediate train of thought might imply; nor were they by any means confined to the probable cost in dollars and cents of his associate's death. Hammon and he had been friends for many years; they shared a mutual respect and affection, and, although Merkle was eminently practical ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... This train of thought brings up the question of the status of our society with the station entomologists as represented by the committee of the general association. Those of us who had desired a national association for the various purposes for which such associations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... half an hour passed. It was not a pleasant train of thought that now occupied her. Her lips were drawn together, her brows were slightly wrinkled; the self-control which at other times was agreeably expressed upon her features had become rather too cold and decided. At one moment it seemed to her that she heard a sound ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... less extraordinary degree of happiness than had been anticipated. The melancholy event which had marked the first ceremonial of his life had cast its gloom alike on all nearly connected with him; and when time had dispelled the clouds of recent mourning, and restored the mourners to their habitual train of thought and action, somewhat of the novelty which had given him such lively interest in the hearts of the sisters had subsided. The distressing conviction, too, more and more forced itself upon them, that their advice and assistance were likely to be wholly overlooked ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... new train of thought. Certainly, infinity, omnipresence, could neither be limited nor outlined; those were ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... SAID you thought—" Mrs. Spragg began reproachfully; but Mrs. Heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of thought. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... his train of thought. Evidently the sergeant major had been doing some calculations of his own. "How long will we be on this rock, sir? You've never told us just how long the trip ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... a mistake to suppose that some specific thing must be the cause of an action, or a train of thought," resumed the other, from the comfortable depths of his chair. "Sometimes thousands of things go to the making of a single thought, countless others to the doing of a single deed. And yet again, a thing entirely unassociated with a result may be the beginning of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... did not in the least mind the Rev. Hartzell's opinion of himself or his work, and cared not one whit that he had been prevented from expressing himself to his brethren. He did care, however, for the work itself, regardless of the preachers, and the train of thought which he had so often followed was stirred afresh in his mind by the incident. With his heart so full of the matter it was not at all strange that he should preach another of his characteristic sermons on what he called "Applied Christianity." His house ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... however, unexpectedly stopped the shrieking, and before Junkie could recover his previous train of thought Gertie bore him off in triumph, leaving the hospitable Dally and Mrs Scholtz to entertain their visitors to small talk ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... was working rapidly and following up a train of thought as fascinating as it was new. He suddenly turned back to the very beginning of the book, and began reading to himself some words he found there. Presently he looked up ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... well aware that the train of thought to which I have tried to give expression is unpopular, and that most people think that any modification of the traditional party system is impracticable. But the question is not whether the system is popular; it is whether it will enable the country to stand ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... what was left of Malone's train of thought, "young Charlie died soon thereafter, and we decided to go on checking the machine. It was during this period that we found someone else reading the minds of our test subjects—sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... him she responded to his command to tell him of what she was afraid, and poured out a story of terror. "Mano, nera, mano nera—the Black Hand," she repeated over and over again, and Edward, who had heard her history, realized that something she had seen had set her mind in the old train of thought. While Miss Merriam attended to the children he calmed the woman and then turned her over to Mrs. Schuler with instructions to put her to bed in a darkened room and to see that some one stayed with her or just ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... The German train of thought is clear enough: "If we are unable to hold Belgium, any pro-German demonstrations in the Northern provinces may suggest the idea that it is the wish of the Flemings to be bound to the Empire and give a pretext ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... developing this train of thought, began to imagine we had lived many ages ago, and somehow or other had alighted here from some older planet. Familiar with the ways of evolution elsewhere in the universe, we naturally should have wondered what course ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... had forgotten them utterly, chiefly because Enoch was the personage he liked best in the whole of the Old Testament, and Enoch's translation to heaven was connected in his mind with a whole long train of thought, in which he became absorbed now while he gazed with fascinated eyes at his father's watch-chain and a half-unbuttoned button on ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... that's not it," he began again suddenly, raising his head, as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were roused him—"that's not it! Better... imagine—yes, it's certainly better—imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Editor, pursuing his train of thought, "we have to consider the personalities of the conspirators. You'll find, Stuart, if you go into newspaper work, that one of the first things to do in any big story, is to estimate, as closely as you can, the character of the men or women who are acting in it. Newspaper ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... be taken by storm, but Confucius taught him better [6]. And in fine, it is only the sage who can fully exemplify the Mean [7]. All these citations do not throw any light on the ideas presented in the first chapter. On the contrary, they interrupt the train of thought. Instead of showing us how virtue, or the path of duty is in accordance with our Heaven-given nature, they lead us to think of it as a mean between two extremes. Each extreme may be a violation of the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... Bathurst and Lord Burlington, Dr. Warburton has endeavoured to find a train of thought which was never in the writer's head, and, to support his hypothesis, has printed that first which was published last. In one the most valuable passage is perhaps the Elegy on Good Sense, and the other the end of ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... the Dreamer was pursuing that train of thought, when the maitre d'hotel—the superb maitre d'hotel—entered with solemnity, carrying in a great silver plate a turbot of fabulous dimensions—one of those phenomenal fish which are only seen in the old paintings representing the miraculous draught of fish, or perhaps ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... see them in course of development, in the act and process of becoming; undergoing marked changes, passing through divers stages, animated by mixed and various motives and impulses, passion alternating with passion, purpose with purpose, train of thought with train of thought; so that they often end greatly modified from what they were at the beginning; the same, and yet another. Thus they have to our minds a past and a future as well as a present; and even in what we see of them at any given moment there is involved something ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... by the class.—Inattention, restlessness, and mischief are great sources of distraction from the class themselves. All these things have a tendency to be contagious, and in any case always break in upon the train of thought of the recitation. Because of this the teacher must win the inattentive and restless, and must check the restless, if he ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... hopelessly fell back upon such banalities as the errability of mankind, being conscious all the time that some special and most curious infatuation must underlie this particular error. Anitchkoff's card interrupted some such train of thought. He came in quietly as sunshine after fog. His face between the curtains reminded me strangely of the awful moment in the Prestonville Museum—paradoxically, for he was as genuine and reassuring as the Del Puente Giorgione ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... production is briefly this:—A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the SOFA for a subject. He obeyed, and having much leisure, connected another subject with it; and, pursuing the train of thought to which his situation and turn of mind led him, brought forth, at length, instead of the trifle which he at first intended, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... clasped tight between his knees, and they were mostly of his dull uneventful days in Scotland, and ever and anon of Cynthia, his beloved. Would she hear of his end? Would she weep for him?—as though it mattered! And every train of thought that he embarked upon brought him to the same issue—to-morrow! Shuddering he would clench his hands still tighter, and the perspiration would stand' out in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... there is no necessity to ignore the elegancies of style; for what is style? Le style est l'homme. The style is the man. A perfect style, then, is attained when the written page is the exact expression of the train of thought as it lies in the writer's head. A style is absolutely perfect when ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... not only supplies the mind with images, but assists in their combination. And even in madness itself, when the soul is resigned over to the tyranny of a distempered imagination, she revives past perceptions, and awakens the train of thought which was ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... other—it might with Harry, perhaps, have been a similar train of thought—caused both my comrades to be more taciturn by far than was their wont; and we had rattled over five miles of our route, and scaled the first ridge of the hills, and dived into the wide ravine; midway the depth of this the pretty village of Bellevale lies on the brink of the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... heart, as though some religious chord had been newly touched. It may, of course, have been that with the renewal of the bird voices a fresh courage, a fresh belief in the good issue of the struggle came too. In the misery of silence, from which they had all suffered for so long, any new train of thought was almost bound to be a boon. As the inrush of birds continued, their wings beating against the crackling rushes, Lady Arabella grew pale, and ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... evidence in their voluntary powers of motion that these creatures possess a will, and that such Will must be conveyed by a nervous system of an infinitesimally minute description. When we follow out such a train of thought, and contrast the myriads of suns and planets at one extreme, with the myriads of minute organised atoms at the other, we cannot but feel inexpressible wonder at the transcendent range of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... made that is not in harmony with the thought or sentiment uttered; for it is this harmony which constitutes propriety. As far as possible, let there be a correspondence between the style of action and the train of thought. Where the thought flows on calmly, let there be grace and ease in gesture and action. Where the style is sharp and abrupt, there is propriety in quick, short, and abrupt gesticulation. Especially avoid that ungraceful ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... half reclining in a big easy-chair, her arms resting on the broad ledges, her fists tightly clenched. Her train of thought led her to alarming conclusions. If the police had been watching—and that now occurred to her as having been an obvious step—they must not only have seen her note, but they might have secured and questioned the person who brought the advertisement. And if so, might ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... too, we cannot always succeed in completely considering some personal matter at the precise time at which we have determined beforehand to consider it, and just when we set ourselves to do so. For the peculiar train of thought which is favorable to it may suddenly become active without any special call being made upon it, and we may then follow it up with keen interest. In this way reflection, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... I could not help laughing at the strange figure of speech, so homely and in this respect so earthly. It made me homesick, for it sounded very much like "not fit to polish her shoes." And then commenced a train of thought quite new to me. I began to wonder what my people at home were doing. I had not seen them for years. There was a family of Carters in Virginia who claimed close relationship with me; I was supposed to be a great uncle, or something of the kind equally foolish. I could pass ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... while the sound of breaking glass continues. My neighbours appear to have been pursuing a train of thought similar to mine, for I hear several of them calling to our informant, and enquiring, "How and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Sergeant," observed Lieutenant Prescott, strolling over to Overton. "I hope I am not interrupting any train of thought." ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... difficult of understanding in the psalm. The train of thought is clear and obvious. The experiences which it details are common, the emotions it expresses simple and familiar. The tears that have been dried, the fears that have been dissipated, by this old song; the love and thankfulness which have found in them their best expression, prove ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... My waking train of thought ended in a stupor in which I do not think I lost for a moment the dull consciousness of pain. I was aroused by a step upon the gravel-path, and, starting up, saw the woman who served Mrs. Yocomb in the domestic labors of the farmhouse. She stopped ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Theatres can conscientiously answer, "Yes, a decidedly good Pantomime." If pressed farther by those who "want to know" as to whether it's the best Pantomime he ever saw, the First Commissioner answers, "No, it is not Beauty and the Best," and he is of opinion that he must travel, in a train of thought on the line of Memory, back to the PAYNES and the VOKESES in the primest of their prime, if he would recall two or three of the very best, mind you, the very best, Pantomimes ever seen in the Tame West. For real good rollicking fun, the Pantomimes at the Surrey ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... him to indulge in luxuries, and the distillation of the country was substituted for wine. With his feet upon the fender, and his glass of whisky-toddy at his side, he had been led into a train of thought by the book which he had been reading; some passage of which had recalled to his memory scenes that had long passed away—the scenes of youth and hope—the happy castle-building of the fresh in heart, invariably overthrown by time and disappointment. The night was tempestuous; the rain now pattered ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in loco; and yet those who must endure the society of inveterate jokers know how intolerable this sort of scintillation can become. There is something inherently vulgar about it; perhaps because our train of thought cannot be very entertaining in itself when we are so glad to break in upon it with irrelevant nullities. The same undertone of disgust mingles with other amusing surprises, as when a dignified personage slips and falls, or some disguise is thrown ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... anything which is not vivid is sad, melancholy, and depressing to the senses. Gianbattista saw in his mind's eye a little apartment after his own heart, and was happy in the idea. But, as he followed the train of thought, it led him to the comparison of the home to which he proposed to take his wife with the one in which they now lived under her father's roof, and suddenly the scene of the previous evening rose clearly in the young man's imagination. He dropped his hammer, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... old comrades said to each other, gradually coming to feel the impression of that twilight, which seemed colder than elsewhere; but before moving off, Hemerlingue, pursuing his train of thought, pointed to the monument winged at the four corners by the draperies and the outstretched hands of its ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... resemblance between instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, and ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... From no train of thought did these fancies come; not from within, but from without; suddenly, too, and in one throng, like hoar frost; yet as soon to vanish as the mild sun of Captain Delano's good-nature ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... intermittent: we can think of things in isolation as well as in association; we do not mean that they must all hang from one another. We can begin again after an interval of rest or vacancy, as a new train of thought suddenly arises, as, for example, when we wake of a morning or after violent exercise. Time, place, the same colour or sound or smell or taste, will often call up some thought or recollection either accidentally or naturally associated with them. But it ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... reflectively, as if following up some train of thought she had been pursuing already a long time. "What heaps of wonderfully beautiful girls and women we saw to-night. Wouldn't you like ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... feet and looked him full in the face. She seemed to be following out her own train of thought rather than taking note of ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and ardor. But scarcely has the return been effected, scarcely has he begun to realize the beauties and perfections of the world, when sadness, suffering, pain, and torture, obtrude themselves, and the old overwhelming sense of life's tragedy takes possession of him. This train of thought, plainly discernible in Heine's poems, he also owes to his descent. A mind given to such speculations naturally seeks poetic solace in Weltschmerz, which, as everybody knows, is still another heirloom ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... good deal admired," Uncle Dan observed dryly, yet with a friendly twinkle that flickered over into the crow's-feet which were such an important feature of his equipment as uncle. And May, nothing daunted, pursued her own train of thought with unflagging spirit. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... tinged with a self-confidence that did not become him. It almost seemed to her that he was shallow, lacking in comprehension, and once she found herself comparing him with another man. She, however, broke off that train of thought abruptly, and once more endeavoured to find the explanation in herself. Weariness had induced this captious, hypercritical fit, and by and bye she would become ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Sibyl would ridicule such a thing," said Mrs. Ellis, continuing her own train of thought, and yet vaguely disturbed by ...
— Different Girls • Various
... you to imagine that you could never survive her loss," said Pensee gravely. "But need you lose her—as a friend?" Something in his countenance encouraged her to pursue this train of thought. "Agnes has the deepest admiration for your qualities. No doubt, you truly realise the high standard of character which she would hope for in one to whom she gave her love. You have proved yourself worthy to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... placid feeling which stole over her as she dwelt longest upon the "Baptism of our Savior." Then there was the family record—her own birth, and that of her brothers and sisters, were chronicled underneath that of generations now sleeping in the shadow of the village church. But this train of thought was broken, as they reverentially knelt when the volume was closed, and listened to their father's humble and fervent petition, that God would watch and guard them all, especially commending to the protection of Heaven, "the lamb now going out ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Helvetius who was then quite young and present rather as a hearer than a speaker, Marivaux and Astruc, formed the nucleus of this clever society and led the conversation. Marmontel, who was not well suited to this society, in which more real knowledge and a deeper train of thought was called for than he possessed, informs us what the tone of this society was, and speaks of their hunting after lively conceits and brilliant flashes of wit, in a somewhat contemptuous manner. Marmontel, however, himself admits, that he was only once in the society, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... his or her own particular humor, some noisy and others silent. One of the most decided characteristics of madness is the desire of solitude. It seldom happens that two lunatics enter into conversation with each other; or, if they do so, each merely gives utterance to his own train of thought, without any regard to what is said by his interlocutor. It is different when they converse with the strangers who occasionally visit them. They then attend to any observations addressed to them, and not unfrequently make very rational ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... him what he contemplated bridging. Both were at that moment busy with the same train of thought. They ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The impression on the reader was proportionate; for, whatever were the merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking; and the train of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness, was bold, well-sustained, and consistent ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... The train of thought we have been following gives us a key to all these positions, without stepping aside to justify them on their own ground. It is because we have been disgusted fifty times with physical squalls and fifty times torn ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contemporary judgments, Baudelaire was infallibly right. He wrote neither verse nor prose with ease, but he would not permit himself to write either without inspiration. His work is without abundance, but it is without waste. It is made out of his whole intellect and all his nerves. Every poem is a train of thought and every essay is the record of sensation. This 'romantic' had something classic in his moderation, a moderation which becomes at times as terrifying as Poe's logic. To 'cultivate one's hysteria' so calmly, and to affront the reader (Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... force of gravity to him, and by the means of the dropped fruit to illustrate how impossible it would be for a body to fall off the earth under any circumstances. He listened so intently that I thought I had made an impression, and started the train of thought that would lead him to a partial understanding of the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... awakened in Guy a Singular train of thought. Yes, Maddy was his inferior as the world saw matters, and settling himself in the chair he tried to fancy what that same world would say if he should make Maddy his wife. Of course he had no such intention, he was just imagining something which ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... alone again. She did not turn back to exactly the same train of thought. A new idea had been given her, which was to become the germ of a long train of others. She hardly put it into words, even to herself; but it was this—that God meant something. He was not sitting on the throne of the universe ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... One train of thought, which she had been busy enough by day and honestly sleepy enough at night, to keep at arm's length during this time of home-coming and entertaining, now invaded and possessed her mind—filling it at once with a new and overwhelming movement of tenderness, yet ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... blank upon the topic given out for treatment, resorts at once to the public library, searches catalogues, questions the librarian, and surrounds himself with books and periodicals which may throw light upon it. He is soon master of facts and reasonings which enable him to start upon a train of thought that bears fruit in an essay or discourse. In fact, it may be laid down as an axiom, that nearly every new book that is written is indebted to the library for most of its ideas, its facts, or its illustrations, so that libraries ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... train of thought that led Forsythe at last to write to Rosa that he was coming, throwing Rosa into a panic of joy and alarm. For Rosa's father had been most explicit about her ever going out with Forsythe again. It had been the most relentless command he had ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... contradiction under discussion is closely related to this one. It is possible when engaged with one object to have several questions or topics close by in the fringe of consciousness so that one or the other may flash to the focal point as the development of the train of thought demands. The individual is apparently considering many questions at the same time, when in reality it is the readiness of these associations plus the oscillations of attention that account for the activity. The ability to do this sort of thing depends partly on the individual,—some ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... three decasyllabic quatrains with a concluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alternately. {95b} A single sonnet does not always form an independent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets of the period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and Drayton, the same train of thought is at times pursued continuously through two or more. The collection of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets thus presents the appearance of an extended series of independent poems, many in a varying number of fourteen-line stanzas. The longest sequence (i.-xvii.) numbers seventeen sonnets, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Here we go, down—down—downy!" the children used to sing when playing see-saw with a broad plank on the fence; and they understood, what their elders sometimes forget—that the rebound of extreme height is descent. One more illustration, before this train of thought ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... to abound in his humour, whatever that might be. The dramatic artist, that lies dormant or only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feet in a divine fury, and chance had served her well. She looked upon him with a subdued twilight look that became the hour of the day and the train of thought; earnestness shone through her like stars in the purple west; and from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole nature there passed into her voice, and rang in her lightest words, a thrill ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frightened her. With an instinctive jealousy she saw that her words had started a train of thought in which she had no part. She felt herself ignored, abandoned; and all her passions rushed to the defence ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... not last long, for shortly after a train of thought came into my mind that prompted me to further action. It was memory that came to my aid. I remembered having read a book, which described very beautifully the struggles of a boy, amidst great difficulties—how he bravely refused to yield to each new disappointment; ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... a little. Wondering if the world this morning were really the unpleasant place that it appeared, or if these conditions of unpleasantness lay not rather within her own mental vision; a train of thought that might be supposed to have furnished her some degree of entertainment had she continued in its pursuit. But she chose rather to dwell on her causes of unhappiness, and thus convince herself that that unhappiness was indeed outside of her and around her and not by ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... strangely dualistic, and it not unfrequently happens that while one is consciously intent upon a certain train of thought, some secret cunning current of association sets in vibration the coil of ideas locked in the chambers of memory, and long forgotten images leap forth, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... inevitably lost, I think you mistake. If there ever was any individuality it will remain. I don't believe it is necessary for development that the individual must always force itself upon us. We naturally fall into the habits and frequently the train of thought of those we love and I like the expression "we" rather than "I." I never feel that my interests and actions can be independent of the dear ones with whom I am surrounded. Even the one who seems to be most absorbed may, in reality, possess the strongest soul. This standing alone is not natural ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... thing for which she could be thankful. Reluctantly from her lips came the mention of some particular thing for which she felt indeed grateful. Then a second was gradually recalled, and then more. And as the train of thought grew on her she suddenly asked, "Why was I so despondent when I came ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... necessary search every man clear down to his bedclothes. But the thought of that flying knife came back to him, and the combination of mystery gave him pause; there must surely be some connection between the two occurrences, and the train of thought led directly to the notion that somewhere in the dark recesses of the brigantine lurked the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... but think, even as I did so, that we had made extraordinary free upon short acquaintance, and that a really wise young lady would have shown herself more backward. I think it was the bank-porter that put me from this ungallant train of thought. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I rose again in rather a bad humour, and looked with an evil eye on the Arabs lying on the sacks around me, who were not "slumbering softly," but snoring lustily. By way of forcing myself, if possible, into a poetical train of thought, I endeavoured to concentrate my attention on the contemplation of the beautiful landscape by moonlight; but even this would not keep me from yawning. My companion seemed much in the same mood; for he had also risen from his soft couch, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... philosophy of the Absolute, philosophy of the Academy, philosophy of the Garden, philosophy of the lyceum, philosophy of the Porch. association of thought, succession of thought, flow of thought, train of thought, current of thought, association of ideas, succession of ideas, flow of ideas, train of ideas, current of ideas. after thought, mature thought; reconsideration, second thoughts; retrospection &c. (memory) 505; excogitation[obs3]; examination &c. (inquiry) 461 invention &c. (imagination) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... able to put my article together, I replaced the paper in my pocket, and leant back in the seat. At this instant my head is so clear that I can follow the most delicate train of thought without tiring. As I lie in this position, and let my eyes glide down my breast and along my legs, I notice the jerking movement my foot makes each time my pulse beats. I half rise and look down at my feet, and I experience at this moment a fantastic and singular feeling ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... aware of the seriousness of his promise to the Elder's daughter. He had pledged himself and his support indirectly to Jim Fox! What that might mean he could not foresee. He remembered what Elizabeth had told him concerning her father's condition, and this set a new train of thought going through his brain. He recalled that there had always been times since Jim Fox had first come to Little River when he had seemed dejected and melancholy. Could it be possible that there had been some physical disease working all these years ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... services of which Nuto spoke, and had therefore no fear of failing on that score; but he doubted he should not be received, because he was too young and well-favoured. So, after much pondering, he fell into the following train of thought:—The place is a long way off, and no one there knows me; if I make believe that I am dumb, doubtless I shall be admitted. Whereupon he made his mind up, laid a hatchet across his shoulder, and saying not a word to any of his destination, set forth, intending to present ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... if he had fallen into a train of thought, and Stephen looked with affectionate awe at a master whose mind, he believed, could swallow up at one meal all ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... [Footnote 77: This train of thought is philosophically exemplified in the character of Abraham, who opposed in Chaldaea the first introduction of idolatry, (Koran, c. 6, p. 106. D'Herbelot, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... same chamber. Seeing at last all his efforts fruitless, he permitted it to remain. The adventure, however, was too remarkable to make no impression on his mind. He threw himself down in his clothes on his couch; but sleep was denied to him. A train of thought on the subject of the wondrous chest, and his fear on account of the warning he had received, disturbed his mind, and prevented him from taking any rest. There he lay awake till midnight, and saw the chest ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... following his train of thought. It fitted into the evening's inflammable proceedings. So, with such trinkets as this, capital would silence the cry of labor for its just share in the products of its skill and strength! It would bribe, and cheaply. Ten dollars, perhaps, that ticking insult. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sweetest Madeline. These fitful and strange moods sometimes come upon me yet. I have been so long in the habit of pursuing any train of thought, however wild, that presents itself to my mind, that I cannot easily break it, even in your presence. All studious men—the twilight Eremites of books and closets, contract this ungraceful custom of soliloquy. You know our abstraction is a common jest and proverb: you must laugh me out of it. But ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... child can hardly tickle itself, or in a much less degree than when tickled by another person, it seems that the precise point to be touched must not be known; so with the mind, something unexpected— a novel or incongruous idea which breaks through an habitual train of thought— appears to he a strong element in ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought, wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men[1] haye thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the point of conversion. He was fascinated by its approach, by its overpowering logic. For a train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence, in secret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidence combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in the love of hope and the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... letter has plunged me into an endless train of thought. I see now that the convent can never take the place of mother to a girl. I beg of you, my grand angel with the black eyes, so pure and proud, so serious and so pretty, do not turn away from these cries, which the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... intensified in each generation by the continual correlation of certain groups of brain cells. It has become not only unnecessary for him to think, but almost impossible, so deeply these well-worn paths of thought have become. His intellectual processes are automatic—his train of thought can never ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... his glorious hopes through an ascended Saviour; and as it falls again perpetually and imperceptibly, may it not typify the dew of the Holy Spirit—ever invisible, ever descending—the blessed fruit of that Holy Ascension? And if the mind be thus insensibly led into such a train of thought, may not the deep and rugged cliff, worn away by centuries unnumbered by man, shadow forth to him ideas of that past Eternity, compared to which they are but as a span; and may not the rolling stream, sweeping ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... commonly, hear what may be called 'inner voices.' That is to say, we do not suppose that any one from without is speaking to us, but we hear, as it were, a voice within us making some remark, usually disjointed enough, and not suggested by any traceable train of thought of which we are conscious at the time. This experience partly enables us to understand the cases of sane persons who, when to all appearance wide awake, occasionally hear voices which appear to be objective and caused by ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... My train of thought next led me to speak of the disciples of the Movement, and I freely acknowledged and lamented that they needed to be kept in order. It is very much to the purpose to draw attention to this point now, when such extravagances as then occurred, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... suggested a new train of thought to Mildred. She argued that it was not for selfish motives that she desired freedom. If she thought that, she would marry him to-morrow. It was because she did not wish to lead a selfish life that she intended to break off her engagement. She wished to live for something; she wished ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... be by-gones. You are confronted with the tomb of Victor Emmanuel and set to thinking on the recent glories of the House of Savoy. Really to appreciate the Pantheon you must be well-posted in nineteenth-century history. You keep up this train of thought till you happen to stumble on the tomb of Raphael. That, of course, is what you ought to have come to see in the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... our homeward ride hardly a word was spoken; the wheels rattled away over the uneven pavement and the coachman snapped his whip, while we sat in opposite corners of the carriage, each pursuing his or her own lugubrious train of thought. But as we had mounted together the steps to Mr. Pfeifer's mansion, and I was applying her latchkey to the lock, she suddenly held out her hand to me, and I grasped it eagerly and ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... may be lost and an irretrievable error committed by a brief break in the lucidity of the intellect or in the train of thought. "He who would be Caesar anywhere," says Kipling, "must know everything everywhere." Nearly everything comes to the man who is always ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... without speaking. Weyling's remark had started a train of thought in his mind, but he had no intention of revealing it to a man who plainly did not intend to confer with him on equal terms, or disclose his own theory of the murder—if ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... parish!" said Gwen, following up her private train of thought. "If Skelwick were a separate living of its own, quite apart from North Ditton, he could do so much more. It's fearfully hampering to be under another church that's such a long way off. It doesn't give Dad a free hand ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... train of thought, pondered that he had accused this same lady of having, to save her lover, the very day the guillotine was erected on the boulevard, found means to send in his stead the innocent ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... read with avidity.{129} I had a deep satisfaction in the thought, that the rascality of slaveholders was not concealed from the eyes of the world, and that I was not alone in abhorring the cruelty and brutality of slavery. A still deeper train of thought was stirred. I saw that there was fear, as well as rage, in the manner of speaking of the abolitionists. The latter, therefore, I was compelled to regard as having some power in the country; and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... you. The age of miracles is not past. But I would raise no false hopes of myself. I am no thaumaturgist. Do you awake with a sinking sensation in the stomach? Have you lost the power of assimilating food? Are you oppressed with an indescribable lassitude? Can you no longer follow the simplest train of thought? Are you troubled throughout the night with a hacking cough? Are you—in fine, are you but a tissue of all the most painful symptoms of all the most malignant maladies ancient and modern? If so, skip this essay, and ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... attempts, could not lead Caroline back again to the same train of thought, or tone of expression. Indeed, Rosamond did not attempt it very skilfully, but rather with the awkward impatience of one not accustomed to use address. Caroline, intent upon the means of assisting the poor young woman whom they had seen at the cottage, went there again ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... He would run no danger of seeing them rudely interrupted. His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the second-hand dealer's. He continued this train of thought to the results that he desired for him, glory; for humanity, the cure of one, and perhaps two, of the most terrible maladies with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... administer to the necessities of our fellow-men? Shall we hoard them up, or shall we not rather give with a free hand and a willing heart to those who have felt misfortune's scourging rod,—who are crushed, oppressed and trampled upon, by not a few of their more wealthy neighbors?" In such a train of thought he indulged himself till the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... negro equality, oh no! But it will be so delightful for the white soldier to be commanded to pace the greensward before the tent of Lieutenant Flipper, the negro graduate of West Point, and the white soldier will probably indulge in a strange train of thought while doing it. And when promotion comes, and the negro becomes Majah Flippah, or Colonel Flippah, the prospects of the white captains and lieutenants will be so cheerful, particularly if they have families and are stationed at some post in the far West, where any neglect in the social courtesies ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... better how to observe with one's own eyes, first, to regard humanity around us and life as it is, and next, old and authentic documents, how to read more than merely the black and white of the page, how to detect under old print and the scrawl of the text the veritable sentiment and the train of thought, the mental state in which the words were penned. In his writings, as in those of Sainte Beuve and in those of the German critics the reader will find how much is to be derived from a literary document, if this document ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the time with hands clasped on her knee before the fire. Given to quick starts as if suddenly awakened from an absorbing train of thought. A pitiful object, especially when seized by terror as she is at odd times. No walks, no visitors to-day. Once I heard her speak some words in a strange language, and once she drew herself up before the mirror in an attitude of so much dignity I was surprised at the ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... follow the train of thought. The family, especially my Aunt Agatha, who has savaged me incessantly from childhood up, have always rather made a point of the fact that mine is a wasted life, and that, since I won the prize at my first school for the best collection of wild flowers made during the summer holidays, ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... inspiration. It is conscious in the highest and the least degree. It consists with the most perfect command of the faculties. It dwells in a repose as of the desert, and objects are as distinct in it as oases or palms in the horizon of sand. The train of thought moves with subdued and measured step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instrument in its hand, and not instinct with life, like a longer arm. It leaves a thin varnish or glaze over all its work. The works of Goethe furnish remarkable instances ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... uses, and, in addition, invented many theories of his own. The man who does old things in a new way, or makes new uses of old inventions, is the one who achieves great things. And so it was the reading of the discovery of Hertz that started the boy on the train of thought and the series of experiments that ended with practical, everyday telegraphy without the use of wires. To begin with, it is necessary to give some idea of the medium that ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... indistinct environments are as a rule considerably distant. I know, further, that considerably distant objects seem much smaller, and hence I must assume that the horse, which in spite of its imaginary distance appears to retain its natural size, is really larger than it is. The train of thought is as follows: "I see the horse indistinctly. It seems to be far away. It is, in spite of its distance, of great size. How enormous it must be when it is close to me!'' Of course these inferences are neither slow nor conscious. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... a long time before she answered. "His stipend forbade it," she said, and seemed to fall into a train of thought. "It would have been rash and unwise," she said at the end of a meditation. "What he had was ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... regarded only as ruses, to afford opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction to which G—, in fact, did finally arrive—the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles concealed—I felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to remain silent. He was almost unaware of my presence. I felt he would go on if I did not divert his train of thought. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... with a little start, as though he had interrupted some train of thought of her own, far removed from hateful little ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... admiringly upon her, who will wonder that Clara became more than usually animated! nor is it strange that the low, musical tones of his voice, breathing thoughts of poetry with the earnestness of love, should awaken a new train of thought in the simple school-girl. She answered in few words, but the drooping of her fringed lids and the bright color in her cheek replied more eloquently than words. The moments flew swiftly, the garlands were placed, and the teacher who had watched them with an anxious eye, announced that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... to the hocks with ink, or split all the way through—vexatious apologies, that throw a person over just at the critical moment, when he has got his sheet prepared and his ideas all ready to pour upon paper; then splut—splut—splutter goes the pen, and away goes the train of thought. Bold is the man who undertakes to write his letters in his bedroom with country-house pens. But, to our friends. Jack and Sponge slept next door to each other; Sponge, as we have already said, occupying the state-room, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... train of thought when you are standing alone in the bleakness and sadness and growing chill of the dying day, with tremendous nature piled all about you, and watching your two companions as they disappear along a lonely road. But the mood ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... there in that simple fact to make me start and hastily recall one or two half-forgotten incidents which, once brought to mind, awoke a train of thought that led to the discovery and capture of those two desperate ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... can now enter into an interesting train of thought while saying to himself: "What need is there of crossing the wide ocean, with the delusion we are visiting the old world, while there are here in our own country the oldest Americans, a race of men who, according to their traditions and the rude architecture of their homes, ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... his chair with slow, deliberate movement, he proceeded, as if following his own train of thought, without noticing that Miss O'Donoghue was intent ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... you'd be as puzzled as a pig in a labyrinth, and not know how to get back to where you started from." And I remember Clement—who generally disputed a point, if possible—said, "How do you know she wouldn't get back, if you let her work out each train of thought in peace? The curt, clean-cut French style may suit some people, whose brains won't stretch far without getting tired; but others may have more sympathy with a Semitic cast ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... questioned about the latter afterwards, he was generally able to sketch out most of the points dwelt upon by the preacher—the explanation being, of course, that, given the text, he was able to follow the probable train of thought inspired by its wording. Summing up Scott's attainments, a biographer gives expression to the opinion that he was 'self-educated in every branch of knowledge he ever turned to account in ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... priest, and fit him for his end." A priest is call'd; 'tis now, alas! too late, Death enters with him at the cottage-gate; Or time allow'd—he goes, assured to find The self-commending, all-confiding mind; And sighs to hear, what we may justly call Death's common-place, the train of thought in all. "True I'm a sinner," feebly he begins, "But trust in Mercy to forgive my sins:" (Such cool confession no past crimes excite! Such claim on Mercy seems the sinner's right!) "I know mankind are frail, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... familiar train of thought, leading on to all kinds of well-known reflections, from the old wonder, why ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... live?" he asked presently, and inconsequently as it seemed, but following out a train of thought of his own which needed ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham |
