"Wistfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the West Mary Ellen spoke but little, though never with harshness, and at times almost with wistfulness. Her history had seemed too full of change to be reality. For the future she made no plans. It seemed to her to be her fate ever to be an alien, a looker-on. The roses drooped across her lattice, and the blue grass stood cool and soft and deep ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... sound rude. I was still a cad. She eyed me, with a certain whiteness, a certain puzzled intentness, a certain fugitive wistfulness—a mute estimation that made me too conscious of her clear appraising gaze and rack my brain for ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... guess all three of us found it fun to chew over a bit the new slant we'd gotten on two (in a way, three) of the great "countries" of the modern world. (And as long as we thought of it as fun, we didn't have to admit the envy and wistfulness that was behind ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... momentary pause in the strange little group linked together by the baby's clutches. The young mother and the girl with their heads so near each other, looked in each other's faces. In Lucy's there was a kind of awe, in Bice's a sort of wondering wistfulness mingled with incipient defiance. They were not born to be each other's friends. They were different in everything; they were even on different sides in this house—the one an intruder, belonging ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... say that, Wilfrid," she said with eager wistfulness. "I've longed so to know—but he'd lived there since our fathers and mothers were children. 'Twould ha' been like taking the soul out of his ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what skill and patience their ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... pace toward him. She had never seemed so little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... and—good? Just this last night you will be able to carry away with you a whiff of real sweetbriar. To-morrow the whole town will be in bloom. It is now I think if we could only see it." Rose Mary had gained her composure and the poignant wistfulness in her voice was but a part of the motif of the briar roses ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... her with a half-smiling wistfulness, as if he would be glad enough to take her tone, were the thing only possible. But for such a juncture as this he had little initiative and less momentum, and he realized it all ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... taking place. Young lovers in the dim sunlight under the trees, paid court to their ladies. There was flirting and teasing and romping play. Though gaiety and frivolity were expressed yet there was a certain wistfulness as well, a little ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... while Preciosa was thus speaking she kept fast hold of the corregidora's hands, and kept her tearful eyes fixed on her face, whilst the lady gazed on her with no less wistfulness, and wept as she did. Just then the corregidor entered, and seeing his wife and Preciosa thus mingling their tears, he was surprised as much by the scene as by the gitanilla's beauty. On his asking the cause of her affliction, Preciosa let go the lady's hands, and threw herself at the corregidor's ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... look like it now. How did you get over it?" The black eyes glistened with eagerness and the little face was full of wistfulness. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... semi-darkness of the carriage Phoebe looked at David. The appealing wistfulness of her face touched him. He patted her arm reassuringly and whispered to her, "Don't you worry. It'll come out all right. Mother Bab will ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... by mysterious forces, drew him also by her beauty and a certain wistfulness in her eyes. He had once had a dog, Amber Witch, whose eyes had held always a wistful question. He had tried to answer it. She had grown old on his hearth, yet always to the end of her eyes had asked. He hoped now that in some celestial hunting ground she had found an answer to that ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... have a splendid sailboat," said fatherless Becky with much wistfulness, and Betty put her arms round her and gave her a warm kiss. Sometimes it seemed that whatever one had the ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... by the light from the door, turned his head slowly toward them; and the look in his eyes, wistful, questioning, expectant, seemed to say, "This is not life, but a miracle." And from his box the red-cheeked, wheezy Irish driver gazed down on Patty with the same wistfulness, the same ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... time Stanley seemed to catch the wistfulness in her eyes and tone. He impulsively ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... as the right girl, no matter what she thought of him. But all at once she realized that he was looking down at her as no one had ever looked before. There was something in his glance like the dumb wistfulness that makes a hunting dog's eyes so pathetic, and she felt a little shiver run over her. She didn't want him to care like that! It was perfectly thrilling to feel that she had aroused a deep regard in any one's heart, but, oh, why did ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I must not talk to you any longer." She glanced uneasily out upon the square, and then hurriedly added, a certain wistfulness in her voice and eyes. "I couldn't help it to-day. I forgot my place. But you are the first gentleman I've spoken to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... as she drew towards the conclusion, they would have wondered what joyful information could have so entranced and delighted the girl who entered the carriage, although with a serene and peaceful countenance, yet with a certain plaintive wistfulness in the shadows of her blue eyes, which betokened no exemption from the ordinary fate of mankind. But now! what unspeakable joy, what ecstatic delight seemed to infuse fresh life and vigour to the fragile, graceful form! For a few moments she crossed ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... looking after him with an odd wistfulness in her eyes. She was seeing him in a new light which made her feel strangely uncertain of herself also. Was it possible that all these years of misunderstanding, which she had regarded as inevitable, might have been ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... the wistfulness in her voice hurt me—'David, would you be very, very disappointed if we went from here—without trying to find out any more ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... along the roadside and standing in gossiping groups about the motor. It was long since they had seen faces from the other life, the life they had left nearly a year earlier and had not been allowed to go back to for a day; and under all their jokes and good-humour their farewell had a tinge of wistfulness. But one felt that this fugitive reminder of a world they had put behind them would pass like a dream, and their minds revert without effort to the one reality: the business of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... revelation of Brian's love revealed also to Erica much in his character which had hitherto perplexed her simply because she had not seen it in the true light. There had always been about him a wistfulness bordering on sadness which had sometimes almost angered her. For so little do even intimate friends know each other, that lives, which seem all peaceful and full of everything calculated to bring happiness, are often the ones which are preyed upon by some grievous trouble ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... strangers just naturally misunderstand Fanny. They see only a tall, sharp-edged wisp of a woman with a mass of faded gold hair carelessly pinned up and two wide-open brown eyes fairly aching with curiosity. You have to know Fanny a long time before the poignant wistfulness of her clutches at your heart, before you can know the singular sweetness of her nature. And even when you come to love her you keep wishing that her collars were pinned on straight and that her skirts were hung evenly at the bottom. There are those who remember the time ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... long hours of her convalescence passed, she sat at her window and scanned the little spot with a wistfulness that might have been given to one of Eden-like proportions. She was astonished to see how her strawberries had improved since she hoed them, but noted in dismay that both they and the rest of the garden ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the gesture of a child of five years old, but Ermentrude's length of limb forbade Christina to suppose her less than fourteen or fifteen. "What, wilt not look at her?" he said, trying to raise her head; and then, holding out one of her wasted, feverish hands to Christina, he again asked, with a wistfulness that had a strange effect from the large, tall man, almost ten years her elder, "Canst thou ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at her with a weary dislike which gave her an impulse to say to him, "Isn't this rather insulting?" But she did not speak. For looking at him sharply, she caught in the man's heavy eyes a certain grim, deep wistfulness which drew her a little in spite of his speech. And she ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... even closer. He shows the most exquisite devotion to his master, caresses him with his pretty baby hands, murmurs ouf in the tenderest of human tones, and sits on his shoulder or on his knee as he writes, looking up with a strange wistfulness in his eyes, as if he would like to express himself in ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... knew he had gone. Her glory had partly died down—but never from her memory. It was too real. Yet it was gone by, leaving a wistfulness. A deeper yearning came into her soul, a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... her with growing wistfulness. At this last moment his love was to become his obstacle, his fear for his ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... be ready at two, then," she said. She turned to the house. Kettering drove slowly down the drive. He was a very fine-looking man, Christine thought with sudden wistfulness; he had been so kind to her—kinder than anyone she had ever known. She was glad he was going to have Upton House, as it had got to be sold. He had promised her to look after it, and not have any of the trees in the garden ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... But most of all he loved to see Harris bending over him, moving about him, and when Lilian came and gave him drink and touched his fevered head, his glittering eyes would soften and follow her with such a world of wistfulness as though they would speak the longing of his heart. Then he would look from her to Harris, and from Harris back to her, in a way that sent the blushes surging to her forehead, and the sight of those blushes set that young soldier's ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... they swept a harp, and a music of piercing sweetness runs with a sudden cry along his blood. But by and by he comes to learn that he has made a comical mistake about this wonder. With his head bent low in worship, he had not seen the wistfulness of her gaze on him; and one day, lo! it is she who presses close to him with the timid appeal of a fawn. Indeed, she has all this time been to him as some beautiful woodland creature might have seemed, breaking for the first time upon the sight of primitive man. Fear, wonder ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... certain wistfulness in the invalid's tone and look; but she did not understand it. Merely, Mother Wit noted and pigeonholed the remark. Janet ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... and her beauty took on an appealing wistfulness. She had been sheltered always and she hungered for Life as the sheltered often do. Madame Bernard, for the thousandth time, looked at her curiously. From the shapely foot that tapped restlessly ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... misunderstand." A note of wistfulness sounded in the high voice. "You won't misunderstand, will you, Jack? I ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... up families that otherwise might have lived in peace, just as well without a church as with one. But the girl listened listlessly and unsmilingly, hardly hearing what was said. Going out of the room she sat for a long time on the doorstep, watching the forest path with patient wistfulness. But there was no sign of the young doctor's coming back and it was a relief when David came up the river bank. He reminded her that she had asked him to go with her to the Sisters' house, and she arose and went indoors to ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... two or three miles from Honolulu, on the coast, where we used to go now and then for a day's fun. It was called—let me get it right—it was called Tormo Tonitui—and there were pleasure-gardens there and the most fascinating girls." His eyes took on a far-away wistfulness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... of fear and mental strain. They were more than ever like the wild wood violets, flecked with those same little brown spots which had made him think sometimes that the flowers were full of laughter. There was something of wistfulness, of thought for him in her eyes now, and in ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... fearless, lad!" continued the trapper, looking up into the eyes of his companion, with a wistfulness that bespoke the delight he received in listening to the praises of one, whom it was so very evident, he had ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... light-hearted English girl, with a taste for field sports (especially riding), and a native love of the country. But at times one caught in the brightened colour of her lustrous brown eyes certain curious undercurrents of depth, of reserve, and of a questioning wistfulness which made you suspect the presence of profounder elements in her nature. From the earliest moment of our acquaintance, indeed, I can say with truth that Hilda Wade interested me immensely. I felt drawn. Her face had that strange quality of compelling attention ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... at the woman, as her abrupt reply reached my ear. Though trembling for the consequences of her boldly spoken wish, Jean did not shrink from my astonished gaze; and when I saw the wistfulness of that wan face, the smile died on my lips, checked by the tender courage which had prompted the utterance of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... idealistic." There was a faint note of wistfulness in Nan's voice. "Why should everything that is beautiful be invariably termed 'idealistic'? Oh, there are ten thousand things I'd like altered in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... for Hunter to see her expression as she looked up at Val and added with what seemed a touch of wistfulness, "I'll be glad to go in with you and Mr. Rockford and do what I can to help if ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... a hint of wistfulness, and said no more. The child Olga would have argued the point. The ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and looked back. The shutter had opened; there was no glass; the small square of the window showed the nebulous gray mist without, and defined upon it was Evelina's head, her dark hair streaming over the red shawl held about it, her fair oval face pallid and pensive, and with a great wistfulness upon it; her lustrous dark ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... arranging clothes, or tackle, and his lusty voice again rang out to the glory of "Napoli, bella Napoli." There was something infectious in his happy-go-lucky light-heartedness. Vere smiled as she listened, but there was a wistfulness in her heart. At that moment a very common desire of young and vigorous girls assailed her—the desire to be a boy; not a boy born of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of aristocratic young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... asked with wistfulness, "what am I to do? For six hundred pounds is the total of ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... a silent and studious moment or two, without looking at Copeland. Then she sighed, with mock plaintiveness. Her wistfulness seemed to leave ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... supposed hilarity, the attributive recklessness, the daring hopes. Perhaps there is some such youth as this, but it has not its home in the breast of any young poet, and he rarely utters it; at best he is of a light melancholy, a smiling wistfulness, and upon the whole, October is more ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... hands in his, but released them after the merest touch, and in the hungry wistfulness of his gaze there was no ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... by, but never once did she doubt the motive which prompted such neglect. From the moment of their meeting the consciousness of his love had enveloped her. He might set a seal on his lips, but he could not control his eyes, and the wistfulness of that ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... concerned; and I was careful not to fling at him a single embarrassing question. As dinner went on he lost the worried look he had brought with him, a look that was a misfit for his merry personality. He glanced often with a rather pathetic wistfulness at me, which I read very easily and shamefacedly; and at last he broke out with information concerning a torchlight procession that would set forth from one of the parks of El Paso. Of course I knew what this remark was leading up to! He'd heard ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to take down a New Testament, and present himself at Fernando's bedside, observing gladly that there was much more wistfulness ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... encountered the deep blue eyes of Adah Yocomb fixed on me with an intent, eager wistfulness. "Can I do anything for thee, Richard Morton?" she asked, rising from her chair near the door. "Mother asked me to stay with thee awhile, and to let her know if thee woke and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the old order of Russia, goes to his doom, there is intoned by his followers the sweetest melody that Moussorgsky wrote or could write. And out of that hymn to the glory of the perishing house there seems to come to us all the pathos of eternally passing things, all the wistfulness of the last sunset, all the last greeting of a vanished happiness. More sheerly than any other moment, more even than the infinitely stern and simple prelude that ushers in the last scene of "Boris" and seems to come out of a great distance and sum up all the sadness and darkness and pitifulness ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... uplifted chin, surveyed him gravely and with a certain wistfulness, Miss Felicia's attempted poaching forgotten and an impression of Faircloth vividly overtaking her. For they were so intimately, disturbingly alike, the father and the son, in voice as well as in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... I want," said Henry Vail, looking with the same tender wistfulness into his friend's eyes. "If I'd wanted a missionary I shouldn't have come to you. If I'd wanted a Sunday-school teacher I could have found twenty better; and as for tract distributing and Bible reading, you couldn't do either if you'd try. What ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... turning her eyes about the room as if from the extremity of martyrdom or the wistfulness of some deep thought. Yet when she spoke it was with a different expression, an expression that would have served for an observer as a marked illustration of that disconnectedness of her parts which frequently was laughable even to the degree of contributing to her ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... note to her room and placed them on her purse to the tune of her snoring, looked at her with a certain wistfulness for the mothering he had never received ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... traveling difficult and wearisome. This Christmas was different. The year was dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature. Cockhoolet stood high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... offended her by his silence—his two letters, which she had neither invited nor answered. That can hardly account for it, since she had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... accustomed circumstances or persons. It was very like Rudolph Musgrave that even now, for all the glow of the future's bright allure, his heart should hark back to the past and its absurd dear memories, with wistfulness. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... him with girlish wistfulness in the blue depths of her eyes, with the something tragic in the lines of her face that little Patience's death had written there irradicably, with poverty speaking from every fold of the blouse and skirt, yet with all the indescribable charm of girlish beauty at fifteen, Lydia was more appealing ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... moulded with a fine waxen delicacy that won admiration from all eyes. Her hair was curly and golden, but her eyes were dark like her mother's, and the lids drooped over them in that manner which gives a peculiar expression of dreamy wistfulness. Every one of us must remember eyes that have a strange, peculiar expression of pathos and desire, as if the spirit that looked out of them were pressed with vague remembrances of a past, or but dimly comprehended the mystery ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they are not in their true sphere. The child who stands, half-clad, before the hearth-fire, in the painting called the "Little Cottager," has the delicate features of a true aristocrat. No cottage boy this, with shapely hands and large, melancholy eyes. His wistfulness is so touching that we would fain snatch him from his surroundings, and set him down amidst the soft luxuries which belong ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... but there was just a shade of wistfulness in their laughter, for they knew that the boys were only skirting the outer edge of the hardships they would be called upon to ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... silent till she glanced up at him again, with a sweet wistfulness, that was rather frequent with her; turning half round—for he stood at her side, not quite enough at his ease to look continually in her face—he was much surprised to find her so charming, so naive in all her movements, and in the flitting ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... met her riding home from an errand to a neighboring ranch, and, turning his horse, rode with her. In worn corduroy skirt, flannel shirt, and gray sombrero, she looked like a handsome, haggard boy, and, that afternoon, there was a certain unusual wistfulness in her eyes, and her mouth had relaxed a little from its bitterness. Perhaps it was the beauty of a clear, keen summer day; without doubt, also, she was touched by the courteous pleasure of his greeting and by his giving up his ride in order ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... a certain wistfulness which I did not at that moment understand. Just then Lord Porthoning made his way toward us. As I watched him approach I realized more than ever the justice of Mr. Bundercombe's description. He was undersized, bent nearly double, ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... voice; very pleading, very conscious of itself and of the pathos of our little span of living; but the wistfulness of its appeal is almost heartbreaking. He can never, I suppose, stand among the great composers; dwarfed he must always be against Mozart or Weber, or even Verdi. But he has done what all wise men must do: he has discovered the one thing he can perform well, and he is performing it very well ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Since they must (not being fools) be aware that these antics were mere subtraction of time from their business, the obvious conclusion was, they were not happy with business. There was some strange wistfulness in the conduct of Big Business Dogs, he thought. Under the pretence of transacting affairs, they were really trying to discover something ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... a day at last when thought and recollection began to struggle back—when she had strength to lie awake and think. More than once Trix caught the dark eyes fixed in silent wistfulness upon her—a question in them her lips would not ask. But Miss Stuart guessed it, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of her song, and presently started another, a more rollicking air, but still charged with wistfulness. Who had taught her those hushed, thrilling tones? Sam recognized this air, too, and thought of the mother who had sung it to him ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... scorn crept into her voice, and she stopped. When she spoke again her tone had changed, deepened into uncertainty, freighted with wistfulness. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to spend the day, for people in the Hollow Land enjoy their pleasures as much by quantity as quality, especially their friends' society; and I could only hope that a certain wistfulness of expression, as she looked back from the tonneau of the red car, meant that Nell would rather have remained with some of those who ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... and smile, and say she did not know. If, sometimes, a handsome boyish face, not dark like Percy, but with a fair, budding mustache and laughing eyes, seemed to rise out of the mist and look at her with odd wistfulness, Fern never spoke of it; a sort of golden haze pervaded it. Sometimes those eyes were eloquent, and seemed appealing to her; a strange meaning pervaded the silence; in that poor room blossomed all sorts of sweet fancies ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that 'now', or from a strange momentary wistfulness in her eyes, I knew that there had been more children, ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his book aside completely and gazed at her in patient thought. "Linda," he said finally, "I have never heard anything that stirred me so much; not what you said, my dear, but the recognition in your voice." A wistfulness of love for her enveloped him; an ineffable desire as vain as the passion she struggled to give him in return. She smiled in an unhappiness ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... old," he said. "I have not been upon the seas these two years past. Who can say that I may not have lost the art of victory. No, no." He shook his head, and his face grew overcast and softened by wistfulness. "Sakr-el-Bahr commands this time, and if Marzak goes, he ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... enthusiastically, "Bravo, Widow Cunningham!"—a smile as spectral as the state of things of which she was the relic. She was very wearied and almost fainting when she was brought back to the platform; and then she said, in a voice that was a little louder than a whisper, and with a strange wistfulness in her eyes, "I'd like ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... knowingly mentioned, gather the lower moral-classes on Saturday and Sunday nights—the little troubled men who are pictured in the comics as "the Consumer" or "the Public." They have made sure that the place has three qualifications: it is cheap; it imitates with a sort of shoddy and mechanical wistfulness the glittering antics of the great cafes in the theatre district; and—this, above all, important—it is a place where they can "take a nice girl," which means, of course, that every one has become equally harmless, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... silent and hurried; for Ducie was in the throng of her festival, and rather impatient for Stephen's help. Only Latrigg walked to the gate with them. He looked after Sandal and his daughter with a grave, but not unhappy wistfulness; and when a belt of larches hid them from his view, he turned towards the ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something that he was pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an air of wistfulness. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... destiny. Once when Charlie and I were staying at Rutherford a beautiful spaniel belonging to Lesbia had been accidentally shot while straying in some wood. The poor animal had dragged himself with pain and difficulty to the garden-gate, and there we found him. I shall never forget the wistfulness of the poor creature's eyes when his mistress knelt down and caressed him. He died a few minutes afterwards, licking her hand. I could not help thinking of Tito when I first saw Phoebe Locke; for the same unreasoning anguish ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... anything special from now on?" asked the skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the old ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... his care; ma—mamma asked him to see me safe." The wistfulness was coming into her ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... a dim remembrance of my final submission, though it is the faintest ghost of an impression and consists but of the bright blur of a dame's schoolroom, a mere medium for small piping shuffling sound and suffered heat, as well as for the wistfulness produced by "glimmering squares" that were fitfully screened, though not to any revival of cheer, by a huge swaying, yet dominant object. This dominant object, the shepherdess of the flock, was Miss Bayou or Bayhoo—I ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... tensely, "all the pain I have ever known." Then as he led her on he spoke again with an odd wistfulness. ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... reached neither their ears nor mine." And he drew up a chair and sat down opposite to Wogan, bending forward with his hands upon his knees. The firelight played upon his pale, indoor face, and it seemed to Wogan that he regarded his guest with a certain wistfulness. Wogan spoke his ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... and touched him. Its confused wistfulness came straight from the heart. And then it recalled to the doctor a conversation he had had with Valentine, when they talked over the extraordinary influence that the mere appearance—will working through features—of one man or woman can have over another. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... lies motionless, still sleeping.—MICHAEL, sitting on the bank opposite, fingers the pipe with awe and wistfulness. He blows softly upon it; then looks at the girl hopefully. She ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... her eyes were bright to see the way, her feet accustomed. So it was true. By what they had suffered, apart, by what they had tested and rejected, they had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be accepted. No wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that which had been given. And resolved hearts ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... forward to her knees, and the girl stoops down to raise her. One guesses the rest. They will be sobbing together in a minute, the girl's face buried in the other's shoulder. All you are to see is just the wistfulness,—"My dear! my dear!" And then the Virgin, full of Grace, but a shy girl in her teens for all that, hides her hot cheeks and cries her little wild heart to quietness. Some of it is in Albertinelli's fine picture, but not all. All of it—and here's the point—is to be ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... husband's words. She felt a return of that glow of admiration which had thrilled her on the previous night, when he and Richard Lane alone amongst that motley company had played the part of men. A curious, almost pathetic wistfulness crept into her heart. If only he would lean towards her at that moment, if she could see once more the light in his eyes that had shone there during the days of their courtship! If only he could remember that it was still his part to play the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... housekeeper for her father and her brother. She was a wholesome, clear-visioned girl, with an attractive face that glowed with the good color of health and happiness. And if at times, when the Ward automobile passed, there was a shadow of wistfulness in Mary's eyes, it did not mar for long the expression of her habitually contented and cheerful spirit. She worked at her household tasks with a song, entered into the pleasures of her friends and neighbors with hearty delight, and was known, as well, to many poverty-stricken ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... open, and after he had carefully locked his box in its official place, he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a few minutes, stroking Dido's silky head, letting her rippled ears fall through my fingers. Her dim eyes were fixed on me with a terrible wistfulness, as though she longed to speak and could not. I felt a great pity for the old dog. What a sad lot is theirs, depending on our presence as they do for the light in their sky, to whom our slightest absence ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... we have had to exert our wits and bodies in more ways than we ever did before in all our lives. True, I do miss my modeling somewhat." He spoke the last with a soft mellowness in his voice and a wistfulness that made ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... a moment with a certain wistfulness suffusing his features, then made his way out ere Jessie could recover sufficiently ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Venice would fill a book. Not all have been too successful; while some have borne false witness. The dashing Ziem, for example, deprived Venice of her translucency; our own Henry Woods and Luke Fildes endow her daughters, who have always a touch of wistfulness, with too bold a beauty. In Whistler's lagoon etchings one finds the authentic note and in Clara Montalba's warm evanescent aquamarines; while for the colour of Venice I cannot remember anything finer, always after Turner, than, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... have bullied you." There was an odd note of wistfulness in the harsh voice, and for a moment the handsome, arrogant old face softened incredibly. "I shouldn't ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... years, swept him to a harsher revolt than he had conquered in the library. In the face of Graham, in spite of his own intolerable position he knew he couldn't fight that truth eternally. She must have noticed his struggle without grasping its cause, for she touched his hand, and the wistfulness ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Hartmann, catching the slight note of wistfulness in Willem's voice. "You're beginning the way I began. It wasn't more than a week after my father got his gardening job with Mr. Grimm that I used to be sent up to meet the trains with a basket of flowers and 'the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... man discarded than of affection for the man she chose. They knew each other's history so completely that there could be no disguise between them. Their eyes met, and for an instant there was a suspicion of wistfulness in the glance. Then Mrs. Frostwinch shook her head, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... some of the wine of youth. Her face was thinner, but that was not the vital difference. The real change lay in the determination with which she had learned to set her jaw, the defiance with which she held her head, and the wistfulness, the pleading, with which her eyes seemed to be looking out into the future. The combination of things about her was ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... de Montfort, "but that an offer of friendship might have won him to a better life. It seemed that in his speech was a note of wistfulness. I wish, father, that we had ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the laugh of Jimmy and Unc' Billy, but still with something of a look of wistfulness ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... for him. Though he had said it was scarcely probable that he would go back to it, she knew that he had not forgotten the land from which he was exiled. Indeed, a certain wistfulness in his eyes suggested that he still thought of it with the exile's usual tenderness. She was going to take her place in the world to which she felt reasonably certain he had once belonged, while he swung the ax or plied the shovel beside some western railroad track; though she did not ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... opened and the influx of guests promised a successful season, yet there was a regret and a wistfulness in Mr. Cone's brown eyes as they scanned the register, for in the long list there was no name of any ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Bay, gazing at the red roofs of the little village across the water. She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Just now some secret sorrow seemed to be troubling her, for on her forehead were wrinkles and in her eyes a look of wistfulness. She had, in fact, all the distinguishing marks of one who is thinking of ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... hire 'a man like Willis' to extract them from your scarlet cushions? Potentates have grand viziers. Mr. Willes would make a delicious grand vizier," she reflected, with a kind of wistfulness. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... herself irremediably. She lived with her maid in a small lodging, and being often confined to her room for days, nearly every visitor was welcome. Mike liked this pallid and forgotten little woman. He found in her a strange sweetness—a wistfulness. There was poetry in her loneliness and her ruined health. Strength, health, and beauty had been crushed by a chance fall. But the accident had not affected the mind, unless perhaps it had raised it into more intense sympathy with life. And in all his various passions and neglected ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... refrained from saying anything just at that moment. Silence seemed to favor the change that was taking place for the better in Mat's temper. He looked up, after awhile, and regarded Zack with a rough wistfulness and anxiety ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the novelist—accompanied, always, by Czar—walked out that way to see how things were progressing; and often,—if he had not been too busy to notice,—Aaron King might have seen a look of wistfulness in the keen, baffling eyes of the famous man—so world-weary and sad. And, while he did not cease to mock and jeer and offer sarcastic advice to his younger friend, the touch of pathos—that, like a minor chord, was so often heard in his ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... speaking now with a sort of whimsical and half-pathetic merriment, as if inclined to break into laughter at its own childish wistfulness. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens |
