"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to have a mysterious instinct, a sort of sub-conscious intuition, that never led him astray. And then there were those baffling, inexplicable premonitions that on three occasions had intervened to prevent some great disaster. The thought of these made her very pensive, and now that the vicar had set her mind at rest upon the abstract theory of invisible protectors she felt that she could harbour speculations about them without danger to her soul's welfare. That the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... desire to hear from his own lips a tale of shipwreck which is virtually without parallel in its ghastly tragedy. I instinctively felt myself creeping on to sacred ground. As soon as I mentioned the matter his countenance changed and he became pensive. A far-off look came over him, which indicated that a tender chord had been touched. Obviously his thoughts were revisiting the scene of a fierce conflict for life. The sight was sublime, and when I saw the moisture come into ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... sculptor left for Rome. On the way Aurelius was pensive and taciturn, staring attentively at everything—the men, the ship, the sea, as though trying to retain something. On the high sea a storm burst upon them, and all through it Aurelius stayed on the deck and eagerly scanned the seas looming ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... effect, because they smiled eternally; they seemed cast with their mouths open, and their pretty teeth forever in sight; and this has a saddening influence on a man of sense—when it has any. But here a fair, pensive face had brightened at sight of him; a lovely countenance, on which circumstances, not nature, had impressed gravity, had sprung back to its natural gayety for a moment, and had thrilled and bewitched ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... and so charmed when you asked us, for we haven't seen you this age, darling," added Blanche, the pensive one, smoothing her blond curls after ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... nurse met, the opinion may be regarded as of relative value. Tom was there, enjoying himself as usual, indeed rather more than usual, because in the stable hard by, munching his oats, was a horse (the gift of the Squire) who owned him, Tom, as lord and master. Jill was there too, a little pensive as she looked round for some one who was not there, but trying hard to enjoy herself and seem glad. Besides these intimates there was Mr Headland, feeling like a father to everybody; Dr Brandram, in professional ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... too shy to keep up the conversation by any remark of her own, although his gentle, pensive manner ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... following after one of his own gros mots, came ringing out of window, this gentleman without laughed and sniggered in the queerest way likewise, and he slapped his thigh and winked at Jeames pensive in the portico, as much as to say, "Plush, my boy, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bounds! That classic house, those classic grounds, My pensive thought recalls! What tender urchins now confine, What little captives now repine, Within ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no object of the familiar landscape, through which, without formality, and in quiet grief, so many of the renowned and the humble followed his remains from the village-church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness to the eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow Creek, near to which Ichabod Crane encountered the headless horseman,—not only as typical of his genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... bark him away, but only dreams of barking, in his cozy kennel. Close by are the windows of the mansion, glowing with light. There beat the philanthropic hearts; there smiles the pale, pensive lady; there beams the aspiring face of her son; and there sits the Judge, with his feet on the rug, pleasantly contemplating the good his speech will do, and thinking quite as much, perhaps, of the fame it will bring him,—happily unconscious ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I answered—she was three years older than I, so I had the right to patronise her. 'That would spoil all. Your dear little face would be quite enough to scare away a timid adventure.' She knew what I meant. It was gentle and pensive, but it lacked initiative. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... most part, however, there was nothing to give gross offence to the eye. Gray, in his charming elegy, used words exactly expressive of the ordinary truth, when he called it 'this neglected spot.' It was tranquil enough, and suggestive of pensive meditation, shaded perhaps by rugged elms or melancholy yews; but the grass was probably rank and untended, and the ground a confused medley of shapeless heaps. Except in epitaphs, there were no particular signs of tenderness and care; no flowers, no shrubs, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... taste, to which they had served as organs. Penetration and judgment were seated on the brows that overhung the eye. Fixed as it was, Sagestus quickly discerned the expression it must have had; dark and pensive, rather from slowness of comprehension than melancholy, it seemed to absorb the light of knowledge, to drink it in ray by ray; nay, a new one was not allowed to enter his head till the last was arranged: an opinion was thus cautiously received, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... matters not then within her knowledge. But she was guided once more, as many a woman has been, by her unerring instinct, her sixth sense of womanhood, her scent for things of danger. Now, though she stood with face grave, pensive, almost melancholy, to give him curtsy as he passed, there was not weakness nor faltering ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... fairy of the waterfalls and is a sort of merman. You never see more than half his body. He is very, very old, his hair and beard are long and white, and his face is always pale and pensive. He carries a harp and plays to amuse the spirits in the waterfall. A statue of Ole Bull has recently been erected in his native city of Bergen. He stands upon a pedestal which rises from a fountain, and the water flows over ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... William the Conqueror, and some of us possess the spirit of our ancestors the French. I do for one. A pleasant spirit it is. Vive la Bagatelle, is the maxim. A light heart may bid defiance to fortune. And yet, Erskine, I must tell you, that I have been a little pensive of late, amorously pensive, and disposed to read Shenstone's Pastoral on Absence, the tenderness and simplicity of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the tooth-ache, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... full minute, pretending to find trouble in the getting on of his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada had not moved. She was looking at him with strange and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a flush on them beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind and snow; but ...
— Options • O. Henry
... the apparent ease of his rescue, had sought information. But little enough had been forthcoming. Leslie Standing had only smiled in his pensive fashion. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the moon, large, round and red, was rising above the black tree-tops. Its soft evasive light touched the stone steps, and Lida's dress, and her pensive, smiling face. In the garden the shadows had grown deeper; they were now sombre and profound as those of ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... inducing sleep. The cultivated Lettuce which comes to our tables retains these same properties, but in a very modified degree, since the formidable principles have become as completely toned down and guileless in the garden product as were the child-like manners and the pensive smile ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Vicar still told his horrible stories at breakfast, still fought vain battles with the parishioners who would not drain the village, and the women who would dry their linen on the tombstones. Anne was still as transparently pretty, as pensive and pious as of old; but over the hope of the house, the dashing, clever Branwell, who was to make the name of Bronte famous in art, a dim, tarnishing change had come. Emily must have seen it with fresh eyes, left more and more in Branwell's company, when, after the Christmas holidays, Anne ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... herself affected,—for the lines were impressed with a wild and melancholy depth of feeling,—she came again to her mother's side, and seeing her emotion, kissed away the tears from the pensive eyes. Her own gayety left her; she drew a stool to her mother's feet, and nestling to her, and clasping her hand, did not leave that place till they retired ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what I saw. This beautiful figure has repose, simplicity, nature, and grace, but I felt a want—the want of some internal sentiment: for instance, if, instead of watching the rotation of her spindle with such industrious attention, the Filatrice had looked careless, or absent, or pensive, or disconsolate, (like Faust's Margaret at her spinning-wheel,) she would have been more interesting—but not perhaps what the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a boy who threw a fork at his brother and put his eye out. But he didn't mean to, and the brother forgave him, and he never did so any more," observed Jill, in a pensive tone, wishing to show that she felt all the dangers of impatience, but was sorry for ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... all the gentler and better spirits which had begun to move over the troubled face of Italy, promising a second and younger empire of poesy, and lore, and art. To the graceful and romantic but somewhat pensive and inert, temperament of the young noble, more adapted to calm and civilized than stormy and barbarous times, ambition proffered no reward so grateful as lettered leisure and intellectual repose. His youth coloured ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... across the reaches of the sea, they played a little game of selecting the right cottage from the little white farm-houses dotted along the shores, and said, "We'd take this or that, and we'd do thus and so with it—and live this way!" Then they would laugh, and grow pensive, as if the land with its smoke wreaths had suddenly drifted past their eyes, reminding them of the future. 'You are bound with invisible cords,' a voice said. 'You have escaped in fancy, but to-morrow ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... preparations the light failed me; the last level streak of sunlight disappeared, and a fading twilight only remained. I sighed in unison with the pensive hour, and threw open the window, intending to look out for a moment before going downstairs. I perceived instantly that the window underneath mine was also open, for I heard two voices in conversation, although I could not distinguish ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... seeds survey, And fling the trade in empty words away. O full-orb'd moon, did but thy rays Their last upon mine anguish gaze! Beside this desk, at dead of night, Oft have I watched to hail thy light: Then, pensive friend! o'er book and scroll, With soothing power, thy radiance stole! In thy dear light, ah, might I climb, Freely, some mountain height sublime, Round mountain caves with spirits ride, In thy mild haze o'er meadows glide, And, purged from knowledge-fumes, renew My spirit, in thy healing dew! ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could she tell ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the fields with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I'm living in ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... feel mean or murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated lubber-land, affording to London the example of a ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... books. The green secluded alleys, the gentle knolls, the glades, the spacious meadows of the park, recall at every step the younger Pliny's incomparable picture of his Tuscan villa. 'Placida omnia et quiescentia.' 'A spirit of pensive peace broods over the whole place, making it not lovelier only, but more salubrious, making the sky more pure, the atmosphere ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... handles which fall out, and the cans with the handles which do not fall out, the equity of selling that which does not belong to you—all these things chased each other across Festus Clasby's mind. The Son of the Bard stood silent by the cart, looking away down the road with a pensive look ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... ripple of his merriment with the children had passed he turned to me with a face now serious and pensive, and said: "Ah, so many things familiar to us are strange to you ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... She cast a hurried glance round that strange assembly, if by chance her eye might rest upon some dear familiar face; but she saw not the kind but grave face of Hector, nor met the bright sparkling eyes of her cousin Louis, nor the soft, subdued, pensive features of the Indian girl, her adopted sister. She stood alone among those wild, gloomy-looking men; some turned away their eyes as if they would not meet her woe-stricken countenance, lest they should be moved to pity her sad condition. No wonder that, overcome by the sense of her utter forlornness, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... mighty sigh. She was thinking of Dr. Ballard's pensive eyes. "I should think so," she answered frankly; "because if you just study the truth, and hold on tight, how can things be anything but happy at last? I wish I was more grown up, ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... stood staring blankly after him, rubbing her cheek which burned hot where he had kissed her. She would always remember that kiss too, and all too late she remembered to become indignant. But, no one being about, she laughed low to herself and hurried back to the house, her eyes downcast and pensive. She had known many men and lovers in her time, but never a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... dressed to perfection, pensive, with set face (though inwardly much tempted to laugh), under a lovely hat, my arms crossed. Would you believe it? Not a single smile was thrown at me, not one poor youth was struck motionless as I passed, not a soul turned to look again; and yet the carriage proceeded with a deliberation ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... by natural and simple and straightforward means. If Webster has not made the part of Antonio dramatically striking and attractive—as he probably found it impossible to do—he has at least bestowed on the fugitive and unconscious widower of his murdered heroine a pensive and manly grace of deliberate resignation which is not without pathetic as well as poetical effect. In the beautiful and well-known scene where the echo from his wife's unknown and new-made grave seems to respond to his meditative mockery and forewarn ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... she went about somewhat pensive, as though a troublous thought were on her; and when, three days thereafter, she met the wood-mother, she spake to her even as they parted, and said: Mother, much wisdom hast thou learned me, and now this at the last withal, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... saw that her lady-in-waiting, Teresa de Launay, had discreetly wandered by herself to the edge of the water- lily pool, and was bending over it, a graceful, pensive figure in the near distance, within call, but certainly ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound silence. At length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my eyes fixed on Asia, suddenly in the north, on the shores of the Black sea, and in the fields of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and flame attracted my attention. They appeared to rise at the same time from all parts of the peninsula; and passing by the isthmus ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... and with severity. The court thrilled, and the murmuring was on his side. The Judge was much disturbed. Manuela alone maintained her calm, sitting like a pensive Hebe, her cheek ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... visionary, out of touch with reality. Perhaps, however, it was I who had become disillusioned and matter-of-fact. I saw with a kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still supplied to her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a certain atmosphere of pensive, prayerful resignation, a background for ethereal day-dreams. Her peaceful days were passed in a kind of picturesque haze, like the mist that, seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... an unexplored cavern, under which an upright shaft of stone had stood for ages statue-like, till not many winters ago the frost heaved it from its base, and it plunged headlong down through the ice into the unfathomed depths below. The unvarying gloom of the pines was lit now by the pensive glimmer of birch-trees, and this gray tone gave an indescribable sentiment of pathos and of age to the scenery. Suddenly the boat rounded the corner of the three steps, each five hundred feet high, in which Cape Eternity climbs ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... a barber at Rome, could imitate to a nicety almost every word it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterwards the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and melancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it, as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that this was far from being the case; for the bird had been all the time occupied ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... EGERIAN GROT, Where, nobly pensive, ST. JOHN sat and thought; Where British sighs from dying Wyndham stole, And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont's soul. Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor, Who dare to love their COUNTRY, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... it is that you find such people so fickle and uncertain in their spirits; now on the mount, then in the valleys; now in the sunshine, then in the shade: now warm, then frozen; now bonny and blithe, then in a moment pensive and sad, as thinking of a portion nowhere but in hell. This will cause smiting on the breast; nor can I imagine that the Publican was as yet farther than thus far in ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... brightly, now it wavered and died, as if its beam was all too weak to hold to the continued effort of projecting itself so far. That must be the Kerr ranch; no other habitation lay in that direction. Perhaps in the light of that lamp somebody was sitting, bending a dark head in pensive tenderness with ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... cards I brought back from Boston," remarked Mrs. Partington, in a pensive mood. "They are momentums of the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... when they saw that it prompted its professors to encounter such tremendous sacrifices. As the heathen bystanders gazed on the martyrdom of a husband and a master, and as they observed the unflinching fortitude with which he endured his anguish, they often became deeply pensive. They would exclaim—"The man has children, we believe—a wife he has, unquestionably—and yet he is not unnerved by these ties of kindred: he is not turned from his purpose by these claims of affection. We must look into the affair—we must get ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... lord, be not pensive; we are your friends: Men are ordain'd to live in misery; Therefore, come; dalliance dangereth our lives. K. Edw. Friends, whither must unhappy Edward go? Will hateful Mortimer appoint no rest? Must I be vexed like the nightly bird, Whose sight is loathsome to all winged fowls? When will the fury ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... in the Earth's atmosphere helped to cloud their intelligence. Certain it is, they returned very pensive, very cross, and rather dusty ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... afternoon in my yacht, idly and slowly sailing over the bay, availing myself of what little wind there was. Guido's absence (he had gone to Rome on a visit of some weeks' duration) rendered me somewhat of a solitary, and as my light craft ran into harbor, I found myself in a pensive, half-uncertain mood, which brought with it its own depression. The few sailors who manned my vessel dispersed right and left as soon as they were landed—each to his own favorite haunts of pleasure ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... childhood's home, Aunt Ruth and I, and sunny-hearted May. She was a fair and most exquisite child; Her pensive face was delicate and mild Like her dead mother's; but through her dear eyes Her father smiled upon me, day by day. Afar in foreign countries did he roam, Now resting under Italy's blue skies, And now with Roy in Scotland. And ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Then Brier-Rose grew pensive, like a bird of thoughtful mien, Whose little life has problems among the branches green. She heard the river brawling where the tide was swift and strong, She heard the summer singing its strange, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... upon the piano-stool was a young-lady of at most eighteen years: her face, had it not been for its expression of exuberant drollery and malicious fun, would have been downright beautiful; her eyes, of the deepest blue, and shaded by long lashes, instead of indulging the character of pensive and thoughtful beauty for which Nature destined them, sparkled with a most animated brightness; her nose, which, rather short, was still beautifully proportioned, gave, with her well-curled upper lip, a look of sauciness to the features quite bewitching; her hair—that brilliant ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... is pensive and retrospective in tone we are given a song of "The Aged Courtier," which once in a pageant touched the finer consciousness of Queen Elizabeth. The unemployed warrior, whose "helmet now shall make a hive for bees," treats ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... face he could not but lament that marriage, at least, established a barrier between her and the advances his bold heart might otherwise be willing to risk. His black hair straggled down over his forehead and his dark eyes—the patch had been surreptitiously lifted—were unusually pensive. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... return?" said the inquisitive gentleman. "Never!" replied the Baronet, with a pensive shake of the head: "I never saw him again." "And pray what has all this to do with the picture?" inquired the old gentleman with the nose—"True!" said the questioner—"Is it the portrait of this crack-brained Italian?" "No!" said the Baronet drily, not half liking the appellation given to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... which he would throw in natural and unexpected Incidents to make his Court to one Part, and rally the other Part of the Company: Then he would vary the Usage he gave them, according as he saw them bear kind or sharp Language. He had the Knack to raise up a pensive Temper, and mortifie an impertinently gay one, with the most agreeable Skill imaginable. There are a thousand things which crowd into my Memory, which make me too much concerned to tell on about him. Hamlet holding up the Skull which the Grave-digger ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... who now stood in an attitude of enchanting and unstudied grace, her dark eyes, shaded by their long and silky lashes, alternately reposing their glances upon her kneeling friend, or gazing out into the distance with a mournful, pensive look. The gently swelling breast, the cheeks overspread with the most delicate tint of the rose, the airy and elastic form, might have belonged to the goddess of love herself, in the days of her freshest youth; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... with ranges of hills made of a luminous bluish smoke, and sky only a more luminous and liquid kind, and the olives but a more solid specimen, of the mysterious silvery substance of the world. The marvellous part of it all, and quite impossible to convey, is that such days are not pensive, but effulgent, that the lines of the landscape are not blurred, but exquisitely selected ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... coming of the foe, and some Had vague forebodings, and were brooding dumb, And longed to greet the huntsmen. Mothers laid Their babes to sleep, and many a gentle maid Sighed for her lover in that lone stockade; And one who sat apart, with pensive eye, Thus sang to ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... last daughter of the ever-beautiful Rothesay line—which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive looked up at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no childish shyness—only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied unbelief. Then his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... chief glory of South Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions—all now ruthlessly swept away—throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. The spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires. The bones of King Edward "the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the pensive nymph oppress'd, And secret passions labour'd in her breast. Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive, Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss, 5 Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss, Not tyrants ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... not whether they were written by a Hindoo or an American, whether they are full of personal experience or drawn with the fervor of the most ardent imagination. Wordsworth's Daffodils (Volume VII, page 1) would charm us and our hearts would dance as joyfully if we knew nothing of the pensive ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... regretted Font Abbey, or, in other words, Mr. Talboys. Well acquainted with all the subtle signs by which women read one another, she observed with some uneasiness that Lucy appeared somewhat listless and pensive at times, when left quite to herself. Once she found her with her cheek in her hand, and, by the way the young lady averted her head and slid suddenly into distinct cheerfulness, suspected there must have been tears in her eyes, but could not be positive. Next, she noticed with ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Dill, more than pensive at the ticket-window, she hesitated, then stopped and observed him. That she should observe anybody was in a way a coincidence, for, as it happened, she was herself the most observed person in all the place. She was veiled in two veils, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... pensive and grave as he said, "It is very hard on the women, certainly, that our race should have degenerated so, for I believe in my conscience they are as clever and wicked, and appreciate temptation as much as ever." (The gusto with which he said this is indescribable.) "There is the Bellasys, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... passage through the loose strata in its course. The brook was heard, though hidden by the tangled underwood, and they stopped to listen. Soothing but melancholy was the sound. Even the birds seemed to chirp there in a sad and pensive twitter, not unnoticed by the lovers, though each kept the gloomy and fanciful ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... when very young are nice-looking without being beautiful, very supple and pensive, and with expressive eyes. They lack the unsteady, insincere countenance of the men, and have reposeful, placid faces, with occasional good features. There is a good deal of character in their firmly closed lips, the upper lip being slightly heavy but well-shaped. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... at observing this careless state in which her lover left things around him. She found in it a sort of grace and nobility, but also a spirit of indifference contrary to her own nature, opposite to the interested and careful mind of the Montessuys. At once she thought that, without spoiling the pensive softness of that rough corner, she would bring to it her well-ordered activity; she would have sand thrown in the alley, and in the angle wherein a little sunlight came she would put the gayety of flowers. She looked sympathetically at a statue which had come there ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is the remedy of the architect and builder—profitable enough to them, anyhow—to widen the streets and to cut "new arteries." Now, every new artery means a series of new whirlpools of traffic, such as the pensive Londoner may study for himself at the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue with Oxford Street, and unless colossal—or inconveniently steep—crossing-bridges are made, the wider the affluent arteries the more terrible the battle of the traffic. Imagine Regent's ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... where it was practicable to cross the river, which, at this season of the year and so near its mouth, was both broad and deep. They returned without having any satisfactory information to report; "whereupon," says Froissart, "the king was not more joyous or less pensive, and began to fall into a great melancholy." He had halted three or four days at Airaines, some few leagues from Amiens, whither the King of France had arrived in pursuit with an army, it is said, more than a hundred thousand strong. Philip learned ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Arthur in a deep fit of study, and bade his yeomen fetch him yet another horse as quickly as they could. And when they left him all alone came Merlin, disguised as a child of fourteen years of age, and saluted the king, and asked him why he was so pensive and heavy. ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... unexpected character. Not one of them at all conformed to the picture of a forsaken child, as conceived by the village. The Elmbrook ideal was the sort that languished on the front page of the Sunday-school library books. It was quiet and pensive and hungry, and gave all its meager earnings to a small invalid brother or drunken father. But the Sawyer orphans were neither pensive nor appealing. There was a defiant belligerency about them that stifled the avenues of pity and put one on the defensive. They were wild and gay, and ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... back in his chair and viewing me with his pensive smile, "since we be brothers and comrades sworn, how d'ye ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... just after Daisy a little poor- looking child, who had stood near, watching what was going on. Daisy turned to look at her as Mr. Lamb's question was thrown at her over the counter, in a tone very different from his words to herself. She saw a pale, freckled, pensive-faced little girl, in very slim clothing, her dress short and ragged, and feet bare. The child had been looking at her and her baskets, but now suddenly looked away ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Evelyn's presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home! Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast! Of late she has assumed a new charm in my eyes,—a certain pensiveness and abstraction have succeeded to her wonted gayety. Ah, Love is pensive,—is it not, Cleveland? How often I ask myself that question! And yet, amidst all my hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond! How can that innocent and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has endured and known? ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... place was that of settled and fixed despair. Emily went to her room, and to her bed, which she did not leave for some days; when she again appeared in the family she was calm and sweet as ever, but a shade more pensive. ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... in the doorway, and gazing reverently at her husband over the small black silk bag she carried. Like the other women of Dinwiddie who had lost relatives by the war, she had never laid aside her mourning since the surrender; and the frame of crape to her face gave her the pensive look of one who has stepped out of the pageant of life into ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... boat had moved out of Cleopatra's sight, as she sat and dreamed on the low temple-roof, while we four Obstacles disported ourselves on different parts of the high pylon. The two Nubians wished to play a betting game with a kind of Egyptian Jack-stones, and it was not desirable that the pensive lady should behold them doing it. Observing the graceful figure of Mrs. East silhouetted against the sky's eternal flame of blue, and at the same time noticing that she could not see the waiting boat, Sir Marcus ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a Frenchwoman who had not heard a word of the last year's doings. Was this the stuff of glory? Napoleon looked at General Drouet, and said, in pensive tones, "Do you hear this, Drouet? What, after all, is the good of troubling the world in order to fill it ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... a pace or two, and for some moments remains silent— pensive. Perhaps she is thinking of a sailor saved from sharks after falling among them, and more still of the man who saved him. Whether or no, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... her face to him, without any start of surprise, with no brightening change in its pensive expression,—an expression rare to the mobile play of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on Procris, poor soon-perished child! Why did her innocent virginity Follow Desire within his arrowy wild? She dies pursuing the cruel ecstasy That keeps as mortal wounds for them that find. Serene her pensive body lies at last Like a mown poppy-flower to sleep resigned, Softly resigned. The wildwood things aghast, With pitiful hearts instinctive, sweet as hers, Approach her now: love, death, and virgin grace, Blue ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Pensive, the girl trained her long skirts heedlessly over the dew-drenched grasses, Amber at her side, himself speechless with an intangible, ineluctable, unreasoning sense of expectancy. Never, he told himself, had a lover's hour ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Lilla's rooms. Hamoud drew in through his expanded nostrils the unique fragrance of this place, and trembled as he looked round him at the walls of French gray, the faintly orange hangings, all the charming objects that were so artfully arranged. He passed into her bedroom, stood pensive before the dressing table whose mirrors were accustomed to reflect her, reached out to touch the handles of her brushes, as if expecting them to be still warm from her hands. He remembered the tiny empty vial, at the same moment that he ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... bycause that I se you sadde and hevy more than nous deux, mais pource que uous uoy pensive et remyse plus que ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... hundreds of wild songsters filled the air with music, while the melancholy notes of the wish-ton-wish's evening song traditionally had power to sooth their savage natures. This sweet, pensive scenery, decked with summer's lovely green or autumn's wampum dyes, with morning's glittering dews or evening's fire-flies' transient gleams, illuminating the darkest places; the distant murmur of the waterfall, the sympathetic cooing of the wild ducks, the cedar-scented air, all tended to thrill ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... him walking up and down. And he looked to them so comical in his queer costume that they had a difficulty in suppressing their inclination to laugh. With a pensive air and a bent back, he walked, like an automaton, from the window to the door and the door to the window, taking each time the same number of steps and turning each time in ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there pensive: marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with its crop of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... diffuses our sympathies; the interest we should take in the fate and prospects of Manuel and Caesar, is expended on the fate and prospects of man. For beautiful and touching delineations of life; for pensive and pathetic reflections, sentiments, and images, conveyed in language simple but nervous and emphatic, this tragedy stands high in the rank of modern compositions. There is in it a breath of young tenderness and ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, "If you go to France, be sure you learn the lingo," his pensive manner and feeble voice making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... is dear—'tis virtue balm'd in love; Yet e'en thy name a pensive sadness brings. Ah! wo the day, our hearts were doom'd to prove, That fondest love but points affliction's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Anderson's yet?"—"No."—"Well, then, I want you to attend to that Business of the Stone to-morrow. Don't forget the Size—Four Feet by Eighteen Inches; and nothing but the Name and Date. The Time's come at last. There's no Place for me but the Cold Grave, where the Pensive Passer-by may drop a Tear over the Mournful Fate of Jack Randolph. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... poor man, and that they ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of agitation, or of any especial interest. Unclasping her hands from about her knee, she turned a gold bracelet that hung loose on her wrist, watching the light slide on its surface. Her face was gently unconcerned, serene, almost pensive. The man's eyes explored it, searched, scanned ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... us be just—the army captain was a man. Caleb," said Mr. Fogo, with a sudden change from his pensive manner, "has it ever occurred to you to guess why I—not yet an old man, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... innocent siren, studying ways of bewitchment, of endearment. She became a bewildering revelation to him, amazing him, delighting him. After he had begun to conclude that he knew her she became not one woman, but a score of women: demure, elfin, pensive, childlike, sedate, aloof, laughing—but always with her delight in him unconcealed: the mask she wore always slipping from its place to reveal her eagerness to draw closer to him, and ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... a fresh, fair, bonnie face, framed in hair of a golden brown, and I knew her for Maura Merle, my old schoolfellow, the lady of Whichello Towers. The other was darker, taller, and the very dark blue eyes had a pensive expression, she could have posed as a study for Milton's Il Pensoroso, and I did not recognise her for an instant, and then I ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... roofs and the tree-tops with gilt, and bathed the more towering office-buildings in a brazen glory of light, and left the street-dust swimming in a vapor of pale gold. The city noises seemed muffled and quiescent. A sense of fulfillment, of pensive maturity, of tranquillity after tumult, lay over even the urban world before her. She scarcely knew why or how it was, but it left her melancholy, lonely, homesick for ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... conscious fear, Shrink from Judgement's eye severe, Yet much I thank thee, Spirit of my song! For, lovely Muse! thy sweet employ 5 Exalts my soul, refines my breast, Gives each pure pleasure keener zest, And softens sorrow into pensive Joy. From thee I learn'd the wish to bless, From thee to commune with my heart; 10 From thee, dear Muse! the gayer part, To laugh with pity at the crowds that press Where Fashion flaunts her robes by Folly spun, Whose hues gay-varying wanton ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ship which was bringing Jefferson Edwardes back to his native shores drew near enough for the Navesink light to wink its welcome, the banker found himself in a pensive mood. The last evening of the voyage was being celebrated with a dance on deck, but Edwardes, who had remained somewhat of a recluse during the passage over, was content to play the part ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Railroad," we have a new Pilgrim's Progress performed by rail. Instead of the slow, solitary, pensive pilgrimage which John Bunyan describes, we travel in fashionable company, and in the most agreeable manner. A certain Mr Smooth-it-away has eclipsed the triumphs of Brunel. He has thrown a viaduct over the Slough of Despond; he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... eyes upon Barkins, whose aspect was ludicrous enough to make him forget his own sensations, and he smiled a peculiarly saddened, pensive smile; for our messmate was leaning ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... dress when she walks, and the visions had more verisimilitude than reality itself, which moves and is confused, whereas the phantoms which are caused by solitude are fixed and unchangeable. She came under various appearances—sometimes pensive, her head crowned with her last perishable wreath, clad as at the banquet at Alexandria, in a mauve robe spangled with silver flowers; sometimes voluptuously in a cloud of light veils, and bathed in the warm shadows of the Grotto of Nymphs; sometimes in a serge cassock, pious and radiant ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... when he was a young man, from an old shepherd who had long been in his employment. Wylie was brought to his father's, "and was at once taken," he says, "to all our hearts; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved in all respects like a lady.... Some months after we got her, there was a mystery about her; every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but in vain; she was always off ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... handkerchief, which she had tied round her head, probably to serve as a nightcap during the drowsy length of the journey. Opposite to her was a middle-aged man of pale complexion, and a grave, pensive, studious expression of face; and vis-a-vis to Philip sat an overdressed, showy, very good-looking man of about two or three and forty. This gentleman wore auburn whiskers, which met at the chin; a ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thickening twilight under thee Walks Davenant, pensive in the paths where he, The blithest throat that ever carolled love In music made of morning's merriest heart, Glad Suckling, stumbled from his seat above And reeled on slippery roads of ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one, chosen from the first calallada he meets; who requires no further protection from the cold than a pair of linen trousers, in that favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer; who, more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive beauties, eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, 'Yo ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... be that Golden—that selfsame, dear, pensive face, those eyes, benignly and sweetly mild, and that heart-dissolving voice, have escaped so many storms, so many dangers? Was it love for me that led you from the extremity of the world? and have you, indeed, brought back with you a heart full of "ineffable ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... for distractions, repaired, as usual, to the sitting room, and seated herself on the floor before the grate. Her eyes assumed their old hazy look, she clasped her hands over her knees and looked vacantly into the fire. What a strange girl this was! So dreamy, so pensive. She was reasoning with herself now as she often did, trying to feel thankful for all the good things with which her life was blest, but though she acknowledged to herself that youth and health, and comfort ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Pensive within the Coliseum's walls I stood with thee, O Poet of the West!— The day when each had been a welcome guest In San Clemente's venerable halls:— With what delight my memory now recalls That hour of hours, that flower ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... looking very sweet, but rather pensive this morning," said Mr. Romaine, noticing a shadow on the bright and beautiful face of Jeanette, whose color had deepened by the plain remarks of her cousin Belle. "What ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the Wood-Pewee. Do you know the Pewees? They are the true Flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have very strong family traits, and very pugnacious dispositions. Without any exception or qualification they are the homeliest or the least ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and her recurrent heavy tasks the drear doom of poverty with its multiform menace had cast no shadow on her ethereal face, and her pensive dark gray eyes were full of serene light as she met the visitor at the bars. A glimmer of mirth began to scintillate beneath her long brown lashes, and she spoke first. "The folks in the mountings air mighty nigh skeered out'n thar boots by yer foolishness, Brent"—she sought to conserve ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander Adown some trottin' burn's meander, An' no think lang: Oh, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder A ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Emma's pensive meditations, as she walked home, were not interrupted; but on entering the parlour, she found those who must rouse her. Mr. Knightley and Harriet had arrived during her absence, and were sitting with her father.—Mr. Knightley ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... took in at a glance. A pensive melancholy came over him, and a feeling of pity for the inanimate ship as though she were capable of feeling. By a natural curiosity he walked around to the stern to see if he could read ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Empire" by Thiers, and "The History of the Girondins" by Lamartine, as well as some popular scientific works. He fancied he was labouring at his education. At times, he forced his wife to listen to certain pages, to particular anecdotes, and felt very much astonished that Therese could remain pensive and silent the whole evening, without being tempted to take up a book. And he thought to himself that his wife must be a woman of very ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... In the boy, pensive and serious beyond his years, might be traced the different characteristics of mind and heart which eventually made up the texture of his later manhood, the yearning desire for retirement, the habit of sober reflection, the trait of gentle sadness, and the passionate love for home and country. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... wake mamma!' Sanin promptly darted out into the street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder's hand, and made him cease playing and move away. When he came back, Gemma thanked him with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber's, in which Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. Then she asked Sanin whether he knew 'Freischuetz,' whether he was fond of Weber, and added that though she was herself an Italian, she liked such ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... of Passion—scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... vain and foolish exultation of the heart," said John Quincy Adams, at the close of his final lecture on resigning his chair at Boston, "which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite, the pensive portress of Science shall call you to the sober pleasures of her holy cell. In the mortification of disappointment, her soothing voice shall whisper serenity and peace. In social converse with the mighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under the galling sense of dependence ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the great change was not allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, what only might have been is as tho it could not be; and to know this may well ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... years, she learned from their pages to form false and extravagant notions concerning it. She used to build castles in the air, was subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind and degree of horror and disgust that would have affected her in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of the United States decides to go off its collective rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked, Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about all ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... proffering him his arms, are "dancing about, and positively screaming with excitement." At another time, when the bullets of the enemy are hissing about his ears, he puts on a pretty girl's slipper for her. "Such," he remarks, with a pensive air, "are some of the few happy scenes that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... might be. Indeed, she seemed scarcely to know of her own existence; there was about her a simplicity to which he had felt himself rise only in the presence of the spirit about some lonely mountain-top or in the heart of deep woods. Her gaze was not vacant, not listless, but the pensive look of a sensitive child, and Clayton let himself fancy that there was in it an unconscious love of the beauty before her, and of its spiritual suggestiveness a slumbering sense, perhaps easily awakened. Perhaps he ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... most beautiful creature that I ever beheld," continued the General, in a pensive tone, after some silence. "She was tall and slight, with all that litheness and grace of movement which is peculiar to Indian women, and yet she seemed more European than Indian. Her face was small and oval, her hair hung round it in rich masses, and her eyes ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... eight o'clock in the Bennington stage, intending to go to Williamstown. Inside passengers,—a new-married couple taking a jaunt. The lady, with a clear, pale complexion, and a rather pensive cast of countenance, slender, and with a genteel figure; the bridegroom, a shopkeeper in New York probably, a young man with a stout black beard, black eyebrows, which formed one line across his forehead. They were very loving; ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... counsel led, Brave Hanuman, who mocked at dread, Sprang at one wild tremendous leap Two hundred leagues across the deep. To Lanka's(35) town he urged his way, Where Ravan held his royal sway. There pensive 'neath Asoka(36) boughs He found poor Sita, Rama's spouse. He gave the hapless girl a ring, A token from her lord and king. A pledge from her fair hand he bore; Then battered down the garden door. Five captains of the host he slew, Seven sons of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... as the seat of the Unitarians, as Baltimore is that of the Roman Catholics, and Philadelphia that of the Quakers.... No axiom is more applicable to the pensive, serious, scrutinizing inhabitant of the New England States than this: 'What I do not understand, I reject as worthless and false;' so said one of the most learned men of Boston to me. 'Why occupy the mind with that which is incomprehensible? Have we not enough ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to such hazardous conjectures, arrived quite pensive at Vereia, when Mortier presented himself before him. But I perceive that, hurried along, just as we then were, by the rapid succession of violent scenes and memorable events, my attention has been diverted from a fact worthy of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... wistfulness of April, the dream of unfathomable things, shone in her brown eyes; and a girl with dreams in her eyes is the divinest work of the gods. Into this twentieth century, into the iron heart of cities, she still comes, and the clear, high stars of April nights and the pensive moon of September are ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... battell to Augustus Caesar, he saw a fearfull apparition, which is commonly related by Historians as a Vision: but considering the circumstances, one may easily judge to have been but a short Dream. For sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the horrour of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which feare, as by degrees it made him wake; so also it must needs make the Apparition by degrees to vanish: And having no ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.—My nerves relax as I tell it.—Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... aloud. There should therefore be no attempt to impress what he says upon others by a studied exaggeration of emphasis or manner; no talking at his hearers. There should be as much of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused into the part, and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... near one border coasting, still we heard The sins of gluttony, with woe erewhile Reguerdon'd. Then along the lonely path, Once more at large, full thousand paces on We travel'd, each contemplative and mute. "Why pensive journey thus ye three alone?" Thus suddenly a voice exclaim'd: whereat I shook, as doth a scar'd and paltry beast; Then rais'd my head to look from whence it came. Was ne'er, in furnace, glass, or ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... so,—a most calm, pensive, melancholy style of native beauty,—and a most touching contrast to the maids of Athens, Annesley, and all the rest of them. I'm sure you'll have the proof Finden has sent you framed for ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... isolated from the main herd of passengers, each silent, watching through the open rail the foaming water as it rushed past. Jefferson had been casting furtive glances at his companion and as he noted her serious, pensive face he thought how pretty she was. He wondered what she was thinking of and suddenly inspired no doubt by the mysterious power that enables some people to read the thoughts of others, ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... now. The families existing in the south and west of France, who are reputed to be of Cagot descent at this day, are, like their ancestors, tall, largely made, and powerful in frame; fair and ruddy in complexion, with gray-blue eyes, in which some observers see a pensive heaviness of look. Their lips are thick, but well-formed. Some of the reports name their sad expression of countenance with surprise and suspicion—"They are not gay, like other folk." The wonder would ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... his thoughts to the brightness and warmth of English fires burning on the hearths of houses that sheltered dear and protected lives. The far-off voices of calling children, coming to him from hidden places among the trees, did not make him pensive because of their contrast with things that were dying. He hailed them as voices of the youth which lasts in the world, though the world may seem to be old to those who ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... hillside, or it was in streams and patches. We travelled along the vale without appearing to ascend for some miles; all the reaches were beautiful, in exquisite proportion, the hills seeming very high from being so near to us. It might have seemed a valley which nature had kept to herself for pensive thoughts and tender feelings, but that we were reminded at every turning of the road of something beyond by the coal-carts which were travelling towards us. Though these carts broke in upon the tranquillity of the glen, they added much to the picturesque effect ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... There was no conversation—only tedious words. The little party was just commonplace and dull—boring. Yet Sir William, the self-made man, was a study. And the young, Oxford-like Major, with his English diffidence and his one dark, pensive, baffled eye was only waiting to be ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Fidelio mine. Ah, wretch! what anguish yet thy soul must prove! For thou canst hope to lose thy care in love; And when Fidelio meets thy tearful eye, Pale fear and cold despair his presence fly. With pensive steps I sought thy walks again, And kissed thy token on the verdant plain; With fondest hope, through many a blissful hour, We gave our souls to Fancy's pleasing power. Lost in the magic of that sweet employ, To build gay scenes and fashion ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... carries the memory back to that first day of April planting. To bring in a basket, however scanty, of those odds and ends and range them side by side on the kitchen table affords a gratification that is not entirely material, I believe, for there is a sort of pensive sadness in it that I have been told is related ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... when Bert said with a pensive cadence: "Well, I tell you, those were days of hard work; but many's the time I've looked back at 'em these last three years, wishin' they'd never ended an' that ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... therefore disowned, and perhaps on this account, he subsequently removed his residence to North Carolina, as we shall hereafter show. His son Daniel, from earliest childhood, developed a peculiar and remarkably interesting character. He was silent, thoughtful, of pensive temperament, yet far from gloomy, never elated, never depressed. He exhibited from his earliest years such an insensibility to danger, as to attract the attention of all who knew him. Though affectionate ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... her in the pasture, and that any kind of success in the milking operations required my vigorous personal exertions morning and evening, the matter wore a more serious aspect, and I began to feel quite pensive and apprehensive. It is very well to talk of the pleasures of the milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness of the purple dawn; but imagine a poor fellow pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping himself for a scamper through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the heels of ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cigarette with energy. Poet though he was, all the Arab blood in him responded to the thought of a gallop over the sands. Within a few minutes they were off. When she was in the saddle it was at all times difficult for Domini to be sad or even pensive. She had a native passion for a good horse, and riding was one of the joys, and almost the keenest, of her life. She felt powerful when she had a spirited, fiery animal under her, and the wide spaces of the desert summoned speed as they summoned dreams. She and Batouch went ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... covered with hair down to the tip of the nails, who was devoted to studies proper for his caste, and whose life was pure and was passed in religious meditation. He came up and saw that his son was seated alone, pensive and sad, his mind upset and sighing again and again with upturned eyes. And Vibhandaka spake to his distressed son, saying, "My boy! why is it that thou art not hewing the logs for fuel. I hope thou hast performed the ceremony of burnt offering today. I hope thou hast polished the sacrificial ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... place. On top of this there is a spire, On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire The fiddle and its spoils, the case, In manner of a trophee place. 1165 That done, they ope the trap-door gate, And let CROWDERO down thereat; CROWDERO making doleful face, Like hermit poor in pensive place. To dungeon they the wretch commit, 1170 And the survivor of his feet But th' other, that had broke the peace And head of Knighthood, they release; Though a delinquent false and forged, Yet be'ing a stranger, he's enlarged; 1175 While his comrade, that did no hurt, Is clapp'd up fast ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... a game of cards under festoons of tobacco smoke, the wiry tinkle of a mandolin distantly heard, sudden clatter subsiding again into a general humming quiet, the happy sense of solitude in multitude, these are the partial ingredients of that feeling no alumnus ever forgets. In his pensive citadel, my friend J—— would be sitting, with his pipe (one of those new "class pipes" with inlaid silver numerals, which appear among every college generation toward Christmas time of freshman year). In his lap ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... thus, King Arthur sat pensive in spirit, and mused deeply of the Holy Grale an what saintly knight should come who might ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... her cheery way, but when she was in her own room her sweet face grew pensive and a little sad. Was there not an element of truth under Elizabeth's jokes? Did she not make an idol of her young brother? Was she altogether ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to the remnants of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng; Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thy annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; Boast of the aged! lesson of the young! Which sages venerate and bards ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... which we find quite tolerable in persons, because they convey to us the secret of lifelike expression, and with regard to which we are all to some extent humourists. But it is part of the privilege of the genuine humourists to anticipate this pensive mood with regard to the ways and things of his own day; to look upon the tricks in manner of the life about him with that same refined, purged sort of vision, which will come naturally to those of a later generation, in observing whatever may have survived by chance ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... to Altamont whilst Hatteras remained pensive. Thanks to his attentions, the doctor succeeded in recalling the unfortunate man to life, but not to feeling; he neither saw, heard, nor spoke, but he lived. The next day Hatteras ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne |
