"Reflective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... care, as was evinced two years later by the popular vote for President throughout the North. One of those who heard these debates says: "Lincoln loved truth for its own sake. He had a deep, true, living conscience; honesty was his polar star. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, spirited, reflective, self-possessed, and self-reliant. His style was clear, terse, compact ... He became tremendous in the directness of his utterance when, as his soul was inspired with the thought of human right and Divine ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... place, that Art, whether in the larger or in the smaller sense which we have assigned to it, is the Product of the Combination and Blending of Science with Nature (reflective knowledge with natural impression); or, speaking in the concrete, of the conjunction of man with the outside world; man as the Agent or Actor, and the World or Nature ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the opposition of her Roman Catholic subjects led Elizabeth's humour to assume a somewhat severe complexion. Her thoughts gradually became more earnest, and her jests cynical. Moreover, as seen in Shakespeare, the age in which she lived was reflective, and the budding activity of mind was directed towards great interests. There was not that impression of the vanity of all things, which grows up with the extension and maturity of society, and attracts the mind to more fanciful and less grave considerations. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... quite sublimely, "I've made out what you mean—she is a picture." The beauty of this moreover was that, as I'm persuaded, she hadn't really made it out at all—the words were the mere hypocrisy of her reflective endeavour for virtue. She couldn't possibly have made it out; her friend was as much as ever "dreadfully plain" to her; she must have wondered to the last what on earth possessed us. Wouldn't it in fact have been after all just this failure of vision, this supreme stupidity in short, that kept ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... consideration is the principles to which the author refers the bearing and motives of the actions and events which he describes, as well as those which determine the form of his narrative. Among us Germans this reflective treatment and the display of ingenuity which it affords assume a manifold variety of phases. Every writer of history proposes to himself an original method. The English and French confess to general principles of historical composition, their viewpoint being more nearly that of cosmopolitan or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... common tyrant, whom they all equally hated, they would have made common cause with their suffering companion, or at all events given no countenance to his persecution; yet it was far otherwise. Without stopping to analyze the feeling which produced it, (and which the moderately reflective reader may easily analyze for himself if so disposed,) I am grieved to have to say, that when all the young men saw that Tag-rag would be gratified by their cutting poor Titmouse, who, with all ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... stir of approaching departure, and went hurriedly into the hall in order to intercept Anderson before he went, one glimpse of the girl's little face reassured him. She seemed to at once have grown older and younger. She was reflective, and fairly beaming with utmost anticipations. She looked at Anderson as he had never seen her look at any one. He had doubted a little about Ina; he had no doubt whatever about Charlotte. "She is in love with him, fast enough," he said to himself. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Grace. "I feel reflective. I suppose that's why I haven't anything to say. Did Miriam tell you about the basketball ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... as I write, and I see the—by the way, I don't know if you have ever tried "looking up as you write." It is a common thing for reflective writers to say they do, but you should never believe them. It is impossible to write properly when looking somewhere else. What we do is to stop and slew our necks round, and then take a fresh dip in the ink. Well, slewing my neck round as I stop writing, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... reflecting power in some than in others. One of the brightest things in Nature that we can imagine is a bank of snow in sunlight; it is so dazzling that we have to look away or wink hard at the sight; and the reflective power of the surface of Venus is as dazzling as if she were made of snow. This is probably because the light strikes on the upper surface of the clouds which surround her. In great contrast to this is the surface ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... delight in escaping from the prison house. And yet, his pleasure was sadly marred by the reflection that his bosom companion was still in bondage in the gloomy prison-house. Henry was a man of dark color, well made, and of a reflective turn of mind. On arriving in Canada, he manifested his gratitude through Rev. H. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... art paints its objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us only successively the relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... incessantly, and it was the pivot on which the imperial policy revolved; it exercised a spell scarcely less powerful and disastrous upon monarchists like Thiers and republicans like Gambetta. Long foreseen, the dread shock, like all grave calamities, came nevertheless as a surprise, even upon reflective minds. Statesmen and soldiers who looked on, while they shared in the natural feelings aroused by so tremendous a drama, were also the privileged witnesses of two instructive experiments on a grand scale—the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... gentry an animated receipt-book. Some of the information she communicated, indeed, was so valuable and important that she could not trust the air with it, but whispered the most important portions in a confidential tone. Among the crowd, Cerinthy Ann's theological admirer was observed in deeply reflective attitude; and that high-spirited young lady added further to his convictions of the total depravity of the species by vexing and discomposing him in those thousand ways in which a lively, ill-conditioned young woman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the court of the Emperor Frederick, had given him courage to repress forever the wish with which he had left the Hohenstaufen court. The sacrifice was hard, but he made it willingly as soon as it became apparent to his reflective mind that not only his earthly but his heavenly Father had appointed the task of devoting the full wealth of his talents and the power of his will to the elevation of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in man's life: life was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, too sentimental, too full of interest and gaiety and chat. It was an age of talk: "mirth is none," says Chaucer's host, "to ride on by the way dumb as a stone "; and the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... bright, of the painting are "ringed by a flowery bowery angel-brood" of song. But before his Bells and Pomegranates were brought to a close Browning had discovered in the short monodrama, lyrical or reflective, the most appropriate vehicle for his powers of passion and of thought. Here a single situation sufficed; characters were seen rightly in position; the action of the piece was wholly internal; a passion could be isolated, and could be either ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... gave Vohrenlorf the slip, and went out on the Boulevards alone. In great cities nobody is known; I enjoyed the luxury of being ignored. I might pass for a student, a chemist, at a pinch, perhaps, for a poet of a reflective type. My natural manner would seem no more than a touch of youth's pardonable arrogance. I sat down and had some coffee. It was half-past ten, and the pavements were full. I bought a paper and read a paragraph about Elsa and myself. Elsa and myself both ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... meant getting away from their parishioners, and not in getting away from the sermons. Sermon-writing in our day, when the area over which a preacher may select his subject is so greatly widened, is probably to a reflective man a great help and relief, as furnishing what nearly every student needs to stimulate study—a means of expression. Sustained solitary thinking is something of which very few men are capable. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... reject the means Providence had put in her hands. And yet, how use them, and avoid throwing suspicion upon her father in cautioning Elkins not to approach him? She was not equal to the invention of a plan on the moment, and said in a doubting, reflective way: ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... "When a reflective man of middle life walks along the embowered paths of Oxford and Cambridge or through their quadrangles whose walls have echoed to the footsteps of so many brainy men of England, he realizes what these institutions have been and still ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... a position of somewhat fuller intercourse with their species; for even as it is we have continually to be surprised that they do not rise to our carefully selected bait. Take me then as a sort of reflective and experienced carp; but do not estimate the justice of my ideas by my ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud. The two great historic universities of England have all this large and level and reflective brilliance. Nevertheless, or, rather, on the other hand, they are puddles—puddles, puddles, puddles, puddles. The undersigned persons ask you to excuse an emphasis inseparable from ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... verse, even when mediocre in quality, has its pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... reflective turn of mind, and never was entirely willing to learn the things that his keepers sought to teach him. To him, dining at a table was tiresomely dull, and the donning of fashionable clothing was a frivolous pastime, On ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... awhile master of his powers and his knowledge; no fatal divorce had yet taken place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; he writes readily even for the public, without labor, without affectations. Eight years later the reflective faculty has outgrown his control; composition, which represents the practical side of the intellectual life, has become difficult and painful to him, and he has developed what he himself calls "a wavering manner, born of doubt ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... written in or before 1593, when he was but twenty years old. The boiling passion, without a thought of satiety, which marks many of his elegies would also incline us to assign them to youth, and though some of his epistles, and many of his miscellaneous poems, are penetrated with a quieter and more reflective spirit, the richness of fancy in them, as well as the amatory character of many, perhaps the majority, favour a similar attribution. All alike display Donne's peculiar poetical quality—the fiery imagination shining in dark places, the magical illumination of obscure and shadowy thoughts ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... simple faith is worth ninety-nine of those who hold only to the egotistic interests of their own individuality. This dark saying means (if it mean anything), that the so-called moral faculties of man, fancy and ideality, must lord it over the perceptive and reflective powers,a simple absurdity! It produced a Turricremata, alias Torquemada, who, shedding floods of honest tears, caused his victims to be burnt alive; and an Anchieta, the Thaumaturgist of Brazil, who beheaded a ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Rector to the students of Edinburgh. The impression he produced on his unusually select audiences was that of a man of genius, but roughly clad. The more superficial auditors had a new sensation, those who came to stare remained to wonder; the more reflective felt that they had learnt something of value. Carlyle had no inconsiderable share of the oratorical power which he latterly so derided; he was able to speak from a few notes; but there were comments more or less severe on his manner and style. J. Grant, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... what I think myself now," said the skipper impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave reflective air. "Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way of helping you, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... admiring the writings of this author; among them he is unquestionably 'popular,' if it be any test of popularity to send forth a second edition three months after the first. Scholarship can appreciate, pure intellect can find nutriment in, his reflective and carefully-wrought pages. His heroes and heroines, cold and unimpassioned to the man of society, are classic and genial to the man of thought. A Quarterly Reviewer observes, that the blended dignity of thought, and a sedate moral habit, invests his poetry with a stateliness in which the drama ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... in 1883, described Algiers as follows: "Extremely vigorous, stronger and better developed than the Giant Naples, [Veitch's Autumn Giant]; leaves very large, undulate, almost curly, of a very deep and reflective glaucous green; stem large and strong, rather tall; head remarkably large, fine and white. In habit of growth it approaches the Half Early Paris, but in time of maturity it agrees with the varieties of Holland and England. It is especially adapted to ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... was actually a giant balloon eight thousand feet in diameter, one-half "silvered" with a greenish reflective surface inside that reflected only that light that could be utilized by the ruby rods at its long focal center; and that absorbed the remainder of the incident solar radiation, dumping it through to its black outside surface, and on into the vastness of space. This half of ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the brain, Articulation is complete, then turns The primal Mover with a smile of joy On such great work of nature, and imbreathes New spirit replete with virtue, that what here Active it finds, to its own substance draws, And forms an individual soul, that lives, And feels, and bends reflective on itself. And that thou less mayst marvel at the word, Mark the sun's heat, how that to wine doth change, Mix'd with the moisture filter'd through the vine. "When Lachesis hath spun the thread, the soul Takes with her ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... "which you have drawn from the erudition of others and your own ingenious and reflective inductions, I collect this solution of the mysteries, by which the experience I gain from my senses confounds all the dogmas approved by my judgment. To the rational conjectures by which, when we first conversed on the marvels that perplexed me, you ascribe to my imagination, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Power. Apart therefore from the romantic recollections, with which the singular history of the "Ladies of Llangollen" has invested this fair spot of earth, it presents to the tourist certain attractions, which the reflective explorer of the lovely vallies of the Dee should not neglect. We heard from some of the older inhabitants several anecdotes of the benevolence and charity of the departed "Ladies," whose memory is most affectionately cherished in the neighbourhood. It has been said that ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... upon his, a little narrowed, curiously and pleasantly reflective. All the time the corners of her sensitive mouth twitched ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Then as the subjects are primary, so the feeling with which Burns regards them is primary too—that is, he gives us the first spontaneous gush—the first throb of his heart, and that a most strong, simple, manly heart. The feeling is not turned over in the reflective faculty, and there artistically shaped,—not subtilized and refined away till it has lost its power and freshness; but given at first hand, as it comes warm from within. When he is (p. 205) at his best you seem to hear the whole song warbling through his spirit, naturally ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... consented to recognize some oats in the feed-box—without looking at them—and was formally installed. All this while she had resolutely ignored my presence. As I stood watching her, she suddenly stopped eating; the same reflective look came over her. "Surely I am not mistaken, but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here!" she seemed to say, and ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... baby softness all her resemblance to her mother. Her hair and eyes had darkened as she grew, and she was to be a larger woman, graver, deeper, more reserved; perhaps better calculated for the Kingdom by reason of a more reflective mind. He adored her, and was awed by her even when he taught her the truths of revealed religion. He closed his eyes at night upon a never-ending prayer for her soul; and opened them each day to a love of her that grew insidiously to enthrall ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the reliableness of history, and which, taking a place midway between the 'frescoed galleries' of Thierry, and the 'philosophic watch-tower of Guizot,' has all the pictorial brilliancy of the one, with much of the reflective speculation of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Cleonice, Alcman, and Pausanias, which occupy the opening chapters of Book II., might be deemed superfluous. But, in fact, they are essential to the preparation of the catastrophe; and that catastrophe, if reached, would undoubtedly have revealed to any reflective reader their important connection with the narrative which they now appear to retard ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... and consequent injury, when we turn from the physical to the moral training. Consider the young, untaught mother and her nursery legislation. A short time ago she was at school, where her memory was crammed with words and names and dates, and her reflective faculties scarcely in the slightest degree exercised—where not one idea was given her respecting the methods of dealing with the opening mind of childhood, and where her discipline did not in the least fit her for thinking out methods ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with raised eyebrows, as he extricated a plethoric-looking canvas bag from his jacket pocket and dropped it with a musical crash on the chipped office table. His eyebrows went still higher, as the old man unfastened the string, and emptying the contents on to the table, knitted his brows into reflective wrinkles, and began to debit the firm with all the liabilities of a slow but ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... a warmth of expression and a confidence of manner which captivated those who heard him. His valor, his keen perception in the field, the profundity of his political views, his knowledge of the affairs of Europe, his reflective and decided character, all rendered him one of the most capable and imposing men of his time-the only one, indeed, whom the Cardinal-Duc really feared. The Queen always listened to him with confidence, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... are disposed to question this superior intelligence of women; their egoism demands the denial, and they are seldom reflective enough to dispose of it by logical and evidential analysis. Moreover, as we shall see a bit later on, there is a certain specious appearance of soundness in their position; they have forced upon women an artificial character which well conceals their real character, and women have found ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... most wonderful production in any language, "In Memoriam," which has enriched the English language by hundreds of quotations and which in its delicate sentiment, its deep sorrow, its reflective tenderness, has been the voice of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... of thought must precede any marked improvement in their lot. He perceived that society is now passing through a transitional period 'of weak convictions, paralysed intellects, and growing laxity of principle,' the consequence of the discredit in the more reflective minds of the old opinions on the cardinal subjects of religion, morals, and politics, which have now lost most of their efficacy for good, though still possessed of life enough to present formidable obstacles to the growth of better opinion ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... of demagogues. Such vermin find the soil of democratic government the most fertile and congenial for their operations, because the audiences to which they speak, the passions to which they appeal, are not always of the most reflective, humane or enlightened. Demagogues are the parasites of republics; and that our country is afflicted with an abnormal number of them is to be expected from the tentative nature of our institutions, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... blaze, no hospitable roof throw open its doors, nor the warm grasp of friendship welcome me at the threshold—yet I feel the influence of the season beaming into my soul from the happy looks of those around me. Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence. He who ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... by his modesty and by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters, however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright fellows, eccentric spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy and deeply reflective, which argue future talent. Everything about Pierre Grassou smacked of mediocrity. His nickname "Fougeres" (that of the painter in the play of "The Eglantine") was the source of much teasing; but, by force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the town ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... The reflective modern mind is clear in this, despite its loquacity. He was yet more eloquent and intense, more fertile in comparisons, when his happiest days ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... was not thinking about the land itself, but about the men who had been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was not for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power of any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad, reflective mood, considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we must break down a multitude of molehills and how desirable and unreplaceable was the life of ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... in a reflective mood, and as he pointed these things out to me, made some sage and pertinent remarks about the peculiar features of some industries which required large expenditures to operate, all of which were useless in a comparatively short time. Mainly uphill the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... my return has proved so—inopportune," returned Rooke. As he spoke his eyes rested for a reflective moment upon Peter Mallory, then returned challengingly to Nan's face. The betraying colour flew up under her skin. She understood what he intended to convey as well as though he had clothed his ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... fray, more overcome by hard drinking than hard fighting, and there safely put to bed by the indefatigable Mark Supple, to whose friendly zeal and more effective arm we were all much indebted. In this reflective mood, I had watched the retiring shadows of the night gradually disperse before the gray-eyed morn, and had just caught a glimpse of the golden streaks which illumine the face of day, when my o'er-wearied ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is night and the life has all gone away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... or kind. And the consequences, for any particular boy, may depend very largely upon accidental circumstances, or inherited tendencies. A boy, who is naturally warm-blooded and very impulsive, may not react in the same way as another boy, who is inclined to be reserved and reflective. If I am led by my observations to make use of extreme or exceptional examples it is not my intention to imply that they are the rule, but merely to bring out clearly a point, or meaning, which, in less degree, may have a ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... my son. Like all children, he was imitative, so had commenced very early to make a collection of insects, and this was sufficient to give him a precocious taste for natural history; but in his character he was earnest and reflective, and very eager for knowledge. Sumichrast took pleasure in the boy's intelligence, and often amused himself by arguing with him. From the flashes of childish humor which he would display on such occasions, my friend sometimes gave him the ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... sat a moment without speaking. Hiram did not dare utter a word. He knew he was dealing with a man quick in his impressions and rapid to decide. He had done his best, and would not venture farther. Mr. Burns, looking up from a reflective posture, cast his eyes on Hiram. The latter really appeared so amazingly distressed that Mr. Burns's feelings ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Plenty in Winter," "Summer Morning," "Summer Evening," and "Crazy Nell." The minor pieces included the sonnet "To the Primrose," already quoted, "My love, thou art a Nosegay sweet," and "What is Life?", a reflective poem produced under circumstances with which the reader has been made acquainted. The compositions last named are inserted here as examples of Clare's style at this early ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... was reflective if not morose. I wondered what his schemes were concerning Barrie, for I imagined uneasily that he was working with some idea; and if I didn't mean to sit still and let him cage the dove while it fluttered homeless ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... are left suspended, as it were, over an abyss, our moral judgment thwarted, our humanity outraged. But "The Spagnoletto" is, nevertheless, a remarkable production, and pitched in another key from anything the writer has yet given us. Heretofore we have only had quiet, reflective, passive emotion: now we have a storm and sweep of passion for which we were quite unprepared. Ribera's character is charged like a thunder-cloud with dramatic elements. Maria Rosa is the child of her father, fired at a flash, "deaf, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... reply, and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... of thoughtlessness stood up, and in a harsh voice said: "I am the great prince of heedlessness whose duty it is to prevent a man taking reflective heed of his state; I am chief of the incessant hell-flies who utterly amaze men, ever dinning in their ears concerning their possessions or their pleasures, and never willingly allowing them a moment's leisure ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... longer a child, but seemed to have matured suddenly into a woman of calm and reflective character, as well as ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... quiet; her own thought coming back upon her with a reflective force, and a thrill at her heart at Frank Scherman's words. Had these two only planned tableaux and danced ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... knelt down to feed the fire, holding-the fragrant chips in her hand; the flame flickered out and lighted up her reflective eyes while she endeavored to express the distinction she felt: "Purdee's words don't sound ter me like the words of a man sech ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... understood when we bear in mind Dr. Johnson's own estimate of his musical knowledge together with his having derived pleasure from listening to the sounds of the bagpipes. If a performance on those droning instruments was in the Doctor's mind when he said that the reflective powers need not be exercised in performing on a musical instrument, there might be some truth in the observation. The labour of thinking, however, cannot be dispensed with in connection with playing most musical instruments, and least of all ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... was. Her head, large and shapely and her eyes wide, dark and curiously reflective, were like her mother's. True, she hadn't much nose, but her hair was abundant and her fingers exquisite. She lay in my big paws with what seemed to me to be tranquil confidence, and though her legs were comically rudimentary, her glance manifested an unassailable ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... part of the music to which she listened, and she was almost oblivious of the brilliant throng, the crowded boxes, or of the Duchess of Snowdon sitting near her strangely still, now and again scanning the beautiful face beside her with a reflective look. The Duchess loved the girl—she was but a girl, after all—as she had never loved any of her sex; it had come to be the last real interest of her life. To her eyes, dimmed with much seeing, blurred by a garish kaleidoscope of fashionable life, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only indeliberate operations, consisting, as they do at the best, but of mere presentative sensible ideas in no way implying any reflective or representative faculty. Such actions minister to and form Instinct. Besides these, we may distinguish two other kinds ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... just now," said Poppy, in a reflective tone; "they are all in the dining-room as snug as possible over their high tea. They have shrimps for tea, and a wonderful new kind of paste that Aunt Flint brought in to-day. It's called Gentlemen's Relish, and eats well on hot toast, and I made a lot. Oh, my! won't the ladies go in for it! ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... became colder, would absorb larger and larger quantities of carbon-dioxide. Thus the Pleistocene atmosphere, gradually relieved of its vapours and carbon-dioxide, would no longer retain the heat at the surface. We may add that the growth of reflective surfaces—ice, snow, cloud, etc.—would further lessen the amount of heat ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... of Turgenev is on the whole a case in point, to my mind. Turgenev was never shy of appearing in his pages as the reflective story-teller, imparting the fruits of his observation to the reader. He will watch a character, let us say, cross a field and enter a wood and sit down under a tree; good, it is an opportunity for ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... silly little ink-stained 'J' pen. I would pretend that it was made of much more grandiose material if I could. But the facts are as I shall tell you. And surely if you fulfil that definition of man which describes him as a reflective being, if you ever think on life at all, you must have noticed how even the great tragedies that go in purple in the great poets all turn on things no less trifling in themselves, all come of people pretending to care for some bauble more than ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the rank the more necessary it is that boldness should be accompanied by a reflective mind, that it may not be a mere blind outburst of passion to no purpose; for with increase of rank it becomes always less a matter of self-sacrifice and more a matter of the preservation of others, and the good of the whole. Where regulations of the service, as a kind of second nature, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... reflective eyes, To-day beneath the sad old story lies, And all must read if they are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... nothing for it but to go on." At a word from the dragoman, the two impatient drivers spoke gutturally to their horses and the car- riages whirled out of Arta. Coleman, his dragoman and the groom trotted in the dust from the wheels of the Wainwright carriage. The correspondent always found his reflective faculties improved by the constant pounding of a horse on the trot, and he was not sorry to have now a period for reflection, as well as this artificial stimulant. As he viewed the game he had in his hand about all ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... would have seen not only the first of our famous prose writers and the first of our acknowledged poets, but also the representatives of the two fundamental and distinctive qualities of our American literature, as of all literature—its grave, reflective, earnest character, and its sportive, genial, and ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... antiquity of the race,—Africa, its inhabitants, and the development of the Negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, led me to furnish something to meet a felt need. If the Negro slave desired his native land before the Rebellion, will not the free, intelligent, and reflective American Negro turn to Africa with its problems of geography and missions, now that he can contribute something towards the improvement of the condition of humanity? Editors and writers everywhere throughout the world should spell the word Negro with a capital N; and when referring ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... known a woman so entirely fascinating as Miss Landon; and this arose mainly from her large sympathy. She was playful with the young, sedate with the old, and considerate and reflective with the middle-aged. She could be tender and she could be severe, prosaic or practical, and essentially of and with whatever party she happened to be among. I remember this faculty once receiving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... conclusion quite took Lilac's breath away. She stared speechlessly at her cousin, and he presently went on in a reflective tone with his eyes still fixed on the ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... emotion run high, but the memory and anticipation of conflict reinstated the emotional conditions in those periods when he was meditating future conflicts and preparing his bows and arrows, traps and poisons. The problem of invention, the reflective and scientific side of his life, was suffused with interest, because the manufacture of the weapon was, psychologically speaking, a part of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk that would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine idea; illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... soliciting agent, the larynx is the vibrative agent, the mouth is the reflective agent. These must act in unison, or there is no result. The larynx might be called the mouth of the instrument, the inside of the mouth the pavilion, the lungs the artist. In a violin, the larynx would be the string, the lungs the bow, the mouth ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... have studied the dynamics of communication and the process by which it occurs are convinced that the monological principle is contradictory to the nature of communication, and as a method is the least effective. Reflective observation of our own learning indicates that communication is most effective when we become a part of the process and meet the message with our own content. Furthermore, the monological principle is not one that was used by our Lord. He, Who was the full incarnation of love, ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... I don't understand why you should have "nothing to write about" because you have been in bed. Surely you must have accumulated all sorts of reflective and imaginative stories there. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... precipice; and I thought, since I saw that descent was inevitable, I would at least engineer the party gently through aesthetics to puns. So I said, "How pretty cows look in a landscape, so calm and reflective, and sheep harmoniously happy in ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... felt very friendly toward her. He could not help pitying her. Ukridge, he thought, was a very good person to know casually, but a little of him, as his former headmaster had once said in a moody, reflective voice, went a very long way. To be bound to him for life was not the ideal state for a girl. If he had been a girl, he felt, he would as ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... place, Charles would never suffer him to be considered superfluous or intrusive. There seemed to be no secrets which the Emperor held too high for the comprehension or discretion of his page. His perceptive and reflective faculties, naturally of remarkable keenness and depth, thus acquired a precocious and extraordinary development. He was brought up behind the curtain of that great stage where the world's dramas were daily enacted. The machinery and the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fiercely than ever, but innumerable rush-lights and sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in nature or art can remain unilluminated,—it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Preface was to give a few traces of the life and literary career of our poet. A remarkable poet cannot but have been a remarkable man. Suppose we take a man with native benevolence amounting almost to folly; but little cunning, caution, or veneration; good perceptive, but better reflective faculties; and a dominant love of the beautiful;—and toss him into the focus of civilization in the age of Louis XIV. It is an interesting problem to find out what will become of him. Such is the problem worked out in the life of JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, born on the eighth of July, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... audience an ounce of genius has more weight than a ton of talent; for though it respects the latter, it reverences the former. But the creative power, divine as it may be, should in common gratitude pay due regard to the reflective; for Art is the handmaid of Genius, and only asks the modest wages of respectful consideration in payment for her valuable services. A splendid torrent of genius ought never to be checked, but it should be wisely guided into the deep channel of the stream, from whose ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the first great American poet. His poetry is chiefly reflective and descriptive, and it is remarkable for its elevation, simplicity, and moral earnestness. He lacks dramatic power and skill in narration. Calmness and restraint, the lack of emotional intensity, are also evident in his greatest work. His depths ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... in a low, reflective voice and a disregard of her previous dialect, as she gazed up in his eyes with an eloquent lucidity, "I have changed, Paul! I feel myself changing at those words you uttered to Jane. There are ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... send another man to the pump," a reflective voice suggested. "To make sure of the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... had proved fairly satisfactory; if he was somewhat slow and heavy, and had frequently been delayed by youthful illnesses, he had, nevertheless, diligently plodded on. As he was far from talkative, his mother gave out that he was a reflective, concentrated genius, who would astonish the world by actions, not by speech. Before he was even fifteen she said of him, in her adoring way: "Oh! he has a great mind." And, naturally enough, she only acknowledged ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Greek cameo vase. Even in that moment of disorder he had been struck by the voice and aspect of the agent of the Holy Office, and by a singular distinction that seemed to set the man himself above the coil of passions in which his action was involved. To Odo's spontaneous yet reflective temper there was something peculiarly impressive in the kind of detachment which implies, not obtuseness or indifference, but a higher sensitiveness disciplined by choice. Now he felt a renewed pang of regret that such ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... tallest of the group stood Sergius Vanno, recognizable at once by his athletic and graceful figure, reflective face, commanding eye, bright with intelligence, and his agreeable, refined, and attractive presence, as the leading spirit of the group. At his side leaned the poet Emilius, whose weak and slender figure and mild, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... not sure that you do," she persisted, speaking slowly and very seriously. She was gazing at him in a curious, reflective way. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... 25 units in accordance with the standards of the second dimension (that of animals), humanity is deprived of the benefit of 100 units of produced wealth. That is an illustration of what a part dimensions play in practical life. The reflective reader may analyse for himself what effect these same rules would have, if expressed and applied in the human "time-binding" dimension, time being the supreme test. The following table gives the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... approached, and the snakelike Hottentot raised his head ever so little and peered out with his beady black eyes through the straw-like grass stems. They fell on Muller's cold face. It was evident that he was in a reflective mood—in an angrily reflective mood. So absorbed was he that he nearly let his horse, which was also absorbed by the near prospect of a comfortable stall, put his foot in a big hole that a wandering antbear had ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... e. the Preacher), a book of the Old Testament, questionably ascribed to Solomon, and now deemed of more recent date as belonging to a period when the reflective spirit prevailed; and it is written apparently in depreciation of mere reflection as a stepping-stone to wisdom. The standpoint of the author is a religious one; the data on which he rests is given in experience, and his object is to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Jones, the reflective man in spectacles, 'positive virtues are getting moved off the stage: negative ones are moved on to the place of positives; we thank bare justice as we used only to thank generosity; call a man honest who steals only by law, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... of the room, in which she takes that fatal sleep, opens on the lawn; any one may enter who sees fit. No one is about. The Oriental dagger lies convenient to his hand on the table. "Here, now," says Mr. Ferrick to Mr. Ferrick, with a reflective frown, "which is guilty—the brother ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... less preferable road was the result of a swift process of unconscious reasoning—for he maintained that what we call intuition is but an instantaneous perception of facts and of their inevitable inferences, too rapid for the reflective part of the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... The pronoun has here a reflective force: in Elizabethan English, and still more often in Early English, this use of the simple pronouns is common (see Abbott, Sec. 223). Compare l. 163. ominous; literally full of omens or portents: comp. 'monstrous' full of monsters (Lyc. 158); also ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Munich. The first represents Albert V., Duke of Bavaria, the founder of the library, and a great patron of science. Of course, he is presented in middle-age costume; his head is bare, his face reflective, and his right hand supports his chin,—an image of repose, after a work is accomplished. The other statue is of King Louis (of Lola Montes memory), in royal robes, the left hand resting on his sword, and his right ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... round his knees, and went swaying himself backwards and forwards in a queer kind of way that was more reflective ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... fragmentary impulses. Memories connected with Cloe, Charles, Balmerino, and a hundred others occupied me. Trivial forgotten happenings flashed through my brain. All the different Aileens that I knew trooped past in procession. Gay and sad, wistful and merry, eager and reflective, in passion and in tender guise, I saw my love in all her moods; and melted always at ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... presented in this Goethe; a singular, highly significant phenomenon, and now also means more or less complete for ascertaining its significance. A man of wonderful, nay, unexampled reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of reflective, serious and cultivated men, invites us to study him; and to determine for ourselves, whether and how far such influence has been salutary, such reputation merited. That this call will one day be answered, that Goethe will be seen ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch of snuff. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... normal, reflective. Many a time the two had talked together of such things in this very room, and the naturalness of the scene, and of the judge's manner, made the brother-in-law for a second forget the tragedy in which ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... things to be said. Sir Thomas had not seen his ward since the old Squire's death, and Ralph had not seen Sir Thomas since the election at Percycross and the accident of the broken arm. Sir Thomas was by far too reticent, too timid, and too reflective a man to begin at once whatever observations he might have to make ultimately in regard to Miss Polly Neefit. He was somewhat slow of speech, unless specially aroused, and had hardly received the congratulations ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... light where others looked only into darkness. "It is not a bad thing to be left out of Congress," he wrote Christopher Morgan, depressed by his defeat. "You will soon be wanted in the State, and that is a better field."[323] Seward had the faculty of slow, reflective brooding, and he often saw both deep and far. In the night of that blinding defeat only such a nature could find ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... law of the rhythm of life. Most of the time we are very much absorbed in busy, outward-looking activity, overwhelmed with engagements and hurry and worry; and then in the midst of this active life there stands the chapel with its summons to us to pause and give the reflective life its chance. That is one of the chief offices of religion in this preposterously busy age. Religion gives one at least a chance to stop and let God speak to him. It sends the multitudes away and takes one up into the ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the setting of tasks requiring more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive and more prone to the less reflective forms ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... miserable business, he rose and left the court. Evidently the barrister to whom he was talking had observed to what this change of demeanour was due, for he looked first at me in the dock and next at Sir John Bell as, recovering his pomposity, he made his way through the crowd. Then he grew reflective, and pushing his wig back from his forehead he stared at the ceiling and ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... she was bitterly disappointed, as well she might have been, and her Indian brain must have been sadly puzzled. But she was treated little worse than thousands of the white pioneer women who have followed her; and standing: there to-day on the bank of her river, she still seems sorrowfully reflective over the strange ways of the ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... below, while a distant cry reaches us from the street beyond of "Le Vengeur," "Le Cri du Peuple," "Le dernier ordre du Comite du Salut Public," and we detect curls of smoke about the Arch of Triumph, which remind us that the bombardment still goes on. A reflective sentry at the door of the cabinet de travail begged me to remark the portraits set round above the doors. "Those are the Empress's favourite ladies," he informed me; "are they not salopines, one would say, of the period of Montespan? ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... dexterously plucked and cut in two, the same as he had done the cape pigeon on the previous day, making him feel ravenously hungry, and limiting all his considerations to the present, instead of his being impressed with their future needs, as was the case with his more reflective companion, "Perhaps it will rain, David. 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' Let us ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... smoke and liquids, was beginning to feel extremely amiable and talkative, - made a reflective observation (addressed to the company generally) which sounded like the words "Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras ingens,"* - he was immediately interrupted by the voice of Mr. Bouncer, crying out, "Who's that talking shop about engines? Holloa, Giglamps!" - Mr. Bouncer, it must be observed, had facetiously ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that the pattern was imperceptible—a costume that was casual but not by any means careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat over-refined, was the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy hair and moustache were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a broad, black ribbon, drooped from his aquiline nose, and ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... without a hope, some fears About my future worldly maintenance, And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind, 80 A feeling that I was not for that hour, Nor for that place. But wherefore be cast down? For (not to speak of Reason and her pure Reflective acts to fix the moral law Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope, 85 Bowing her head before her sister Faith As one far mightier), hither I had come, Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers And faculties, whether to work or feel. Oft when the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the infield in the wake of the good horse Elisha. Another owner, on the day of an important race, might have been nervous or worried; the patriarch maintained his customary calm; his head was bent at a reflective angle, and he nibbled at a straw. Certain gentlemen, speculatively inclined, would have given much more than a penny for the old man's thoughts; having bought them at any price, they would ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... whether she could hear the tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... form of judgments, the object and result of which must be to erase his hated name from the earth. As Faith grew up, his anxieties on her account diminished, but that only left him the wider scope to dwell upon wild imaginations and make himself more the subject of his thoughts. Of a grave and reflective cast of mind, he had even from his early years respected the duties of religion, and now he turned to it for consolation. But the very sources whence he should have derived comfort and peace were fountains of disquiet. His diseased mind seemed ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... tattooed, was about six feet high, thin, but vigorous and muscular. His features were not handsome but agreeable; his countenance was intelligent and reflective; his behaviour ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... expression"—(im hoechsten Grade gisntreich.) In his manner there was something remarkably calm and cool, almost phlegmatic. He spoke with great slowness and deliberation, but often with much point, and a great deal of reflective wit. He was thus a thorough German in his temperament; so at least as Englishmen and Frenchmen, of a more nimble blood, delight to picture the Rhenish Teut, not always in the most complimentary contrast with themselves. As it is, his merit shines forth only so much the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... loved best. "They mind me so of when I was a child, and the whole world seemed in summer time like a great garden. We lived deep in the country, just a little strip of ground brought in from the woods, and all round our little log house was the green trees," she said one day, the pleasant reflective look that I liked to see coming into her kind, strong face. I used to sit and listen to her homely, uncultivated speech, and wonder why I liked her so much better than my natural associates. She was ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... the first line of the fifth stanza. The highest encomiums are justly bestowed upon BRYANT, as a 'purely American poet,' who 'treats the works of Nature with a religious solemnity, and brings to the contemplation of her grandest relations a pure and serious spirit. His poetry is reflective but not sad; grave in its depths but brightened in its flow by the sunshine of the imagination. He never paints on gauze; he is always earnest, always poetical; his manner is every where graceful and unaffected.' The illustrative quotation ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... McFlimsey became interested, and when Miss Anthony mentioned the fact that the majority of men felt it necessary to talk down to women, instead of sharing with them their best thoughts and most vital interests, Flora looked reflective, as if in that direction might lie the clew to the insufferable stupidity which she often found in the young ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the French world had satisfied me, what was not my wonder and joy at discovering in it a reflective side; and for half an hour I remained in a leafy alcove listening to her refined converse,—dealing with books like "Corinne," and "La Chaumiere Indienne,"—La Fontaine, Moliere, Montesquieu,—and especially interesting me in the society which moved around us, which as she touched it ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... seated himself thoughtfully on the solitary chair to sit like a statue staring at the floor. Certain sudden twistings of his clumsy frame revealed the vagrant meanderings of his mind, now satisfied and determined, now uncertain and reflective. Plainly it was a mind ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... It was here that, in spite of some sympathy based on common literary tastes, he altogether parted company from a brother poet, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, who has invariably left his facts to take care of themselves. Though eminently meditative and reflective, Lyall's mind, his biographer says, "seemed always hungry for facts." "Though he had an unusual degree of imagination, he never allowed himself to be tempted too far from the region of the known or the knowable." ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... above described seem to correspond on the whole to the oft-made distinction between the intuitive or spontaneous, and the combining or reflective imagination. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... private parlor at the Melbourne, pompously furnished, and bare of all things that make a room reflective of personality, Mrs. Swink and her daughter were awaiting me on my arrival, and the moment I met the former all the perversity of which I am possessed rose up within me, and for the latter I was conscious of sympathy, based on nothing save intuitive antipathy to her mother. Inwardly I warned ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... where he took up his residence. He applied himself to study, and in 1827, capable of reading and writing, he began business in Brattle Street. He was possessed of a rather reflective and penetrating mind. And before Mr. William Lloyd Garrison unfurled his flag for the Agitation Movement, David Walker wrote and published his Appeal in 1829. It was circulated widely, and touched and stirred the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Jehu, in a fat wheezy voice as Joe crawled into the seat beside him. Joe agreed without qualification. The old man paused a minute, gave him a sober, reflective look of far-away intensity, and then suddenly turned and spat precariously ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... those family histories, I assure you, were of an exciting nature; but so great were Patsy's prudence and his idea of the proprieties that he never divulged his knowledge till we were alone. Then his tongue would be loosed, and he would break into his half-childlike, half-ancient and reflective conversation. ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... choruses singing the harmony of the chorales, accompanied by the instruments, while the congregation sing the tune in unison. They display to the utmost the breadth, richness, ingenuity, and power of Bach in this form of writing. The reflective portions of the work, the text written by Picander, are composed of arias introduced by recitative, with the first part repeated in the close; of arias accompanied by chorus; and of single choruses constructed in the most ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton |
