"Meditative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a cudgel to such an extent that the blows resolved the poor animal into the five elements of death. 'So that,' continued Karataka, 'is why I say, Let the prime minister look to him. The hunting for prey is our duty—let us stick to it, then. And this,' he said, with a meditative look, 'need not trouble us to-day; for we have a capital dish of the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... table, pushed his hat away from his broad, shining forehead, and then, meditative, absently lifted higher his carefully tended hand and lowered the singing gas-jet, only to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... outward bark Not conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself Not having been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No! Not in a condition to lend must forbid himself to borrow Not melancholic, but meditative Not to instruct but to be instructed Not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice Nothing can be a grievance that is but once Nothing falls where all falls Nothing is more confident than a bad poet Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know Nothing is so supple and erratic ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... prepared, one should drink it with art. The mere commonplace drinks one absorbs with free heart; But this—once with care from the bright flame removed, And the lime set aside that its value has proved— Take it first in deep draughts, meditative and slow, Quit it now, now resume, thus imbibe with gusto; While charming the palate it burns yet enchants, In the hour of its triumph the virtue it grants Penetrates every tissue; its powers condense. Circulate cheering warmths, bring new life to each sense. From the cauldron profound ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... were clearly suggestive of waves of the sea, following each other at equal intervals. The sky was bright, as often happens in the evening of a rainy day, an immense sky, shaded with tints of dawn, against which the family tomb of Mora exhibited in relief four allegorical figures, imploring, meditative, thoughtful, whose attitudes were made more imposing by the dying light. Of the speeches, of the official condolences, nothing remained. The soil trodden down all around, masons at work washing the dirt from the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... moon. Of course, at first it was an intercourse infinitely tedious and exasperating, but imperceptibly it has grown to comprehension. And my patience has grown to meet its limitations, Phi-oo it is who does all the talking. He does it with a vast amount of meditative provisional 'M'm—M'm' and has caught up one or two phrases, 'If I may say,' 'If you understand,' and beads all ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... very first notes, Vendramin's face was wet with tears. Capraja stood as motionless as one of the statues in the ducal palace. Cataneo seemed moved to some feeling. The Frenchman, taken by surprise, was meditative, like a man of science in the presence of a phenomenon that upsets all his fundamental axioms. These four minds, all so different, whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves or after themselves, who regarded their own existence ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... which these Spanish Autos must be taken as the final development and bright consummate flower), he has treated that subject, when once undertaken by him, entirely from his own point of view. 'Gerontius' is meant to be studied and dwelt upon by the meditative reader. The Autos of Calderon were got ready by perhaps the most accomplished playwright that ever lived, to amuse and stimulate a thronging southern population. 'Gerontius' is, we may perhaps say for Dr. Newman in the words ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Higginson says: "If not in all respects the ablest, he was the wisest man in our ranks. As large, as powerful, and as black as our good-looking Color-sergeant, but more heavily built and with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more meditative and systematic intellect. Not yet grounded even in the spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have talked all day and ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... on their peaceful activities, hold in horror the business men and the politicians, and will one day succeed in driving them back. That assuredly will be the great and capital revolution of humanity, an active psychological revolution: the recognized preponderance of the meditative and contemplative, the lover's side of the human soul, over the feverish, expansive, rapacious, and ambitious side. And then it will be understood that one of the greatest of social problems, perhaps the most arduous of all, has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Gad!" was Thorpe's meditative comment. "How they shoot up! Why I was thinking she was a little girl." "She never will be tall, I'm afraid," said the literal mother. "She favours her father's family. But Alfred is more of a Thorpe. I'm sorry you missed seeing them last summer—but ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... was," replied her husband: "there was the same meditative expression of the eyes; the same reflective mood as each one began to speak, as if he and she were merely thinking aloud; the same quick, kind reference to me, as if the speaker feared that my feelings might have ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... grew more intimate, became less conversational, and after the sisters had blushingly accorded him the privilege of a pipe he began to permit himself long stretches of meditative silence that were not without charm to his hostesses. There was something at once fortifying and pacific in the sense of that tranquil male presence in an atmosphere which had so long quivered with little feminine doubts and distresses; and the sisters fell into ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Barking by John of Gaunt, was probably his dau. In person C. was inclined to corpulence, "no poppet to embrace," of fair complexion with "a beard the colour of ripe wheat," an "elvish" expression, and an eye downcast and meditative. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... has a long article (pp. 114, 115) on the meaning of Samadhi, which is one of the seven sections of wisdom (bodhyanga). Hardy defines it as meaning "perfect tranquillity;" Turnour, as "meditative abstraction;" Burnouf, as "self-control;" and Edkins, as "ecstatic reverie." "Samadhi," says Eitel, "signifies the highest pitch of abstract, ecstatic meditation; a state of absolute indifference ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, "I felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed that God would send an angel to ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... for some time, profoundly meditative. "You have not seen my other things," he said suddenly. "Come and look ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... One was a meditative monad, called a sage; And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought: "Tradition, handed down for hours and hours, Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world, Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence, When I am very old, yon shimmering dome Come drawing down and down, till ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... all the sufferers by the seeming neglect of the consul were expressing themselves so freely in the matter, old Sobersides, as Jack called his comrade, Harry Girdwood, remained silent and meditative. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... deliberately as because, by the choice of chance, he had invited us to Voisin's in the Rue St. Honore, where the red-cushioned seats, the mirrors, the white paint, the discreet gilding, the air of retirement, the few elderly, rotund, meditative diners, each dining with himself, were all typical of the old classical Paris restaurant, and assured us beforehand of a good dinner and a price in keeping. That we ate asparagus from Argenteuil and petites fraises des bois I know because the season was spring; that the wine was good I also ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Mr. Means, spitting in a meditative sort of a way, "you see, we a'n't none of your saft sort in these diggings. It takes a man to boss this deestrick. Howsumdever, ef you think you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick school-house I ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef you git licked, don't come on us. Flat ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... a moment with an expression of simple surprise, her eyes growing large. Then her glance fell to her dress, and when she again looked up her expression had changed to one which was at once meditative, humorous, and wholly inscrutable. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... presents to his imagination, and the transient emotions which it will excite in him. But besides this there is a secret life which the careless reader will fail to see, and which the critic cannot report, but which will be revealed to the thoughtful, patient, meditative student. In this power to reveal an otherwise unknown world, lies the true glory of poetry. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the poet has to say ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... had no further satisfaction in his book. He knew that the burglar kept casting meditative glances at him as if in wonder at such brutality, and in truth, his own mind was not entirely at ease. If by any chance the story were true,—if there was a woman at his doors freezing to death, how could he sit enjoying the fire? But, on the other hand, could any one have a more evident motive ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... that know not love. I like them, too, because they really seem to have an eye for the strange beauty and charm of the Sphinx, quite an unexpected taste for Botticelli. They ill conceal their envy of my lot, and sometimes, in the meditative pauses between the courses, I see them romantically reckoning how it might be possible by desperately saving up, by prodigious windfalls of tips, from unexampled despatch and sweetness in their ministrations, how it might be possible in ten years' time, perhaps even in five—the lady would ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... tide, As gently on the pebbly beach It lays its head, then ebbs away, Or round the rocks, with nearer reach, Throws up a cloud of silvery spray? Or to the firry woods, that shed Their spicy odours to the sun, Goest thou with meditative tread, Thinking of all things that are done Beneath the sky?—a great, big thought, Of which I know you're very fond. For me, my mind is solely wrought To this one wish:—O! in a pond Would I were over head and ears! (Of a cold ducking I've no fears) Or any where, where I am not; For, bless ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... Jenny. "I thought, Jinny," said the father apologetically,—"I thought I heard sounds as if you was takin' on inside, and, listenin' I fell asleep."—"You dear, old simple-minded baby!" said Jenny, looking past her father's eyes, and lifting his grizzled locks one by one with meditative fingers: "what should I be takin' on for? Look how much taller I am than you!" she said, suddenly lifting herself up to the extreme of her superb figure. Then rubbing his head rapidly with both hands, as if she were ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... understand your ways. We clouds live our divinest days Beneath great sunny depths of sky, High above all that you think high, Drifting through sunset's surf of gold, Dawn-lakes and moonlight's clear waves cold, In realms so distant, chill and lone, That Love, impatient, leaves the throne To meditative Amity. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... full of dwellings and painless, and give us protection."[60] In the burial service the dead are exhorted to "go into kindly mother earth" who will be "wool-soft, like a maiden."[61] The one hymn to Earth should perhaps be placed parallel with similar meditative and perfunctory ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... demurring to the soundness of the latter doctrine, than can conveniently be made to fill a digression here. For one thing, spoken language necessarily implies one or more listeners, whereas written language may often have to express meditative moods and trains of inward reflection that move through the mind without trace of external reference, and that would lose their special traits by the introduction of any suspicion that they were to be overheard. Again, even granting that all composition must be ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... this strange and, to some extent, unmannerly behaviour. By its queer trick of squirting, it manages to kill at least two birds with one stone. For, in the first place, the sudden elastic jump of the fruit frightens away browsing animals, such as goats and cattle. Those meditative ruminants are little accustomed to finding shrubs or plants take the aggressive against them; and when they see a fruit that quite literally flies in their faces of its own accord, they hesitate to attack the uncanny ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... nobility which distinguished him as a thinker and a man, was not of the heroic type. He had nothing Homeric in his inspiration, nothing of the warrior or the patriot in his nature. His genius, when it pursued its bias, found instinctive utterance in elegy and idyl, in meditative rhetoric and pastoral melody. In order to assume the heroic strain, Tasso had recourse to scholarship, and gave himself up blindly to the guidance of Latin poets. This was consistent with the tendency of the Classical Revival; but since the subject to be dignified by epic style was Christian ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... foot in it, saying what I did," said Rutherford, staring through his eye-glasses in a meditative manner, "but it did make me hot, their insinuating things in that way about such a nice little girl as Lyle, and before Miss ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... a schoolboy is a curious thing," Fisher continued, in a meditative manner. "It can survive a great many things besides climbing out of a chimney. A man can grow gray in great campaigns, and still have the soul of a schoolboy. A man can return with a great reputation from India and be put in charge of a great public ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... the fatigues of the day, and the effort to get and dispose of a very substantial supper, and was puffing at her pipe in a meditative aspect. Evidently something unusual was on her mind, and she at last ejaculated, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... love; and habit does the work 100 Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul, By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued Doth find herself [13] insensibly disposed To virtue and true goodness. 105 Some there are, By their good works exalted, lofty minds And meditative, authors of delight And happiness, which to the end of time Will live, and spread, and kindle: even such minds [14] 110 In childhood, from this solitary Being, Or from like wanderer, haply have received [15] (A thing more precious far than all that books Or the solicitudes of love ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... in all her varying charms. Now gliding calmly past a water-side village, with the children running out to give you a greeting; then through a waving, poppy-starred cornfield, or past low-lying meadows, with the meditative cattle standing knee-deep in the sweet pasturage, and anon a bend in the canal carries you past wood-lands where the trees meet overhead and form a cool canopy through which the rays of the sun can only penetrate here and there ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... so vague that Margaret glanced at him. He was looking at the inside of his right hand in a meditative way, as if it recalled something. If he had shown more interest in what she said she would have told him what she had just learned, about the breaking off of the engagement, but he was evidently absorbed ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... advantage till he has examined him well, for an anxious countenance and a hollow, somewhat haggard, outline of face disturb the idea of beauty with one of care. His eyes are large, and grave, and gray; their expression is intent and meditative, rather searching than soft, rather thoughtful than genial. When he parts his lips in a smile, his physiognomy is agreeable—not that it is frank or cheerful even then, but you feel the influence of a certain sedate charm, suggestive, whether truly or delusively, of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... poetry, lolling indolently upon the cushions of a divan, while they roll between their fingers the amber beads of their rosary, or walking slowly under the arcades of a mosque, draped in their white-silk simars, with a serious and meditative air, gestures elegant and measured, courteous and harmonious speech, and something discreet, polite, and already clerical in their ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... their faces which I should like to picture and interpret as being the very essence of what I have called the look of Paris. They are grave, these young faces: one hears a great deal of the gaiety in the trenches, but the wounded are not gay. Neither are they sad, however. They are calm, meditative, strangely purified and matured. It is as though their great experience had purged them of pettiness, meanness and frivolity, burning them down to the bare bones of character, the fundamental substance of the soul, and shaping that ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... determine whether or not he personally possessed psychic powers. He began with regular periods of mental concentration, an opening of the soul, as it were, to spirit impressions; he would sit alone, in a state of meditative receptiveness for ten or fifteen minutes every day, and later several times a day, waiting for something to happen—he did not ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... his pursuit of colour, nature is, perhaps, on account of his English origin, something more to him than a brilliant appearance. It has of course happened to Monet to set his easel before the suburban aspect that Sisley loves, but he has always treated it rather in the decorative than in the meditative spirit. He has never been touched by the humility of a lane's end, and the sentiment of the humble life that collects there has never appeared on his canvas. Yet Sisley, being more in sympathy with such nature, has often been able to produce ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... bread, the true vine, the true Shepherd—which comes to this, to use modern phraseology, that Jesus Christ, in His relation to you and me, fulfils all that in figure and shadow is represented to the meditative eye by that lower relationship between the material shepherd and his sheep. That is the picture, this the reality. There is another point to be made clear, and that is, that whilst the word 'good' is perhaps a fair enough ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his cheeks; a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His expression was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude might wear. My sleeping-suit was just right for his size. A well-knit young fellow of twenty-five at most. He caught his lower lip with the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Francis!" said Myles, turning upon him indignantly. "Thou knowest that thou likest to see the boy beaten no more than I." Then, after a meditative pause, "How many, think ye, we muster of our ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... Dominican striding back and forth, ascetic and serene of face, two nuns buried in their hoods, telling their beads on long rosaries which measured their time of waiting, priests from the diocese of Lyon, recognizable from the shape of their hats, and other persons of stern and meditative mien seated by the great table of black wood which stood in the centre of the room, and turning the leaves of some of those edifying periodicals which are printed on the hill of Fourvieres, the Echoes ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Duffy; you're worse than usual,' said her brother, setting his elbows on the table, and nibbling the end of the pen-holder in a meditative fashion. 'Of course he was properly introduced to the class as Mr. ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... there is more truth in that remark than either you or I would at first think," said the painter in a meditative tone. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... meditative performance different from the actual performance of which the brick-altar is a constituent element, follows from the reasons proving separation, viz. the connexions. i.e. the things connected with the sacrifice, such as the Soma cups, the hymns, the recitations, and so on. What is meant ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... "too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears—wanting of necessity to those who, being protected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that same levity be made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of such feelings; but also, I believe that all minds which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection from ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... meditative look. He was thinking of Canon Aylwin's last volume of essays—of their fine scholarship, their delicate, unique qualities of style. As for Lucy, it seemed to her that all the principalities and powers ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... With meditative eyes directed down to the ashes at the end of his cigar, Meade mulled over the question. "A great adventure it surely would be," he at length emitted from behind a puff of smoke. "The right man, a great writer, for instance, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... His response came with meditative slowness and with playful eyes: "Whenever I am justified in having such anxieties, they ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... mortal ever watched the ocean-roll or heard its thunder without feeling serious. I have noticed that even animals,—horses and cows,—become meditative in the presence of the sea: they stand and stare and listen as if the sight and sound of that immensity made them forget all else in ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Union with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind. The old gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap and gazed down tenderly upon it, and became silent and meditative. Presently Tracy noticed that he was dripping tears on it. This touched the young fellow's sympathetic nature, and at the same time gave him the painful sense of being an intruder upon a sacred ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... slow from the exact opposite of these two reasons. First, when there is a great back-ground of thought suggested by the words, and second, when the reflective and meditative nature of the thought leads to slow action on the part of the mind. In some selections both of these conditions are present; in others only one of them. In The Day is Done (p. 63) there is little ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... her head, with those thoughtful eyes which look attentive yet see nothing.... Her lowered eyelids had that vague contraction which suggests a tear checked in its course, or a thought suppressed.... Her face, which might inspire adoration, seemed meditative, like portraits of the Virgin.—Toilers of ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... on in a meditative way, "even to the feet, but the feet I came back and saved, cutting the burnt bone from them, and hid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a piece of linen. Surely, I remember it as though it ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... quitted the mantelpiece, on which he had been leaning, begin to walk up and down the room, with a meditative air, and without ceasing to bite ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and finally returned to his own country. The conduct of the American at a moment so critical, and when, without relatives or friends, the invalid was languishing in a strange land, was not forgotten. He remembered it in his thoughtful and meditative moments, and when about to prepare for another world, his gratitude was manifested in a truly signal manner. A year or two ago, an individual in this city was labouring under great pecuniary difficulty. He was unexpectedly called ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... the tall, blond young man who earned his eighty marks per month as wireless man on the Ottilie, having eaten his dinner with the passengers of the second-cabin and smoked a meditative pipe at the door of the little coop on the after boat-deck which served him as office and bedroom, knocked out the ashes and entered his citadel to prepare for the night's business. But first he connected up his detector ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... we did get bored with William was when he turned inventor. It came rather as a surprise to us; and when he began to be abstracted, profoundly meditative, almost sullen, with an apparent desire to be alone, we thought at first that it was the onset of hydrophobia. In fact, we looked it up on the back of the ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... enforced absences of Mrs. Morrissy, into a privacy more than sealed, by reason of the attentions of a dog who would climb to her lap, and there, with an angry nose, put to no more than temporary rout the nimble guests of his jacket. Shortly Mrs. Morrissy began to look upon the toy terrier with a meditative eye. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Miss Maggie turned back to her meditative gazing at nothing. "The two years are nearly up, you know,—I was talking with Jane the other day—just ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... went by, and ten and fifteen and twenty. Peachy still sat silent, moveless, meditative. Not once did she ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... than any his Highness has favoured before,' he said in a meditative voice. 'Yet Cromwell knows the King's tastes better than any man.' He sank down into her tall-backed chair and suddenly tossed the piece of bark into the fire. 'I would have you walk across the floor, elevating your arms as you were the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... greatly interested in you and some new project you have in mind. Emerson thinks well of it," said Amos, "though," he added, "Emerson thinks it won't amount to much—in practical immediate results. But I think, Grant, now of course, I can't be sure," the father rubbed his jaw and shook a meditative head, "it certainly did seem to me mother was there for a time. Something kept bothering Emerson—calling Grantie—the way she used to—all the time he ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... toward the door as a light double foot-fall approached again down the hall and the girl appeared once more, somewhat preceded by a small, tired-looking, pretty woman some thirty-five years of age, of slow, self-contained movement and clear, meditative eyes. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... were said, not fiercely or resentfully, but in a sort of meditative, passive despair. A sense of the wickedness, the cruelty there was in the world, the hopelessness of struggling against it, of disentangling fact from falsehood, of silencing malice and disarming envy, came upon Christian ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... personal experience, he comes to the ground, having drawn his types from the family circle or from the weekly washerwoman, and having acquired an amount of useful information from which never, even in his most meditative moments, can he thoroughly ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... judgment; for people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. In the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much of that meditative subtlety, which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the great imaginative workmen of its close. Leaving the simple religion which had occupied the followers of Giotto for a century, and the simple naturalism ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... into the studio, his pursed lips emitting a low, meditative whistle, while Bettina hurried downstairs, her ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... and struggling for distinction or wealth in all kinds of adventure, and under the breath of every clime—there are few, indeed, of our people, when twilight begins to gather over their path, but turn towards the light that comes from their old homes; and would fain pass a serene and meditative old age by the burnside where they "paidled" in their youth, and lay down their bones beside their fathers in the kirkyard of yon calm sequestered glen. Scott went down to the nether springs of the national character when he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of exclamations which extends into the following verse. If we take account of the whole series, and regard the subsequent part of it as led up to, by the part which is our text, we get an important thought as to what should be the outcome of the truths concerning God, and of our meditative contemplation of them. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... with great expedition, pouring out explanation and entreaty in one excited rush, while Miss Jinny sat opposite her on the side of the bed, her rather protruding pale blue eyes cocked sidewise at her in the meditative way she ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... So, taking a meditative ramble in 'His Majesty's Park, the Phoenix;' and passing out at Castleknock gate, he walked up the river, between the wooded slopes, which make the valley of the Liffey so pleasant and picturesque, until he ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... replied Bumpus, in a meditative way; "but, of course, we must look out for puzzlers ahead sometimes w'en we gets into a land storm, d'ye see; just as we looks out ahead for breakers in a storm at sea. Suppose now that I creeps into the cave and listens for 'em. They'd never hear me, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... what Christianity is expected to produce," Mr. Morgan replied, in a meditative way; "but I have an idea that the early Christians in their assemblies all knew each other, having met elsewhere in social intercourse, or, if they were not acquainted, they lost sight of distinctions in one paramount ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... again, and lifting the latch to the hook which held it up, left the room, closing the door softly behind him. He walked down the corridor, with a meditative frown, and began to descend the stairs ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... to which she referred had not been unregarded by the individual she addressed, and while she spoke, his looks assumed a meditative expression, and he replied as in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot gin and water. My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in getting the gin the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the time being at least, I was saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... engendered out of the mind, brooding in self-creation upon its own suggestions: but truth is to be mined from Nature, to be wrung from experience, to be seized as the victor's trophy on the battlefield of action and suffering. The flowers of poetry may bud spontaneously around the meditative spirit of genius, but the harvest of Truth, though, to be reaped by mind, must grow ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... in the air; or was he obeying another Dominie, of a wider parish, whose voice he heard in his heart? It was not often that the painter went to church. More frequently, in his little studio at the top of a house in Fulton Street, he sat smoking meditative cigars during the Sunday hours; or, if the day were auspicious, even ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... asked her father, pressing the tobacco harder into the pipe-bowl, and casting a meditative eye at ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... became Protestant;—among the first great Prelates who took that heretical course; being favored by circumstances to cast out the 'V. D. (Verbum Diaboli),' as Philip read it. He is a wise-looking man, with magnificent beard, with something of contemptuous patience in the meditative eyes of him. He had great troubles with his Riga people,—as indeed was a perennial case between their Bishop and them, of whatever creed ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... under which was a seat, she turned. It formed a wide canopy of shade, grateful and cool. For the breezes stirred under the leaves, and the river moved beneath with a pleasant, meditative hush ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way. When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the feeling that he was distinctly hungry. Yet he alone had eaten. The two children in the other room had been sent early to bed in order that in sleep they might forget they ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... brush, so piled up the foam on him, that his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and vain to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in the sea to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing would do, but he must keep his mouth shut. Doubtless, the interval was not, in a meditative way, unimproved; for, upon the traces of the operation being at last removed, the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment, washed his face and hands; and having generally readjusted himself, began, at last, addressing the barber in a manner different, singularly ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... said he at last. "You must try to make her as comfortable as you can. There is consumption in the family, you see," he added, with a meditative sigh. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... of meditative smoking: "Yes, I guess that's the best thing you can do. It will strike her fancy, if she's an imaginative girl, and she'll think you a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have in the hymns of the Greek service-books a pictorial representation of the history of Redemption, which by engaging the mind appeals ultimately to the heart and its emotions. Our self-regarding praise is perhaps inevitable, as being the product of the meditative spirit which has its birth, and lives in the land of the twilight; but the advantages of the objectiveness of Greek hymnody are so patent, that its cultivation might be fostered by our hymn-writers, with advantage to the devotional feeling ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... With meditative hearts the others go The memory of their dead to dress anew. But, sister mine, bide here that I may know, Life grows, through death, as ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... sigh as if some burden she had long borne in patient silence had been loosened a little, if only by the fact of speech about it. She was not convinced exactly. She was too strong a nature to relinquish a principle without a period of meditative struggle in which conscience should have all its dues. But her tone made his heart leap. He felt in it a momentary self-surrender that, coming from a creature of so rare a dignity, filled him with an exquisite ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... didn't know he was at Turtle Head; and I am satisfied now that he is the man that shook up Hasbrook that night," continued Laud, in meditative mood. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... Advice to the Reader, for two years. The building of his house with his own hands, and the disposition of the land about it occupied him for the better part of one; the next, with its progressive seasons of fruition, was spent in meditative ecstasy; by the beginning of the third his cure was complete. The poet in him was now the philosopher's humble servant, as should surely always be the case. Resolved that the world should be sweetened ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... she mentioned casually, a day or two later, that her windows looked the other way over the sea, he felt that Destiny had fooled him once more; but for the time being he found a gentle happiness in his speculation. Chilled to the bone, at last, he sought his hotel bedroom and smoked a pipe, meditative, with his hat on until the morning. Then he ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... prepare for removal to Mission San Juan Capistrano, his future field of work. After a sleepless night of vain repining, he had risen early and wandered out into his garden, back of the church, his favorite resort when in a meditative mood, or when he wished to escape intrusion of ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... looking over the dark waters and sending my whole soul across them to that unknown spot where my father and mother were. "Home," that spot was to me. Preston did not know what I liked the Esplanade for; he sometimes laughed at me for being poetic and meditative; when I was only sending my heart over the water. But he was glad to please me in all that he could; and whenever it was not too cold, our walks always ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... band less bloody or bloodthirsty wander over the roof of the continent. Hay loved as little as Adams did, the labor of skinning and butchering big game; he had even outgrown the sedate, middle-aged, meditative joy of duck-shooting, and found the trout of the Yellowstone too easy a prey. Hallett Phillips himself, who managed the party loved to play Indian hunter without hunting so much as a fieldmouse; Iddings the geologist was reduced to shooting only for the table, and the guileless prattle ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... did not arrive anywhere, so far as it went; but I believe that it might have been different with a Yankee story in verse such as we have fragmentarily in 'The Nooning' and 'FitzAdam's Story'. Still, his gift was essentially lyrical and meditative, with the universal New England tendency to allegory. He was wholly undramatic in the actuation of the characters which he imagined so dramatically. He liked to deal with his subject at first hand, to indulge through himself all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of nature here and there shine out from its lines,—a charm wanting which meditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too, there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by the way to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read, you wander by a clear brook of thought, coining ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... said the girl quietly. "It's fish, of course?" she added, looking down at her stepmother, and speaking in a meditative voice. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have, a mulatto outlaw. But this shall not stop here, no, by St. George! Yes, I did well to call you. Now my anger boils; the most cruel plans crowd in upon my imagination. Yes, yes, that is it;" said Croustillac, with a meditative air. "I have it at last! I have found a revenge fitting ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Towards the end of June Mr. Spicer began to amuse himself with a little gardening. He had discovered in the coal-hole an ancient fork, with one prong broken and the others rusting away. This implement served him in his slow, meditative attack on that part of the jungle which seemed to offer least resistance. He would work for a quarter of an hour, then, resting on his fork, contemplate the tangled mass of vegetation which he had succeeded in ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... church a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few that ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in her eyes, and looked ten times comelier and more womanly and interesting than she had done all day. The desertion of the best narrator broke up the party, and the unassuming Denys approached the meditative mijauree, and invited her in the most flattering terms to gamble with him. She started from her reverie, looked him down into the earth's centre with chilling dignity, and consented, for she remembered all in a moment what a show ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... northward to an unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away for ever. Something in him, his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes, his brave laugh, reminded her of him—her husband—who, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth went, it was as though one they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eye, and skill profound, He woke the entrancing viol's sound, Or touched the sweet guitar. For heavenly music deigned to dwell An inmate in his cloistered cell, As beams the solem star, All night, with meditative eyes Where some ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... rather wonders how the Twice-Told Tales should have gained what vogue they did, than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade—the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion, there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... of the bar, from Natchez, a limping youth in plain garb, but in whose bearing there was a manly, indeed almost a haughty, mien; in whose cheek a rich glow, telling the influence of more northern climes; in whose eye a keen but meditative expression; and in whose voice and conversation a vivacity and originality that attracted every one, and drew around him, wherever he appeared, a knot of listeners, whose curiosity invariably yielded in a few moments to admiration and delight. There ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... excellent match, and the wealthiest and most respected Hebrews would fain have had him for a son-in-law, just as even nowadays the Israelites are very desirous of the honor of marrying their daughters to the sons of Rabbis or scholars. But the meditative youth, whose mind was far above anything corporeal, and possessed by the thirst for knowledge, stealthily left his home and joined the caravans going ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... finish his paragraph, as he said, by his important manner of doing which, Purcel, who thoroughly understood him, was much amused. He frequently paused for instance, placed his chin in the end of his half-closed hand, somewhat like an egg in an egg-cup, looked in a meditative mood into Purcel's face, without appearing to see him at all; then went over to the library, which ought rather to have been pronounced his son's than his; and after having consulted a book—a Latin Horace, which by the way he opened ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the widest exterior range, is at the median line, where we find clairvoyance; and the interior meditative power, such as Invention, Composition, Calculation, and Planning, belongs to the lateral or exterior surface of the forehead, according to the principles just stated. Adhesiveness (Adh.) is the centre of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... sufficient to banish further meditative surmising, and I crept swiftly to a point of vantage, and with sweep-net awaited their reappearance. It was five minutes before faint, discolored spots indicated their rising, and at least two minutes more before they actually disturbed the surface. With eight ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... sorry, Cupples," Trent broke in upon his meditative speech with a swift return to the table. "When I began this investigation I meant to take you with me every step of the way. You mustn't think I have any doubts about your discretion if I say now that I must hold my ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... too glad just then to have effaced his foot-prints if he had had the least idea how to do it. The small shawl she wore fell from her unnoticed as she went quickly into the house. He picked it up, and folded it awkwardly, but with meditative care. It was a square of orange-coloured merino, such as pedlars who deal with the squaws always carry, an ordinary thing for a settler's child to possess. As he held it, Bates felt compunction that it was not something finer and to his idea prettier, for he ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... train, discipline, drill, inculcate, instil, indoctrinate. Thoughtful, contemplative, meditative, reflective, pensive, wistful. Tire, weary, fatigue, exhaust, jade, fag. Tool, implement, instrument, utensil. Trifle, dally, dawdle, potter. Try, endeavor, essay, attempt. Trust, confidence, reliance, assurance, faith. Turn, revolve, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... impress, I might show what an "exciting" inward life may do for the person leading it even while it remains perfectly normal. And I cannot think of a more consistent application of that ideal unless it be in the long statement, just beyond the middle of the book, of my young woman's extraordinary meditative vigil on the occasion that was to become for her such a landmark. Reduced to its essence, it is but the vigil of searching criticism; but it throws the action further forward that twenty "incidents" might have done. It was designed to have ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... nature as his model, he followed it slavishly. On the occasion of his initial departure from the accepted rules, he had never dreamed it possible to disregard ritualistic commandments so absolutely. He even ignored the passive and meditative repose, immemorial on the carven countenances ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... unfortunate criticisms expresses it, the ode suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel. To find beautiful and pathetic language, set to harmonious numbers, for the common impressions of meditative minds, is no small part of the poet's task. That part has never been achieved by any poet in any tongue with more complete perfection and success than in the immortal Elegy, of which we may truly say that it ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place, — 'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... meagre possessions in their proper receptacles, which was the girls after-breakfast occupation, she came upon an unfinished silk purse, and this served to bring an end for a time to the restoration of order, while she sat upon the floor in a meditative attitude. Presently she laid it on the bureau with a little sigh and returned to her task. Once this was completed, she again took the purse, and seating herself, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... he had neither the wish nor the courage to break into the conversation, he left the salon and took refuge in the billiard-room. No one there greeted him, nobody spoke to him, no one sent so much as a friendly glance in his direction. His turn of mind, naturally meditative, had discovered instinctively the general grounds and reasons for the aversion he inspired. This little world was obeying, unconsciously perhaps, the sovereign law which rules over polite society; its inexorable nature was becoming apparent in its entirety to Raphael's eyes. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... dreams. This, indeed, was the one sole memorial which restores my father's image to me as a personal reality. Otherwise, he would have been for me a bare nominis umbra. He languished, indeed, for weeks upon a sofa; and, during that interval, it happened naturally, from my meditative habits and corresponding repose of manners, that I was a privileged visitor to him during his waking hours. I was also present at his bed-side in the closing hour of his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of delirious conversation with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... fell strangely silent, and the square-browed judge leaned head on hand and pondered his soul and the soul of his race. Only was heard the deep tones of Imber, rhythmically alternating with the shrill voice of the interpreter, and now and again, like the bell of the Lord, the wondering and meditative "Hell" of the ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... somewhere near the ground. Bethink you, sirs, that though I was denied The learning which in colleges is found, Yet may a hungry brain still find its fo Wherever books may lie or men may be; [103] And though perchance by Isis or by Cam The meditative, philosophic plant May best luxuriate; yet some would say That in the task of limning mortal life A fitter preparation might be made Beside the banks of Thames. And then again, If I be suspect, in that I was ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Cure, peacefully conning his "Hours," as with slow and thoughtful step he paces round and round. I can now read his calm, benevolent face by the light of half a century's experience of life, and have learned to love that still, black, meditative aspect which I found so antipathetic as a small boy—he is no burner alive of little heretics! This world is big enough for us both—and so is the world to come! And he knows it. Now, at ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... wandered around the bare stone space, his glance fell at last upon it, and there it rested. For a while he stood looking intently at it, presently he began rubbing his hand over his bristling chin in a thoughtful, meditative manner. Finally he drew a deep breath, and giving himself a shake as though to arouse himself from his thoughts, and after listening a moment or two to make sure that no one was nigh, he walked softly to the fireplace, and stooping, peered ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... very pensive, meditative young man, of poetic temperament, and of unsullied purity of character. With such persons love ever becomes an all-absorbing passion. It has been well said that love is represented as a little Cupid shooting tiny arrows, whereas it should be presented as a giant shaking the world. The ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... crepuscular light, that streaked the east, and gave promise of the coming day. Irving had just completed his "Sketch-Book," which was basking in the full sunshine of unqualified popularity. Dana, in the thoughtful and meditative beauty of "The Idle Man," was addressing a more limited public. Percival had just before published a small volume of poems; Halleck's "Fanny" had recently appeared; and so had a small duodecimo volume by Bryant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... longer, both for your own sake and for Dimitri's," she said in a meditative manner. "At your age friendship is a ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... supper had reached its apotheosis of stewed prunes and blue-boiled rice, Hawley and Mead had gone out for a meditative and tobacco-shrouded stroll. They passed through the hall and inspiration ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... the marquise, after a meditative pause. "We are both still beautiful enough to inspire love, but we could never convince any one of our ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... a time, taking a meditative but wholly unagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is and I ain't saying she ain't. But I never did say I was a perfessional housekeeper, did ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... was a Glug with a twisted mind Of the nasty, meditative kind. He'd meditate on the modes of Gosh, And dared to muse on the acts of Splosh; He dared to speak, and, worse than that, He spoke out loud, and he said it flat. "Why climb?" said he. "When you reach the top There's nowhere to go, and you have to stop, Unless you drop. ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... worry and the labor of getting an honest boy were over—that the horses had gone to the post, and that the race rested with Lucretia herself, Porter's mind had relaxed. Even at the time of the very struggle itself tension had gone from him; he was in a meditative mood, and spoke on, weighing the chances, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... first; rest assured, I will save you;" he responded, shaking her hand, bidding her good night. On returning to the mansion he found Marston seated at the table in the drawing-room, in a meditative mood. Good night, my friend!" ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... with hard, meditative inquiry. "It's Heaven she trusts in. What's Heaven going to do for her, I'd ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... ponds have their own fascination; not, perhaps, at meal-times, when the water is lashed to froth by the darting, gleaming bodies—that is too greedy a business. But when a passer-by on a spring morning sees a pound fish fall back into the water with a meditative flop, he may pay the pond the compliment of wishing himself elsewhere. One accompaniment of a trout farm he may hope to escape—the sight of a dead kingfisher. Without wire netting, kingfishers find out the young fry only too quickly, and a dead kingfisher spoils ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Cora will be over anxious to have me come back," she said, looking like a meditative cat-bird. "I know she kept that Celine in ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... everything." And he cites a similar judgment of Fenelon: "The poet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but what can be beautified." In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks of the youthful poems of Milton: "'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. All that is beautiful in Milton stands by ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... rail-fence of moss-grown cedar, with bushes sprouting beneath it, and thrusting their branches through it; sometimes by a stone wall of unknown antiquity, older than the wood it closed in. A stone wall, when shrubbery has grown around it, and thrust its roots beneath it, becomes a very pleasant and meditative object. It does not belong too evidently to man, having been built so long ago. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... one turned his meditative eyes from their focus upon the horse's back and rested them upon the open and guileleas face by his side. Then from deep down in his brawny throat came a sudden sound. It was unmistakably a chuckle. Without the slightest trace of an accompanying smile, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled conviction in the deeply-meditative Ode to Autumn, where he finds the ideal in the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... valued as they deserved his force of faith, his earnestness, the glow and hurry of his thought, and the (if every third stump-speaker among us were not a Demosthenes, we should have said Demosthenean) eloquence of his verse; but here we meet him in a softer and more meditative mood. He seems a Berserker turned Carthusian. The half-mystic tone of "The Shadow and the Light" contrasts strangely, and, we think, pleasantly, with the war-like clang of "From Perugia." The years deal kindly with good men, and we find a clearer and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the mind, flash across the mind, float in the mind, fasten itself on the mind, be uppermost in the mind, occupy the mind; have in one's mind. make an impression; sink into the mind, penetrate into the mind; engross the thoughts. Adj. thinking &c. v.; thoughtful, pensive, meditative, reflective, museful[obs3], wistful, contemplative, speculative, deliberative, studious, sedate, introspective, Platonic, philosophical. lost in thought &c. (inattentive) 458; deep musing &c. (intent) 457. in the mind, under consideration. Adv. all things considered. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to take much interest in the Miss Melvilles' hair. She was very meditative about something; but her meditations must have been of a pleasant nature, for there was a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange and pass a night under my own roof, for the tenancy had not yet expired. When I reached the Grange before sunset I found a girl knitting under the porch, and an old woman reclining on the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... time. He had never had a soul to tell him of outline or perspective, of anatomy or of shadow, and yet he had given all the weary, worn-out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the rugged, careworn pathos of his original, and given them so that the old lonely figure was a poem, sitting there, meditative and alone, on the dead tree, with the darkness of the ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... the meditative order. The writer expresses her thoughts in a manner that is a delightful reminder of 'Reveries of a Bachelor' of Ike Marvel.... In parts it is amusing, in the manner of Mark Twain's 'Sketches.' The combination of humor and sensible reflection ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... came you here?" ejaculated the stranger, putting aside the lute, which hung suspended from his neck by a diamond chain. "You are deeply in love with the dead, cavalier, to select such a place as this for the haunt of your meditative dreams." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... admiring him. If I might hint a fault, it is that the fox-terrier lacks balance of character. The ejaculation "Cats!" causes him to behave in a way which is devoid of well-bred repose, and his conduct when in presence of rabbits is enough to make a meditative lurcher or retriever grieve. When a lurcher sees a rabbit in the daytime, he leers at him from his villainous oblique eye, and seems to say, "Shan't follow you just now—may have the pleasure of looking you up this evening." ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... that her soul felt bondage as her body would have felt a harrow. So I left the fugitives of Egyptian slavery under the frown of the Almighty in the wilderness of Sin; Sidney was trusting me; uncle and aunt were trusting me; and between them I was getting into a narrow corner. After a meditative silence my ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... along in silence, sitting over to one side with a foot dangling free of its stirrup; except Andy, who had hooked one leg over the saddle-horn and was riding sidewise, smoking a meditative cigarette and staring out between the ears of his horse. They were tired; horses and men, they were tired to the middle of their bones. But they went ahead without making any complaints whatever or rasping oneanother's tempers with ill-chosen remarks; and for ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and effort of the reader to the lowest point. Only extreme literary art can so nullify this effort in effect as to make description by detail pleasurable, if of any length. Description by detail is, perhaps, more admissible in writing having a meditative tone than in any other, except, of ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... his nose in a meditative way. "Well," he drawled, "He haven't made many, true enough. I'm not sayin' He mightn't have made more. But He've done very well. They's enough—oh, ay, they's enough t' get along with. For, look you! lad, they's no real need o' any more. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... the highly-gifted Merton; but it was only upon this particular morning that the recognition was mutual. Merton, on turning his eyes by chance from the ground, looked to the opposite side of the street, and there beheld a nose. He then turned his eyes to the earth in his usual meditative mood; but, reflecting that a nose without an owner was rather a singular phenomenon, he looked a second time, and there, behind the nose, he saw a man; it was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various |
