"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Roderick; and the next minute they were sailing smoothly over the polished floor, with all the fair pictured faces, the crimson draperies, the pensive Madonnas, Dutch boors, Italian temples, and hills, and skies, circling round them like the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... tossed wistaria bloom Foam up in purple turbulence, Where twining boughs have built a room And wing'd winds pause to garner scents And scattered sunlight flecks the gloom, She broods in pensive indolence. ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... have written as if their hearts were old before their time; their pensive morning twilight has been as cool and saddening as that of evening in more common lives. The profound melancholy ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... whenever any considerable number of them were in company, scarcely a day passed without some overtures being made for contests of this kind, and it was often very unpleasant to me to see the object of the contest sitting in pensive silence watching her fate, while her husband and his rival were contending for his prize. I have, indeed, not only felt pity for those poor wretched victims, but the utmost indignation, when I have seen them won, perhaps ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... handles which do not fall out, the equity of selling that which does not belong to you—all these things chased each other across Festus Clasby's mind. The Son of the Bard stood silent by the cart, looking away down the road with a pensive look on ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... joyous youth, what soul hath never known, Thought, feeling, taste, harmonious to its own? Who hath not paused while Beauty's pensive eye Asked from his heart ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... exultingly leaps forth To hail the coming of the genial spring, Shedding around from her green lap the buds, In winter's rugged casket long enshrined, To form the chaplet of the infant year.— Young pensive moralist!—'tis sweet to muse On beauties which escape the vulgar eye, To talk with Nature 'mid her woodland paths, And hear an answering voice in every breeze.— You court her beauties with a lover's zeal; You hear her voice, nor understand ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... sweetest," she said, and her voice was full and tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could she ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... of this nature was even imputed to L'Aubespine, the French ambassador; and that minister was obliged to leave the kingdom. The queen, affecting to be in terror and perplexity, was observed to sit much alone, pensive and silent; and sometimes to mutter to herself half sentences, importing the difficulty and distress to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... spirit of "Childe Harold," it is not satirical; it is more pensive than bitter, and reveals the loneliness and sorrows of an unsatisfied soul,—the unrest of a pilgrim in search for something new. It seeks to penetrate the secrets of struggling humanity, at war often with those certitudes which are the consolation of our ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... scarce believe the tidings, Till I stood above her grave, And beheld those flaxen ringlets, That so late did buoyant wave, Lie beside a face whose features Still in death did sweetly smile And methought angelic beauty Lingered on her cheeks the while. At the pensive hour of twilight, Oft do angel-footsteps tread Near her grave, and flowers in beauty Blossom o'er the early dead; And a simple marble tablet Thence doth unassuming rise, And these simple words are on it,— "Here our Angelina lies." Oft at night, when others ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... an utterly calm face and the pensive attitude of one who has all the time that he needs to examine a delicate situation from every point of view. He had reached one of those minutes which he called the "superior moments of existence," those which ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... spray of a thousand fountain jets, and makes the bosquets which shadow the regal staircase a haunt of the water nymphs as well as of the Dryads. You fancy, as your unwary foot presses the concealed springs that it is the white hands of mischievous Naiads which dash the water in your face, a pensive melancholy settles upon you with the mysterious dusk, and you are startled by Undine's "short, quick sobs," and are loth to believe that the plaintive sounds with which the air pulses are but the dropping of rills in and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... coming back down the hill, picking our way among the graves, a pensive Chinaman stopped us to ask our assistance in finding him a lucky spot in which to bury his father, who died a year ago but was still above ground. He was sorry to hear that we could not pretend to any knowledge of such things. He ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... spouse, his soul's far dearer part; At home he sought her, but he sought in vain: She, with one maid of all her menial train, Had thence retired; and with her second joy, The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy: Pensive she stood on Ilion's towery height, Beheld the war, and sicken'd at the sight; There her sad eyes in vain her lord explore, Or weep the wounds her bleeding country bore. Hector this heard, return'd without delay; Swift through the town he trod his former way, Through streets of palaces and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... garden-room and its picturesque bow. It was a favourite occupation of Miss Mapp's, when there was a decent gathering of artists outside, to pull a table right into the window of the garden-room, in full view of them, and, quite unconscious of their presence, to arrange flowers there with a smiling and pensive countenance. She had other little playful public pastimes: she would get her kitten from the house, and induce it to sit on the table while she diverted it with the tassel of the blind, and she would kiss it on its sweet little sooty head, or she would write ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Kate—who during the voyage would at one time be in the highest spirits, and the next pensive, as if occupied by a world of thought—"I declare if that one isn't the very image of Mr Trotter, our curate at Allington! He has the same little tuft of hair on top on his head; and, besides, he has the identical same way of popping it on one side when he used to speak, and ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... between two persons so opposite in tastes, habitudes and appearance as John Silverthorn and Bill Vibbard. John was a hard reader, and Bill a lazy one. John was thin and graceful, with something pensive yet free and vivid in his nature; Bill was robust, prosaic and conventional. There was an air of neglect and a prospective sense of worldly failure about Silverthorn, but you would at once have singled out Vibbard as being well cared for, and adapted to push his way. Their likes and dislikes even ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... relieved of present responsibility, evolved other less pressing but more pensive thoughts. He thought not of himself or his bleeding wound, for he had bled before for his country, when he earned his stars and made his fame secure at Trafalgar; but as the sun went down that night he thought that no more in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... returned to the seat, and for some time remained silent and in a pensive attitude. Philip also had his own thoughts, and did not open his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ... 'He will wake mamma!' Sanin promptly darted out into the street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder's hand, and made him cease playing and move away. When he came back, Gemma thanked him with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber's, in which Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. Then she asked Sanin whether he knew 'Freischuetz,' whether he was fond of Weber, and added that though she was herself ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... to a barber at Rome, could imitate to a nicety almost every word it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterwards the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and melancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it, as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... grew sober again when Bert said with a pensive cadence: "Well, I tell you, those were days of hard work; but many's the time I've looked back at 'em these last three years, wishin' they'd never ended an' that ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... not reply; he stood looking down, pensive and resigned—tired, perhaps, now that the anxieties of the last ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... back a pace or two, and for some moments remains silent— pensive. Perhaps she is thinking of a sailor saved from sharks after falling among them, and more still of the man who saved him. Whether or no, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... cropping heather buds, of whirring flocks of partridges, of the sooty coot and the speckled teal, of the fisher herons, of the green-crested lapwing, of clamoring craiks among fields of flowering clover, of robins cheering the pensive autumn, of lintwhites chanting among the buds, of the mavis singing ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Bressant, originally the least inclined of any of the circle to be pensive and sombre, he now seemed occasionally to contend with shadows of some kind. He was far from being habitually gloomy, but his moods were not to be depended upon; sometimes a turn of the conversation would seem to alter him; sometimes a word which he himself might ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... solitudes ascend, I sit me down a pensive hour to spend; And, plac'd on high above the storm's career, Look downward where a hundred realms appear; Lakes, forests, cities, plains, extending wide, 35 The pomp of kings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... were these convictions gaining strength, but no opportunity occurred to assist any of them. Meanwhile she grew pensive and silent, oppressed by the helpless misery which she saw around ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... interrupt some tale of scandal, or some description of a toupee. Active wit, however despicable when compared with intellectual, is yet surely better than the insignificant click-clack of modish conversation," casting his eyes towards Miss Larolles, "or even the pensive dullness of affected silence," changing ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... confidence in their master, as we watch them brandishing their weapons or hurrying to the attack, and see the shock of battle and the death-blows given and received. The human-headed bulls, standing on guard at the gates, exhibit the calm and pensive dignity befitting creatures conscious of their strength, while the lions passant who sometimes replace them, snarl and show their teeth with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was on the point of calling him) threw his superb viaduct across the deep ravine which divides it from Albano. At the risk of seeming to fantasticate I confess that the Pope's having built the viaduct— in this very recent antiquity—made me linger there in a pensive posture and marvel at the march of history and at Pius the Ninth's beginning already to profit by the sentimental allowances we make to vanished powers. An ardent nero then would have had his own way with me and obtained ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... last night, I to Jove's palace went, (The brightest part of all the firmament) Instead of all those gods, whose thick resort Filled up the presence of the thunderers court; There Jove and Juno all forsaken sate, Pensive, like kings in their declining state: Yet (wanting power) they would preserve the show, By hearing prayers from some few men below: Mortals to Jove may their devotions pay; The gods themselves to Proserpine do pray. To Sicily ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... had little less); not honour and titles, attendants and equipages; in a word, not all the things we call pleasure, could give me any relish, or sweeten the taste of things to me; at least, not so much but I grew sad, heavy, pensive, and melancholy; slept little, and ate little; dreamed continually of the most frightful and terrible things imaginable: nothing but apparitions of devils and monsters, falling into gulfs, and off from steep and high precipices, and the like; ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the sorrows and sins of the kingdom, and habits necessarily restricted to that bare sufficiency which just supports life. The manners of the young ladies were equally mild, uncomplaining, and respectable; the only difference was, that Constantia was pensive and dejected, Isabel active and cheerful in adversity. The former seemed to move in a joyless routine of duty; but Isabel was so animated that only the most minute observer could tell that she ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the steep hill, their heads bowed, pensive, their horses walking at a slow gait. Stubbornly restless, Anastasio made the same observation to other groups; the soldiers laughed at his candor. If a man has a rifle in his hands and a beltful of cartridges, surely ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... living thing that seemed pensive and sad there was a lovely, delicate fawn, which rested, with her head drooping, at the foot of a rose bush, on the summit of the little green mound which was the centre of this delightful spot. Perhaps the lovely creature is after being weaned from ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... bird on the linden tree, From which November leaves were falling, Sweet were its notes, and wild their tone; And pensive there as I paused alone, They spake with a mystical voice to me, The sunlight of vanish'd years recalling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... Mourning is a grief at the bitter death of one who was dear to you. Sadness is a grief attended with tears. Tribulation is a painful grief. Sorrow, an excruciating grief. Lamentation, a grief where we loudly bewail ourselves. Solicitude, a pensive grief. Trouble, a continued grief. Affliction, a grief that harasses the body. Despair, a grief that excludes all hope of better things to come. But those feelings which are included under fear, they define thus:—There is sloth, which ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... was now thirty-seven years of age—with the experience of a sexagenarian. No longer the impetuous, arbitrary, hot-headed youth, whose intelligence and courage hardly atoned for his insolent manner and stormy career, he had become pensive, modest, almost gentle. His genius was rapid in conception, patient in combination, fertile in expedients, adamantine in the endurance or suffering; for never did a heroic general and a noble army of veterans manifest ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... devil incarnate. He, too, had his demon as well as Liszt, and only, as Ehlert puts it, "theoretical fear" of this spirit driving him over the cliffs of reason made him curb its antics. After all the couleur de rose portraits and lollipop miniatures made of him by pensive, poetic persons it is not possible to conceive Chopin as being irascible and almost brutal. Yet he was at times even this. "Beethoven was scarce more vehement and irritable," writes Ehlert. And we remember the stories of friends and pupils who have seen this slender, refined ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel— For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel— In that red realm from which are no returnings; Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... him master, and have shown him the same loving reverence which he gave to Chaucer. Minor poets like Sidney, Drayton, and Daniel paid tribute to his inspiration; Milton was deeply indebted to him, especially in Lycidas; and many of the pensive poets of the seventeenth century show traces of his influence. "Spenser delighted Shakespeare," says Mr. Church; "he was the poetical master of Cowley, and then of Milton, and in a sense of Dryden, and even Pope." Giles and Phineas ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... what she would do in aforesaid case, Mr. Fletcher decided to put one before her as speedily as possible, so he said, in a pensive tone, and with a ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... idleness, and taste no scenes But such as art contrives, possess ye still Your element; there only ye can shine, There only minds like yours can do no harm. Our groves were planted to console at noon The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve The moonbeam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music. We can spare The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... had as frequently postponed the fulfilment of his word. At last, weary of beseeching him, she devised a speech which she trusted might have the desired effect. Accordingly, when the monarch came to see her one day, he found her in a pensive mood, playing with her pretty boy; and the lad, being presently set upon his feet, he promptly tottered down the room, whereon she cried out to him, "Come here, you little bastard!" Hearing this word of evil import applied to his son, the monarch begged ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... not gay," Felix admitted. "They are sober; they are even severe. They are of a pensive cast; they take things hard. I think there is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or some depressing expectation. It 's not the epicurean temperament. My uncle, Mr. Wentworth, is a tremendously high-toned old fellow; he looks as if ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... tomb; By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possessed, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee's a jest; Emblem of hell, nursery of vice, Thou crawling university of lice; When wretches numberless to ease their pains, With smoke and all delude their pensive chains. How shall I avoid thee? or with what spell Dissolve the enchantment of thy magic cell? Ev'n Fox himself can't boast so many martyrs, As yearly fall within thy wretched quarters. Money I've none, and debts I cannot pay, Unless ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... evening, our family party was assembled in the hall, to enjoy the refreshing breeze. Sophy was playing some favorite Scotch airs on the piano, while Glencoe, seated apart, with his forehead resting on his hand, was buried in one of those pensive reveries that made him so interesting ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander, Adown some trottin' burn's meander, And no thick lang; Oh sweet to muse and pensive ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... particular appeal lay in her eyes. They seemed to be quite marvelously deep and clear, so darkly gray that they looked black in certain lights, and they were so shadowed and pensive that sometimes they gave the image of actual sadness. For all the isolation of her home she was no stranger to romance; but the romance that was to be seen, like a gentleness, in her face was that of the great, shadowed forest in ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Tuscan flower-girls delight to cheer Each pensive exile with thy scented leaves, Fit largess of a clime to fancy dear, Which a new ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... The owl foresaw, in pensive mood, The ruin of her ancient seat; And fled in haste, with all her brood, To seek a more ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... and fro with a pensive air, and ideas came to him as he spoke on in a slow, meditative fashion. "My orders! well, my orders, they are, first, that you must act with the very greatest prudence. Yes, don't gather a mob of promenaders ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... walked on air, and to Mrs. Getz and the children she seemed almost another girl, with that happy vibration in her usually sad voice, and that light of gladness in her soft pensive eyes. The glorious consciousness was ever with her that the teacher was always near—though she saw him but seldom. This, and the possession of the precious certificate, her talisman to freedom, hidden always in ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... pride themselves on their superior knowledge of the world, though their sober habits have commonly saved them from the demoralization of a sailor's life. But the untravelled Fayalese peasantry are a very gentle, affectionate, childlike people, pensive rather than gay, industrious, but not ingenious, with few amusements and those the simplest, incapable of great crimes or very heroic virtues, educated by their religion up to the point of reverent ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... china animals on the mantlepiece. She was a great animal lover, and, being a favorite with every one, she received many votive offerings. Her shrine was an amusing one to look at. A green china frog played a tuneless guitar; a pensive monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable embrace, an enormous ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... are clearly obsolete. No, no, I'll mount his saddle! There's my place! How often have I dreamt, in pensive ease, He bore me, buoyant, through the world apace, His mane a flag of freedom ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... passed between them, and whether it was some divine apparition, or merely a man of flesh and blood, was never discovered, for he seems to have kept his mother in ignorance of the whole affair. From that time onward his conduct changed. He grew pensive, mild, and charitable. He entered, as youthful acolyte, a neighbouring Convent of Salacian monks, and quickly distinguished himself for piety and the gift of miracles. In the short space of three years, or thereabouts, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... days later: "I incline rather more to Master Humphrey's Clock than Old Humphrey's—if so be that there is no danger of the pensive confounding master with a boy." After two days more: "I was thinking all yesterday, and have begun at Master Humphrey to-day." Then, a week later: "I have finished the first number, but have not been able to do more in the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... with his usual thoughtful and pensive smile, "we may be allowed to vary that simile, I would, separating the universal and eternal course of Destiny from the fleeting generations of human life, compare the river before us to that course, and not it, but the city scattered on its banks, to the varieties ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... succeeded a sort of lethargic sleep, from which it was not easy to arouse her, so that she could be made to take any notice of what was passing around her. But now she awoke, clear and collected; and, glancing round the room, with a sort of pensive animation, met and answered the inquiring and solicitous look of her son with an affectionate smile. Presently her wandering eye rested on some objects of the landscape, glimpses of which she had caught ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... mist before the sun; whereas if you quail before it, it becomes more imminent. I have fervent hope that the words which I uttered sunk deep into the hearts of some of my hearers, as I observed many of them depart musing and pensive. I occasionally distributed tracts among them, for although they themselves were unable to turn them to much account, I thought that by their means they might become of service at some future time, and might fall into the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... however, there was a pause,—the deep pause of flagging spirits, that always follows mirth and wine. No one would have believed, on beholding the pensive faces, and hearing the involuntary sighs of the party, that from these, but a moment before, had arisen so loud and wild a laugh. During this interval Edward Walcott (who was the poet of his class) volunteered the following song, which, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spoke the worthy gentleman strove to open the coach door; but the horseman, to whom the latter part of his speech was addressed, and who had now dismounted, was beforehand with him. The door swung open, and a young lady, of a delicate and pensive beauty, placed one hand upon the deferential arm of Mr. Marmaduke Haward and descended from the painted coach to the flower-enameled sward. The women amongst the assembled guests fluttered and whispered; for this was youth, beauty, wealth, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... beauty of these 'interference spectra' may not have been partly owing to the extreme sobriety of the observer? no refreshment, it appears, having been attainable the night before at the Grands Mulets, except the beverage diluted with dirty snow, of which I have elsewhere quoted the Professor's pensive report,—"my memory of that tea is ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... stupid day; Sir George is civil, attentive, and dull; Emily pensive, thoughtful, and silent; and my little self as peevish as an old maid: nobody comes near us, not even your brother, because we are supposed to be settling preliminaries; for you must know Sir George has graciously condescended ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... Still in pensive mood, he was passing the park of Lavardens when he heard some one calling him. Looking up, he saw the Countess of Lavardens and her son Paul. She was a widow; her son a handsome young man, who had made a bad start in the world and now contented ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the platform, sat his two young nephews. He presented them separately to the departments and the army as in the direct line of inheritance. This scene must have produced a profound impression upon the younger child, Louis Napoleon, who was so thoughtful, reflective, and pensive. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... with magic, methinks, And the future was given to her gaze; For an obelisk marked her abode, and a sphinx On her threshold kept vigil always. She was pensive and ever alone, nor was seen In the haunts of the dissolute crowd; But communed with the ghosts of the Pharaohs, I ween, Or with visitors ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... was pensive and doubtful still "So help me! you couldn't have made all this up out ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... the small-pox, which left her rather marked. I know not if she was handsome, but it is clear that she was very winning, with all the charming contrasts, the twofold nature of the maidens of Provence. Lively and pensive, gay and sad, by turns, she was a good little worshipper, but given to harmless pranks withal. Between the long church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own age, she made no fuss ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of Ebba this sentiment of uneasiness and melancholy sympathy. When after supper he bade adieu to his uncle and cousins, when he was alone in his room, he smiled when he remembered the amiable gayety of Alete, but became sad and pensive when he recalled the dreamy look of her young sister, the sad melancholy glance which shone over her face like the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... little poor-looking child, who had stood near, watching what was going on. Daisy turned to look at her as Mr. Lamb's question was thrown at her over the counter, in a tone very different from his words to herself. She saw a pale, freckled, pensive-faced little girl, in very slim clothing, her dress short and ragged, and feet bare. The child had been looking at her and her baskets, but now suddenly looked away ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... who love the pensive song To whom all sounds of Mirth are dissonant! There are who at this hour Will ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... starting as from a pensive reverie. "Ah, to be sure. Now, what would you say, Mr. Mallalieu? How ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... he did not want amongst his Court. This done, he sent for the donor to thank him in person. As the captain walked up the beach, his majesty advanced to meet him, looking every inch a king in the sober dignity of a dress-coat. The waistcoat imparted an air of pensive melancholy that mightily became the Prime Minister, whilst the Lord Chamberlain, as he skipped to and fro in his white gloves, looked a courtier indeed. The trousers had become the subject of an unfortunate dispute, in the course of which they had sustained such injuries ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise, and change, ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... all the rest. She grew pensive and sank into a reverie. Suddenly the door of the salon opened, and Camille entered. After inquiring after her health, he informed her that in consequence of a cold he, too, had been sick; and, as he was now free from ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... at least I dare affirm, Since genius too has bound and term, There is no bard in all the choir, Not Homer's self, the poet-sire, Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure, Or Shakespeare whom no mind can measure, Nor Collins' verse of tender pain, Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, Scott, the delight of generous boys, Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,— Not one of all can put in verse, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... opiates my soul gradually settled into a sort of pleasing pensive melancholy. Has it not been said, that melancholy is a characteristic of genius? I make no pretensions to genius: but I am persuaded that melancholy is the habitual, perhaps the natural state of those who have the misfortune to feel ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... not, I suppose, at the moment thinking of anything more original to say. He departed in a pensive mood. ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... world in her tender years, she learned from their pages to form false and extravagant notions concerning it. She used to build castles in the air, was subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Those we have chosen are only slaves we have happened to buy; and their life is but feeble; they hold themselves shyly aloof, ever watching for a chance to escape. But the reasons we have deserved stand faithfully by us; they are so many pensive Antigones, on whose help we may ever rely. Nor can such reasons as these be forcibly lodged in the soul; for indeed they must have dwelt there from earliest days, have spent their childhood there, nourished ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... symmetry and beauty show, A look, a character, the pencil seize, Give to the form where youthful graces glow, An air of pensive dignity and ease, ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... the kind supposed. Though she incessantly by looks disclosed, That something unrevealed disturbed the soul, And o'er her mind had absolute control. Whatever presents Constance might receive, Still pensive sighs her breast appeared to heave: Her tints of beauty too, began to fail, And o'er the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... of the sunrise; the old man becomes a child once more. But this second childhood is not like the first; it is as melancholy as the other is joyous. It is the same with lyric poetry. Dazzling, dreamy, at the dawn of civilization it reappears, solemn and pensive, at its decline. The Bible opens joyously with Genesis and comes to a close with the threatening Apocalypse. The modern ode is still inspired, but is no longer ignorant. It meditates more than it scrutinizes; its musing is melancholy. We see, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... answer, but retired sad and pensive to his own home, where he spent the night in pondering what was best for him to do; for there was no likelihood he should be able to defend himself against the power of the king's son; therefore he at length concluded he would ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now—just at first—that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in life, by setting ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... I have no constitution, and never shall be strong," observed Rose, in a pensive tone, as if it was rather a nice ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... grace, some delicacy here and there, now and then a touch of real, if by no means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... in my childhood's home, Aunt Ruth and I, and sunny-hearted May. She was a fair and most exquisite child; Her pensive face was delicate and mild Like her dead mother's; but through her dear eyes Her father smiled upon me, day by day. Afar in foreign countries did he roam, Now resting under Italy's blue skies, And now ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvae gradually emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel, and, lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends my description of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;—I can feel With all around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,—and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... just below the hills; multitudes of rooks inhabit its steeple and fill throughout the day the air with their cawing. The place wears a remarkable air of solitude, but presents nothing of gloom and horror, and seems just the kind of spot in which some quiet pensive man, fatigued but not soured by the turmoil of the world, might settle down, enjoy a few innocent pleasures, make his peace with God, and then compose himself to his ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... one day be 'at home with the Lord,' and in the light of that blessed hope the transiency of this life changes its whole aspect, loses the last trace of sadness, and becomes a solemn joy. Why should we be pensive and wistful when we think how near our end is? Is the sentry sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? Is the wanderer in far-off lands sad when he turns his face homewards? And why should not we rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall soon depart to the true ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... mellow voice bade him enter. He went in, and a tall lady in black, with plain linen collar and wristbands, rose to receive him. They confronted each other. Time and trouble had left their trace, but there were the glorious eyes, and jet black hair, and the face, worn and pensive, but still beautiful. It was the woman he had loved, the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... that, of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay color, and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... pensive pair Of picnickers, straying there— By green fields and running brooks, Sylvan shades ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... drawing-room party, the ladies expect that for a long while, if not all evening, they will be left alone in it. For a time they scarce know how to employ themselves. With Helen, amusement is out of the question. She has flung herself into a fauteuil, and sits in pensive attitude; of late, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... than the earth from the sun,—from her gallant neighbor, the table, and the hall. But Bergmann's gaze must have followed her all this distance, for it suddenly met hers, and the tall, grave fellow flushed under her pensive glance. The hostess looked at him just at this moment, and saw the blood mount ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... little knowest thou, that hast not tride, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To lose good days that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent. To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow. To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy heart through ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... showing amid the snow of the petticoats. Up they go; you can almost hear their light false voices into the summer of the leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as of roses. Masks and arrows are everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive gestures and reluctance—false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... careful restoration that has taken place at Ellerburne and Sinnington. The font is one of those unadorned, circular basins which generally date from the thirteenth century. One of the village inns is known as "The Durham Ox," and bears a sign adorned with a huge beast whose pensive but intelligent eye looks down upon all passers-by. The village stocks that used to stand outside the churchyard wall on the east side, near the present schoolhouse, are remembered by the older inhabitants. They were taken away about forty years ago. ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... United States decides to go off its collective rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked, Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about all ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that 'the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character.' We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. 'Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard.' He was the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... were baulk'd, my last resort, I left the Muses to frequent the Court; Pensive each night, from room to room I walk'd, To one I bow'd, and with another talk'd; Inquir'd what news, or such a lady's name, And did the next day, and the next, the same. Places I found, were daily giv'n away, And yet no friendly ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... down among grapevines covered with ripe clusters, they heard a woman's voice which called, or rather sang in pensive notes: ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... telegram in his hand, the porter appeared at the door with letters. Guy seized them at once, with some little impatience. The first was from Cyril. He tore it open in haste, and skimmed it through rapidly. Montague Nevitt meanwhile sat languid in his chair, striking a pensive note now and again on his violin, with his eyes half closed and his lips parted. Guy drew a sigh of relief as ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, And sits as safe as in a senate-house; For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, Or do his grey hairs any violence? But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... mustache. In spite of his air of granite imperturbability, she saw that his fair skin was subject to little flushes of embarrassment or shyness, like a girl's. As she was in a mood to criticize, she called this absurd and said of his blue eyes, resting on her with a pensive directness, as though he were studying her from a long way off, that they were hard. Deep-set and caverned under heavy, overhanging brows, they more than any other feature imparted to his face the frowning ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... tributes due unto your natural vein. Your tears have passion in them, and a grace Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, That vanish and return we know not how— And please the better from a pensive face, And thoughtful eye, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... desires the pensive ALCEA burns, 70 And, like sad ELOISA, loves and mourns. The freckled IRIS owns a fiercer flame, And three unjealous husbands wed the dame. CUPRESSUS dark disdains his dusky bride, One dome contains them, but two beds divide. 75 ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... earth! how sweetly pretty, how amiable and adorable; and such eyes, dark and lustrous!—full of witchcraft, burning and humid as an April sun after a shower. Some there are, also, of pensive blue, pregnant with promises, soft and almond-shaped, like the divine eyes of the Italian Cenci. Supple as the young and slender branches of willow, are these divinities, fresh as new opened tulips, and brisk and gay as the golden-speckled trout in the sparkling current. In their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... while piped the pensive wind, To hear thy harp, by British Fairfax strung, Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders that ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... shiver, for the wind was keen. 'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass Of leafless branches, with a blackened back And a green foot—an isolated Faun In old deserted park, who, bending forward, Half-merged himself in the entangled boughs, Half in his marble settings. He was there, Pensive, and bound to earth; and, as all things Devoid of movement, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... is a thoughtful, pensive, kind-hearted man, feeling keenly the wrong that has been done him, but not at all given to cherishing a resentful temper; and here, if I mistake not, his language relishes of the benevolent, meditative, and somewhat sentimental melancholy ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and Christina was no longer a single phenomenon, but a series of developments. It was like sailing in agreeably rough water. No pensive mood could survive the sight of mighty Frikkie gambolling like a young bull in the company of Paul; nor could quiet hours impart a melancholy while the welkin rang with the voice of the kleintje bullying the adoring Kafirs. Where before life had glided, now it steeplechased, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... brought, on which is placed the gardener, with a spade, a cord, and a large basket. Four strong men carry him on their shoulders. His wife follows on foot, and the old folks come after with a grave and pensive air; then the nuptial procession march two by two to the measure of the music. The firing of pistols recommences, the dogs bark more loudly than ever at the sight of the gardener thus borne in triumph, and the children jeer him as he passes. The procession ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... eyes, tin toys, trains, carts, mechanical horses, carriages, steam-engines with diminutive boilers, Lilliputian tableware of porcelain, pine Nativities, dolls both foreign and domestic, the former red and smiling, the latter sad and pensive like little ladies beside gigantic children. The beating of drums, the roar of tin horns, the wheezy music of the accordions and the hand-organs, all mingled in a carnival concert, amid the coming and going of the crowd, pushing, stumbling over one another, with their faces turned ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... this month, stealing from half-blown bowers, Bathed the young cowslip in her sunny showers, Pensive I travell’d, and approach’d the plains, That met the bounds of Severn’s wide domains. As up the hill I rose, from whose green brow The village church o’erlooks the vale below, O! when its rustic form first met my eyes, What wild emotions swell’d the rising sighs! ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... unfamiliar. A thin mist was drifting across the country, getting lost in valleys where it piled up into fleecy mounds, getting caught in tree-tops where it fluttered like tattered banners. Every now and then, with the suddenness of our approach, we would startle an aged shepherd, muffled and pensive as an Arab, strolling slowly across moorlands, followed closely by the sentinel goats which led his flock. The day had been strangely mystic. Time seemed a mood. I had ceased to trouble about where I was going; that I knew my ultimate destination was sufficient. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... prithee why so pensive? I have had the pleasantest Adventure this Afternoon, going to the Bank to receive Mony; in Pater-Noster-Row I saw two of the loveliest Sempstresses the Trade e'er countenanc'd; I went into the Shop, struck up a Bargain, whipt over to the Castle, where ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclin'd, 5 Gaz'd on the ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... was a small man, of light but elegant make, and peculiarly symmetrical. His head was quite small, but his countenance was of an imposing character; and his eye, brilliant but not fierce, often melted into a pensive tenderness. Such was Jeffrey's appearance on the bench in his latter days. I should have little judged from it that he was the relentless critic, whoso withering sarcasm was felt from the garrets of Grub Street to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... felt remorse at having bound her to secrecy. She was so pensive, and so wistful, and her eyes were so loyal, that he felt he owed her a ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... strange magnetisms,' said Langham, seized as he spoke by the pensive prettiness of the bent head and neck, 'and they show themselves ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can hear a withering leaf rustling down. I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not sad. It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October is one of the finest months of the year, and that ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... good sense, ripe reflection; and he never forgot his origin; his dress, his equipages, his furniture, all were of the greatest simplicity. His air and his deportment were so also. He was tall, dark, and thin; had an aspect pensive, slow, and somewhat mean; with very fine and expressive eyes. He deplored the signal faults that he saw succeed each other unceasingly; the gradual extinction of all emulation; the luxury, the emptiness, the ignorance, the confusion of ranks; the inquisition in the place of the police: he ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Jacques does not hold his gun very valiantly. He is a melancholy lad. But we must not blame him for that; dreamers can be just as brave as those who never dream at all. His little brother Etienne, the tiniest mite in the regiment, looks pensive. He is ambitious; he would like to be a general officer right away, and that ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... tenacious grasp, had told her repeatedly that the English cousin was ready to offer up his life to her happiness in this world. Many a time she would turn her glance upon me—not a grateful glance, but, as it were, searching and pensive—a glance of penetrating candour, a young girl's glance, that, by its very trustfulness, seems to look one through ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... officers on the evening before the engagement, at which time, it was afterwards reported, he gave his advice to attack the rebels; and when it was overruled, he afterwards saw the colonel walk by himself in a very pensive manner.] ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... sighed the master resignedly. "She smiled so divinely. Henner girls never smile, do they, Selim? Have you noticed that they are always pensive? Perhaps you haven't. It doesn't matter. But this one smiled. I say," coming back to earth, "have they begun to distil the water? I've ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... scout powers that be, of judging stalking photographs preliminary to awarding the Audubon prize offered by the historical society in his home town. Perhaps he was under the influence of a little pensive regret that the season was coming to an end and wished to have this lonely parting with his beloved hills and trees. It is of no consequence. About all he actually did was to kick a stick along before him and pause now and again to examine the caked ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... boy who threw a fork at his brother and put his eye out. But he didn't mean to, and the brother forgave him, and he never did so any more," observed Jill, in a pensive tone, wishing to show that she felt all the dangers of impatience, but was sorry ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... PELLY pensive in manner and enigmatical in allusion; felt it particularly hard thus to be placed in the dock, as if he were an Irish County Councillor under Prince ARTHUR's new Bill. Only last Friday, in debate preceding the very Division now under discussion, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... walkers from the heat of the summer's sun. It was Aminta's favorite retreat, and thither she came in the morning to paint her sisters, the white Bengal roses, the red cactus and the graceful clematides, which surrounded her charming retreat. There in the evening, pensive and reflective, the young girl suffered her glance to stray over the vast horizon of the sea gilded by the sun's expiring rays. On the day we speak of, Maulear found her reading, or rather seeming to read, for her book rested on her knee, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... hearing some noise in the gardens of the Tuileries, the young prince threw himself into the arms of the Queen, crying out, "Grand-Dieu, mamma! will it be yesterday over again?" A few days after this affecting exclamation, he went up to the King, and looked at him with a pensive air. The King asked him what he wanted; he answered, that he had something very serious to say to him. The King having prevailed on him to explain himself, the young Prince asked why his people, who ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... do that," conceded Johnnie dutifully, those changeful eyes of hers full of pensive, denied desire, as they swept the dainty gowns of the women before her. "I do—you're right. I wouldn't think of spending my money for a dress-body like that when I'm mighty near as barefoot as a rabbit this minute, and the little 'uns back ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... the cold dew of heaven Lay on the humbler graves around, what time The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds, Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse, Twere brooding on the dead inhumed beneath. There while with him, the holy man of Uz, O'er human destiny I sympathised, Counting the long, long periods prophecy Decrees to roll, ere the great day ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... methinks, when wisdom shall assuage The griefs and passions of our greener age, Though dull the close of life, and far away, Each flower that hailed the dawning of our day, Yet o'er her lovely hopes that once were dear, The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe, With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill, And weep their falsehood, though she love ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... whole faculties, her whole mental powers, became absorbed in that weary watching; long before she died, she was childish, and only conscious of one wish—to sit in that long high window, and watch the road, along which he might come. She was as faithful as Evangeline, if pensive and inglorious. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... The good-looking man who plays upon the double-bass is equally prudent with regard to his trophies, which he has hung up around the post on which is pinned the score to which he looks for directions when it becomes necessary to bind together with string-music the pensive interchanges of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the languishing Sultana; but then her eyes, they banished all idea of the Seraglio, and were the most decidedly European, though the most brilliant that ever glanced; eagles might have proved their young at them. To a countenance which otherwise would have been calm, and perhaps pensive, they gave an expression of extreme vivacity and unusual animation, and perhaps of restlessness and arrogance: it might have been courage. The lady was dressed in the costume of a Chanoinesse??? of a Couvent des dames nobles; an ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... as she was for him to leave; but a few minutes light and careless talking, carried on at whatever effort, was a sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, or his self-respect. He glanced from time to time at her sad and pensive face. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the quiet tone of an unobserving and uninterested third party, led them into their former habits of easy chat, and, after having served awhile as the channel of communication through which they chose to address each other, set them down to a pensive game at chess, and very dutifully went to tease papa, who was still busied with his drawings. The chess-players, you must observe, were placed near the chimney, beside a little work-table, which held the board and men, the Colonel, at some distance, with ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Lord Chesterfield's Letters produced an airiness and jauntiness that were quite foreign to his nature. His favourite authors were Jeremy Taylor, Bacon, and Milton. After many months reverential communion with these Goliaths of literature he became pensive and contemplative, and his manner more chastened and severe. The secluded village in which he dwelt had been his birthplace, and there he remained to the day of his death. He knew nothing of the outer world, and the rector ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... to realize how much you have promised. It was certain that I must pay the expenses of his illness, and it was equally certain that I should not have enough money to pay my college bills as well; the whole thing made me very pensive. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... her, and unbleached linen sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, catching eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the titlepage of a song in a ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... the remnants of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng; Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thy annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; Boast of the aged! lesson of the young! Which sages venerate ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt |
