"Pensiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the quiet Victorine, he was enchanted with the growing and still budding beauty of Lisette, who was certainly, in outward appearance, the loveliest of the family; then Caliste, too, with her long dark eyelashes, and her look of proud pensiveness, was very charming. In short, the worthy man looked first on one fair girl and then on another in high delight, and concluded by heartily embracing the little Mimi playfully, scolding her for pushing by him so hastily, ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... religious feeling had been to her but too much like what it was to Cowper; I mean, of course, in a far milder form. Without rendering her a prey to those horrors that defy concealment, it subdued her mood and bearing to a perpetual pensiveness; the pillar of a cloud glided constantly before her eyes; she ever waited at the foot of a secret Sinai, listening in her heart to the voice of a trumpet sounding long and waxing louder. Some, perhaps, would rejoice over these tokens of sincere though sorrowing piety in a ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... love-name, whereby, if the child lives, the parents know it in their hearts, or by which, if it dies, God seems to have called it away, leaving the sound lingering faintly and sweetly through the house. In Pansie's case, it may have been a certain pensiveness which was sometimes seen under her childish frolic, and so translated itself into French (pensee), her mother having been of Acadian kin; or, quite as probably, it alluded merely to the color of her eyes, which, in some lights, were very like the dark petals of ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... them! I will relate to you, before we separate, one among the multitude of mine, as coming the nearest to the poetry of yours, and as having been not totally useless to me. Often have I reflected on it; sometimes with pensiveness, with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... without moving. "I have thought it over. For your sake, I will be the man I was. It's true, I can't restore the old face; but the old outlook on life, the old habits, the old pensiveness, will bring back the old expression. I will resume the old name, the old set of memories, the old sense of personality. I said last night that a resumption of the old self could be only mental, and incomplete even so. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gone by Had dealt with them, and poisoned wretchedly Good days, good deeds, and longings for all good: Yet on the evil times they would not brood, But sighing, strove to raise the weight of years, And no more memory of their hopes and fears They nourished, but such gentle thoughts as fed The pensiveness which that sweet ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... shamelessness, his pensiveness, his elegance, I felt that somehow our national triumph was not complete in him,—that there were yet more finished forms of self-abasement in the Old World, till one day I looked out of the window and saw at a little distance my veteran digging ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... works. They traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest: and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness checkered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects casually described, whether men, or things, or usages; and in the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... remained, for some time, in a state of tranquil pensiveness, which is not unpleasing. St. Aubert interrupted it by observing, 'This is a very promising young man; it is many years since I have been so much pleased with any person, on so short an acquaintance. He brings back ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... on his last year's straw hat and went into the street, taking his pensiveness with him. Warm. Rows of arc lights. A shifting crowd. There are some streets that draw aimless feet. The blazing store fronts, clothes shops, candy shops, drug-stores, Victrola shops, movie theatres invite with the promise of a ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... everywhere; and then that he himself fought with them, and that they did him mighty injuries, and wounded him nigh to death, but that at last he overcame and slew them all. When he woke, he sat in great heaviness of spirit and pensiveness, thinking what this dream might signify, but by-and-by, when he could by no means satisfy himself what it might mean, to rid himself of all his thoughts of it, he made ready with a great ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... many things and heard much talk,' Sidwell was replying, in a gay tone. It irritated him; he would have preferred her to speak with more of the old pensiveness. Yet perhaps she was glad simply because she found herself ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Goths and Paralytics.' I suppose the Senores Gamacho and Fuentes knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentlemen. In the Assembly they called themselves Moderates, and opposed every energetic measure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the first rumours of Montero's victory, they showed a subtle change of the pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune with an effrontery to which the poor man could only ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... guardian will be under the necessity of imposing restrictions with regard to the free perusal of every production emanating from this gifted woman. There breathes throughout the whole a most eminent exemption from impropriety of thought or diction; and there is at times a pensiveness of tone, a winning sadness in her more serious compositions, which tells of a soul which has been lifted from the contemplation of terrestrial things, to divine communings with beings of ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... to say how long Mr. Hoopdriver's pensiveness lasted. It seemed a long time before his thoughts of action returned. Then he remembered he was a 'watcher'; that to-morrow he must be busy. It would be in character to make notes, and he pulled out his little note-book. With that in ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... sigh of impatience, it was also a sigh of resignation. Then she rose from her seat, and returned her night glasses to the bureau. Again she looked out of the window, but this time she remained standing. Nor were her eyes turned upon the distant ranch house. Her whole attitude was one of deep pensiveness. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... sadness at the thought, "Sakuntala must go to-day"; my throat is choked with flow of tears repressed; my sight is dimmed with pensiveness but if the grief of an old forest hermit is so great, how keen must be the pang a father feels when freshly parted ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... since attempted. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects of Nature are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner. The meaning of the first is that Gaiety is the child of Nature; of the second, that Pensiveness is the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in her fine eyes, and a cast of pensive thought on her forehead, that spoke of a longer experience of grief than so brief a portion of life might be supposed to have furnished. She had once lovers; but they had gradually dropped away in the despair of moving her, and awed by a deep and settled pensiveness which, in the gayest season of youth, her character had suddenly but permanently assumed. Besides, they all knew her affections were already engaged, and had come to learn, though late and unwillingly, that there are cases ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... returning. Songs that were so gay an hour ago took on a certain pensiveness, akin to the purple and dun stealing over the river. It moved Jeanne Angelot strangely; it gave her a sense of exaltation, as if she could fly like a bird to some strange country where a mother loved her and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Darkness lurked in masses amid the trees. The air was so still that the lotus in the weed-covered pool bordering the road did not shed its seed; the dogs were sleeping by the wayside; nature was full of sweet pensiveness. Kunda, guessing the road, went with doubtful steps to the front of the Datta house; she had no design in going, except that she might by a happy chance see Nagendra. Her return to his house might come about; let it occur when ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... sustained the quiet and almost grave undertone of our conference. My own quite unconscious act of rising from the grave and standing before him on the path to listen brought back to us our harmonious pensiveness. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... had always been a quiet, thoughtful boy; and even when the first gush of his agony was over, there remained upon him a gentle, grave pensiveness which it appeared as if ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... isn't it!" and then went slowly towards Tollington Park. Would he follow? She was almost breathless, her eyes downcast, her ears strained. He did not follow. Sally frowned. A sneer came to her lips. Then a pensiveness succeeded, and resolve became fixed. All right; he did not follow. He was a man. All the ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... observation of Crabbe, entitled "The Village Curate," which is a record of his thoughts and impressions in his Burwash days. One could hardly say that "The Village Curate" would bear reprinting at the present time; we have moved too far from its pensiveness, and an age that does not read "The Task" and only talks about Crabbe is hardly likely to reach out for Hurdis. But within its limits "The Village Curate" is good, alike in its description of scenery, its ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... is up to a new game; and she'll beat," he said to himself; "she'll beat, for she always beats. She's got a long head, and I can only guess what it is that she is up to. She'll never tell me." And he thought, with some pensiveness, upon the sadness of that one fact, that she would never tell him. Meanwhile he contented himself with watching until something more ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... to my happiness was the pensiveness that hung like a soft cloud over the spirits of Edith. She was still kind and affectionate to me; but the sweet unreserve of former intercourse was gone. I had come between her and her brother's heart. I was the shadow on her dial of flowers, that made their bloom wither. I never walked with Ernest ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... weep, my girl, Forget him, pretty pensiveness; there will Come others, every day, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... you," she continued in the same pensiveness of manner. "I guess your unbroken reserve was meant ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... very promptly answered. The stranger stood still, regarding him intently for two of three minutes with a look of peculiar pensiveness and abstraction, the heavy double fringe of his long dark lashes giving an almost drowsy pathos to his proud and earnest eyes. Soon, however, this absorbed expression changed to one ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... resumed his work, and thought no more about it; but Caleb alternated between moods of pensiveness and fussy ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... think it necessary to point out to the reader the association between sacred cheerfulness and solemn thought, or to explain any appearance of contradiction between passages in which (as above in Chap. V.) I have had to oppose sacred pensiveness to unholy mirth, and those in which I have to oppose sacred ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and sporting "under the greenwood tree." The sensibility and even pensiveness of her demeanor in the first instance, render her archness and gayety afterwards, more ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... commissary being in extreme pensiveness, knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made by one expert in astronomy—and his judjment doth continually persist upon this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of London, and will shortly ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... presently turned away and started homeward by way of Great Ormond Street. My companion was deeply thoughtful, relapsing for a while into that sombreness of manner that had so impressed me when I first met her. Nor was I without a certain sympathetic pensiveness; as if, from the great, silent house, the spirit of the vanished man had issued forth to bear ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... voice, and the alluring fascination of her face. The face was not perfect; far from it, if by perfect is meant features accordant with one another and true to type. Her hair was flaming red; her eyes were brown, dark brown, a certain pensiveness in them most inaccordant with the hair; her nose was slender, with sensitive nostrils; her mouth was generous with lips a trifle full; her teeth were exquisitely white and symmetrical—and she showed them with due modesty, yet with ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... who had made off into Dorsetshire. He took counsel with the Warden of New College and with the Dean of Wolsey's new foundation, Cardinal College; and at length, as they could find out nothing, being 'in extreme pensiveness', they determined to consult an astrologer. They knew they were doing wrong. Such inquiries were forbidden by the law of the Church, and they were afraid; but they were more afraid of Wolsey. The man of science drew a figure upon the floor of his secret chamber, and made his calculations; ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... The pensiveness did not prevent Milton from hitting Bert a tremendous slap with a boot-leg, saying, "Hello! that mosquito pretty near ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... velvet doublet—deeming the occasion worthy of it—whilst Andrea wore a handsome suit of black, with gold lace, which for elegance it would have been difficult to surpass. An air of pensiveness added interest to his handsome face and courtly figure, and methought that Genevieve must be hard to please if she fell not a victim to ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... to be the cause of their pensiveness, and I should have expected it to be quite otherwise when I found them talking ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... of the "Yellow Violet" has all his accustomed simplicity and pensiveness, but his love for the flower carries him a little beyond the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... to pace the little room. The firelight played on her mop of brown hair, bringing out its golden shades, and on the charming pensiveness of her face. Alice watched her, thinking "She could do it all, if she chose!" But she didn't dare to say anything, for fear ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she always displayed, but the young face had last something of its happy girlish delight—that debonnaire cheerfulness which usually characterized it. A shadow seemed to be hanging over her—a shadow, which, although it marred in no way her fresh young beauty, added a deepened pensiveness to her great somber eyes, and seemed to broaden the fringing black ring round the gray pupils. This year the girl had more to grapple with than the mere management of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... are not what the garb is to the body but what the body is to the soul, themselves a constituent part and power or function in the thought—all these are abandoned for their opposites,—as if our countrymen, through successive generations, had lost the sense of solemnity and pensiveness (not to speak of deeper emotions) and resorted to the tombs of their forefathers and contemporaries, only to be tickled and surprised. Would we not recoil from such gratification, in such a place, if the general ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun and flashed like a little stream ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... thus reconciled to herself, found, that no evil is insupportable, but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She sat, from morning to evening, recollecting all that had been done or said by her Pekuah; treasured up, with care, every trifle on which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which might recall to mind any little incident or careless conversation. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... the maid, with good-hearted pensiveness; 'it's not in the course of nature that she should.' She rose as she spoke, as if it behoved her to begin her new duties with alacrity, as there might not long be occasion for them. She put another question before she went. 'And who will there be ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... are delightful. I have as many as I have dresses, and they cost me nearly as much. I suppose they cost Jimmy a good deal too," she added, with a desultory pensiveness; "but fortunately he is well off, so it doesn't matter. I never go into the slums, though. It is so tiring, and then there is so much infection. Microbes generally flourish most in shabby places, don't they, Mr. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... reverent silence. They were rebel hearts there to a man, and many exiles from Erin were in the company. The simple tune went right home to them all. The men sat still, gazing into their pannikins, and big bearded diggers had a chastened pensiveness that might have been comic had there been any there to laugh at them. Just as suddenly the girl swung into a rollicking dance-step, abandoning her tender mood with a burst of happy laughter; but Tim Carrol, a young new chum; fresh from ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... widow received Gilbert very graciously; but there was a slight shade of melancholy in her manner, a pensiveness which softened and refined her, Gilbert thought. Nor was it long before she allowed him to discover the cause of her sadness. After a little conventional talk upon indifferent subjects, she began to speak ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... height, well shaped, without presenting the appearance of unusual strength, and was always seen neatly and respectably dressed. His face was pale, and wore a thoughtful expression, his features, when in repose, wearing an appearance of pensiveness approaching to melancholy. His eyes were small, the eyelids slightly marked; a mass of dark hair clustered gracefully over a broad pale forehead, while the absence of any beard gave him a peculiarly boyish appearance. Gentle and ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... she not been so young, gay, and healthy, would have swept her trembling nerves like some omen, some anticipatory dirge. In this her prime of existence and bloom of beauty they but subdued vivacity to pensiveness. Snatches of sweet ballads haunted her ear; now and then she sang a stanza. Her accents obeyed the fitful impulse of the wind; they swelled as its gusts rushed on, and died as they wandered away. Caroline, withdrawn to the farthest and darkest end of the room, her figure just discernible by ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a young man who was on his way to college, where he expected to be matriculated the following day. His valise was full of books and other students' requisites, and his heart full of literary ambition. Attracted to me by my uniform, he soon learned my business, and, after a few moments of pensiveness, to my surprise, he told me to inscribe his name among my recruits. Then turning to a friend on board the car, he said, "Take this trunk to my home, and tell my mother I have enlisted ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... the Queen, surprised out of the pensiveness of her matronly gravity, "surely you do not mean to say that the girl would refuse a prince—a ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... with lingering pensiveness, very graciously acknowledged that it would; and seemed so touchingly resigned, and made such a merit of her resignation, that John told her she was an angel; in fact, he had a sort of indistinct remorseful feeling that he was a sort of cruel monster to deny her ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exceeding leanness. He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop's cheeks or the suspiciously excessive composure of ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... began to realise that she was growing old. Then a certain pensiveness fell over her beauty which dimmed yet intensified it; sharp angles, glittering points, melted away into curves and enticing gleams. The white harbor put on soft grays and pinks; the ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sooner were we all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment—and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally—than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored by the colic. A little whiskey then; and as a little gave so much ease, she would try ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... was now associated for the time much more to interest and to please. The manners of each were of the highest tone; the person of each was highly pleasing; and when Laura turned to the Lady Helen, and marked the gentle pensiveness of her beautiful countenance, listened to the high, pure, noble words that hung upon her lips, and marked the deep feelings which existed beneath an exterior that people sometimes thought cold, the remembrance of her own mother rose up before her, and she felt a sort of clinging yearning towards ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... He closed his eyes, as if fearing to look upon a face that he had last seen in the brightness of his hopes; and which twelve years had left unchanged, except to mature the loveliness of earliest youth into more womanly beauty and expression, and to deepen the pensiveness, that always marked it, into a shade of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... of a calmer nature than his fiery cousin would have allowed to be love. It took a good deal of working-up to make it outwardly affect his spirits or demeanour, in general, it served only as an ingredient in the pensiveness that pervaded all his moods, even ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Newman, a cheerful temper, and "a sunniness of mind all his own," Saint Gregory of Nazianzus was a fair humourist, and Saint Basil was a wit. "Pensive playfulness" is Newman's phrase for Basil, but there was a speed about his retorts which did not always savour of pensiveness. When the furious governor of Pontus threatened to tear out his liver, Basil, a confirmed invalid, replied suavely, "It is a kind intention. My liver, as at present located, has given me ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... that there was truth in Sir John's observation that young men wanted to protect her. But the bald statement is not sufficient. Whether that quick transition from pensiveness to a dancing gaiety was the cause, or whether it only helped her beauty, this is certain. Young men went down before her like ninepins in a bowling alley. There was something singularly virginal about her. She had, too, quite ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... long as Nisida seemed terrible as well as beautiful, he was subdued;—now that her eyes had ceased to dart forth lightnings, and the expression of her countenance had changed from indignation and resolute menace to pensiveness and a comparatively mournful softness, the bandit as rapidly regained the usual ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of that ill-fated being,—but with a taste as true to the Beautiful, with a soul as sensitive to the Sublime! In Evelyn's presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home! Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast! Of late she has assumed a new charm in my eyes,—a certain pensiveness and abstraction have succeeded to her wonted gayety. Ah, Love is pensive,—is it not, Cleveland? How often I ask myself that question! And yet, amidst all my hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond! How can that innocent and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight—feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene—withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reconciling herself. Then, after an instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But you haven't found out yet ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... vivacity, were away on their wedding tour, and our good friend, Mr. Desmond, to whom we had taken a great liking, was about to sail for an indefinite absence in foreign lands. Though the mother-in-law's presence was less oppressive than formerly, there was now a pensiveness, an air of departed glory about it, that was not cheerful. There was danger of settling down to a humdrum sort of life, free from strife, perhaps, but at the same time devoid of that buoyancy which should make the home ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... the Giver of every good from its altar. He lifted his gaze to the cerulean blue above him, and dwelt upon his future, with a glow of hope upon his heart—then he turned to the past, and his beaming expression gradually mellowed into pensiveness: in thought, he travelled through the long vista of years which he had left behind him, and his mental ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... she weeps Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow: She lends them words, and she ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... loftiness of feeling, not to be found in Bacon's wisest maxims, and from his point of view in their composition we could not expect to find them there. We seek in vain amid the positivity of Bacon, or the quaint and timorous paradox of Browne, or the acute sobriety of Shaftesbury, for any of that poetic pensiveness which is strong in Vauvenargues, and reaches tragic heights in Pascal.[30] Addison may have the delicacy of Vauvenargues, but it is a delicacy that wants the stir and warmth of feeling. It seems as if with English writers poetic sentiment naturally sought expression in poetic forms, while the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... had never plunged deeper into the heart than in this verse. It is a poem of beauty and sorrow that cannot be symbolized by such public figures as Cromwell and Milton. Here the genius of the parting day, and all that it means to the imagination, its quiet movement and its music, its pensiveness and its regrets, have been given a form more lasting than bronze. Perhaps the poem owes a part of its popularity to the fact that it is a great homily, though a homily transfigured. But then does ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... pensiveness for melancholy, it might seem strange to say that my Aunt Mary was always happy. Yet she was so. Her spirits never rose to buoyancy, and never sunk to despondency. I know that it is an article in the sentimental ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... if a transient grief o'ershades the spirit for a while, The momentary tear that falls is followed by a smile; Or if a pensive mood, at times, across the bosom steals, It scarcely sighs, so gentle is the pensiveness it feels ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... the cheerful sweetness of her disposition, there was an unusual pensiveness, a tender care for others, which was most endearing, and often touching to witness. One day, perceiving her mother much affected on receiving intelligence of the decease of a valued friend and minister at a distance from home, Eliza evinced her sympathy by laying on the table before her some ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... by all circumstances, which, according equally with social exultation and with solitary pensiveness, though it falls upon many an unheeding ear, never fails to find some hearts which it exhilarates, and some ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... foreigner at his landing. On my first arrival in England, I was asked by a friend how I liked the English women; to which I replied that I thought them all handsome. This is the first impression they produce. There is an air of calmness and pensiveness about them, which surprises and interests particularly a native of the south. They seem to look, if I may apply to them the fine lines of one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... "The utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin, but no ruin was ever so affecting as the gliding of this ship to her grave. This particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... mighty good man," agreed Johnnie with sudden pensiveness. "They've all been mighty good to me ever since I've been here; but I believe Mr. Stoddard has done more for me than any one else. He not only lends me books, but he takes time to explain things ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... me that passage expresses something immeasurably more difficult of expression. The whole tone of the environment is reproduced in a few touches. We not only realize the scene, but we also feel in its description the same mood of subtle pensiveness, with its flavour of melancholy, in which the writer saw and felt it. For myself I know that the passage brings back to me, exactly and perfectly, not only a mental picture, but also a frame of mind, which I can recognize across the years which now separate me from those English "garden walks and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... long after the affair of the five hundred dollars, and Miss Pritchard had wondered if the difficulty might not be somehow connected with that. She had just reached the decision to question the girl when suddenly the weariness, the sadness, the pensiveness, the shadow, vanished utterly, leaving Elsie not only herself again, but even more glowingly and infectiously happy and buoyant than before. And from that moment until this morning at the breakfast-table she had ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... a half-sigh, seating herself upon a fallen stone, and letting her hands fall into each other in her lap as her wont was, "you write them." A curious pensiveness passed from one to the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... back and looked at him, and sighed, and sighed, and looked at him till bedtime, shaking her head sadly when he demanded the reason for her pensiveness, he wished he had made her stay at home. He decided that Zeburee Nute had probably been busy with his tongue as to that boyish display of temper on the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... calls the fourth prelude in E minor "a little poem, the exquisitely sweet, languid pensiveness of which defies description. The composer seems to be absorbed in the narrow sphere of his ego, from which the wide, noisy world is for the time shut out." Willeby finds this prelude to be "one of the most ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... retiring, and tinged with a certain pensiveness, the effect of too much early sorrow and seclusion upon a very sensitive temperament, Edith better loved the solitude of the grand old forest of St. Mary's or the loneliness of her own shaded rooms at Luckenough than any society the humdrum neighborhood could ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... jest the same thing," reflected Captain Leezur aloud, with a pensiveness that still had nothing of unavailing regret in it, "ef I'd been a mind tew; and had a monniment put up over me like one o' these here No. 10 Mornin' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... you," said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, "that my cousin Cliff can beat me dancing. We've always been what you might call pals. If you'd take him up instead of me, now, it might be better. He's invented a lot of steps that ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Felicia Dorothea Browne's society, accompanied by her excellent mother. She has since married —— Hemans, Esq., then an Adjutant in the army. A great number of her pieces have appeared in the Monthly Magazine, as well as the New Monthly, and although a pleasing pensiveness and sombre cast of mind seem to pervade her beautifully mental pictures, she was, I may say, noted in her youth for the buoyancy and sprightliness of her conversation and manner, which made her the delight and charm of every society ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... Gray, Collins, and the Warton brothers, abounds in verbal reminiscences of Shakspere; but their genius was not allied to his, being exclusively lyrical, and not at all dramatic. The Muse of this romantic school was Fancy rather than Passion. A thoughtful melancholy, a gentle, scholarly pensiveness, the spirit of Milton's Il Penseroso, pervades their poetry. Gray was a fastidious scholar, who produced very little, but that little of the finest quality. His famous Elegy, expressing a meditative mood in language of the choicest perfection, is the representative ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... writes one of his earliest and closest school-friends, 'retiring, thoughtful to pensiveness, affectionate, without envy or jealousy, almost without emulation, impressible, but not wanting in moral firmness. No one was ever more formed for friendship. In all his words and acts he was simple, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... coming to his bedroom door to usher out three men and admit others, saw his young lieutenants. He called them to him. He was straighter. He was stern. Fires within had given his eyes the flash of youth. All his usual gentle pensiveness was gone. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... maiden shook her head, her eyes were dimmed with the shade of pensiveness; a thrill of jealousy, in spite of herself, darted to her heart. 'What! and didst thou not fear to go to him?' she said—'Is he not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and warm on that sandy shore even to the end of November; the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam:—it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... undulating woods, and silent well, And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom 485 Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, Held commune with him, as if he and it Were all that was,—only...when his regard Was raised by intense pensiveness,...two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 490 And seemed with their serene and azure ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... profound truths. His speculations, often bold and striking, are presented with singular force, but with such a quiet grace and simplicity as not to startle until they enter in and occupy the mind. The gayety with which his pensiveness is occasionally broken, seems more than any thing else in his works to have cost some effort. The gentle sadness, the "half-acknowledged melancholy," of his manner and reflections, are ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... written proceeded not from the pen of vainglory, but from the process of that pensiveness, which two summers since overtook me; whose obscured cause, best known to every name of curse, hath compelled my wit to wander abroad unregarded in this satirical disguise, and counselled my content to dislodge his delight ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... bald and shapeless asceticism, who is so excessively penetrated with the reality, the duties, the claims, and the constant hazards of civilisation, as to find in himself no chord responsive to that sombre pensiveness into which Obermann's unfathomable melancholy and impotence of will deepened, as he meditated on the mean shadows which men are content to chase for happiness, and on all the pigmy progeny of giant effort? 'C'est ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... which she sat was broken into a Rock, with ragged Pieces pointing upwards for her to lean upon. A heavy Mist hung above her, her Head oppressed with it reclined upon her Arm: Thus did she reign over her disconsolate Subjects, full of her self to stupidity, in eternal Pensiveness, and the profoundest Silence. On one side of her stood Dejection just dropping into a Swoon, and Paleness wasting to a Skeleton; on the other side were Care inwardly tormented with Imaginations, and Anguish suffering outward Troubles to suck the Blood from ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... personal attractions. Now, Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a mild and pensive expression of countenance, and she would have been positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though Miss Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not de natura pensive; she had too much of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and viscid humor called melancholy, and therefore ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Claudian, to the marriage toilet of Proserpine, the goddess of the fertility of the earth and of all creatures, but still of fertility as arisen out of death;* and therefore she is not without a certain pensiveness, having seen the seed fall into the ground and die, many times. Persephone is returned to her, and the hair [148] spreads, like a rich harvest, over her shoulders; but she is still veiled, and knows that the seed must fall into ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... game of shine and shadow in among the trees of the gum forest; the aromatic exhalations from the trees give the evening air a hint of balm and spice; the people driving or riding grow a little pensive, for the spell of the Australian forest, "tender, intimate, spiritual," is upon them. But it is a pensiveness of pure, quiet joy, of those who have come near to Nature and enjoyed the peace ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... among friends, that, day by day, Elinor's face was assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness, which threatened soon to render her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the other hand, instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had given him on the canvas, became reserved and downcast, with no outward flashes of emotion, however it might be smouldering ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looked with much pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride on a barrel, by Rubens; the most natural and lifelike representation of a tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is possible to imagine. And sometimes, amid these sensual images, I caught the divine pensiveness of a Madonna's face, by Raphael, or the glory and majesty of the babe Jesus in her arm, with his Father shining through him. This is a sort of revelation, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time, I sallied out, and sauntered along the banks of the river. It was now full day: and the cheerful light, and the noble face of the Po,—here a superb stream, equal almost to the Rhine at Cologne,—rolling on to the Adriatic, chased away my pensiveness. The river here flows between lofty embankments,—the adjoining lands being below its level, and reminding one of Holland; and were any extraordinary inundation to happen among the Alps, and force the embankments of the Po, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... yours to give the word?" asked the slight man, who was dressed point-device, and with a finical nicety, in black and silver. His voice was low and clear, and of a somewhat melancholy cadence, going well with the pensiveness ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... fresher than herself, free from English commonplaces, though older and of more standing. She expanded and brightened wonderfully, and Emily, imagining her a female Gilbert, was devoted to her, and thought her a marvel of learning, depth, goodness, and humility, the more striking for her tinge of grave pensiveness. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A certain pensiveness very perceptible in "St. Ambrose" is the prevailing sentiment of another poem of Giusti's, which I like very much, because it is more intelligible than his political satires, and because it places ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... same to others since), not long before his death, that all the devils in hell did tear him in pieces. Forster, likewise, after this fact, being a man formerly addicted to hospitality, company, mirth, and music, was afterwards observed to forsake all this, and with much melancholy and pensiveness (some say with madness) pined and drooped away. The wife also of Bald Butter, kinsman to the Earl, gave out the whole fact a little before her death. Neither are these following passages to be forgotten, that as soon ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... interesting to me as my collegiate course I seldom reflect without melancholy; not a harsh and dark brooding, but a soft and tender pensiveness which ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Some of thy pensiveness serene, Some of thy never-dying green, Put in this scrip of mine, That griefs may fall like snowflakes light, And deck me in a robe of white, Ready to be an angel ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... smiling at her reception. She was not quite so youthful looking as she had been before her recent trouble, but the thinner cheeks and the slightly deeper eyes added to the pensiveness and delicacy of her countenance. She was a model of neatness. Her clothes, all newly cleaned and ironed before leaving home, gave her a fresh and inviting appearance. There was growth coming to her in the matter of height, but already in appearance and intelligence she looked to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of his betrothed, Henrietta Winter; a comely face, shadowed with pensiveness. 'Taken at Torquay; she sent it a day or two ago.—I've been thinking of giving her up. If I do, I shall do it brutally and savagely, to make it easy for her. I've spoilt her life, and I'm pretty sure I've ruined ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed what a friend has called his 'awful power of insight'; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splendor ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... presently, tripping through an alley in the low wood, with her eyes on the ground, and her whole carriage full of a sweet pensiveness which it did me good to see. I turned my back on the stream before she saw me, and made a pretence of being taken up with something in another direction. Doubtless she espied me soon, and before she came very near; but she made no sign until she ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... occasional impression, I find gradually dispelling the pleasing pensiveness which the melancholy event, the subject of my last, had diffused over my mind. Naturally cheerful, volatile, and unreflecting, the opposite disposition I have found to contain sources of enjoyment which I was ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... heaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. But it is also true that we transfer our inward feelings to their outward condition, and with our religious spirit imbue all the ongoings of animated and even inanimated life. There is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of pensiveness, a touch of pathos, in all profound rest. Perhaps because it is so much in contrast with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Perhaps because the soul, when undisturbed, will, from the impulse of its own divine nature, have high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the senses)—only so much life as would hold down the spirit during its probation; and when this spiritual mouth was at rest, no painter has ever drawn lips on which lay more of the unutterable pensiveness of beauty which we dream to have been Mary's, in the childhood of Jesus. A tear in the heart was the instinctive answer to Stephania's every look when she did not smile; and her large, soft, slowly-lifting eyes, were to any elevated perception, it seemed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... unattended,—but met by two of his shepherds, who are speaking to each other, uncertain what to do or how to receive their master. The dog hastens to meet him with joy. The figure of Joachim is singularly beautiful in its pensiveness and slow motion; and the ignobleness of the herdsmen's figures is curiously marked in opposition to the dignity ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... whom in comparison these two were but children." This last did so harry a client for four years that the latter, still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within four days made an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness." And after his death the lawyer so handled his son "that there was never sheep shorn in May, so near clipped of his fleece present, as he was of many to come." The Welsh were the most litigious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mind's eye, Horatio, surrounded by their little ones—noble youths and graceful maidens, in whom the impetuosity of the fiery Romeo is tempered by the pensiveness of the fair Ophelia. I shall take it most unkindly of them, love," toying with Juliet's fingers, "if they do not ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... disappointment in the dispositions of his sons. The cause, indeed, is not uncommon, as was confirmed by another great man, to whom the archbishop confessed it. The old Lord Thomas Fairfax one day finding the archbishop very melancholy, inquired the reason of his grace's pensiveness: "My lord," said the archbishop, "I have great reason of sorrow with respect of my sons; one of whom has wit and no grace, another grace but no wit, and the third neither grace nor wit." "Your case," replied Lord Fairfax, "is not singular. I ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... smiled, but his eye was melancholy. How I wished that he could feel heart's-ease! How I grieved that he brooded over pain, and pain from such a cause! He, with his great advantages, he to love in vain! I did not then know that the pensiveness of reverse is the best phase for some minds; nor did I reflect that some herbs, "though scentless when entire, yield fragrance when ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... meal at Mrs. Arty's, dining with literary pensiveness at the Armenian, for he had subtle problems to meditate. He bought a dollar fountain-pen, which had large gold-like bands and a rather scratchy pen-point, and a box of fairly large sheets of paper. Pressing ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was to marry Jack you did not seem to mind," said Georgina, looking at me with that new pensiveness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the late Lord Blanchemain—I knew him fairly well," she mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... approved, pensiveness cast aside. "Come up to them, Gerard. I hear her tooting for us with ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... softly. An agreeable glow of relief passed over her. She looked up at Richard with a delightful effect of pensiveness from beneath the sweeping brim of her cavalier hat.—"I can well believe Aunt Katherine would be attracted by her," she continued. "Honoria is quite a woman's woman. Men do not care very much about her as a rule. There is a good deal of latent vanity ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... curls called oreilles de chien, which became fashionable long afterwards, during the days of the French Directory. Had the Alchemist remained profoundly ignorant as to the identity of the old man, he must still have observed with interest, features which were equally characterised by the pensiveness of the student and the paleness of the valetudinarian. He knew, however, instinctively, as he had done upon the two preceding occasions, that he beheld a personage of illustrious memory. And he knew rightly, for it was Milton. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... colonel, with a shade of pensiveness. There had been two sides to the watermelon question. Peter and he had not always been able to find ripe watermelons, early in the season, and at times there had been painful consequences, the memory of which came back to the colonel with surprising ease. Nor had ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... very rich and lovely land," said Eglamore—"this kingdom which a half-hour since lay in the hollow of my hand." He viewed it for a while, and not without pensiveness. Then he took Graciosa's hand and looked into her face, and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... she did not appear to do so. Her heart had been touched by all she had heard from her son of the lonely boy, and she had also been interested in accounts of his gifts that had come to her from various sources. The beauty, the poetry, the pensiveness of his face moved her deeply—knowing his history and divining the lack of sympathy one of his bent would probably find in the Allan home, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... This characteristic pensiveness in them being so notorious, I wonder none of those writers, who have expressly treated of melancholy, should have mentioned it. Burton, whose book is an excellent abstract of all the authors in that kind who preceded him, and who treats of every species ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... raised by intense pensiveness, two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, And seemed, with their serene and azure smiles, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... time,' Mr Boffin assented, with his former pensiveness, as he took his seat upon his settle. 'I hope good may be coming of it in the future time. Towards which, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... phrases of their never-finished song. The white-throat's distant descant with slow stress Note after note upon the noonday falls, Filling the leisured air at intervals With his own mood of piercing pensiveness. ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... Henrietta was altogether herself, save for a pretty pensiveness, and emerged with all her accustomed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... reluctantly from the brooding peace of mountain and sky, wondered a little at her pensiveness; wondered also where her thoughts—if mere flittings of the mind are entitled to be so ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... his purpose of hunting, but was observed to ride all the morning with great pensiveness, and in deep thoughts, without any delight in the exercise he was upon, and before the morning was spent, left the field, and alighted at his mother's lodgings at Whitehall, with whom he was shut up for the space of two ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... of her face was a sweet pensiveness, but sometimes she was irritable and a little petulant. She even snapped Gerard now and then. And when she went to see him, if a monk was with him she would turn her back and go home. She hated the monks for having parted Gerard and her, and she inoculated her boy with a contempt ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... said Warner, with something of sarcasm in his pensiveness of tone. "We must not dispute; so I will hold my peace: but make love all you will; what are the false smiles of a lip which a few years can blight as an autumn leaf? what the homage of a heart as feeble and mortal as your own? Why, I, with a few strokes of a little hair ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... loftiest emotion will want the noble height of that heroic soul, who must always stand forth in history a figure of beautiful and singular distinction, admirable alike for the sensibility and daring, the poetic pensiveness, and the martial ardor that mingled in him and taxed his feeble frame with tasks greater than it could bear. The whole story of the capture of Quebec is full of romantic splendor and pathos. Her fall was a triumph for all the English-speaking ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... back and neatly ordered tail, the immaculate fore-paws peering sedately below the snowy chest, the squeezed-up eyes which so resolutely shut off a bleak and (so to say) unenlightened world. That is pensiveness, sedate chastened melancholy; but it is soothing, it speaks a philosophy, and a certain balancing of pleasures and pains. In San Lorenzo cloister, when I looked in one hot noon seeking a refuge from ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... high above, sustained on massive pillars, she uttered a low murmur of 'beautiful!' and there was a heart-felt expression of awe and reverence on her face, a look as of rapt thought, chased away in a moment by his eye, and giving place to quiet pensiveness. After the service they went over the building; but though eager for information, the gravity did not leave her, nor did she speak at once when they emerged into ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... official tone, and tell us almost nothing. To his Sisters he writes assurances; to his friends, his Suhms, Duhans, Voltaires, eager invitations, general or particular, to come to him. "My state has changed," is his phrase to Voltaire and other dear intimates; a tone of pensiveness, at first even of sorrow and pathos traceable in it; "Come to me,"—and the tone, in an old dialect, different from Friedrich's, might have meant, "Pray for me." An immense new scene is opened, full of possibilities of good and bad. His hopes being ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... kiss or two, confess, What doth cause this pensiveness, Thou most lovely neat-herdess? Why so lonely on the hill? Why thy pipe by thee so still, That erewhile was heard so shrill? Tell me, do thy kine now fail To full fill the milking-pail? Say, what is't that thou ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... self-poised genius. The Mozart sonata for violin and piano is exceedingly interesting in all its three movements, light and airy in its general character,—except in the andante, which is touched with pensiveness,—and not striking very far down in its suggestions, but full of fresh beauty and consummate in its symmetrical grace. In the happiest contrast with the sonata was the wonderful D-minor quartette of Schubert. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... hair, her complexion pure and delicate as a young girl's; and indeed she was but twenty years older than myself, thus at this date only thirty-four. But while she talked to Mr. Floyd I observed a change in her: her eyes had lost their pensiveness and calm, and fell before his shyly: the flushes came and went on her cheeks. He told her again and again that in meeting her he found the first realization that he had come back to his home: old Mr. Raymond ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various |
