"Meditative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be here, I say to myself, and we need no tabernacle. All things are in harmony. A crow in the distance says caw, caw in a meditative voice, as if he, too, were thinking of days past; and not even the scream of a hen-hawk, off in the pine-woods, breaks the spell that is upon us. A quail whistles,—a true Yankee Bob White, to judge him by ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... of delicate constitution, not addicted to the active sports or any of the more vigorous habits of boys of his age. His only companions were a few intimate friends, and, thus secluded, his character naturally took a sensitive, meditative cast, and his growing disrelish for severer tasks was confirmed. As has been intimated, he entered as a pupil at Athens; but as the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... trickled ceaselessly over the hideous face. We knew that the body and the clothing were there for identification by friends, but still we wondered if anybody could love that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew meditative and wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that ghastly thing was dandling it upon her knee, and kissing it and petting it and displaying it with satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic vision of this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... effort, however, the Alderman failed. There is a feeling which universally pervades landsmen and landswomen, when they first embark on an element to which they are strangers, that ordinarily shuts their mouths and renders them meditative. In the older and more observant travellers, it is observation and comparison; while with the younger and more susceptible, it is very apt to take the character of sentiment. Without stopping to analyze the cause, or the consequences, in the instance of the Patroon and ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself Not having been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No! Not in a condition to lend must forbid himself to borrow Not melancholic, but meditative Not to instruct but to be instructed Not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice Nothing can be a grievance that is but once Nothing falls where all falls Nothing is more confident than a bad poet Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know Nothing is so supple ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... face northward to an unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away forever. Something in him—his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes, his brave laugh—reminded her of him, her husband, who, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... something rich and strange, like some old cloister into which one might turn from an inquiet and hubbubby street ... A knock at an oaken wicket; a peering shy brother, and one was on green lawns and the shadows of a gabled monastery. Cowled, meditative friars, and the quiet of Christ like spread wings ... But there was a reason for the cloister's glamour: cool thoughts and the rhythm of quiet praying, and the ringing of the little bell of mass, and the cadenced sacramental. All these were sympathetic magic ... But whence came ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Callistion's meditative eyes were dry, but those of Melicent were not. And Melicent came to the Dacian woman, and put one arm about her in that dim, sweet-scented place, saying, "I never ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... said Hugh Crombie, in a meditative tone. "Of a certainty, my conscience has grown unreasonably tender within the last two years. This one small sin, if I were to aid in it, would add but a trifle to the sum of mine. But then the ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... passage floor. He had a natural impulse to use his masculine strength, to push the door open before she could lock it again, but fortunately he restrained it. He went down-stairs slowly, shoes and stockings in hand; threw them down behind the big green stove in the smoking-room and lighted a meditative pipe. It was evidently a fact that women were difficult to understand; even Milly was. He had been uniformly kind and tender to her, and so far she had seemed more than content with him as a husband. But beneath this apparent happiness of hers had some instinct, incomprehensible ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... made an end of questioning Hunt, Captain Len Guy came out of his meditative mood, profoundly troubled, and gave the word, ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... life may do for the person leading it even while it remains perfectly normal. And I cannot think of a more consistent application of that ideal unless it be in the long statement, just beyond the middle of the book, of my young woman's extraordinary meditative vigil on the occasion that was to become for her such a landmark. Reduced to its essence, it is but the vigil of searching criticism; but it throws the action further forward that twenty "incidents" might have done. It was designed to have all the vivacity ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... her front sunk down Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown: On her mouth museful sweet - (Even as the twin lips meet) Did thought and sadness greet: Sighs In those mournful eyes So put on visibilities; As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes. Thus, long ago, She kept her meditative paces slow Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and gleam Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream, Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow. Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine! This drooping ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... while they were talking thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however, on the mountain-side, stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since he had ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and strain were new, but their most significant quality was not melody nor pensive grace, but humor. This was ingrained and genuine. Sometimes it was rollicking, as in "The Height of the Ridiculous" and "The September Gale". Sometimes it was drolly meditative, as in "Evening, by a Tailor". Sometimes it was a tearful smile of the deepest feeling, as in the most charming and perfect of these poems, "The Last Leaf", in which delicate and searching pathos is exquisitely fused with tender gayety. The ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... producing in those who see and taste an effect, for good or evil, according to the nature of the recipient. The strong, powerful, self-willed, passionate character of Mrs. Hazleton, found, in the calm meditative fall of the cataract, in the ever shifting play of the wild waters, and in the watchful stillness of the air around, a softening, enfeebling influence. The gentle character of Emily turned from the scene with a heart raised rather than depressed, a spirit better ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... this dull suspense for some time. Wrapped up in her own thoughts, and busy with her own calculations, she suffered several minutes to elapse without adding a word to that which had so much surprised the attorney. Then, however, she said, in a meditative tone, "There is only one way by which it can be accomplished. If you allow it to be conducted in a formal manner, you will fail utterly. Sir Philip will never consent. She will never ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... terrified me by its darkness as does my invisible existence. Lord, to David my father thou gavest only the gift of harmonizing words and sounds, to sing and praise thee on strings, to lament sweetly, to make people weep or admire beauty; but why hast thou given me a meditative, sleepless, hungry mind? Like an insect born of the dust, I hide in darkness; and in fear and despair, all shaking and shivering, I see and hear in everything an invisible mystery. Why this morning? Why does the sun come out from behind the temple and gild the palm tree? ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... a room of her own,' she answered, 'and I do not understand typewriting;' and with that she left me, and went below, looking very meditative. ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... With meditative hearts the others go The memory of their dead to dress anew. But, sister mine, bide here that I may know, Life grows, through death, as ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... more relaxing into a meditative tone, 'Meeker, you have asked for my advice and spiritual direction: Answer me, answer me truly; have you really no idea, at least to some extent, what sort of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he mean by this?" Razumov asked himself, turning his eyes fully on his companion. The face of Peter Ivanovitch expressed a meditative seriousness. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... graceful and meditative style in his English sketches has recommended his earlier volume upon (Shakespeare's) England to many readers, who will not need urging to make the acquaintance of this companion book, in which the traveller guides us through the quiet and romantic scenery ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Errington looked meditative. "Nothing at present We'll go fishing with the others. But, I tell you what, if you're up to it, we'll leave Duprez and Macfarlane at the minister's house this evening and tell them to wait for us there,—once ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... eyes of Dennis de Brian de Boru gazing from the transom. Both brushes went flying across the room, but Dennis knew when his presence was de trop. The episode shook off the derby and deranged the part. Snorky watched the process of reconstruction with a meditative glance. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... until the following day, because such things may not be hurried; and moreover, various potent charms had to be sent for to the native village. Meanwhile Bakahenzie squatted by the fire, contemplating the nickel-plated revolver and affairs of policy, and opposite him sat the meditative Marufa. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... fixed to start business the next day, when a big, fine-looking white man in white clothes stopped at the door and looked in. We extended the invitations, and he walked inside and sized us up. He was chewing a long cigar, and wrinkling his eyes, meditative, like a girl trying to decide which dress to wear ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... "but it will be a pretty close shave for all that—one hundred a year. Well, well—there's many a deserving man has to do with less," and after a meditative pause he asked Lewisham to pass ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... chewed a meditative cud. "Maybeso you're right—and maybe 'way off. Say you're wrong. Say Meldrum has nothing to do with this. In that case it is in the hills that we have got ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... sympathy,' soliloquised the physician of the Caliph, with a meditative air; 'all resolves itself into this principle, and I confess this learned doctor treats it deeply and well. An erudite spirit truly, and an eloquent pen; yet he refines too much. 'Tis too scholastic. Observation will teach us more than dogma. Meditating upon my passionate ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... affectionate simplicity of his demeanor. As it was the country's custom to educate the first-born of royalty for the throne, the Ali-Mami of Footha-Yallon had been brought up almost within the precincts of the mosque. I found the prince, therefore, more of a meditative "book-man" than warrior; while the rest of his family, and especially his younger brothers, had never been exempt from military duties, at home or abroad. Like a good Mussulman, the sovereign was a quiet, temperate gentleman, never indulging in "bitters" or any thing ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... at me silently with meditative eyes; and after a while she said slowly: I wish I were a man, only for a moment, to judge of myself and thy answer: for in one way thou art right, since I cannot understand why all men seem to lose their reason, as soon as they see me. And I said: There it is again, the very ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... Genestas' hand as an invitation to follow him, and they went out. By this time the first room was full of people who had come from another mountain commune; all of them waited in meditative silence, as if the sorrow and grief that brooded over the house had already taken possession of them. As Benassis and the commandant crossed the threshold, they overheard a few words that passed between one of the newcomers and the eldest ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... with his tongue at an overhanging prune branch, bowed to the breaking point with green beads of fruit. As they watched, he sucked its tip between his blue lips, pulled at it with a twist of his head; the branch cracked and broke. Dynamo, his eyes closed in meditative enjoyment, started to absorb ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... of hearing and speech—which set her apart among her fellow-creatures, a solitary living being in a sphere of death-silence that others might approach, but might never enter—gave a touching significance to the deep, meditative stillness that often passed over her suddenly, even in the society of her adopted parents, and of friends who were all talking around her. Sometimes, the thoughts by which she was thus absorbed—thoughts only indicated to others by the shadow of their mysterious presence, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... taught this pleading to unpractised eyes? Who hid such import in an infant's gloom? Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise? Who mass'd, round that slight ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... loved the chase, and held That no composer's score excelled The merry horn, when Sweetlip swelled Its jovial riot; But most his measured words of praise Caressed the angler's easy ways,— His idly meditative days,— ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... summer months only, and, one would think, impassable at this season of the year. "And you go alone?" I asked him. "You will have no companions to join you?" "I shall have guides," he answered, and relapsed into meditative silence. Presently I ventured another question: "You go on business, perhaps— not on pleasure?" He turned his melancholy eyes on mine. "Do I look as if I were traveling for pleasure's sake?" he asked gently. I felt rebuked, and hastened to apologise. "Pardon me; I ought not to have said ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... faculty—partly on the extraordinary misconduct of the doctor, to whose criminal neglect and mismanagement of the case she hotly attributed the whole of the woman's illness; and partly—in deep, swift sinkings of meditative thought—on the strangeness of the fact that she should be there at all, sitting in this chair in this miserable room, keeping guard over this Jewish ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is not wholly without claim to a glance of approbation now and then from a lady's eye. You must not suppose I care at all about the matter. But as I have not even a book allowed me to take up my thoughts, my curiosity fixes itself strangely upon this silent, sulky, meditative little person, who takes about as much notice of me as of the figure of Father ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and person which fascinated the Greeks: beauty of person, symmetry of form, skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best critics, are the perfection of the Grecian drama, and they, moreover, maintain that he has no rival, Shakespeare alone excepted, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the master was obliged to walk to the door and command him sternly away, when, retreating to the fence, he mounted the uppermost rail, and drawing a knife from his pocket, cut a long splinter from the rail, and began to whittle it in patient and meditative silence. But when recess was declared, and the relieved feelings of the little flock had vent in the clearing around the schoolhouse, the few who rushed to the spot found that Uncle Ben had already disappeared. Whether the appearance of the children ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... enthroned. I shone upon the group of the Laocoon; the stone seemed to sigh. I pressed a silent kiss on the lips of the Muses, and they seemed to stir and move. But my rays lingered longest about the Nile group with the colossal god. Leaning against the Sphinx, he lies there thoughtful and meditative, as if he were thinking on the rolling centuries; and little love-gods sport with him and with the crocodiles. In the horn of plenty sat with folded arms a little tiny love-god, contemplating the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place, — 'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... unknown, and not to see in it the inevitable result of the vulgarizing tendency of modern life upon the masses. Things being as they are, surely it is better that the Church should do the little she can than do nothing at all. The "meditative mind" is incompatible with the rush and worry of a busy life, especially where educational methods substitute information for reflection, and so kill the habit, and eventually the faculty, of thought in so many cases. But if the higher prayer is impossible, the lower is possible ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the habit of drinking tea in the evening, which had found favour in these northern countries bordering on Russia. Instead, he usually went out at this time to one of the many wine-rooms or Bier Halles in the town to drink a slow and meditative glass of beer with such friends as he had made in Dantzig. For he was a lonely man, whose face was quite familiar to many who looked for a bow or a friendly salutation ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... not, however, inaccessible. Of the three volumes of collected works, each may be had separately, and is complete in itself. The first contains "The Search after Proserpine, and other Poems—Classical and Meditative." The second contains the "Legends of St. Patrick, and Legends of Ireland's Heroic Age," including a version of the "Tain Bo." The third contains two plays, "Alexander the Great," "St. Thomas of Canterbury," and ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of the new morning in advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... you once, when you came to the vicarage, and I had not the least idea what your name was. But I—I hoped you would come back; and so I used to write poems to you. They were very good, too," added John in a meditative tone, "I have never written any nearly so good ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also be able ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... for the parliamentary side of the affair, which was a revelation of generalship and organization to William Wetherell. By the time he had grasped it they were come in view of the lights of Fosters Opera House, and they perceived, among a sprinkling of idlers, a conspicuous and meditative gentleman leaning against a pillar. He was ludicrously tall and ludicrously thin, his hands were in his trousers pockets, and the skirts of his Sunday broadcloth coat hung down behind him awry. One long foot was crossed over the other and rested on the point ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... oblivion—these are to be found here, the full-bodied expression of a personality—for poetry is that, or nothing. It is no defect in it that it is of 1872—that there is a certain formality, a kind of austerity, even, in its flippancies. It is meditative poetry. It is poetry which is essentially concerned with the emotions, the fancies, or the reflections, the very personal and secluded reflections, of a mind still concerned about the private ways of the spirit. The emotions, the operations of the mind, and ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... his clean-shaven chin, a trick he had inherited from his father, and surveyed her steadily from under meditative brows. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... elevated to Seventy-sixth Street and walked through the old neighborhood to the printery. The familiar streets, which secretly bore the print of every size shoe he had worn since he was a tiny toddling fellow, made him meditative, almost sad. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... smoking a meditative cigar alone, while pacing the old Cantonal high road before the Faucon. "I think I will remain on picket here," he mused. "This fiddler fellow, Wieniawski, must not meet her. She must be led on to leave here at once. Constitution, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... groaned young Evershed, when he had done laughing, laying meditative hands on his knees ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surviving actualities begotten by it. He was glad he had been prosperous and had been a great man of business rather than a small one; he was extremely glad he was rich. He felt no impulse to sell all he had and give to the poor, or to retire into meditative economy and asceticism. He was glad he was rich and tolerably young; it was possible to think too much about buying and selling, it was a gain to have a good slice of life left in which not to think about them. Come, what should he think about now? Again and again Newman could ...
— The American • Henry James
... arrived as the Regent had just quitted the two persons with whom he had been talking. The Comte de Toulouse was in his mantle, and saluted the company with a grave and meditative manner, neither accosting nor accosted: M. le Duc d'Orleans found himself in front of him and turned towards me, although at some distance, as though to testify his trouble. I bent my head a little while looking fixedly at him, as though to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... have effaced his foot-prints if he had had the least idea how to do it. The small shawl she wore fell from her unnoticed as she went quickly into the house. He picked it up, and folded it awkwardly, but with meditative care. It was a square of orange-coloured merino, such as pedlars who deal with the squaws always carry, an ordinary thing for a settler's child to possess. As he held it, Bates felt compunction that it was not something finer and to his idea prettier, for he did not ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... gasp broke from Lady Richard's lips; she gazed helplessly at her friends. Fanny began to laugh. May preserved a meditative seriousness; she seemed to be reviewing Quisante's ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... the quiver are better than one; and three are better still.' Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... quatuor verba adjecerim? an hoc tantum crimen est! quid facerem absens absenti?" Cardan writes on in meditative strain: "Coeterum cum non ignorem maculatos fuisse codices B. Hieronimi, atque aliorum patrum nostrorum, ab his qui aliter sentiebant, erroremque suum auctoritate viri tegere voluerunt: ut ne quis in nostris operibus hallucinetur vel ab aliis decipiatur, sciant omnes me nullibi ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... congregation, was silent and deserted. The floors were swept, the pens closed, the sheep on their way to a distant paddock. Not a soul remains about the building but the pressers, who stay to work at the rapidly lessening piles of fleeces in the bins, or a meditative teamster who sits musing on a wool-bale, absorbed in a calculation as to when his load will ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... roaming lone beneath the woodland shades, Thy meditative prayer In the umbrageous aisles and choral glades ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... His law doth meditate day and night, that "he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." Here the devout meditative student of the blessed book of God is likened to an evergreen tree planted beside unfailing supplies of moisture; his fruit is perennial, and so is his verdure—and whatsoever he doeth prospers! More than a thousand years pass away, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... over devoted to it, but not to retire from it. We may do all things whatever we are about to God's glory; we may do all things heartily, as to the Lord, and not to man, being both active yet meditative; and now let me give some instances to show what ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... after Portobello), and how the boys would troop out of Leith on a Saturday, and sit and listen to his swearing tales, as thick as crows about a carrion: a thing I often remarked as I went by, a young student, on my own more meditative holiday diversion. Many of these boys went, no doubt, in the face of an express command; many feared, and even hated, the old brute of whom they made their hero; and I have seen them flee from him when he was tipsy, and stone him when he was drunk. And yet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he had his way, after all; and even now poor Billy can't get Selwoode without taking you with it," and he caught his daughter's face between his hands and turned it toward his for a moment. "I wonder now," said he, in meditative wise, "if Billy ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... little or no conversation during the evening. In fact, I do not remember that anyone spoke at all, excepting once, when the Captain remarked, in a meditative manner, that my parents "must have reached New York by this time"; at which supposition I nearly strangled myself in attempting ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... garden, which glances she accompanied with a determined and vigorous rubbing of her antique nose, Miss Sallianna gently raised her fan, and seeing a cavalier approaching from the town, assumed her habitual air of languishing and meditative grace. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... returned to the square, he found that the trappers had adjourned with the men of the establishment to enjoy a social pipe together, and that Theodore Bertram was taking a solitary, meditative promenade in front of the gate of ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... graces. She rather affected, prematurely, the dress and appearance of an elderly woman. I remember her as always the same, very small and neat, very pretty with her chiselled nose, the fair oval of her features, the slightly ironic, slightly meditative smile, the fascinating colour of the steady eyes, beautifully set in the head, with the eyebrows rather lifted as in a perpetual amusement of curiosity. Her head, slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little sideways, like a bird's that contemplates ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... evinced by it either a sternly sweet dignity of tolerance, or an approbation generous as a broad meadow, or a sadly glanced, adverse comment that lashed one's inner consciousness with remorse. He was meditative, as all those are who care that the world is full of sorrow and sin, but cheerful, as those are who have the character and genius to see the finite beauty and perfection in the world, which are sent to the true-hearted as indications of heaven. He could be full of cheer, and at the same time ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... hoppen to hove a cyar," said Tom with a meditative air, stooping to examine the spokes of a wheel, "Boot, ef we hod mon, I'm thenkin' ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... apathy; nor did she so much as blink at us, as we passed. A little farther up, on the opposite bank, sat a similar bit of still life. A third beyond completed the picture. These good dames bordered the brink like so many meditative frogs. Though I saw them for the first time in the flesh, I recognized them at once. Here were the identical fisherfolk who have sat for centuries in the paintings of Tsunenobu, not a whit more immovable in kakemono than in real life. I almost looked to find the master's ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... father's hut, sanctifying their humble birthplace with pious thoughts that made the very weekdays to them like Sabbaths—nor on the evening of the Sabbath might they not blamelessly be blended with those breathed from the Bible, enlarging their souls to religion by those meditative moods which such pure poetry inspires, and by those habits of reflection which its study forms, when pursued under the influence ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... gave me that glint of a laugh that I had learned to expect and to—dread. I knew what he meant to imply, and I also knew that he knew that I understood that he considered me a disturbing element. Then he again raised the half-demolished hunk of bread to his mouth, stopped and regarded the apple in meditative indecision. From head to heels he was clothed in the most exquisite white flannel and buckskin tennis clothes, but for all their civilized worldliness he resembled nothing so much as a feeding king of the forest in the poise of his wonderful head and equally wonderful body. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of an hour I returned to the drawing-room. My uncle was there; M. de la Marche was staying to dinner; Edmee seemed meditative but not melancholy; the abbe's eyes were putting questions to her which she did not understand, or did not wish ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... he sat smoking in his wonted meditative fashion, he had a visitor—the painter Oswyn. He had almost forgotten his invitation, but he reminded himself of his first impression, and greeted him with a cordiality which the other seemed to find surprising. He took him into ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... member of the secret council, who had not spoken since the disappearance of the accused, and who was no other than the reader's old acquaintance of the name just mentioned, slowly lifted his head from a meditative position ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... plans. He travelled usually five thousand miles a year, preaching twice and thrice a day, commencing at five o'clock in the morning. In the midst of all this travelling and preaching, he carried with him the meditative and studious habits of the philosopher. No department of human inquiry was omitted by him. "History, poetry, and philosophy," said he, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... necessary to change the conversation. Luckily, at that instant, Cap, who had been in the block in company with his dying brother-in-law, and who knew nothing of what had passed since the capitulation, now appeared, walking with a meditative and melancholy air towards the group. Much of that hearty dogmatism, that imparted even to his ordinary air and demeanor an appearance of something like contempt for all around him, had disappeared, and he seemed thoughtful, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... art 'tis prepared, one should drink it with art. The mere commonplace drinks one absorbs with free heart; But this—once with care from the bright flame removed, And the lime set aside that its value has proved— Take it first in deep draughts, meditative and slow, Quit it now, now resume, thus imbibe with gusto; While charming the palate it burns yet enchants, In the hour of its triumph the virtue it grants Penetrates every tissue; its powers condense. Circulate cheering warmths, bring new life to each sense. From the cauldron profound ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... own meagre possessions in their proper receptacles, which was the girls after-breakfast occupation, she came upon an unfinished silk purse, and this served to bring an end for a time to the restoration of order, while she sat upon the floor in a meditative attitude. Presently she laid it on the bureau with a little sigh and returned to her task. Once this was completed, she again took the purse, and seating herself, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... on in a meditative way, "even to the feet, but the feet I came back and saved, cutting the burnt bone from them, and hid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a piece of linen. Surely, I remember it as though it were but yesterday. Perchance ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... follow the ball up to the top of the bookcase, or fish for it behind boxes or in the bottom of china vases with their dainty little paws. As they grew up they came to disdain those frivolous amusements, and assumed the philosophical and meditative quiet which is the true temperament of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... silent, that the sound Even of a falling leaflet had been heard, Was that, wherein, with meditative step, With uncompanion'd step, measured and slow, And wistful gaze, that to the left, the right, Was often turn'd, as if in secret dread Of something horrible that must be met— Of unseen evil not to be eschew'd— Up a long vista'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... century's end. The bizarre genius of Nietzsche, whose whole position is implicit in Goethe's Divan, popularized it in Germany. The youngest of literatures, Norway and Russia, reveal its power as vividly as the oldest, Italy and France. It controls the meditative depth of Leopardi, the melancholy of Tourgenieff, the nobler of Ibsen's dramas, and the cadenced prose of Flaubert. It informs the teaching of Tolstoi and the greater art of Tschaikowsky. Goethe, at the beginning of the century, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Achleitner had had to pay the penalty of his undignified, dog-like love, and the girl, shaken and refined to the depths of her being, was wax in his hands. Often he would look at her to find that her eyes had been fixed upon him in a long, grave, meditative gaze. Then he would seem to himself a very sorry sort of person, and was compelled to admit that he who had once wished to overwhelm the girl with the infinite riches of a passionately loving soul, was a bankrupt, groping ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... may he do, Who shall do greatly? Doth he gird his waist With a monk's rope, like Luther? or pursue The goat, like Tell? or dry his nets in haste, Like Masaniello when the sky was blue? Keep house, like other peasants, with inlaced Bare brawny arms about a favourite child, And meditative looks beyond the door (But not to mark the kidling's teeth have filed The green shoots of his vine which last year bore Full twenty bunches), or, on triple-piled Throne-velvets sit at ease to bless the poor, Like other pontiffs, in the Poorest's ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... others that know not love. I like them, too, because they really seem to have an eye for the strange beauty and charm of the Sphinx, quite an unexpected taste for Botticelli. They ill conceal their envy of my lot, and sometimes, in the meditative pauses between the courses, I see them romantically reckoning how it might be possible by desperately saving up, by prodigious windfalls of tips, from unexampled despatch and sweetness in their ministrations, how it might be possible in ten years' time, perhaps even in five—the lady would ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... a weakness of Monsieur, and the princess had undertaken the amazing task of curing him of it. As for the rest, poets, wits, beautiful women, all were received by her with the air of a mistress superior to her slaves. Sufficiently meditative in her liveliest humors to make even poets meditate; sufficiently pretty to dazzle by her attractions, even among the prettiest; sufficiently witty for the most distinguished persons who were present, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... years' standing, when "The Scarlet Letter" appeared. He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea-captain. He led there a shy and rather sombre life; of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. Its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his "Twice-Told Tales" and other short stories, the product of his first literary period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite break through his acquired and inherited ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Renard replied As the floating fowl he slyly eyed; "I hardly know what 'tis best to say, Let's think about it a moment, pray, I may help you yet, my dear, who knows?" So he struck a meditative pose, And thoughtfully laid his small, red toes, Up by the side of his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... anxieties, after this eventful day I enjoyed the first decent night's rest I had had for a week. The colonel refused, with an unnecessary ostentation of scorn, my patriotic offer to keep watch and ward over the city, and I turned in, tired out, at eleven o'clock, after a light dinner and a meditative pipe. I felt I had some reasons for self-congratulation; for considerable as my present difficulties were, yet I undoubtedly stood in a more hopeful position than I had before the revolution. I was now resolved to get my money safe out of the country, and I had hopes of being too ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... was to make the foundations of benevolence vibrate like the strings of a many-toned lute, and he compared his general progress through the haunts of the charitably disposed to the passage of a highly-charged firework through an assembly of meditative turtles. He was usually known, he added, as "the rapidly-moving person," or "the one devoid of outline," and it soon became apparent that he was also quite destitute of all dignified restraint. Selecting the place of commerce of some wealthy merchant, Ho entered without ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... I didn't know he was at Turtle Head; and I am satisfied now that he is the man that shook up Hasbrook that night," continued Laud, in meditative mood. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... a personal origin to the system, now said to be the religion of one-third of the human race, begin with Prince Siddhartha, a young man disposed to be an ascetic, and inclined to retire from the world. In order to wean him from his meditative tendency, his father, in order to cure him, and prevent him from forsaking his caste, married him to a beautiful princess, and introduced him to the splendid dissipation of a luxurious court. A dozen years of this life convinced ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... strength to crisp it into silvery wavelets. It was a night for meditation and prayer. Unhappy is the state of man who can look forth from the deck of a ship on such a scene and not feel gratitude to the Framer of the magnificent firmament above him,—whom it does not make more meditative, more prayerful, than his wont,—whom it does not cause to ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... on the window-sill and fell into a meditative state of mind. Once or twice he walked to the door and looked down the hall, while Norris plugged steadily away and ignored ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... here describe the excellence or defect of either; but will, if it be in my power, say a word as to this difference. The German girl of one-and-twenty,— our Isa's age,—is more sedate, more womanly, more meditative than her English sister. The world's work is more in her thoughts, and the world's amusements less so. She probably knows less of those things which women learn than the English girl, but that which she does know is nearer to her hand for use. She is not ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... we must return to the past. Gretry, during his sojourn at Rome, in the spring-time of his life, was fond of seeking religious inspiration in the garden of an almost deserted convent. He observed one day, in the summer-house, an old monk of venerable form, who was separating seeds with a meditative air, and at the same time observing them with a microscope. The absent-minded musician approached him in silence. 'Do you like flowers?' the monk asked him. 'Very much,' 'At your age, however, we only cultivate the flowers of life; the culture of the flowers of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... by the pirates. This is almost the only play of Shakespeare, in which mere accidents, independent of all will, form an essential part of the plot;—but here how judiciously in keeping with the character of the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last determined by accident or by ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... the kitchen, transported the meditative Mrs. Pratt in a wonderful hurry from her philanthropic reasoning to a saucepan of potatoes that were bubbling furiously in the water, over a good fire in her cracked cooking stove; but though she busied herself with her daily duties for ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... full strength is essentially solitary. The play of social intercourse, its quick transitions, and incessant demands, are fatal to free and uninterrupted abandonment to the flow of soft internal emotions. Rousseau, dreaming, moody, indolently, meditative, profoundly enwrapped in the brooding egoism of his own sensations, had to mix with men and women whose egoism took the contrary form of an eager desire to produce flashing effects on other people. We may be sure that as the two sides of his character—his notions of serious principle, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was puffing meditative whiffs in the air. "Great things move slowly. Richard Firmstone is great, Benjamin; ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... thought fit to interweave them; even in the close of the last scene of all we can say to a line, to a letter, where Shakespeare ends and Fletcher begins. That scene is opened by Shakespeare in his most majestic vein of meditative or moral verse, pointed and coloured as usual with him alone by direct and absolute aptitude to the immediate sentiment and situation of the speaker and of no man else: then either Fletcher strikes in for a moment with a touch of somewhat more Shakespearean ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... poetical figure; moreover, he charms by his flowing, musical verse, by the enthralling elegance and grace of his poetical imagery, and genuine lyric inspiration. All his poetry is filled with quiet, meditative sadness. It is by the music of his verse and the tender tears of his feminine lyrism that Nadson penetrates the hearts of his readers. His masterpiece is "My Friend, My Brother," and this reflects the sentiment of all his work.[52] Here is ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... by different ways, following each his own bent of mind, they had attained to poesy. Lucien, destined for the highest speculative fields of natural science, was aiming with hot enthusiasm at fame through literature; while David, with that meditative temperament which inclines to poetry, was drawn by his ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... O, 't is hard, so hard, to see Prattling child to woman turning, As to grander company! Little heart she lulled with hushes Beating, burning up with blushes, All with meditative dreaming On the dear delicious gleaming Of the bridal veil and ring; Finding in the sweet ovations Of its new, untried relations Better joys ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... of tender and minute retrospect, and often indulged himself, in lonely hours, with the meditative pleasures of memory. To look back into the old years was to him like gazing into a misty place, with sudden and bright glimpses, and then the cloud closed in again; but it was not only with his own life ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to war, and of truly Christianizing Europe. She hastened to Paris, when the allied sovereigns were there, and obtained an interview with the Russian tzar. Alexander was by nature of a devotional turn of mind, and the terrific scenes through which he had passed had given him a meditative and pensive spirit. He listened eagerly to the suggestions of Madame Krudoner, and, aided by her, sketched as follows the plan ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... child," Mrs. Frankland went on, in a meditative tone, looking out of the window and steering now upon a home tack—"I hope that I can serve in some way the cause of the poor you have so much at heart. Missions like yours languish for funds. If I could be the means of bringing people of great fortune to consecrate their wealth, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... gentle courtesy, and gave me also his simple unaffected benediction. We all partook of a light luncheon to-gether, after which repast Heliobas and Father Paul withdrew together. Zara looked after their retreating figures with a sort of meditative pathos in her large eyes; and then she told me she had something to finish in her studio—would I excuse her for about an hour? I readily consented, for I myself was desirous of passing a little time in solitude, in order to read the manuscripts Heliobas had given me. "For," thought I, "if there ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Evelyn spoke; but it was in a meditative fashion, and not very much to the point. He lay back in his easy-chair, his hands clasped behind his head, and talked; and his talk was not at all about the selling of Hill Beeches in Buckinghamshire, but of much more abstract matters. He spoke of the divine wrath of the reformer—what a curious ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... unmannerly behaviour. By its queer trick of squirting, it manages to kill at least two birds with one stone. For, in the first place, the sudden elastic jump of the fruit frightens away browsing animals, such as goats and cattle. Those meditative ruminants are little accustomed to finding shrubs or plants take the aggressive against them; and when they see a fruit that quite literally flies in their faces of its own accord, they hesitate to attack the uncanny vine which bristles with such magical and almost miraculous defences. Moreover, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... bowed across and emptied by the trio; and presently there began to fall upon them a luxurious spell, under the influence of which little but the sound of quiet and confidential laughter interrupted the long intervals of meditative silence. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again, and lifting the latch to the hook which held it up, left the room, closing the door softly behind him. He walked down the corridor, with a meditative frown, and began to descend ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... some time for the answer which did not come. His simple, hardy nature was quelled by the grim and death-like stillness of the night. He wanted to recall the fullness of life, to wake the solitude with sound, to disturb and trouble the hidden meditative silence of the leaden mass of water, flowing slowly to the sea; and of the dull, threatening clouds hanging motionless in the air. At the other end of the raft there was life, and it called ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Meditative reflection, when aptly associated with circumstance or occasion, may become a pleasing source of beauty. When employed by way of introduction, it may, as frequently in Irving and Hawthorne, strike the keynote of what follows. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of the crowd listening silently. By this time the gloom was so dense that the majority of us could not see the singer, which enhanced the mystery of her melody and the charm of her young voice. Presently other voices joined in, all in the same meditative, somewhat doleful rhythm. Gayer strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling glint of the river, with the mysterious splash of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, with the starry enchantment of the passing ferry-boats, with ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... with upturned eyes, and Arab arch in hair. Under her, Dionysius the Areopagite—mending his pen! But I am doubtful of Lord Lindsay's identification of this figure, and the action is curiously common and meaningless. It may have meant that meditative theology is essentially ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... valet, his threadbare cloak, and the humbleness of his diplomatic position, the fire and honesty of his character combined with his known ability to place him high in the esteem of the society of St. Petersburg. His fidelity, devotion, and fortitude, mellowed by many years and by meditative habits, and tinged perhaps by the patrician consciousness of birth, formed in him a modest dignity of manner which men respected. They perceived it to be no artificial assumption, but the outward image of a lofty and self-respecting ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... side of things is presented by some of the groups: in the ungainly figure of the elephant of Senegal running; in the bear lying on his back in a trough and eating with great gusto some sweet morsel which he holds between his paws; and in the meditative stork standing on the back of a turtle. Some of the animals are shown as sleeping or reclining, and there is a cat sitting, a goat feeding, a deer scratching its side and a pheasant walking, among others, but the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Sundays when the birds are very musical indeed, farmers' boys patter out over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing of the sort has happened. The aunt and nephew in this City church are much disturbed by the sniggering boys. The nephew is himself a boy, and the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles and string, by secretly offering such commodities to his ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Italian and of fashioning his own thoughts into rhyme. His was a nature capable indeed of vehement and fiery activity, but by constitution somewhat saturnine and sluggish, only energetic when powerfully stimulated; a meditative man, glad enough to be inert when not spurred forward on the path of strenuous achievement. And so, it seems, the literary bent took hold upon him as a relief from labour, as an excuse for temporary inaction. In his own art, the art of design, whether this assumed the form of sculpture ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Twice-Told Tales should have gained what vogue they did, than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade—the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion, there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... away across the rank meadow, where her meditative form made the solitary black cow look lonelier than ever. Mark turned aside to examine the chapel. He had been warned by the Rector to look at the images of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene that had survived the ruin of the holy ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie |
