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Musing   /mjˈuzɪŋ/   Listen
Musing

adjective
1.
Deeply or seriously thoughtful.  Synonyms: brooding, broody, contemplative, meditative, pensive, pondering, reflective, ruminative.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Musing" Quotes from Famous Books



... which he had just escaped and to which he was soon to return. He changed his tone and his subject with amazing versatility, from the bitterest satire to idyllic sweetness, or to a pleasant kind of clever naivete which is truly his own. We see him musing among the firs and the pine-trees of his native Provence, or riding on the top of the diligence under the scorching sun and listening, in a Sterne-like fashion, to the conversation which took place between the facetious ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... temples like balm. Its refreshing effect, however, penetrated no deeper than the mere surface of the frame; for as I walked by the side of Mdlle. Reuter, my heart was still hot within me, and while I was musing the fire burned; then spake ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... still to come. Poetry hath hitherto been with me rather the Recreation of a Mind conscious of its Health, than the deliberate Task-work of a Soule that must hereafter give an Account of its Talents. Yet my Mind, in the free Circuit of her Musing, has ranged over a thousand Themes that lie, like the Marble in the Quarry, readie for anie Shape that Fancy and Skill may give. Neither Laziness nor Caprice makes me difficult in my Choice; for, the longer I am in selecting my Tree, and laying my Axe to ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... have gathered round me as I sit musing in the gloaming. The leading goat is a handsome animal, generally respected and feared by the rest of the herd. He has excellent knowledge, inherited and acquired, of the uses of mountains, and his venerable beard adorns a head of undisputed male ascendancy in the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... one old nook, where she had many and many a time sat musing, and laid their burden softly on the pavement. The light streamed on it through the coloured window—a window where the boughs of trees were ever rustling in the summer, and where the birds sang sweetly all day ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the titlepage of a song in ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... the moment of this musing I began to doubt whether I was really alone,—to ask myself whether there might not be something more than a mere shuddering of light in the thing that rocked beside me: some presence that haunted the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... but it is certain many lives were lost, though how many was not ascertained, as a number were carried away by the stream. Special care was afterwards taken by the authorities to prevent such catastrophes. After stopping some time at Raj Ghat I returned to my home, musing on what I had seen, and longing for the time when the millions of India will seek cleansing and life, where alone ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... to time the warden's wife glanced from her sewing toward the motionless figure, reluctant to obtrude upon her revery, yet equally loath to leave her a prey to melancholy musing. After a while, she saw the black lashes quiver, and fall upon the waxen cheeks, then, as she watched, great tears glittered, rolled slowly, dripped softly, but there was no sigh, no sound of sobs. Leaning closer, she laid her arm across the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Leonard stood for a while musing upon the curiously tangled web in which he found himself involved. Here he was, committed to a strange and desperate enterprise. Nor was this all, for about him were other complications, totally different from those which might be expected in connection with such a mediaeval adventure, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... outburst, he crumpled the scribbled paper in his fist and crushed it under foot. Mr. Konig grinned vindictively and turned away, while Captain Davenport leaned against the cabin and for half an hour spoke no word, contenting himself with gazing to leeward with an expression of musing hopelessness on ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... be lost. One evening when Eyre had taken the first watch, the horses, in their search for grass, had wandered about a quarter of a mile from the camp. He had followed them, and was sitting on a stone beneath the moonlight, musing on his gloomy prospects, when he was startled by a flash and a report. Hastening to the camp, he was met by Wylie, who was speechless with terror, and could only wring his hands and cry: "Oh, massa". When he entered, he saw Baxter ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... reflection of other men, for already she had suitors in plenty. Upon one of them her musing lingered. He had brought to her gifts of the friendly smile, of comradeship, of youth's debonair give-and-take. She did not try to analyze her feeling for Winthrop Beresford. It was enough to know that he had brought into her existence ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... that smiled, And hushed is the laughter I heard when a child— Yet often when musing they float back to me, And I see them and hear it as clear as can be! And I'm playing again, while the heart strings all thrill, By the old spring house at the foot of ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy

... as his three legs would carry him. Only one event in his life had eclipsed this in happiness—the interview in front of the White House. He rapped on the window with his stick, thereby frightening Cynthia half out of her wits as she sat musing sorrowfully by the fire. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... 4-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches, and it belonged to Queen Elizabeth. Inside she has written a note in which she says: 'I walke manie times into the pleasant fieldes of the Holy Scriptures, where I plucke up the goodlie greene herbes of sentences by pruning, eate them by reading, chawe them by musing, and laie them up at length in the hie seat of memorie by gathering them together, so that having tasted thy swetenes I may the less perceive the ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport

... there musing and looking down through the plate-glass at the delicate porcelain beneath, a faint sound intruded itself upon the stillness. It gave him another idea. Part of the floor was stone-paved, but part ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... maiden last met by our travellers, and whose appearance had so favorably impressed them, had not been altogether uninfluenced by the encounter. Her spirit was of a musing and perhaps somewhat moody character, and the little adventure related in our last chapter, had awakened in her mind a train of vague and purposeless thought, from which she did not strive to disengage herself. She ceased to pursue the direct path back to Charlemont, the moment she had persuaded ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... Fluxion, musing. "The Josephine is a fast vessel. Under the most favorable circumstances, she would make the run in eight days. A fair passage would be twelve days. If I remain one day in Genoa, where my sister lives, the ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... would soon take to quarrelling, as often happened in that tap-room, when Tom Bull softly came again, having gone but a step beyond the threshold of the place. He stepped, as though aimlessly, to our place, like a man watched, fearing the hand of the law; and for a time he sat musing, toying with the glass ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... grove, While yet there was no fear of Jove. 30 Com pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestick train, And sable stole of Cipres Lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Com, but keep thy wonted state, With eev'n step, and musing gate, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: 40 There held in holy passion still, Forget thy self to Marble, till With a sad Leaden downward cast, Thou fix them on the earth as fast. And joyn with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... sat musing bitterly on his sad fate, while his dog came and laid his head sympathizingly on ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... ogling, and rhyming, and sighing, Who's musing, and pining, and whining, and dying: When a thousand of lies ev'ry minute he tells— What is he, my friends, but a fool ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... Forster to accelerate. They might be her husband and her son. It was the first time that the spare bed had been ordered. Reflection, however, convinced her that her hopes were strung upon too slight a thread; and, musing on the improbability of not having ascertained during a year the fact of her master having so near a relative—moreover, her son was not in existence—she sighed, and dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Before the gentlemen had finished their wine, Amber was in bed, and Mrs Forster ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... his late disputant. Once he spoke in low, quick tones to his companion, and he stirred the boughs with his feet like an animal that is restive. At that moment the watchfulness of Deerslayer had a little abated, for he sat musing on the means of renewing the negotiation without giving too much advantage to the other side. It was perhaps fortunate for him that the keen and bright eyes of Judith were as vigilant as ever. At the instant ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... that under his calm exterior he had a fervor which made him easily feel the presence of poetry in everyday events; and the forms of the Juden-gasse, rousing the sense of union with what is remote, set him musing on two elements of our historic life which that sense raises into the same region of poetry;—the faint beginnings of faiths and institutions, and their obscure lingering decay; the dust and withered remnants with which they are apt to be covered, only enhancing for the awakened perception ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... romance and strong common-sense," thought Harley, musing over the letter. "She wants the romance without paying the price. Now I wonder if that is not rather more the characteristic ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... he continued, musing, 'to be mixed up together! But we'll let them rest in peace. I'd better let you have what was entrusted to me, and then, mayhap, ye'll be better ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... old, of irreproachable virtue and of all wonderful qualities. In the course of the play, however, he shows himself very nimble-witted, credulous, and impulsive, quick to anger and quicker still to forgive; with thoughts all turned to sadness and to musing; a poet—ever in extremes; now hating his own rash errors to the point of demanding the heaviest punishment for them; now swearing that he will revenge himself on women by writing against them; a philosopher—he ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... he begins to crowd A thousand thoughts within a pulse's space; There seem'd so brief a pause of life allow'd, His mind stretch'd universal, to embrace The whole wide world, in an extreme farewell,— A moment's musing—but an age to tell. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the like of this sleeping youth whom I passed but now, how shall I know him? Alas, the length of my travail and travel! How shall I go about in search of a somebody I know not, one whom, if I saw him face to face I should not know?" So saying he turned back, musing anent that sleeping youth, and coming to him, he still sleeping, dismounted from his mare and sat down by his side. He fixed his eyes upon his face and considered him awhile and said in himself, "For aught I wot, this youth may be Malik ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Thus musing, Mortimer De Royster adjusted his one eye glass, selected a delicately-colored necktie from his rather large stock, and attired himself to go out and call at Roy's hotel, which ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster

... He fell to musing, and as he did so the dreaded shadow Chris had anticipated fell across the doorway. A moment later Claggett Chew, limping from an old wound and a newly received bruise, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... gently nurtured Boston boys, Wendell Phillips began the study of law. Doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the noble youth of every country and time. Musing over Coke and Blackstone, perhaps he saw himself succeeding Ames and Otis and Webster, the idol of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the elegant ease, and the cultivated conservatism ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... brimming stream, the leisurely herds, the growing grass. All seemed to be moving together, neither lingering nor making haste, to some far-off end within the quiet mind of God. Everything seemed to be waiting, musing, living the untroubled life of nature, with no thought of death or care or sorrow. I passed a trench of still water that ran as far as the eye could follow it across the flat; it was full from end to end of the beautiful water violet, the pale lilac flowers, with their faint ethereal scent, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in the conservatory, musing over the gloomy anticipations her dreams had cast over her thoughts, Louis Marie came towards her. A beam of joy lit up her hectic cheek; she impressed a kiss on the forehead of her darling son, and playfully reproved him for the dreams that ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... And musing thus on the general inclination of our instincts towards injustice I met unexpectedly, at the turn of the road, as it were, a shape of duplicity. It might have been unconscious on Mrs. Fyne's part, but her leading idea appeared to me to be not to keep, not to preserve ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... be so much as named with that life's sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more ardently to the Unchanging One, did by degrees pass through all things bodily—beyond the heaven even, and the sun and stars. Yea, we soared higher yet by inward musing. We came to our own minds, and we passed beyond them, that we might reach that place of plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the Wisdom by which all these things are made. And whilst ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... though musing, "the dead come back to life—sometimes—and in strange shape, and, mayhap, I know the truth. To-morrow when yonder body is borne on high for burial we will speak of it again. Till then rest you all, and prepare to face that ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... been enough. Now the lady merely smoked and chuckled. When I again uttered "Well?" with a tinge of rebuke, she came down from her musing, but into another and distant field. It was the field of natural history, of zoology, of vertebrates, mammals, furred quadrupeds—or, in short, skunks. One may as well be blunt in ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... spots. And the patterings of the feet in that short walk had worn the board into hollows at the treads. I felt those hollows with my hands, traced their formation, and despite my unhappy plight could not refrain from musing upon the stories which those hollows could relate—stories of abandoned hope, frenzy, madness, resignation, suppressed fury, and pathetic awaiting of the doom ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... to whom had never before been exhibited these samples of imperial riches craned their necks, and the looks of some were musing and of others keenly eager. The room fell silent, and still they gazed and gazed at the small heap of glistening stones and those few grains of gold. They were busy men in the vanguard of a quickened age, and theirs were its ardors, its Argus-eyed fancy and potent imagination. Show ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... He departed, musing. How plainly he could see the patch of garden in the summer sunshine and the white hollyhocks nodding above the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... her where she is sitting, then, With lotus-blossom on ankle and arm Wearing thine emblems, and musing of nought But the meeting to ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... there was some brilliant shrubbery which seemed to light up the whole picture with the effect of a sweet and melancholy smile. I felt as if spirits were there,—or as if these shrubs had a spiritual life. In short, the impression was indefinable; and, after gazing and musing a good while, I retraced my steps through the Irish hamlet, and plodded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... spring came Gervaise often went and sought refuge with Goujet. She could no longer sit musing on a chair without immediately thinking of her first lover; she pictured him leaving Adele, packing his clothes in the bottom of their old trunk, and returning to her in a cab. The days when she went out, she was seized with the most foolish fears in the street; she ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... here detailed, that George Willison was wandering over the grounds of Warriston, on the north side of Edinburgh. He had been with a letter to the Laird of Warriston, and, in coming back, as was not uncommon with him, was musing, in a half dreaming, listless kind of state, as he sauntered through the planted grounds in the neighbourhood. His attention was in an instant arrested by the sounds of voices, and he stood, or rather sat down, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... keeping-room of the master of Scarthey, and here, for the greater part, daily sat Sir Adrian Landale, placidly reading, writing, or thinking at his table; or at his organ, lost in soaring melody; or yet, by the fireside, in his wooden arm-chair musing over the events of that strange world of thought he had made his own; whilst the aging black retriever with muzzle stretched between his paws slept his light, lazy sleep, ever and anon opening an eye of inquiry ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... an arm-chair, and fell to musing, and thought how wonderfully his life had been changed in these few short weeks. He could hardly get back across the gulf which separated him from the self who had come back into those rooms after Easter, full of anticipations of the pleasures and delights of the coming summer term and vacation. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... lonely musing, wilful nursing of dark care, I will join the joyous circle of the dear ones gathered there, Who with smiles will greet my advent, and in that delightful room Shake aside the dreary shadows of this scene of ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... former shape, and "while I was musing the fire burned." I then looked out toward the festival ground and saw that Satan had returned to Mr. World and was explaining to him how helpful these festivals were ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... passion is variously developed; some feel positive delight in slaying, others are indifferent. An old soldier, who had been in Waterloo, informed me that to his mind there was no pleasure equal to running a man through the body, and that he could lie awake at night musing on the pleasurable sensations afforded him by ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... that point. However much she may have yawned, at the tender age of ten, over a certain dissertation on the etiquette of travel, given one summer afternoon by Mademoiselle D'Ormy, Felicia aged twenty-seven, embarked upon her first journey alone, found herself musing with mighty comfort upon the charming definiteness of those never-to-be-forgotten axioms. For Mademoiselle had made the small Felicia recite them over and over until she was ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... her undying love— (Perchance her happy spirit oft would stray Round their dear footsteps wheresoe'er they rove) And Europe's turf grow green her heart above. No more could grief or joy disturb her breast. Soft by her tomb let musing Fancy move! Let not a sound of thoughtlessness molest The melancholy spot of ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... eye and felt all the leaps potential in that luxurious torpor? Who has not attributed some little romance to the passer-by? Who has not sometimes exchanged places even with things inanimate, and drawn some new moral experience from following the movement of stars or of daffodils? All this is idle musing or at best poetry; yet our ordinary knowledge of what goes on in men's minds is made of no other stuff. True, we have our own mind to go by, which presumably might be a fair sample of what men's minds are; but unfortunately our notion of ourselves is of all notions the most biassed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... Musing in this manner, he walked on until he found himself in one of the principal streets of St. Petersburg, in front of a house of antiquated architecture. The street was blocked with equipages; carriages one after the other drew up in front of the brilliantly illuminated ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were so blinded and hoodwinked that they could not proceed, but were obliged to lie down and scrape the incumbrances from their faces with their fore-feet, so that, finding my sport interrupted, I returned home musing in my mind on the oddness of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... I moved with the languid crowd on the Riva, Musing with idle eyes on the wide lagoons and the islands, And on the dim-seen seaward glimmering sails in the distance, Where the azure haze, like a vision of Indian-Summer, Haunted the dreamy sky of the soft Venetian December,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... the many there, the thralls Of the cold tyrant's cruel lust; and they Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls; But she was calm and sad, musing alway On loftiest enterprise, till on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... music. This difference, being seized, would put an end to much musical sectarianism. There has been much contention whether the music of the modern Italian school, that of Rossini and his successors, be impassioned or not. Without doubt, the passion it expresses is not the musing, meditative tenderness, or pathos, or grief of Mozart or Beethoven. Yet it is passion, but garrulous passion—the passion which pours itself into other ears; and therein the better calculated for dramatic effect, having a natural ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... I was lounging upon an odorous bed of pine needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky gleamed bright azure through the openings of the great trees, a dry west breeze murmured through the forest. I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left no room for imagination. There was ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... Wrapped in musing stands the sprite: 'Tis the middle wane of night, His task is hard, his way is far, But he must do his errand right Ere dawning mounts her beamy car, And rolls her chariot wheels of light; And vain are the spells of fairy-land, He must work with ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... me alone and musing in the barroom over the occurrences of the evening. Of all the incidents, that of the entrance of Joe Morgan's child kept the most prominent place in my thoughts. The picture of that mournful little face was ever before ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... office to-morrow," she sipped the last of her black coffee slowly. "All the rest of the facts there ever will be about Edward Clayte are in that room—aren't they?" Her voice was musing; she looked straight ahead of her as she finished softly, "What time ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... Musing on the possibilities in this field, Tom, having left Ned at the latter's home, soared down from aloft, and a little later, having told Koku to look after the Air Scout, much to the delight of the giant and the discomfiture of ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... Ned ceased his musing. Something was taking place down below that he could not explain. The tank seemed to be slackening her progress. More and more slowly she approached the edge ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... To the musing or drowsy traveller by rail how space and time are annihilated! He is barely conscious of progress, only when the brakeman with measured tone shouts the name of the station; he looks up from his paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... be no pleasure like the pleasure derived from reading a good book. Emerson, expressing our debt to a book says: 'Let us not forget the genial, miraculous, we have known to proceed from a book. We go musing into the vaults of day and night; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored leaves; and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons creak along the road. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... Trenck could remain sad and silent under all these evidences of royal favor; no one understood how this gallant young officer could enter upon this campaign with bowed head and heavy brow; he should have sat upon his horse proud and erect—not dreaming, not lost in melancholy musing. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... through the long wreck of the fair portico that had once extended from the bridge to the basilica, till he came to the broad flight of steps leading to the walled garden-court of old Saint Peter's. There he loved to sit musing among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze pine- cone and the great brass peacocks which Symmachus had brought thither from the ruins of Agrippa's baths, wherein the terrible Crescenzi had fortified themselves during more than ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... the large European galleries contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for overpainting. Between varnish and retouching ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... her seat and looked about her. How long had she sat there musing—dreaming dreams which every instinct of womanly pride compelled her to renounce? She wondered if he had gone. Once more came that mingled hope and fear that he might seek an interview with her before leaving. The hope was stronger than ever, and ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... one of the new books her friend had brought her, she was for a while unconscious of everything else. Then, as the twilight deepened, she closed the book, and having again concealed it, sat watching the stars just beginning to appear, one by one, and musing, as she often did, on her own life. Why had she not, with her passionate love of the beautiful and her thirst for knowledge, been given the birth and training, the social advantages of any one of that little ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... them, and, at intervals, pecans. The pecan-trees grew thickly along the borders of the creeks, while the mesquites cloaked with gossamer wide portions of the flats; and here and there in the valleys and on the sides of the hills the sombre, self-enwrapped live-oaks stood about, like philosophers musing amid the general lightness. Spanish-dagger, bear-grass, and persimmon-bushes freckled the sides of the rocky divides with dark spots, and mistletoe hung its fine green globes like unillumined lanterns in the branches of the mesquites. Over the plains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... sympathised with her dearest possession, a Dutch doll called Mary Jane, since a lamentable accident had bereft it of both its legs; and she had dived into the schoolroom and fished it out of the dark corner reserved for the mangled and thrust it in my face before I had well done musing on the nature and extent of my love for Moses—for I try to be conscientious—and bracing myself to meet the ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... ourselves, in whose hands nature has placed a fairy wand, with which they no sooner touch us, than straightway we forget the evils of life, the darkness lifts from our souls, and we are reconciled to existence."[201] The musing suggestiveness of reading when we read only for reading's sake, and not for reproduction nor direct use, was as delightful to our laborious drudge as to others, but he could indulge himself with little of this sweet idleness. It was in harder labour that he passed most of his mornings. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... Nor for yours neither. You've ungently, Brutus, Stole from my bed: and yesternight at supper You suddenly arose, and walk'd about, Musing and sighing, with your arms across; 240 And when I ask'd you what the matter was, You star'd upon me with ungentle looks: I urg'd you further; then you scratch'd your head, And too impatiently stamp'd with your foot: Yet I insisted, yet ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, And sits as safe as in a senate-house; For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, Or do his grey hairs any violence? But Beauty, like ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... about the Jutland fight as people believe, and that when he protests he sank a ship, he did very completely sink a ship. I am the more confirmed in this belief by a still small voice among the Jutland reports, musing aloud over an account of an unaccountable outlying brawl witnessed by one of our destroyers. The voice suggests that what the destroyer saw was one German ship being sunk by ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... acquaintance only a short time before, and first discovered his good feeling towards me during my misfortune: I felt the value of this favor the more warmly, as no one is apt to seek a closer connection with invalids. He spared nothing to give me pleasure, to draw me away from musing on my situation, to hold up to my view and promise me recovery and a wholesome activity in the nearest future. How often have I been delighted, in the progress of life, to hear how this excellent man has in the weightiest affairs shown himself useful, and indeed a blessing ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I could see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle and sink and rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw, while she paused musing; and I believed that she must yield now, and in truth I hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good and deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... be surprised to hear of anything they do,' answered he, 'so mad are they generally reported to be; but that India is governed by infidel old women, that has never yet reached our ears. Perhaps it is so. God knows,' continued he, musing, 'for mad people do ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... rode at an anker, we saw the similitude of a storme rising at Northnorthwest, and could not tell where to get rode nor succor for that winde, and harborough we knew none: and that land which we rode vnder with that winde was a lee shore. And as I was musing what was best to be done, I saw a saile come out of a creeke vnder the foresayd Caninoz, which was my friend Gabriel, who forsooke his harborough and company, and came as neere vs as he might, and pointed vs to the Eastwards, and then we weyed and followed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... that still clung to life would be withered and dead. The trees, as if weeping at the evanescence of the life around them, shed their leaves at the faintest breeze. These fluttered to the ground, or, falling into the tranquil stream, were carried away by it, and passed from sight. Ayrault stood musing and regretting the necessity of such general death. "But," he thought, "I would rather die than lose my love; for then I should have had the taste of bliss without its fulfilment, and should be worse off than dead. Love ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... Amine, musing. "But," continued she, "is not this connected with your resolution of going ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... she said, musing, as she played a pretty little hand on the table, and no doubt thinking about mad young Harry Estridge; 'tis not impossible, William, that old folks, and young folks, too, should ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... became untalkative as the coffee came. Fitzgerald was musing over the impulse which had seized him in asking Breitmann to share his dinner. He was genuinely pleased that he had done so, however; but it forced itself upon him that sometime or other these impulses would land him in difficulties. On his part the recipient of this particular ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... from the lookout, and descended, musing profoundly, to the shore. He communicated the result of his observations to his companions, in Delaware, and a short and earnest consultation succeeded. When it terminated, the three instantly set about ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... they had been wed, when it happened that as Sir Guy lay by a window of his tower, looking out upon the landscape, he fell to musing on his life. He thought, "How many men I have slain, how many battles I have fought, how many lands I have taken and destroyed! All for a woman's love; and not one single deed done for my God!" Then he thought, "I will go a pilgrimage ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... in whose musing mind [15] Those ages live which Time has cast behind, To every spot shall lead his wondering guests On whose known site the beam of glory rests: Here Chatham's eloquence in thunder broke, Here Fox persuaded, or here Garrick spoke; Shall boast how Nelson, fame and death in view, ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld

... sweet Alice, my neighbour, Stands musing beneath the pine tree; And her look says—"I have a lover Who ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of Mrs. Rankeillor; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.'s ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his lips, and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... retired within, and lights were gleaming in the upper windows of the houses; but knots of neighbours still stood about here and there, talking and laughing loudly. Cargrim strolled slowly down the street towards the Eastgate, musing over his late experience, and enjoying the coolness of the night air after the sultry atmosphere of the coffee-room. The sky was now brilliant with stars, and a silver moon rolled aloft in the blue arch, shedding down floods of light on the town, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... velvets; as she floated to the head of her table, with opals shining among her priceless point laces, and some tropical flower with leaves of glistening gold crowning her bronze hair; as she glided down in a waltz along the polished floor, or bent her proud head over ecarte in a musing grace that made her opponent utterly forget to mark the king or even play his cards at all; as she talked in the low music of her voice of European imbrogli, and consols and coupons, for she was a politician and a speculator, or lapsed into a beautifully ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... I was left to myself, sometimes musing on the islanders— but no longer fearing them because the captain's unflappable confidence had won me over—and sometimes forgetting them to marvel at the splendors of this tropical night. My memories took wing toward France, in the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... do it for you,' said Harry; 'but there is only one other person in the world to please whom I would bring my father into such odd company as yon man's;' and he went in, looking but half pleased; and as we took our way to the Grange I was musing who that other person might be Harry was so ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... he was reading in a spiritless whisper. Neither of us had lunched that day. His curly head was propped upon his arm, his near-sighted eyes close to the book. He never stirred. He was too faint to sway his body or to gesticulate. I was musing wearily, and it seemed as though my hunger was a living thing and was taking ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... sat silent for some minutes, musing on the odd chance of destiny which required him to make his own return to normal life contingent on the arrest of a mysterious criminal, who was merely suspected, and had ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... which displeases and wearies me. In my little house on the Euganean hills, I hope to pass my few remaining days in tranquillity, and to have always before my eyes my dead, or my absent, friends." I was musing on these circumstances as I walked along the village, till a venerable old woman, seated at her door with her distaff in her hand, observing me, soon guessed the cause of my excursion; and offered to guide me to Petrarch's ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... spoken words to which something within bore witness as truth, and she knew not what to say. Emma, too, lay musing for some time; and then raising her head, and resting it upon her hand, she said: "How wonderfully self-denying Jesus was, Miss Sliver. Nobody appreciated the Saviour when he was upon earth, not even the disciples; ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell

... through much unwonted fatigue of late, and while thus musing he fell asleep, with his head against the wall. He was half wakened by the sound of voices, and presently became aware that two persons were examining the walls, and comparing the paintings with some others, which one of them had evidently seen. If ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the mystery is over, that the person who did find her again happened to be Mr. Rollo. Yet she had hardly seen him all day before that. Wych Hazel had half forgotten her situation in enjoying its beauties and musing in accordance with them; and then suddenly looking up to the great piece of rock nearest her, she saw him standing there, looking down at her with the calm face and handsome gray eyes which she had noticed ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... it strange that no one should remain on guard amid a life so savage and isolated as that of these simple people, when he was aroused by a touch on his arm, as he sat musing on a log before the embers ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... What struck Isabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... Grumpy (musing). Could it have been his own? In the fierceness of the struggle might he have torn it off in order to give himself greater freedom? Was he offering it to his assailant as a bribe? Was he—but first we must find if he was wearing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various

... Tiberias from the rage of the Galileans; for I could not deny that those of Tiborias had written to the king, and invited him to come to them; for his letters to them, in answer thereto, would fully prove the truth of that. So I sat a long time musing with myself, and then said to them, "I know well enough that the people of Tiberias have offended; nor shall I forbid you to plunder the city. However, such things ought to be done with discretion; ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus

... been musing a good deal over my "Dooiney-molla"[1]: he is now taking shape, and looms rather large. I believe you will like him, and his fiery little groom. These good souls do well to visit my dreams: they are such a comfort; and, do you know, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... subversive or reconstructive system of thought. But the depth and sincerity of feeling which explains his marvellous intensity of pathos is sometimes a pleasant relief to the sentimentalism of his greater predecessor. Nor is it hard to understand why his passages of sweet and melancholy musing by the quiet Ouse should have come like a breath of fresh air to the jaded generation waiting for the fall of the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... I was musing in this manner by the bank one day when I felt myself touched on the shoulder. It was the crutch of the Old Gentleman, who had been wheeled hither, as was his custom, by ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... unconscious of this gaze, pursued her meditations. Her eye caught the hour-glass that stood on a small table beside her. "Sand after sand," said she, musing to herself—"Sand after sand, thought after thought. The same sand ever trickling there; the same thought ever coursing through my mind. Oh, love! love! They say it enlarges the heart; I think it contracts it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... honour is but another name for pride; which easier bears the consciousness of guilt, than the world's just reproofs. But 'tis the fashion of the times; and in defence of falsehood and false honour, men die martyrs. I knew not that my nature was so bad. [Stands musing. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... how when the dawn, Her early light diffusing, Your petals first flung open wide; His steps beside chill Neckar drawn, You see him silent by your side, Upon its Spring perennial musing. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... upon her musing, and as she put the receiver to her ear and said "hello" she was almost as much astonished as delighted to hear in reply the voice of Felix Brand himself. He told her that he had just got home, after another beastly trip into the back woods of West Virginia, ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... and determined that she would not let doubts of what she really did not doubt torment her. But still she sat on and on upon the bench in the shade musing on many things—on the Contessa Violante, on the steps Ludovico had said that he would take this very first day of Lent towards the open breaking off of all engagement with that lady, and on the amount of scandal and difficulty ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... surface of the globe, which the next earthquake may burst, the Vatican, with its marvels of statuary, the ruined temples of the old gods and heroes, the Campagna, the Pope, and—Flora. We had but a glimpse of her. It was one night, at the Colosseum. We had been musing about that vast and solemn pile by the moonlight, which silvered it over with indescribable beauty, and at last, accompanied by our guides, bearing torches, we ascended through dark and broken passages to the upper benches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various



Words linked to "Musing" :   muse, cogitation, meditation, rumination, self-examination, introspection, self-contemplation, speculation, consideration, retrospect, study, thoughtful, meditative



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