"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the country, getting lost in valleys where it piled up into fleecy mounds, getting caught in tree-tops where it fluttered like tattered banners. Every now and then, with the suddenness of our approach, we would startle an aged shepherd, muffled and pensive as an Arab, strolling slowly across moorlands, followed closely by the sentinel goats which led his flock. The day had been strangely mystic. Time seemed a mood. I had ceased to trouble about where I was going; that I knew my ultimate destination was sufficient. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... a mandolin distantly heard, sudden clatter subsiding again into a general humming quiet, the happy sense of solitude in multitude, these are the partial ingredients of that feeling no alumnus ever forgets. In his pensive citadel, my friend J—— would be sitting, with his pipe (one of those new "class pipes" with inlaid silver numerals, which appear among every college generation toward Christmas time of freshman year). In his lap would be the large green volume ("British Poets of the Nineteenth ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of approaching dissolution. To this had succeeded a sort of lethargic sleep, from which it was not easy to arouse her, so that she could be made to take any notice of what was passing around her. But now she awoke, clear and collected; and, glancing round the room, with a sort of pensive animation, met and answered the inquiring and solicitous look of her son with an affectionate smile. Presently her wandering eye rested on some objects of the landscape, glimpses of which she had caught through one of the small patched windows of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... landlord no rent, and little regarded his indignation. Olivia, on her side, acted the coquet to perfection, if that might be called acting which was her real character, pretending to lavish all her tenderness on her new lover. Mr Thornhill appeared quite dejected at this preference, and with a pensive air took leave, though I own it puzzled me to find him so much in pain as he appeared to be, when he had it in his power so easily to remove the cause, by declaring an honourable passion. But whatever uneasiness he seemed to endure, it could easily ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... the yard belonging to the house in which little Louisa and her father then were. The distress of the poor birds seemed to afflict the tender-hearted maid very much, which her father perceived as soon as she entered his chamber. "What is it makes you look so pensive now," said her father, "since it is but a few minutes ago when you were so remarkably cheerful?"—"O my dear papa!" said Louisa, "all those sweet birds, that sung so charmingly but a day or two ago, are now come into the yard starving with hunger. Do, pray, let me give them ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... It stood by my hammock last night; my conscious soul looked through my closed eyelids, and sleep felt its dreadful presence. If it comes again I will throw myself into the sea! Hush!" he whispered, "it stands by the cabin door, so pale! so pale! Come not near me, pensive ghost. Give ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gallows-bird!" "Down with the damned renegade!" dispelled what doubt remained. A shade of melancholy deepened the expression of the sweet, thoughtful mouth; then, as by volition, the habitual look of pensive cheerfulness came back, and he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... nothin'," said Texas, glancing with pensive eyes to a point far up the sun-baked street where his gaze rested upon a pretentious house in a neatly-fenced yard where there were green things that gave a restful impression. "Circumstantial evidence ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... The figs refer to the anus and the pomegranates, like the sycomore, to the female parts. Me nec faemina nec puer, &c., says Horace in pensive mood. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... studied his task conscientiously. His official letters were written with the utmost gravity, and transmitted the commands of the minister in solemn phrases. Monsieur Phellion's face was that of a pensive ram, with little color and pitted by the small-pox; the lips were thick and the lower one pendent; the eyes light-blue, and his figure above the common height. Neat and clean as a master of history and geography in a young ladies' school ought to be, he wore fine ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... very long complain, for fearing one Menelaus, an usher of a school, might, among other misfortunes, find me alone in the inn, I made up my wallet, and, very pensive, took me a lodging in a private place near the sea: there, after I had been mewd up for three days, reflecting afresh on my despis'd and abject condition, I beat my breast, as sick as it was; and, when my deep sighs would suffer me, often cry'd out; "Why ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... to him. He then left a polite, tender note for Charlotte, and returned to New-York. His first business was to seek Montraville, and endeavour to convince him that what had happened would ultimately tend to his happiness: he found him in his apartment, solitary, pensive, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... appearance of Ebba this sentiment of uneasiness and melancholy sympathy. When after supper he bade adieu to his uncle and cousins, when he was alone in his room, he smiled when he remembered the amiable gayety of Alete, but became sad and pensive when he recalled the dreamy look of her young sister, the sad melancholy glance which shone over her face like the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection—when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness—who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it, even ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... gay," Felix admitted. "They are sober; they are even severe. They are of a pensive cast; they take things hard. I think there is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or some depressing expectation. It 's not the epicurean temperament. My uncle, Mr. Wentworth, is a tremendously high-toned old fellow; he looks as if he were ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure. * * * * * With even step and musing gait; And looks commercing with the skies, Thy wrapt soul ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... XL Pensive, above an hour, with drooping head, He rested mute, ere he began his moan; And then his piteous tale of sorrow said, Lamenting in so soft and sweet a tone, He in a tiger's breast had pity bred, Or with his mournful wailings rent a stone. And so he sighed and wept; like rivers ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... tent, and, rising very early, at the President's suggestion they took a walk before sunrise about the great camp, inspecting the field, the artillery, the quarters, and all the appurtenances of the army. Lincoln was in a pensive mood, and scarcely a word was spoken. Finally, just as the sun was rising, they reached a commanding point; the President stopped, placed his left hand upon Mr. Hatch's shoulder, and slowly waving his right in the direction of the great city of tents, seriously inquired: "Mr. Hatch, what is all ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... raven blackness over shoulders that seemed chiseled. I began to think myself the happiest of men, for my system had always a bit of poetic fire in it. And then these charms, which had already begun to rob my heart of its peace, were made more seductive by a calmly resolved and yet pensive expression of countenance. Indeed, at a second glance, it seemed to approach melancholy, and bespoke that frame of mind when sorrow feeds most upon ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... activity of his mind, which was always being exercised on subjects of grave speculation, removed him from the noise and bustle of commonplace society. He was somewhat silent, inclined to solitude, and of a pensive countenance; yet no man found him difficult of access: his courtesy was exquisite, and among familiar friends he was noted for the flashes of a delicate and subtle wit. Collections were made of his apophthegms by friends, and some are recorded by his anonymous biographer.[5] Their finer perfume, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... together in my childhood's home, Aunt Ruth and I, and sunny-hearted May. She was a fair and most exquisite child; Her pensive face was delicate and mild Like her dead mother's; but through her dear eyes Her father smiled upon me, day by day. Afar in foreign countries did he roam, Now resting under Italy's blue skies, And now with Roy ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in his own room, with Oscar lying across the rug at his feet, his mind refused to be quieted. One picture after another presented itself to his imagination: the proud-souled enthusiast longing for the wild winter nights and the dark Atlantic seas; the pensive maiden, shuddering to hear the fierce story of Maclean of Lochbuy; the spoiled child, teasing her mamma and petting her canary; the wronged and weeping woman, her frame shaken with sobs, her hands clasped in despair; the artful and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... horses and chariots of fire. Chariots and horses are emblems of flight; but if sleep were descending upon the hero of the prophetic age, twilight would more appropriately have drawn her soft veil over nature, birds would have begun their vespers, clouds would have put on their changing, pensive colors, while cadences of music, breathed by the winds, would have shed lethargic influences into the scene. Inspiration does not trifle with us by really meaning such a preparation for a sleep of ages, and yet informing us, in so many words, that "the Lord would ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... the cracks-man's glance. She was then more beautiful than aught that ever he had dreamed of. Such hair as was hers, woven seemingly of dull flames, lambent, witching! And eyes!—beautiful always, but never more so than at this moment, when filled with sweetly pensive contemplation.... Was she reviewing the last twenty-four hours, dreaming of what had passed between her and that silly fool, Maitland? If only Anisty could surmise what they had said to each other, how long they had been acquainted; ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the pensive nymph oppressed, And secret passions laboured in her breast. Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, Not ardent lover robbed of all his bliss, 5 Not ancient lady when refused a kiss, Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... with the flax, she smiled, as though some pleasing thought had touched her mind. Her smile had the effect of sudden sunshine in the dark room where she sat and span,—it was radiant and mirthful as the smile of a happy child. Yet her dark blue eyes remained pensive and earnest, and the smile soon faded, leaving her fair face absorbed and almost dreamy. The whirr-whirring of the wheel grew less and less rapid,—it slackened,—it stopped altogether,—and, as though startled by some unexpected sound, the girl paused and listened, pushing away the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... them to the fight! What dangers threaten them—yet still they write: A hapless tribe! to every evil born, Whom villains hate, and fools affect to scorn: Strangers they come, amid a world of woe, And taste the largest portion ere they go. Pensive I spoke, and cast mine eyes around; The roof, methought, return'd a solemn sound; Each column seem'd to shake, and clouds, like smoke, From dusty piles and ancient volumes broke; Gathering above, like mists condensed they seem, Exhaled in summer from the rushy ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander, Adown some trottin' burn's meander, And no thick lang; Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... sashed; nurse a kitten with a blue ribbon round its neck; say that you like chocolate-creams; open your eyes very wide, and suck the tip of one finger occasionally. Let your manner generally vary between the pensive and the mischievous; always ask for explanations, especially of things which cannot possibly be explained in public. Do not attempt this pose unless your figure is mignon and your complexion pink. Do not be too realistic; never be sticky or dirty—men do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... of an insect-like buzz, divided into stanzas of two syllables each, with a pensive strain running through it, as if the heart of the little singer were filled with sadness. While it sounds rather faint at a distance, close at hand it has ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... recognized the tune as that which Thelma had sung at her spinning-wheel, and his bold bright eyes grew pensive and soft, as the picture of the fair face and form rose up again before his mind. Absorbed in a reverie, he almost started when Lorimer ceased playing, and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... ane ancient and godly matron, (the Lard at his cuming was absent.) In his cumpany war only with him Williame Kirkaldy, now Lard of Grange, and some otheris that wated upoun his chalmer. The Lady at suppar, persaving him pensive, begane to conforte him, and willed him to tack the werk of God in good parte. "My portioun, (said he,) of this world is schorte, for I will nott be with you fyvetene dayis." His servandis reparing ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... contrive to see her profile, dimly lighted by the flickering oil lamp; a very perfect profile, he thought; a forehead that was neither too high nor too low, a small aquiline nose, a short upper lip, and the prettiest mouth and chin in the world. It was just a shade too pensive now, the poor little mouth, he thought pityingly; and be wondered what it was like when it smiled. And then he began to arrange his lines for winning the smile he wanted so much to see from those thoughtful lips. It was, of course, for the gratification of the idlest, most vagabond curiosity ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Crossing were obliterated by a vast sheet of water stretching to the foothills. The up stage was stopped at Grangers; the last mail had been abandoned in the tules, the rider swimming for his life. "An area," remarked the "Sierra Avalanche," with pensive local pride, "as large as the State of Massachusetts is now ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a shrill voice, rudely breaking the pensive reverie, and with a start, she shut the desk, exclaiming as she ran to the door: "They ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... mentally digestive laugh. And if they have now, like a monarch with a troop of dwarfs, too many jesters kicking the dictionary about, to let them reflect that they are dull, occasionally, like the pensive monarch surprising himself with an idea of an idea of his own, they look so. And they are given to looking in the glass. They must see that something ails them. How much even the better order of them will endure, without a thought of the defensive, when the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bade him enter. He went in, and a tall lady in black, with plain linen collar and wristbands, rose to receive him. They confronted each other. Time and trouble had left their trace, but there were the glorious eyes, and jet black hair, and the face, worn and pensive, but still beautiful. It was the woman he had loved, the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... repose, so vast our throng. Three hundred wretches here, denied all light, In crowded quarters pass the infernal night. Some for a bed their tattered vestments join, And some on chest, and some on floors recline; Shut from the blessings of the evening air Pensive we lay with mingled corpses there: Meagre and wan, and scorched with heat below, We looked like ghosts ere death had made us so: How could we else, where heat and hunger joined Thus to debase the body and the mind? Where cruel thirst ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... pensive, rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always active and self-possessed, and those ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... very young are nice-looking without being beautiful, very supple and pensive, and with expressive eyes. They lack the unsteady, insincere countenance of the men, and have reposeful, placid faces, with occasional good features. There is a good deal of character in their firmly closed ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... virgin of the skies, How great thy use, how great thy blessing, every thing that lives. Lives not alone nor or itself: fear not and I will call, The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice. Come forth worm and the silent valley, to thy pensive queen. ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... was in the tower, a gentleman of his acquaintance got access to him, and found him very pensive and melancholy concerning the prevailing defections amongst many of the ministers of Scotland, and, having lately got account of their proceedings at the general assembly held at Glasgow, anno 1610, where the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... thine image here's so deeply graven, That nought can e'er efface it. Trust me, then, love, As I would thee. There's not a thought I own, No, not a fond emotion of my soul,— Not e'en the slightest ripple o'er the mind, When calm and pensive as it used to be, But I would tell it thee. O couldst thou view my heart, and see thyself So firmly master of its deep recesses, Thou wouldst be confident. If thou shouldst be ignoble, fear not me, Love shall draw out thy patent of descent, And trace thy ancestry to more than ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... remarkable for its activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must not be confounded ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by no means ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Puritanic stiffness still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated officer of the old French war; and there comes the shop-keeping Pyncheon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned back from his wrists; and there the periwigged and brocaded gentleman of the artist's legend, with the beautiful and pensive Alice, who brings no pride out of her virgin grave. All try the picture-frame. What do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts her child, that his little hands may touch it! There is evidently a mystery about the picture, that perplexes these poor Pyncheons when they ought ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... overwhelming. But Berenice was a refined, cultivated, and dignified woman of society; such a woman never loses her self-possession; she is always mistress of the situation. Berenice was so now. But for the bright light in her usually pensive dark eyes, and the rosy flush on her habitually pale cheeks, there was no difference in her aspect, as, with her hand lightly resting on Mr. Brudenell's arm, she advanced towards ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... journey has successful been, The fierce Almanzor will obey the queen. I found him, like Achilles on the shore, Pensive, complaining much, but threatening more; And, like that injured Greek, he heard our woes, Which, while I told, a gloomy smile arose From his bent brows: And still, the more he heard, A more severe and sullen joy appeared. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... there was an old gentleman, of the age of sixty-three, in a bob-wig, and inclined to be stout, who always played the lover. He was equally excellent in the pensive Romeo and the bustling Rapid. He had an ill way of talking off the stage, partly because he had lost all his front teeth: a circumstance which made him avoid, in general, those parts in which he had to force a great ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her features, though not of classic outline, were radiant with life. Her eye was one of the finest I have ever seen—rich, deep-toned, and eloquent, speaking volumes in each varying expression, and generally suggestive of pensive emotion. Irving was about eight years her senior, and this difference was just sufficient to draw out that fond reliance of female character which he has so beautifully set forth in the sketch of 'The ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... to stay nearly a half hour. She put the baby to sleep and sat waiting with her pensive young eyes gazing at the leaping flames. She heard him stop and answer the call of an owl from the woods. A whip-poor-will was softly singing from the bushes nearby. He stopped to call him also, and then found an excuse to linger ten minutes ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... poem in all literature than that one in which the pensive and moral Schiller portrays the struggle of an ingenuous youth who would find the source of moral purification in the moral law; who would seek the power that can transform him, in the mere imperatives of his conscience, and the mere struggling ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... may enjoy an analysis of certain pages in "Ma Piece," for instance, the wonderful description of an alerte at 2 A.M. above the village of Tailly-sur-Meuse (pp. 131, 132). With the vigorous picturesqueness of these sentences we may compare the pensive quality and the solidity of touch which combine to form such a passage as the following account of a watch at Azannes (August 14, 1914):—"La nuit est claire, rayee par les feux des projecteurs de Verdun qui font des barres d'or dans le ciel; ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... had changed—he felt it before she reached him—before she uttered a word. He had never seen her in a long dress until to-day; and in putting on Mrs. Gay's gown she seemed to have clothed herself in that lady's appealing and pensive manner. The black skirt, flowing between them on the grass, divided them more completely than the memory of their quarrel. He was chilled because it made her appear reserved and distant; she was embarrassed because she had not yet learned to walk in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... a reply as to the sister-in-law's state, and a few words on the progress of the flitting, there was a silence while Mr. Audley read the letters that had come for him in his absence, and Cherry's face became more and more pensive. At last, when Mr. Audley laid down his letters, and leant against the chimneypiece, she ventured to say, 'Is ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more than pensive at the ticket-window, she hesitated, then stopped and observed him. That she should observe anybody was in a way a coincidence, for, as it happened, she was herself the most observed person in all the place. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills With hopvines' incense all the pensive glory That fills the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... eyes wandered away from the bone-yellow pages of the ancient document and grew pensive in dreamy meditation. This record was opening, for her, the door of intimately wrought history upon the past of her family and her nation when both had been in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... people. In a commonwealth, where the People was sovereign, and the persons of the magistrates ever changing, those little comfortable commercial operations could not be managed so easily as in civilized realms like France and England. The old Leaguer thought with pensive regret, no doubt, of the hard, but still profitable bargains by which the Guises and Mayennes and Mercoeurs, and a few hundred of their noble adherents, had been brought over to the cause of the king. He sighed at the more recent memories of the Marquis de ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... chosen from the first calallada he meets; who requires no further protection from the cold than a pair of linen trousers, in that favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer; who, more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive beauties, eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... may its symmetry and beauty show, A look, a character, the pencil seize, Give to the form where youthful graces glow, An air of pensive dignity and ease, ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... her list to include sausages and a pie, cheese and rolls, besides the usual tea and stewed tomatoes. The girls ate the little meal with their hats and wraps on, a sense of change filled the air, and they were all a little pensive, even with an unexpected ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his, he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those days. "The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result—not the active," he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend, Diodati: "You asked what I am about—what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I am thinking of immortality. Forgive ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... is too much, too much for mortal Eyes! I see a Monarch seated on a Throne—but seems most sad and pensive. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... mysterious personage return?" said the inquisitive gentleman. "Never!" replied the Baronet, with a pensive shake of the head: "I never saw him again." "And pray what has all this to do with the picture?" inquired the old gentleman with the nose—"True!" said the questioner—"Is it the portrait of this crack-brained ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... William to the States General. Mr Vanslyperken proceeded from the admiral's to the charming widow, to whom he imparted this unwelcome intelligence. She, of course, was grave, and listened to his protestations with her little finger in her mouth, and a pensive, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... most men do in selecting a wife. Tell Dr. Leet that I am glad he found me in a pigeon hole of his memory, but that I am a long way from being "the blue-eyed bunch of mischief" he describes. I wish you would tell him that I am slender, pale, and pensive with a glamour of romance and mystery hovering about me; that is the way I would ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... spurred on her horse, saying to her people, "Ho there! Don't let him kill her." But when the seneschal's lady arrived close to them, she turned her horse's head quickly and the sight she beheld prevented her from hunting. She came back pensive, and then the lantern of her intelligence opened, and received a bright light, which made a thousand things clear, such as church and other pictures, fables, and lays of the troubadours, or the domestic ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... admiration and jealousy. He was ashamed to admit the aversion inspired by the wounded man, so sorely wounded that he was unable to see what was going on around him. His hatred was a form of cowardice, terrifying in its persistence. How pensive were Marguerite's eyes if she took them off her patient for a few seconds! . . . She had never looked at him in that way. He knew all the amorous gradations of her glance, but her fixed gaze at this injured ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Louis, was of nearly the same age with Hortense. He was a young man of fine personal appearance, very intelligent, of scholarly tastes, and of irreproachable character. Though pensive in temperament, he had proved himself a hero on the field of battle, and he possessed, in all respects, a very noble character. Many of the letters which he had written from Egypt to his friends in Paris had been intercepted by the British cruisers, and were published. They ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... of the month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked, read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to do in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in currying and brushing down the horses' coats, and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... mortals in its tomb; By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possessed, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee's a jest; Emblem of hell, nursery of vice, Thou crawling university of lice; When wretches numberless to ease their pains, With smoke and all delude their pensive chains. How shall I avoid thee? or with what spell Dissolve the enchantment of thy magic cell? Ev'n Fox himself can't boast so many martyrs, As yearly fall within thy wretched quarters. Money I've none, and debts I cannot pay, Unless my vermin, will those debts defray. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... pensive. The day was too bright and fine for him to be sorrowful or reflective for any length of time; so, after staying by the side of Fritz for a short while on the shore, sharing his thoughts about the dear ones far away—although ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... track, of nights spent in trees, and days spent in hunger and combats. By degrees, the fate of the unfortunate king interested his auditors so greatly, that the play languished even at the royal table, and the young king, with a pensive look and downcast eye, followed, without appearing to give any attention to it, the smallest details of this Odyssey, very picturesquely related by ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her face is as one perfect sunbeam. Surely never has she looked so lovely. The smile dies, her lips close, a pensive sweetness creeps around them, and one terms one's self a fatuous fool to have deemed her at her best a moment since; and so on through all the many changes that only serve to show how countless is ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... To the eyes of childhood nothing could be more beautiful. It was a pink and pensive cow with a slight clerical expression, a very dignified animal, caught in the act of sedately skipping ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... matter of fact, I didn't, but I suppose," added Mrs. Lascelles, as her rich voice fell into a pensive (but not a pathetic) key, "I suppose it is you who are much more surprised at seeing me. I can't help it if you are, Captain Clephane. I am not really a religious person. I have not flown to that extreme as yet. But it has been a comfort to me, sometimes; ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... all the rest. She grew pensive and sank into a reverie. Suddenly the door of the salon opened, and Camille entered. After inquiring after her health, he informed her that in consequence of a cold he, too, had been sick; and, as he was now free from business engagements, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... profound. Mark what blunders parents constantly make as to the nature of their own offspring, bred, too, under their eyes, and displaying every hour their characteristics. How often in the nursery does the genius count as a dunce because he is pensive; while a rattling urchin is invested with almost supernatural qualities because his animal spirits make him impudent and flippant! The school-boy, above all others, is not the simple being the world imagines. In that young bosom are often stirring passions as strong as our own, desires ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... to his—the eyes with the drooping, pensive corners deepened by dark lashes which Miss ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... answer, but retired sad and pensive to his own home, where he spent the night in pondering what was best for him to do; for there was no likelihood he should be able to defend himself against the power of the king's son; therefore he at length concluded he would travel abroad and see the world. Being ready to depart, ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... persons lament in a pensive and apologetic sort of way, "Yes, I have a great weakness for fine books." The very presence of this mis-called weakness, however, is unmistakable proof of great mental strength, and those who suffer from it may find solace in the fact that the giants of commerce, leading ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... should be pensive at the demise of Lorenzo, is there any reason why Aurora should weep outright upon the same occasion? This Aurora, however, weeping and stately, all nobleness and all tears, is a magnificent creation, fashioned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... out in December, but there were times when the Doctor wondered if she was really as keen about it as she pretended to be. He found her once or twice, her usually active hands idle in her lap, and a pensive droop ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on. A great bustle and much preparation seemed to be going on within the convent, and veiled figures were flitting about, whispering, arranging, &c. Sometimes a skinny old dame would come close to the grating, and, lifting up her veil, bestow upon the pensive public a generous view of a very haughty and very wrinkled visage of some seventy years standing, and beckon into the church for the major-domo of the convent (an excellent and profitable situation, by the way), or for padre this ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... at all the ideal sister, being tall and dark, and with nothing peculiarly devotional or pensive in her cast of feature. Her face was a fine, earnest one. Her movements were full of energy and decision, though not quick or sharp. The whole impression left was that of one by nature far from humility, ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... Roi bears no definite date, but is a sort of pensive autumn reverie following the Rocky Mount convention of last summer. This grave and dignified journal is credited to the House of Tillery, and if typographical evidence may be accepted, it belongs most particularly to that ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the G.F.S. girl arrived, and as Mysie came to a halt in delight at the aspect of a young one that had just crept out into public life, the sister was called to the window. She was a great deal younger and more of the present day in style than her sister, and had pensive-looking grey eyes, with a somewhat bored languid manner as she shook hands ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... late when we rose from conference, and I betook me to the princess's apartments. She was pensive that evening; yet, when I left her, she flung her arms about me and grew, for an instant, bashfully radiant as she slipped a ring on my finger. I was wearing the King's ring; but I had also on my little finger a plain ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... mustered, even before discussion of the first magnum. She was indeed a very pretty girl of the Scotch cast of beauty, that is, with a profusion of hair of paley gold, and a skin like the snow of her own mountains in whiteness. Yet she had not a pallid or pensive cast of countenance; her features, as well as her temper, had a lively expression; her complexion, though not florid, was so pure as to seem transparent, and the slightest emotion sent her whole blood at once to her face and neck. Her form, though under the common size, was remarkably ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... long, sweet child, Thou too shalt be a page unto a King. I'm glad Alarcos smiled not overmuch; Your smilers please me not. I love a face Pensive, not sad; for where the mood is thoughtful, The passion is most deep and most refined. Gay tempers bear light hearts—are soonest gained And soonest lost; but he who meditates On his own nature, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... Jean—fair-haired, blue-eyed, pensive Jean—was seated in the cellar with her uncle. She had brought him his daily dinner in a tin can, and he having just finished it, was about to resume his work while the niece rose to depart. Time ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... on thee, Love, when each hour Of twilight comes, with pensive mood, And silence, like a spell of power, Rests, in its depth, on field and wood; And as the mingling shadows brood Still closer o'er the lonely sea, Here, on the beach where first we woo'd, I 'll pour to heaven ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wilt, and here nigh this well thou shalt find me, and so passed on his way. Then the king sat in a study, and bade his men fetch his horse as fast as ever they might. Right so came by him Merlin like a child of fourteen year of age, and saluted the king, and asked him why he was so pensive. I may well be pensive, said the king, for I have seen the marvellest sight that ever I saw. That know I well, said Merlin, as well as thyself, and of all thy thoughts, but thou art but a fool to take thought, for it will not amend thee. Also I know what thou art, and who was thy father, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Kate—who during the voyage would at one time be in the highest spirits, and the next pensive, as if occupied by a world of thought—"I declare if that one isn't the very image of Mr Trotter, our curate at Allington! He has the same little tuft of hair on top on his head; and, besides, he has the identical same way of popping it on one side when he used to speak, and staring at you ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... declining day, And bring the hour my pensive spirit loves; When, o'er the mountain flow descends the ray That gives to silence the deserted groves. Ah, let the happy court the morning still, When, in her blooming loveliness array'd, She bids fresh beauty light the vale, or hill, And rapture warble ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... hillside, or it was in streams and patches. We travelled along the vale without appearing to ascend for some miles; all the reaches were beautiful, in exquisite proportion, the hills seeming very high from being so near to us. It might have seemed a valley which nature had kept to herself for pensive thoughts and tender feelings, but that we were reminded at every turning of the road of something beyond by the coal-carts which were travelling towards us. Though these carts broke in upon the tranquillity of the glen, they added much to ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Berta tucked a pensive skip in between steps as they moved through the gloomy corridor past rain-beaten windows. "It wasn't like Gertrude to burst out like that just because Sara came late to our domestic evening, but it did spoil the fudges and the game ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... moments when Dorothea's exuberance made him pensive and sad; he felt the weight of his forty years; they were inclined to make him hypochondriacal. Was it the vengeance of fate that made him slow up when they came to a hill, while Dorothea ran on ahead and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... after she went about somewhat pensive, as though a troublous thought were on her; and when, three days thereafter, she met the wood-mother, she spake to her even as they parted, and said: Mother, much wisdom hast thou learned me, and now ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... rejoiced, for reasons of her own, that it was made. She began to find the occupation diverting, and characteristically did not hesitate to allow her critic to form most alarming conclusions as to the state of matters at the Red House. She was pensive, and mild, and a little surprised when Miss Temperley, with a suppressed gasp, urged that the question was deeply serious. It amused Hadria to reproduce, for Henriette's benefit, the theories regarding the treatment and training of children that she had found current ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... course, at the bottom of it. He probably felt that it was a pity. We usually feel so on hearing that a pretty and charming girl is engaged to be married. We think that she might have done so much better for herself, and we grow pensive or possibly sentimental over her lost opportunity when contemplating him in the mirror as he shaves. Like all so-called happy events, an engagement is not usually a matter of universal rejoicing. Some one is, in all probability, left to think twice about it. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of an air of superiority; but with Mr. Harte, to dress well was simply a natural instinct. His long, drooping moustache and the side-whiskers of the time—incongruous as the comparison may seem—called to mind the elder Sothern as "Lord Dundreary." His natural expression was pensive, even sad. When one considers that pathos and tragedy, perhaps even more than humor, pervade his ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... our literary connoisseurs who cast a retrospective glance over days long past, may awaken into memory that delicately constructed and pensive-looking man, of Pearl-street, recognized by the name of Charles Smith. I believe he was a New-Yorker. Pulmonary suffering was his physical infirmity—his relief, tobacco, the fumes of which aver surrounded him like a halo. He abounded in the gloom and glory of the American Revolution, and published, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Perhaps we'd better keep it quiet—though I must tell Aunt JULIE—it will make her so happy to hear that you burnt a manuscript on my account! And, besides, I should like to ask her whether that's a usual thing with young wives. (Looks uneasy and pensive again.) But poor old EJLERT'S manuscript! Oh Lor, you know! Well, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... the Earth's atmosphere helped to cloud their intelligence. Certain it is, they returned very pensive, very cross, and ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... the children, she stopped. Then she turned up her veil, and Elsie saw with astonishment that it was really the lady who had spoken to them that morning, but so changed, that it was no wonder Elsie had not known her. The face that had looked so gay and smiling was now sad and pensive; the fair curling hair, falling in pretty confusion over the white forehead, was drawn smoothly back under the neat crape bonnet, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches that fell ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... remarkable stillness in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down. I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not sad. It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October is one of the finest months of the year, and that we have many warm, bright, still days yet before us. Of course we know we ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learn'd to wander, Adown some trottin' burn's meander, An' no think lang: O sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... again sang Chibiabos, Sang a song of love and longing, 335 In those accents sweet and tender, In those tones of pensive sadness, Sang a maiden's lamentation For her lover, her Algonquin. "When I think of my beloved, 340 Ah me! think of my beloved, When my heart is thinking of him, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "Ah, me! when I parted from him, Round my neck he hung the wampum, 345 As a pledge, the snow-white ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down Into this Deep; and in the general fall I also: at which time this powerful key Into my hands was given, with charge to keep These gates for ever shut, which none can pass Without my opening. Pensive here I sat Alone; but long I sat not, till my womb, Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown, Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. At last this odious offspring whom thou seest, Thine own begotten, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... in general vanish like the morning mist before the sun; whereas, if you quail before it, it is sure to become more imminent. I have fervent hope that the words of my mouth sank deep into the hearts of some of my auditors, as I observed many of them depart musing and pensive. I occasionally distributed tracts amongst them; for although they themselves were unable to turn them to much account, I thought that by their means they might become of service at some future ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... her own room, she could easily see that very window where she was told the man came to take his prospects. The thought that it was the Duke de Nemours, entirely changed the situation of her mind; she no longer found herself in that pensive tranquillity which she had begun to enjoy, her spirits were ruffled again as with a tempest: at last, not being able to stay at home, she went abroad to take the air in a garden without the suburbs, where she hoped to ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... and forlorn marches of the last fortnight silence had for the most part fitlier expressed our emotions; or, if we sang, the melodies were pensive and often sad. But now all was changed. We saw that our painful trials were rapidly drawing to a close, and it is only the truth to say that we rejoiced ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... lonely hast thou stood Here all forsaken and forgot! All men failed thee to visit save Some idle lover of sylvan haunts Who trod, perchance, this hallowed spot, And cast a pensive eye upon This lovely glade, thy sole abode (Full lost in these continuous woods), And brooding o'er thy lowly lot, Oft thus did muse: "This cabin lone Here stands to tell the tale of him, Back-woodsman brave, who having ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... lingered on the still night air. There was a pensive gladness in the man's heart as he tightly held her little hand and led her to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... those of the setting sun do not. Then the sunlight is whiter and newer in the morning,—not so yellow and diffused. A difference akin to this is true of the two seasons I am speaking of. The spring is the morning sunlight, clear and determined; the autumn, the afternoon rays, pensive, lessening, golden. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... made it up no one ever knew. But after much talking and crying, kissing and laughing, the breach was healed, and peace declared. A slight haze still lingered in the air after the storm, for Fanny was very humble and tender that evening; Tom a trifle pensive, but distressingly polite, and Polly magnanimously friendly to every one; for generous natures like to forgive, and Polly enjoyed the petting after the insult, like ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... spectacles, and darted one glance which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed to envelop and take in, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss Jemima's personal attractions. Now Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a mild and pensive expression of countenance; and she would have been positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though Miss Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not de natura pensive; she had too much of the Hazeldean ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hazel eye Outshines the light gazelle's, And hid beneath its brilliancy, A pensive shadow dwells. But I've seen it illumed with a mischievous light, Which the sparkles displayed in the meteor's flight Cannot meet, as her laughter reverberates round, And merrily echo responds ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home! Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast! Of late she has assumed a new charm in my eyes,—a certain pensiveness and abstraction have succeeded to her wonted gayety. Ah, Love is pensive,—is it not, Cleveland? How often I ask myself that question! And yet, amidst all my hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond! How can that innocent and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has endured and known? How, even though her imagination be dazzled by some prestige around ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peppermint bull's-eye—on the short grass, he patted a little beetle that pushed its way across a world of disproportionate size, and then, by peevishly pulling the end of his whip which hung from Mr. Russell's pensive hand, he suggested that the pursuit should continue. So they walked to the crest of wood that stands at the top of the Ring, a compressed tabloid forest, fifty yards from side to side, as round as ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... will not tell him till he returns. Otherwise he would leave Rome at once, and we do not want him back just immediately, do we?" And I toyed with her rippling gold tresses half mechanically, while I wondered within myself at the rapid success of my scheme. She, in the meantime grew pensive and abstracted, and for a few moments we were both silent. If she had known! I thought, if she could have imagined that she was encircled by the arm of HER OWN HUSBAND, the man whom she had duped and wronged, the poor fool she had mocked at and despised, whose life had been an obstruction in ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli |
