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Reverie   /rˈɛvəri/   Listen
Reverie

noun
(pl. reveries)
1.
Absentminded dreaming while awake.  Synonyms: air castle, castle in Spain, castle in the air, daydream, daydreaming, oneirism, revery.
2.
An abstracted state of absorption.  Synonym: revery.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Reverie" Quotes from Famous Books



... looking at the picture, and secretly wondering how any person with such a face could bear to see it transferred to canvas, she was suddenly roused from her reverie by the pressure of a heavy hand upon her shoulder, and a gentleman in a very gruff, but by no means an ill-natured or ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... barbaric splendour, have long presented to my fancy the glowing and ever-shifting combinations upon which, as on the red embers, in a winter's gloaming, I love to gaze, propping my white head upon my hand, in a lazy luxury of reverie, from my own arm-chair, while they drop, ever and anon, into new shapes, and silently tell ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... from his reverie by the clatter of approaching hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... also be considered, a history of the police force in every large town in England. When I had ended these papers, I did not feel disposed to read any others at that time, but preferred falling into a train of reverie and recollection. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... one of them forth. The minutes passed, and Wetherell began to hate him. Then some one tried the door, peered in through the glass, perceived Jethro, shook the knob, knocked violently, all to no purpose. Jethro seemed lost in a reverie. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... tears rolled down their cheeks. They had seen Shasta's trick and they could therefore appreciate it. Never a smile lit up the grim face of the Pah Utah. He continued leisurely smoking, his keen black eyes looking dreamily into the fire, as if lost in some pleasant reverie. ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... and ideas of the same sort, the Anglo-Saxons had landed in Britain and settled there.[51] Established in their "isolated dwellings," if they leave them it is for action; if they re-enter them it is for solitary reverie, or sometimes for orgies. The main part of their original literature, like that of their brothers and cousins on the Continent, consists of triumphal songs and heartrending laments. It is ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... broods in reverie beatific Over as nice a "sitting" Of golden eggs as ever fowl prolific Tended, untired, unflitting. Sound eggs and of good stock, there is no doubt of them. What will come out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... recalled that dark portal, with its dusty stairway mounting between close walls to disappear in the upper shadows, her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless, it was a picture often in her reverie; and sometimes it came suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts, as if it leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveller, still roaming the world afar, ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... time in blissful reverie. "He's getting there!" he whispered to himself. "He'll get the big cases yet, and I can keep my first place. I must see Jane ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... girl replied, awakened suddenly from a reverie of a different sort. "Let's keep it a secret for a while. I haven't told Aunt Susan yet, and I don't want to tell her till I go to Topeka. Of course I'll have to explain if you come down there to ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... had pictured that scene the tempo of the verse changed: the music began softly to play a Schumann Reverie to the lines beginning: "But this triumphal cortege is not enough. The return of the army demands another cortege,"—the triumph of the Mutiles— the martyrs of the war who have given more than life to the defence of France—the most glorious heroes ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of a distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour of night. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round. As the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones of the pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form of a solitary horseman. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... and all was dark, when Dick started up from a reverie into which he had fallen. What was that which had reached his ears from a distance? Was it a cry, or merely the moaning ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... did not care if she did. Such is the egoism of untried love that I did not care if she did! And I lapsed into a reverie—a reverie in which everything went smoothly, everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and only love and ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoues took a tawnier tint in his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the signal of decay, through the half-open shutters, and it lay wearily on the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... on the bench. She moved not. She had remained like that, still for hours, giving him a waking dream of rest without end, in an infinity of happiness without sound and movement, without thought, without joy; but with an infinite ease of content, like a world-embracing reverie breathing the air of sadness and scented with love. For hours she ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... of her adored one. The hallucination went so far that she marked the linen with the priest's initials; often with his and her own interlaced. She plied her needle with a very deft hand, and would work for hours at a stretch, absorbed in a delicious reverie. So she satisfied her cravings, and passed through moments of delight which kept her ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... undertaken somewhat under compulsion, and we doubt not he would much more gladly have gone straight back to farm-life, and kept these leisurely pilgrimages to a more convenient season. One is not in a mood for dreaming on battlefields, or wandering in a reverie by romantic rivers, when the future is unsettled and life is for the time being without an aim. There is something of mystery and melancholy hanging about these peregrinations, and the cause, it seems to us, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... her reverie. She, too, had said no word. "This is Steven's Forks, isn't it? Shall we ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... begins to appear. Many dark superstitions, no doubt, bubbled up in the torrent of that plastic reverie; for this people, clean and natural as on the whole it appears, cannot have been without a long and ignoble ancestry. The Greeks themselves, heirs to kindred general traditions, retained some childish and obscene ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... out of the room, and up the stairs into the loft; and here, in a dark corner, where no daylight could enter, they left him. "What's the meaning of this?" thought the Tree. "What am I to do here? What shall I hear now, I wonder?" And he leaned against the wall lost in reverie. Time enough had he too for his reflections; for days and nights passed on, and nobody came up; and when at last somebody did come, it was only to put some great trunks in a corner out of the way. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... His reverie was suddenly interrupted by the sound of two whistles. A moment later the motor was purring softly, and with the headlights dimmed, the big sixty horse-power car slid out of the garage and started ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... behold, as if by magic, a paradise burst from her wilds, see cultivation smile upon her jungles, and hail a vast and increasing population, blessing the hand that awoke them to life, to happiness, and to prosperity. That so felicitous a change is not the mere reverie of a glowing imagination, or the sheer effusion of benevolence alone, is ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... pleasantly exciting remark, Tommy returned to his supper, and Nat sank into a blissful reverie ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... a manner not to be resisted. For a long time an automaton, he remained passive, without inquiring into the cause of this action; but the very moment he was desirous of accounting to himself for it, astonishment seized his mind; and passing from the surprise of a first thought to the reverie of curiosity, he formed a chain ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... sits spinning or weaving: it would reveal the process next highest to creation. But the only hope of ever understanding such things lies in growing oneself. There is the still growth of the moonlit night of reverie; cloudy, with wind, and a little rain, comes the morning of thought, when the mind grows faster and the heart more slowly; then wakes the storm in the forest of human relation, tempest and lightning abroad, the soul enlarging by great bursts of vision and leaps of understanding and resolve; then ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... Buren and the children liked to go to Franklin Park. Mrs. Van Buren liked to sit in the great stone Emerson arbor on Schoolmaster's Hill, and watch the white flocks of English sheep wander to and fro and feed, guarded and guided by shepherd-dogs, and to gaze away in an idle reverie at the Blue Hills under the purple ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth

... all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world, and all the vaporous freshness of dawn. They recalled to me the poetry of the North, wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or Iceland or Sweden, Frithjof and the Edda, Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world of cold and mist, of genius and of reverie, where warmth comes not from the sun but from the heart, where man is more noticeable than nature,—that chaste and vigorous world, in which will plays a greater part than sensation, and thought has more power ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... rejoiced in his day's employment, like a horse among pastures, now sat staring on a column of accounts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily sighing, the picture of inefficiency and inattention. He was sunk deep in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor heard me, and I stood and watched him unobserved. I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance bludgeoned me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked myself. Here was I come home again, my honour saved; there was my friend in want of rest, nursing, and a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in a sort of reverie, held by the charm of these things. "We have no trees like this in Italy," she was vaguely thinking. "The trees and the wild creatures are never so near to one there; one never gets so intimate with them; Nature is not so accessible and friendly." She remembered having ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... sonorous, the magic of the words more vivid. The purified meaning of the author, the exaltation he himself must have felt, were realised with a clearer apprehension. But the very novelty of the emotional undertaking drew me reluctantly from that which was becoming a lulling musical reverie. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... you see matters were gradually approaching to a very delightful crisis; and we, as you may believe, saw it with no small satisfaction. We indulged in the most delicious dreams; indeed, our whole life was now one continued reverie of the most soothing and balmy kind. From this dreamy state, however, we were very soon awakened by the following paragraph in a newspaper, which my father accidentally stumbled on, one morning as we were at breakfast. It was headed "Dreadful Shipwreck," and went on thus:—"It is with feelings ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... horribly suggestive of his ancestry. Presently he lifted one great paw to the window. Balancing his weight upon his only serviceable hind-leg, he lifted himself and stood with both front feet upon the sill, and pushed his nose against the girl's dress. She awoke from her reverie at the touch, and her hands unclasped, and she slowly caressed the bristly head. The animal seemed to appreciate the attention, for, with his powerful paws, he drew himself ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her reverie. "Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?" ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... McClellan was very quiet for a considerable time, evidently thinking of matters which deeply interested him. An occasional marked change seemed to come over the spirit of his dream. Finally I awakened him from his reverie, saying: "A penny for your thoughts. I have been watching you for half an hour or more, and would like much to know, honor bright, what you ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith

... these things?" he demanded. "Even an amateur artist must have SOME sense. Can't they see what is happening? There's that thing of hers hanging in the passage. I put it in the passage because there's not much light in the passage. She's labelled it Reverie. If she had called it Influenza I could have understood it. I asked her where she got the idea from, and she said she saw the sky like that one evening in Norfolk. Great Heavens! then why didn't she shut her eyes or go home and hide behind the bed-curtains? If I had seen ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... reveal forgotten sights and let loose lost passions. I have never heard him speak except in some Irish literary or political society, but there at any rate, as in conversation, I found a man whose life was a ceaseless reverie over the religious and political history of Ireland. He saw himself pleading for his country before an invisible jury, perhaps of the great dead, against traitors at home and enemies abroad, and a sort of frenzy in his voice and ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats

... for a subject on which to write, and according to her temperament and circumstances she will certainly choose one of six things:—"A Spring Reverie" (or it may be "An Autumn Reverie," as the time of year suits); or "Elsie, a character sketch" (describing one of those insufferably angelic women whom happily God never made); or "Hints on Economy in Dress"; or "My First Bicycle Ride"; or an exposure of the ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... Jacques pointed to Claire RenA(C), and the three strange men held back. Jacques came slowly forward. The sound of his step on the hard ground interrupted Claire RenA(C)'s reverie; she looked up and around. She saw the three men standing at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... hear what I said. Or perhaps the learned horse struck him differently. Or his mind may have been entirely occupied with the problem of Mexican railways so that he could pay no attention either to the learned horse or to me. If so, he was wakened from his reverie by the next performance. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... these volumes, had grown up beneath this roof of worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating even in his infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that he was of a different order from those among whom he lived. Timid, susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no better company than a book, the years had stolen on, till he had arrived at that mournful period of boyhood when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy. In the chapter ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Before him lay the lake where the long morning lights quivered and danced, as its calm was now and again ruffled by a gentle breeze. The whole scene had a lovely and peaceful look, and, gazing on it, Arthur fell into a reverie. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... it gave me a mental fillip, and enabled me to start with work I had been pausing over; and it nearly always has the power to produce a pleasant, and perhaps wholesome, retardation of thought—a half unthinking reverie, if one adapts surrounding circumstances to encourage this mood. The only sure brain stimulants with me are plenty of fresh air and tea; but each of these in large quantity produces a kind of intoxication: the ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... Claes out of his reverie. He took her into his arms, pushed open a door, and sprang lightly up the staircase. Finding the door of her apartment locked, he laid her gently ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... do so," he answered, smiling. Miss Winter looked at Etheldred reprovingly, and she shrank into herself, drew apart, and indulged in a reverie. She had heard in books of girls writing poetry, romance, history—gaining fifties and hundreds. Could not some of the myriads of fancies floating in her mind thus be made available? She would compose, publish, earn money—some day call papa, show him her hoard, beg him to take ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... stream is not level, but is broken by a wave which stands above the rest; which is but another way of saying that some one thing is always more prominent in our thought than the rest. Only when we are in a sleepy reverie, or not thinking about much of anything, does the stream approximate a level. At all other times some one object occupies the highest point in our thought, to the more or less complete exclusion of other things which we might think about. A thousand and one ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... in his astronomical meditations, and thinking more about the celestial than the terrestrial world, when a distant sound aroused him from his reverie. He listened attentively, and to his great amaze, fancied he heard the sounds of a piano. He could not be mistaken, for he distinctly heard ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... paint'st?" "Lo, I the man?" the savouring sage replied. "Now be thine eyes the witness of my art! This tunny drest, so odorous shall steam, The spicy sweetness so shall steal thy sense, That thou in a delicious reverie Shalt slumber heavenly o'er the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... in your ring?" Mitya interrupted suddenly, as though awakening from a reverie. He pointed to one of the three large rings adorning ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... her reverie, sat up and began fanning herself with greater energy. "Of all summers to have to stay in town!" she said disconsolately. "I don't remember having such ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... formless reverie, an aimless groping through a bewildering maze of emotions but vaguely apprehended, she started up, faced round and saw Lanyard, topcoat over arm and hat in hand, about to ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... heard; and not until the carriage drew up at Stillyside, and the bark of a lap-dog, on the top of the distant steps, that led to the verandah in front of the house, struck her ear, did she fully awake from her mournful reverie. Then, alighting, she passed through a postern that hung at the side of folding gates, and, winding her way up a walk bordered with shrubs and flowers, approached the dwelling, that stood upon a knoll. At that moment the sound of a cowbell in the contiguous mountain coppice told ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... Margaret saw that in a twinkling; but she missed out of them all hearty and genial atmosphere. They were to be preserved, however, as valuable; so she laid them carefully on one side. When this little piece of business was ended, she fell into a reverie; and the thought of her absent father ran strangely in Margaret's head this night. She almost blamed herself for having felt her solitude (and consequently his absence) as a relief; but these two days had set her up afresh, with new strength and brighter ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... depend upon the sight of buildings?" said Cecilia, when, turning towards her companion, she perceived him yawning, with such evident inattention to her answer, that not chusing to interrupt his reverie, she ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... through the darkness within the tepee, over the cold ashes heaped on the centre fire, and passes into the ear of the toothless old woman, who sits dumb in silent reverie. Thence it flies on swifter wing over many winter snows, till at last it cleaves the warm light atmosphere of her grandfather's youth. From there ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... amazing sequence of events which had befallen since he strolled out of the dining-room of the Central Hotel. He stood there, motionless, with hands plunged deep in his pockets, but, at the outset of a reverie in which judgment and prudence might have helped in the council, he happened to catch sight of himself in an oblong mirror over the mantelpiece, for the apartment, redolent of New York's later architecture, contained an open grate, and was furnished with the chaste beauty of the Chippendale ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of it. In this vivid being, carried away by an impulse to speak, talking with her whole personality, he had seen the real woman in a temper of activity, as he had already seen the real woman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded emotion. In both she was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of majesty that she had been to the world. With that amazement of his went something like terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... upon my reverie by putting me into the omnibus. But the omnibus quite belonged to fairyland too; it did not go rattling and jolting, but stole quietly up the long hill; letting me enjoy a view of the river and the hills of ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... but too self-consciously and with unnecessary refinements, a few poems of Lermontov (Pushkin had not then come into fashion again). Then suddenly, as though ashamed of his enthusiasm, began, a propos of the well-known poem, "A Reverie," to attack and fall foul of the younger generation. While doing so he did not lose the opportunity of expounding how he would change everything! after his own fashion, if the power were in his hands. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... long while making his way between the fences, keeping close to the river bank, but finding his way confidently, and scarcely giving it a thought indeed. He was absorbed in something quite different, and looked round with surprise when suddenly, waking up from a profound reverie, he found himself almost in the middle of ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... and the dash of their oars; by the low murmur of human voices, by the chime of the vesper bells, borne over the water, and the sounds of music raised at intervals along the canals. The poetry, the romance of the scene stole upon me unawares. I fell into a reverie, in which visionary forms and recollections gave way to dearer and sadder realities, and my mind seemed no longer in my own power. I called upon the lost, the absent, to share the present with me,—I called ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... in the innocent heart and the placid mien of his young descendant? No matter now! Behold, he is a light-hearted and airy child! Thought passes over his brow like a cloud in a summer sky, or the shadow of a bird over the sunshiny earth; and he skims away from the silent hall and his momentary reverie to fly a ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... crouched to sleep, Conn sat alone in reverie deep, And saw before him in a maze The mute procession of his days, In gloom and glamour wending fast— His heart a-hungering for the past— Again he leapt, a tender boy, To greet his sire with eager joy, When he came over the wide North Sea, Enriched with spoils ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... young lambs and his hoard of cheeses. Imogen was not there, and in the midst of traffic, and in the midst of frolic merriment he was conscious to a vacancy and a listlessness for which he could not account. When he tended his flocks, and played upon his slender pipe, he would sink in reverie, and form to himself a thousand schemes of imaginary happiness. Erewhile they had been vague and general. His spirit was too gentle for him not to represent to himself a fancied associate; his heart was not narrow enough to know so much as the meaning of a solitary ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... know that he has not forgotten it. For ofttimes he does sink into a deep reverie; and disjointed words break from him, which tell me whither his ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... midst of her reverie, the tapestry at the door was again pushed back, cautiously this time, then eagerly. There entered the prettiest spark that ever graced a ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... from his reverie. "Melancholy, senor," said he, "was made, not for beasts, but for men; but if men give way to it overmuch they turn to beasts; control yourself, your worship; be yourself again; gather up Rocinante's reins; cheer up, rouse yourself and show that gallant spirit that knights-errant ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... large high painting, now nearly finished. Criticising himself, honestly admiring himself, floating on the current of his thoughts, he then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down from his perch, or whether he made some ill-judged movement, believing himself to be on the floor—the event did not allow of his remembering exactly the cause of his accident—he fell, his head struck ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac

... moment the vessel struck the dock and lurched William out of his reverie, coming "within an ace" of pitching the poet into ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... in a reverie for some minutes; Joey's behaviour had puzzled her almost as much as what she had overheard the day before. At last she opened the book, and, to her great astonishment, beheld the letter. She started—looked ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... notwithstanding he was afoot, in much less time than the drive had taken, so rapidly did he walk when out of sight, and so much was the length of the way shortened. Upon arriving at the place, he sat down upon the same log which had been his former seat, and folding his arms sunk into a reverie. After the space of an hour, perhaps, thus passed, he rose and commenced piling up near the brook some pieces of wood which he took from the heaps about him, making another, differing from them principally ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... it was no less a celebrity who had broken in on Roland's reverie—was a long, thin man of a somewhat priestly cast of countenance. He lacked that air of reproving hauteur which many butlers possess, and it was for this reason that Roland had felt drawn to him during the black days of his stay at Evenwood Towers. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... been fully a quarter of an hour later that Knight, having finished his cigarette, came out of his reverie. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... the night they talked, the young man asking them many questions and chief of all, of Alice. They could see that he was thinking of her, and often he would stop before the picture and look at it and fall into a reverie. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... husbands secured them a degree of respect, which they might not have met with either as Grecian or as stranger females of a similar rank. But almost all these were personally known to Hereward. It was no time, however, for reverie—he was himself in danger—-the situation of the young female might be no safe one. In every case, it was judicious to quit the more public part of the gardens; he therefore lost not a moment in conveying the fainting Saxon to a retreat he fortunately was acquainted ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... Again I collected my thoughts from this sweet reverie—wherein what gave me not least joy was the perfect trust she showed in me, for that is perhaps the one thing in this world that a man may be proud ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... labours the more that they upheld her from the absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de Grantmesnil's command—did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... deliberation, pondering; head work, brain work; cerebration; deep reflection; close study, application &c (attention) 457. abstract thought, abstraction contemplation, musing; brown study &c (inattention) 458; reverie, Platonism; depth of thought, workings of the mind, thoughts, inmost thoughts; self-counsel self-communing, self- consultation; philosophy of the Absolute, philosophy of the Academy, philosophy of the Garden, philosophy of the lyceum, philosophy of the Porch. association ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams; his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world into which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... for some long time in a reverie, as they went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks, nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the crunch ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... stubborn pride so often stand between us and our best intentions. I let the moment pass, and my heart remained true to its stern determination, not to yield one inch of what I falsely termed independence. My reverie was dispelled by Alice. She took my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... bed and munched hard lumps of bread, from time to time taking a drink of water. After that he fell into a soothing reverie, more and more forgetting his position, till at last he settled himself down comfortably on the hard wood, and ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... entered the room; and, seeing the young man standing thus thoughtful by the window, paused. She was used to his habits; and since his success in life, had learned to respect them. So she did not disturb his reverie, but began softly to arrange the room—dusting, with the corner of her apron, the various articles of furniture, putting a stray chair or two in its right place, but not touching a single paper. Virtuous woman, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... was musical enough to bring before me some memory of the faces of pretty girls I had danced with long ago in my dancing days, so that, what with the music, and the distant sea, and the soft air, so sparklingly full of moonshine, and the little dancing memories, I was floated off into a reverie that was like a prelude for the person who broke it. She came so quietly that I did not hear her until she was almost beside me and spoke to me. It was the second time that ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... cup, and looked complacently into its clear depths. The tap on the door broke his reverie, and he looked ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... breaking her reverie, "of what your husbands do. Are they carpenters? Do they build houses for men, like the blessed Jesus? Or are they tillers of the soil? Do they bring fruits out of ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... continually, and seems to be trying to recall something. When Pidorka succeeds in getting him to speak, he seems to forget himself, carries on a conversation, and even grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently glances at the sacks, "Stop, stop! I have forgotten," he cries, and again plunges into reverie, and again strives to recall something. Sometimes when he has sat long in a place, it seems to him as though it were coming, just coming back to mind, . . . and again all fades away. It seems as if he is sitting in the tavern: they bring him vodka; ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... indulgence of the feelings and fancies which had been thus freshly kindled, Claud stood, for some minutes, quite unconscious of the lapse of time, though it had been long enough to place his companions far out of sight and hearing. From this reverie he was suddenly aroused by the sharp report of a rifle, bursting on his ear from the woods, about a quarter of a mile off, in the direction just taken by his companions. Starting at the sound, which sent a boding chill ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... onward, quite lost in reverie, and neither knew nor cared whither I was going, until a low, soft, well-remembered voice spoke, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... reading it through afterwards I saw at once that the first two sentences were out of place in an article that obviously ought to be called "The Last Swallow;" so I cut them out, sent "The Last Swallow: A Reverie" to another Editor, and began again. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... am well aware that the correct thing for a boy in my situation (i.e. leaving home for the first time) would be to fall back on his seat, and into a reverie, during which, utterly lost to all external impressions, he should entertain the thoughts and feelings of a well-informed man of thirty; the same thoughts and feelings being clothed in 2the semi-poetic prose ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... My reverie was awakened by the arrival of Richard with the horses and the sais and Habib. Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... into fifteen fixed powers, none of which should be allowed to make any new acquisition, but should together form an association for maintaining a mutual balance, and preserving peace. This political reverie, impossible to be realized, is not likely ever to have been actually divulged, even if meditated by Henry, nor is there any trace of it to be found in the history, or among the state-papers of England, Venice, or Holland, the supposed co-operators in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... were surprised at the silence which Voltaire had preserved all the former part of the night, particularly as the conversation happened to turn upon one of his favorite topics. Fontenelle continued his triumph until about twelve o'clock, when Voltaire appeared at last roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began his defense with the utmost defiance mixed with spirit, and now and then let fall the finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist; and his harangue lasted till three in the morning. I must confess that, whether from national ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... moment's reverie, he added, "My good Louise is gentle and submissive. I can depend on her. Her love and fidelity will never fail me. In the current of events there may arise circumstances which will decide the fate of an empire. In that case I hope that the daughter of the Caesars will be inspired by the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... Dick, he would sometimes talk and mutter to himself, as if in a reverie; but if you caught the words, you would find that they referred to no abstraction, but to some trifle he had on hand. He seemed entirely bound up in the moment, and to have forgotten the past as completely as though it ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... his reverie throughout the uptown journey. And he strengthened himself with it, deriving a sort of acrid comfort from the knowledge that henceforth none should know the burden of his misfortunes save himself. There was no deprecation of Kellogg's goodness in his mood, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... throbbing temples. She put up her right hand to shade the too vivid reflection of the glistening sea, and was astounded to find that in a few minutes the back of her hand was scorched. A faint sound of distant shouting disturbed her painful reverie. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... the Lincoln anecdotes an overtone of melancholy which lingers after one's impression of his good nature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical atmosphere, we find ourselves thinking of him at first as a little too good-humored, a little too easy-going, a little prone to fall into reverie. We are not surprised when we find his favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the spirit of ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... inhabitants, and ever open to their contemplation, they travel with an unwearied foot. Crebillon, the celebrated tragic poet, was enamoured of solitude, that he might there indulge, without interruption, in those fine romances with which his imagination teemed. One day when he was in a deep reverie, a friend entered hastily: "Don't disturb me," cried the poet; "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the thought of making them lustrous, one day, with tenderness for himself. It had paled since then, there had been so many other things; but still they were dear, honest eyes—and Kendal never brought his reverie to a ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... same thought possessed each, and perhaps there was sweet companionship even in the unbroken quiet. Genevra bit the handle of her parasol, and blushed. Natty Bumpo took a fresh chew of tobacco. At length Genevra said, as if in half-spoken reverie:— ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... one to the other of the disputants, and fell into a reverie. There was something in the tone of twopence remarkably insignificant. Threepence had a definite value as money—it was an appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling matter; but twopence—"Here," he said, stepping forward and handing twopence to the gatekeeper; ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... of his comrades in India and the expedition he had so fondly hoped to join, that even now was fighting its way through the hills of Chittagong. His reverie was broken by a sharp "hist!" and Forbes glided swiftly out of ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon



Words linked to "Reverie" :   dream, dreaming, abstraction, brown study, abstractedness



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