"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for Newport, and Kate had already benefited by the change. That was nearly all; and it was the middle of July before the second arrived. They were still at Newport, and the improvement in Kate was marked. The wan and sickly look was rapidly passing away—the change, the excitement, the sea-bathing, the gay life, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... romances, like "The House of the Wolfings" and "The Sundering Flood." As in the last named, and in Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native," the reader's imagination is assisted by a map of the Morgraunt forest and the river Wan. Mr. Hewlett has evidently profited, too, by recent romances of various schools: by "Prince Otto," e.g., and "The Prisoner of Zenda," and possibly by others. His Middle Ages are not the Middle Ages of history, but of poetic convention; a world where anything may ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... father-in-law, and would thank them tenderly for their care and love. Now he lay sleeping like a baby, resting easily on his back, his mouth just open, and his few gray hairs straggling from beneath his cap; his breath was perfectly noiseless, and his thin, wan hand, which lay above the coverlid, never moved. Nothing could be easier than the old man's passage from this world ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... peers to see, And the man he loved so tenderly, Fast the tears of Count Roland ran, His visage discolored became, and wan, He swooned for sorrow beyond control. "Alas," said Turpin, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... I passed, O'er which from the rock's throat is cast The swirling rush of waters wan, To meet the sword-player feared of man. By giant's hall the strong stream pressed Cold hands against the singer's breast; Huge weight upon him there did hurl The swallower ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... waters on his way to win a bride when suddenly above "the night wind's melancholy song" he heard a voice calling him through the twilight. "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" he answered in French. "Who calls?" But only his own voice came back in echoes while the gloom of night deepened and a wan moon rose silently behind the distant hill. Then when he reached the Indian encampment it was only to see the death fires lighted on the shore, to hear the wail of women and to learn that just before her lips had closed forever, his ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... victories of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, the United States Army under General Zachary Taylor lay near the town of Matamoros. Visiting the hospital of a recently joined volunteer corps from the States, I remarked a bright-eyed youth of some nineteen years, wan with disease, but cheery withal. The interest he inspired led to his removal to army headquarters, where he soon recovered health and became a pet. This was Bob Wheat, son of an Episcopal clergyman, who had left school ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... coarse, dusty felt hats or peaked caps, with shaggy beards or faded scarfs around their throats. Here and there, too, was a woman of comely face and figure, but for the most part it was a collection of crones, prematurely aged, with weird, wan, old-world features, slip-shod and draggle-tailed, their heads bare, or covered with dingy shawls in lieu of bonnets—red shawls, gray shawls, brick-dust shawls, mud-colored shawls. Yet there was an indefinable touch of romance and pathos about the tawdriness and witch-like ugliness, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "Dthere eeze wan troub' 'bout dat. To which case do you riffer? 'Cause, you know, dey got t'ree, four case' like dat. An' you better not mention no name, 'cause you don't want git nobody in troub', you know. Now dthere's ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... November, there might be one chance out of a hundred of our reaching Manhattan and the Dutch, who might or might not give us refuge. She had willed to flee, and we were upon our journey, and the one chance had vanished. That wan, monotonous, cold, and clinging mist had shrouded us for our burial, and our grave ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... of a physician whose wan face betokened a marasmus, and who was induced to try a method not unlike the sympathetic cures. "He took an egg and boiled it hard in his own warm urine; he then with a bodkin perforated the shell in many places, and buried it in an ant-hill, where ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of waiting, not without some fear that- -as the Negroes would have put it—'If I tap da wan momant ma, I catch da confection,' while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget fatigue, amid the hospitality of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... were set. For several hours, I sat gazing at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If I had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them of my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have had the waiters ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... only occasional intervals of peace. There was little left to suffer except death. His bodily resistance grew weaker towards the end of his last summer on earth, and he lost flesh rapidly. The fulness of his face was gone by autumn, and a wan look, as of decaying force, was stamped upon it. He suffered in literally every member of his body, by turns or simultaneously. We find ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... possible. Accordingly, they went up town to lunch, strolled about Twenty-third Street for an hour or two before going to the office of the fresh-air charity, and, late that evening, reappeared at their own front doors, each with a wan and weary child at her heels. Isabel's was a boy; Phebe, in deference to the conditions of a family ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... the shrine: each look was chang'd To sudden veneration: women meek Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear. Endymion too, without a forest peer, 190 Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face, Among his brothers of the mountain chase. In midst of all, the venerable priest Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least, And, after lifting up his aged hands, Thus spake he: "Men of Latmos! shepherd bands! ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... instant the violet eyes, with their vague wistfulness, their mute appeal, looked straight into Corinna's; and in that instant an inscrutable expression quivered in Alice Rokeby's face, as if a wan light had flickered up and died ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... head seemingly about a foot from the cross-beam of the door. She was cloaked from crown to foot; nothing but the oval of her face, colourless white with lips very wan, and a droop to them inexpressibly sad, showed out of the dark column she made. The servant shrank into the passage and stayed there praying; of the three men at the table only one, Can Grande himself, had the spirit left to be courteous. He got up; the other two remained seated, Francesco ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... ex-councillor of the Bordeaux Parliament, named Castelnaux; this man declared himself the lover of the Queen, and was generally known by that appellation. For ten successive years did he follow the Court in all its excursions. Pale and wan, as people who are out of their senses usually are, his sinister appearance occasioned the most uncomfortable sensations. During the two hours that the Queen's public card parties lasted, he would remain opposite her Majesty. He placed himself in the same manner before her at chapel, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... labored diligently to impress upon the child of how great benefit that same money would be to him by and by. Just picture to yourself, if you can, that fond, foolish old man seeking to teach this lesson to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little cripple! But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was so apt a pupil that Old Growly made great joy and was wont to rub his bony hands gleefully and say to himself, "He has great genius,—this boy of mine,—great ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... was here profound, being increased by the dense masses of foliage beneath which he was riding. By the time, however, that he reached the summit of Snow Hill the moon struggled through the clouds, and threw a wan glimmer over the leafy wilderness around. The deep slumber of the woods was unbroken by any sound save that of the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "but hand a wee—I'm no' dune yet. So after they had dune laughin', I telled them o' the last man that was hangit at the Grassmarket o' Edinburgh. There was three coonts in the dittay against him: first, that he was fand on the king's highway withoot due cause; second, he wan'ered in his speech; and, thirdly, he owned that he ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... a moment, Moor's step came down the hall, the hair fell, the anguish passed, and nothing but a wan and weary face remained. But Warwick had seen it, and as he stole away unperceived he pressed his hands together, saying mournfully within himself, "I was mistaken. ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... And ye confess it, becod! Well, I can tell ye wan thing—ye'll not see him. Are ye in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shipboard fall, For now the Goddess had inform'd me all. Their noble spirits agreed; nor yet so clear Could I bring all off, but Elpenor there His heedless life left. He was youngest man Of all my company, and one that wan Least fame for arms, as little for his brain; Who (too much steep'd in wine and so made fain To get refreshing by the cool of sleep, Apart his fellows plung'd in vapours deep, And they as high in tumult of their way) Suddenly waked ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... The wan dawn turned the dead man's face from waxen yellow to stone grey. The servants saw it, whispered, and closed the inner shutters, and the yellow candle-light shone again in the room. Any light is better than ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... spreads through ether the dejected day, Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot His struggling rays, in horizontal lines, Through the thick air; as clothed in cloudy storm, Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky; And soon descending, to the long dark night. Wide-shading all, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... Wan water from the border hills, Dear voice from the old years, Thy distant music lulls and stills, And moves ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... Uncle Sam's military village,—a fort by courtesy,—where, when not sleeping, black soldiers and white strolled about in the warm sun. When the little street was fairly awake, it presented a very lively appearance and had the air of doing a great deal of business. The wan houses emitted their occupants, and numerous pink-faced riders, in leathers and broad hats, poured in from all sides, and, tying their heavily-accoutred ponies, disappeared into the shops with a sort of bow-legged waddle, like sailors ashore. Off his horse, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... complain, however, and Aunt Hepsy was too much absorbed to see that her powers were overtaxed. The cleaning was triumphantly concluded on Saturday night, and Lucy crept away early to bed, but was unable to sleep from fatigue. She came downstairs next morning so wan and white that Aunt Hepsy feared she was going to turn sick on her hands. But Lucy said she was well enough, and would go to church as usual. Thinking she looked really ill, Miss Goldthwaite came round to the ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... certainly. The tender widow's habitual melancholy seemed to deepen into a sadder gloom; and Laura saw with alarm that the dear friend became every year more languid and weary, and that her pale cheek grew more wan. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were gaunt and frenzied mothers With wan children in their arms, There were youths, and there were maidens, Curses, tears, and wild alarms, There were auction blocks and hammers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... present with her, and the same feeling of bewilderment. The suddenness and the nature of the disclosures were dream-like and unreal, and the image of Dorcas remained impressed upon her sight; not like Dorcas, though the same, but something ghastly, wan, glittering, and terrible, like a priestess ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was the cavern dark and dread, Where not a ray of light was shed; Yet not the more their eyesight failed, Their courage sank or valour quailed. On through the gloom the Vanars pressed With hunger, thirst, and toil distressed, Poor helpless wanderers, sad, forlorn, With wasted faces wan and worn. At length, when life seemed lost for aye, They saw a splendour as of day, A wondrous forest, fair and bright, Where golden trees shot flamy light. And lotus-covered pools were there With pleasant waters fresh and fair, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... pattern of benevolence, was a sore check upon his self applause, and he formed many prudent resolutions to be more upon his guard in future. Some days after, in passing through his grounds, he was accosted by a man who exhibited an appearance of extreme wretchedness. His face was wan, and his features sunken. His dimmed eye seemed hardly able to discern the object on which it gazed; and his tottering limbs with difficulty supported his feeble frame. His moving lips appeared to be framing a prayer for compassion, ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... was approaching when this pleasant interchange of courtesies between the three sovereigns, Ostrogothic, Frankish, and Burgundian, was to be succeeded by the din of wan Alaric the Visigoth, alarmed at the victorious progress of the Frankish king, sent a message to this effect: "If my brother is willing, let him consider my proposal that, by the favour of God, we should ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... I've been rowing the boat with them lying in the bottom not able to raise a hand for the last two days we was in it. [Furiously, as he sees this is making no impression on her.] And I can lick all hands on this tub, wan be ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... treated and society move on its way unheeding, might not many men be so monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest's women of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton mills he had described. And I could see their wan white hands, from which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which had been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... bellered like a bull of Bashan. There was nobody in the bank, I tell you, except the three men and old Aunt Emmeline and they were waitin' in my private room. And except for Nellie and Eddie Ellis, the messenger, and Charlie Phillips, there wan't a soul around, as it happened. The money hasn't been stolen; I lost it somewheres—but where? Well, I can't stop here any longer. I'm goin' back to the bank to ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in my breviary," soliloquized Mary of Scotland; and in the streaming moonlight, as she spoke, a faint outline gathered, lips and eyes of solemn peace, a crown of blood-red roses pressing thorns into the wan temples that dripped sanguine streams, and in the halo above the wreath a legend, partially obscured, that ran, "Utque talis Rosa nulli ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... him wan-looking and depressed, and every now and then he sighed. During a walk across the common he cheered up considerably, but the moment we got back to the house door he seemed to recollect himself, and began to sigh again. He ate no dinner whatever, merely sipping ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... ever-changing April days. When May came, lightsome footed, o'er the lea, Accompanied by kind Aunt Ruth and Roy, I bade farewell to home with secret joy, And turned my wan face eastward to the sea. Roy planned our route of travel: for all lands Were one to him. Or Egypt's burning sands, Or Alps of Switzerland, or stately Rome, All were familiar as the fields ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... though some of that steadfast light penetrated into her soul, for as he turned and went his way among the roses, a look of peace descended on her tired face, and she fell back upon her cushion and closed her eyes, and let the breeze of the palm-fan play over her wan cheeks and through ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... with the chill that fell upon him by that blazing hearth. Weary as he was, and—as soon appeared—wounded also, his nerve, shaken by fatigue, gave way before this reception. With giddy brain and wan face he sank into ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... in among de swells what's enjoyin' themselves and spoil deir evenin' by showin' dem a face like yours? To de woods! It's youse for de coal cellar, me man, and we'll see what youse has got to say afterward. G'wan!' And off dey went. And I lit me lantern again, got de ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... hopes grew pale, as they soon did, he could at least play with the wan fancies that took their place. Hour after hour, while she lavished upon him the sweetness of her devotion, he was half consciously shaping with his tongue some word of terrible revealing that should divide them like a spell, if spoken, and ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was Tom—the same man as put a straw rope to the bell which the cows did eat away, so that he cudn't ring the people to mittin'. Well, when he was studdyin' the morials on the stones out comes Captain Rowe. He was wan o' the churchwardens, or somethin' o' that sort, but I don't knaw nothin' 'bout the church, so I ain't sure—an' he calls owld Tom ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... states in turn, and then suddenly cast aside like a sucked orange. Then he sank into the depths of squalor. He was eloquent, resourceful, imaginative, and brimful of the poetry of untruth. One day through the asphalt streets of Paris he shuffled along in the procession of the doomed, with wan face and sunken eyes, wearing a tragically mean garb. And soon after I learned that he had vanished ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... slaughter swine as Rome did slaves, (A sanguine carnival of sausage-meat), Here, where Chicago belles their braided hair Pile in Greek knots,—to gaze on brawn and gristle! Here, where in gilded cars the pork-kings loll, Driven Mammon-like unto their marble homes, Lit by the wan light of the electric arc, Swift-wheeled and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... her plaint to lay Before the face of Love Divine. Saying in heaven she will not stay, Since you have stolen what made her shine: Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,— She told her stars and two are gone: They are not there; you have them now; They are the eyes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Odessa, Nicolaieff, Sebastopol, Nova-Rossiisk, Berdiansk and Batoum, Taganrog, Marinpol, Rostov and Kertch (on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov); Astrakhan, Derbent and Baku (on the Caspian Sea); Nicolaieffsk, Vladivostok and Petrapaulovsk in Kamtchatka; and Port Arthur and Dalni or Ta-lien-wan (Gulf of Pechili), have been occupied since the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... too! Sich a very smart man! No Rip wan Winkle HARTY affectation! Yet 'e somehow made yer feel That 'e jest knowed 'ow to deal With the "Gentlemen" by buth ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... right and to the left, silent and wan. Each tree bears on its side the scar of wounds where the woodmen have set flowing the resinous blood which chokes it; the powerful liquor still ascends into its limbs with the sap, exhales by its slimy shoots and by its cleft skin; a sharp aromatic ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... passing of a day, doth pass The bud and blossom of the life of man, Nor ere doth flourish more, but like the grass Cut down, becometh wither'd, pale and wan: O gather then the rose while time thou hast, Short is the day, done when it scant began; Gather the rose of love, while yet thou may'st Loving be ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the third big sea," says he, his face wan with the terror of that time, his body shrunk in the chair and so uneasy that I was moved against my will to doubt the tale. "May God A'mighty forgive un ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... replied Ann softly. A wan gleam of amusement flitted across her face. "But it's true, you know—Tony and I did stay at ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... reasons for individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh's feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling; another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in lessons, although a few ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... velvet cheek; her wasted bosom Loses its fulness; e'en her slender waist Grows more attenuate; her face is wan, Her shoulders droop;—as when the vernal blasts Sear the young blossoms of the Madhavi[52], Blighting their bloom; so mournful is the change. Yet in its sadness, fascinating still, Inflicted by the mighty lord of love On the fair figure ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... at times unwilling hospitality to flakes of snow whiter than themselves. In February, under warmer sunshine, the blossoms showed in constellations, a myriad on a single branch. Then, all too soon, the falling of wan petals made a perfumed tragedy of snow ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... doubt awakened by her departure. To be sure, the heads of the offices were polite enough; but when the young housekeeper had stated her case at the first to which she applied, and the Intelligencer had called out to the invisible expectants in the adjoining room, "Anny wan wants to do giner'l housewark in Charlsbrudge?" there came from the maids invoked so loud, so fierce, so full a "No!" as shook the lady's heart with an indescribable shame and dread. The name that, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... my dream to have you here with me, Out of the heated city's dust and din— Here where the colts have room to gambol in, And kine to graze, in clover to the knee. I want to see your wan face happily Lit with the wholesome smiles that have not been In use since the old games you used to win When we pitched horseshoes: And I want to be At utter loaf with you in this dim land Of grove and meadow, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... energy, Laura tore her Minerva from top to bottom, while two great tears rolled down the cheeks grown wan with hope deferred. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... white fringe now, and the waves followed us higher and more curling. Then there was a sickly wan glow that spread itself through the watery air in front of us, and I knew that they were burning a blue light on the beach. They would all be there waiting for us, though we could not see them, and they did not know that there were only two men that they were ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... as the carriage proceeds on its course, the scene changes little by little. The streets become vulgar: the houses of "The Arabian Nights" give place to tasteless Levantine buildings; electric lamps begin to pierce the darkness with their wan, fatiguing glare, and at a sharp turning the new ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... without feeling that happiness is in the air, without a glimpse of all that is meant by a peaceful life without care or ambition. There is that in the air and the sound of the river that sets you dreaming; the sands have a language, and are joyous or dreary, golden or wan; and the owner of the vineyard may sit motionless amid perennial flowers and tempting fruit, and feel all the stir ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... love. Suo'mi (swo'mi). The ancient abode of the Finns. Suo'ne-tar (swone-tar). The goddess of the veins. Suo-wak'ko. An old wizard of Pohyola. Suo'ya-tar (Syo'jatar). The mother of the serpent. Su've-tar (Suve, summer). Goddess of the South-wind Su-wan'to-lai'nen. Another name for Wainamoinen. Taeh'ti. The Polar Star. Ta-he'tar. The daughter of the Stars. Tai'vas. The firmament in general. Ta-ni'ka. A magic mansion of Pohja. Ta'pi-o. The god of the forest. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... to look for the dead. Nothing to be seen. No living soul appears in this desert of desolation, encompassed by appalling silence.... Through the clouds of ashes and of smoke diffused in our atmosphere, the sun breaks wan and dim, as it is never seen in our skies, and throws over the whole picture a sinister light, suggestive of a world beyond ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a Turkish beneesh, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan features. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... forever. Henceforward you must fret away much sunlight by interminably shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... "Christ is born" a sharp cry rang through the rooms of The Three Holy Kings and Melchior knelt beside his blighted flower that now was whiter even than the lily, for the last shimmer of red had faded forever from her wan cheeks, and he wrung his hands ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... we can pass by mines, and factories, and by dungeons darker and fouler still, in the lanes and alleys of our great towns and cities, where thousands and tens of thousands of starving men, and wan women, and children grown old before their youth, sit toiling and pining in Mammon's prison-house, in worse than Egyptian bondage, to earn such pay as just keeps the broken heart within the worn-out body;—ay, we ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... better now," panted their captain, with a wan little smile. "I'll manage, thanks! Yes, really! Please don't ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... come to any wan in this house,' said the man, earnestly, raising her hand to his lips, 'for the blessin' av God an' the Holy Virgin is ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good cause'; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... of progress: it seemed like a great adventuress retired from the world after a life of vicissitude, anxious only to be forgotten, and after so much storm and stress to be nothing more than pious. There must be many descendants of the Moors, but the present population is wan and lifeless. They are taciturn, sombre folk, with nothing in them of the chattering and vivacious creatures of Arab history. Indeed, as I wandered through the streets, it was not the Moors that engaged my mind, but rather Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castille. Their grim ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the health of a family. It is a universal law of physiology, that all living things flourish best in the light. Vegetables, in a dark cellar, grow pale and spindling. Children brought up in mines are always wan and stunted, while men become pale and cadaverous who live under ground. This indicates the folly of losing the genial influence which the light of day produces on all ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or one o'clock, and had sat at his window watching the sickly lamps in the yard, and looking upward for the first wan trace of day, hours before it was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now when the night came, he could not even ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... green Gleams a merry, festive scene; Trees, with candles burning bright, Wake in children's hearts delight. Where such peace and comfort reign, None observes the window-pane, Where your wan face sadly peers Through a mist of falling tears At a joy you never ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... gintleman that took a thrip to Reno in ordher to saw off th' housekeepin' expinses on a rash successor wud find throuble ready f'r him whin he come back to Ar-rchey Road. No, sir, whin our people grab hands at th' altar, they're hooked up f'river. There's on'y wan decree iv divoorce that th' neighbors will recognize, an' that's th' wan that entitles ye to ride just behind th' pall bearers. That's why I'm a batch. 'Tis th' fine skylark iv a timprary husband I'd make, bringin' home a new wife ivry Foorth iv July an' dischargin' ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... sad steps, O Moon thou climb'st the sky. How silently, and with how wan a face!" [2] Where art thou? Thou whom I have seen on high Running among the clouds a Wood-nymph's race? Unhappy Nuns, whose common breath's a sigh Which they would stifle, move at such a pace! The Northern Wind, to call thee to the chace, Must blow tonight his bugle horn. Had ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... the old man had replied, "Oi've bin thinkin' o' that. Whin the ould sow litters, Doyley, it's sore perplexhed we'll be fer shlapin' room. Divil a wan o' me knows how fer to sarcumvint the throuble widout we takes you, Doyley, an' the young pigs, an' shtrings ye all up ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... pale. deprive of color, decolorize, bleach, tarnish, achromatize, blanch, etiolate, wash out, tone down. Adj. uncolored &c (color) &c 428; colorless, achromatic, aplanatic^; etiolate, etiolated; hueless^, pale, pallid; palefaced^, tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c v.. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... radiant with intelligence, and her dark eyes beaming with sympathy and kindness, it was indeed a pleasant surprise to see one so young and delicate, going about from hospital to hospital to find opportunities of doing good to the wan and suffering, and crippled heroes, who had been brought from hard-fought battle-fields to be cared for ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... you do, my dear!" she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak, wan voice, with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying from love and from consumption. "Sit down here ... I am glad to see you ... Only don't be angry—I am almost dying from migraine, and from my miserable heart. Pardon my speaking ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... marked; his upper eyelid, flabby and overhanging, like the membrane which shades the eyes of reptiles, half concealed his small, sharp, black eye. His thin lips, absolutely colorless, were hardly distinguishable from the wan hue of his lean visage, with its pointed nose and chin; and this livid mask (deprived as it were of lips) appeared only the more singular, from its maintaining a death-like immobility. Had it not been for the rapid movement ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... five, the latest piece should be referred to the twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the line of Kau. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous. There were some reigns of which we do not have ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... better than he speaks it; and makes up for any defect by his habits of observation and imitation. You have only to show him how to do a thing once, and he will repeat it, whether it is an offence or a virtue. But you certainly know him already. You are one of his godfathers; for is he not Wan Lee, the reputed son of Wang the conjurer, to whose performances I had the honor to introduce you? But ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down Each with its loveliness as with a crown, Drooped in a florist's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... frail little child of the old days at Greenwater Broad had ripened, in the bracing Scotch air and the healthy mode of life, into a comely young woman. Her features were still, as in her early years, not regularly beautiful; but the change in her was not the less marked on that account. The wan face had filled out, and the pale complexion had found its color. As to her figure, its remarkable development was perceived even by the rough people about her. Promising nothing when she was a child, it had now sprung into womanly fullness, symmetry, and grace. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... and fiery words found their echo in the brave rough hearts around him. There was a deep-chested shout from both archers and seamen. Even Aylward sat up, with a wan ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a wan smile, "oh, yes! here's the res'lutions. That's the way the breaker boys feel—the way it says in this paper; an' we want Mrs. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... commiseration. The sound must have been heard by those who were huddled around the miserable fire, for they scrambled to their knees. As the tiny blaze sprang up just then, it showed the scouts the four Stanhope boys looking pinched and wan, with their eyes staring the wonder they must have felt ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... of October king Richard wan another strong hold, called Monasterium Griffonum, situated in the midst of the streight del Fare, betweene Messana and Calabria, from whence the Monks being expulsed, he reposed there all his store and prouision of victuals, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... with tenderest care, They hasten the wounded, wan soldier to bear; And never hung mother more patiently o'er The couch of the child, her own bosom that bore, Than Alice above the lone orphan, who lay Submissively breathing his spirit away. He knows that existence is ebbing; his brain Is lucid ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... made Rochester recall "the simple yet sagacious grace" of Jane's first smile; she who wrote: "I looked at my love; it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle"; who wrote: "To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted, what a wan glance she flung upon the hills, you would have thought the sun's fire quenched in last night's floods." This new genius was solitary and afraid, and touched to the quick by the eyes and voice of judges. In her worse style there was no "quick." Latin-English, whether scholarly ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Beth, wi' yer baste of a burrd; bad luck to it!" he exclaimed, crossing himself. "Shure, don't I tell ye ivery day uf your life it's wan fur sorrow." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the patient fellows had kept alive their hope of a great day of joy and celebration, only to see it steadily receding from their view. At length they decided to carry their presents to the house where the wan little foundling lay, trusting the sight of their labors of love might ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... gone, sure enough!" he said. "Glad on 't! The darndest, kickin'est, bitin'est beast th't ever I see, 'r ever wan' t' see ag'in! Good reddance! Don' wan' no snappin'-turkles in my stable! Whar's the man gone ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one of the Taidshut chiefs, called Mutchin Sultu, had revolted against Madagu, the Kin Emperor of China, who had sent his chinsang ("prime minister"), Wan-jan-siang, with an army against him. He eagerly volunteered his services against the old enemies of his people, and was successful. He killed the chief and captured much booty; inter alia was a silver cradle with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... to Colonel Greenleaf, the large, dingy-gray, lively-eyed Major Kincaid, at the sentinelled door of the room where he and his four wan fellows, snatched back from liberty on the eve of release, were prisoners in plain view of the vessel on which they were ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... now in motley clad, Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad, That some condoled with him as with a brother Who, having lost a wife, had got another. Others, mistaking his profession, often Approached him to be measured for a coffin. For years this highborn ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... unrestrained dominion of caprice and passion, that reason was pretty effectually dethroned, and all self-control was gone. She was now nearly forty years of age, and, though traces of her inexpressible beauty remained, her bloom was faded, and her countenance was wan with the effects of weeping, anxiety, and despair. She was, in a word, both in body and mind, only the wreck and ruin of ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... told her to git right back in thar, an' keep still. It was just as that whole caboodle come tearin' up this las' time, sir. It wan't no safe place fer a girl whar you was. Ragan he promised to tell you, only he got hit 'fore the fracas was done. That's why Foster chirked up, an' ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... She gave her deputy, Jay, a few charges, and went to the visitor, who had thought her an interminable time in coming. He, blooming, strong, fresh from his healthy farm life in the backwoods, saw with compassion how wan and worn she looked. Nursing at night during her father's illness, and school-keeping in the day, might be blamed for this. Would she come to Cedar Creek and ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... I gaze at each feature, Perspiring and grimy and wan, It is not the strength of the creature,— The will only, ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... Andrew lying in a quiet slumber; and he looked nothing so death-like as the night before. But the others appeared haggard and weary, as well they might; for none of them had slept a wink the night through. Yet joy spoke from the poor wan faces of Mary Giles and her husband. They had helped in the tending of Andrew with wonderful skill and care, and now they were rejoicing in a good hope that he ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... All wan and shivering in the leafless glade The sad ANEMONE reclined her head; Grief on her cheeks had paled the roseate hue, 320 And her sweet eye-lids dropp'd with pearly dew. —"See, from bright regions, borne on odorous gales The Swallow, herald of ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... speak of it. We read of it, we know it is the song of all the world, but it comes not to us unless by chance. We go to you as strangers, we have no choice, and if the Gods withhold their greatest gift, the gift of love, then life is grey and wan as the twilight of a hopeless day. Few women have the joy I feel when I look into my loved one's face and know that I am his and he is mine, and that our lives are twined together for all the days ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... Wan, haggard, almost spectral, his hat over his brows, his dress neglected, his air reckless and fierce, Cesarini crossed the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I wan't never in 'em afore, and wouldn't be now, only my son Dan'el's wife's took oncommon bad, and he thinks ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her impulse to throw ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of the best man to dress the bridegroom for the wedding. As you enter his room you see, lying half-dressed on the bed, a pale, wan, emaciated creature, who is staring fixedly at the ceiling. It is the happy bridegroom. His lips open. He speaks feebly. "What time is it?" he says. You reply, "Two-thirty, old man. Time to start getting dressed." "Oh, my God!" says the groom. Ten minutes pass. "What time is it?" ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... can't. They ain't made f'r to come off. Never mind; peg along afther me. You did be doing me a good turn wan black night, and I'm not ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... was her bright eyes, And her fair face that held him still; And wild and wan she led him on ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... dimmed, grew dark. The street lamps outside sent a wan, wavery gleam into the room. Evening crowds went by, and in a motion-picture theater a banging piano struck up. Bill breathed in choking snorts. Milt sat unmoving, feeling very old, very tired, too dumbly unhappy to be frightened of the dreadful coming ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... my scarlet cloak on and drew the hood over my head, and it tumbled my hair," she said, with a little wan smile. Already the glamour of the wedding was giving way to the sorrow of parting. "I had my hat under my cloak. Oh, anwl! I am getting quite ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... gradually went back through the years. The white-haired old negro and the young soldier both smiled as they recalled childish escapades of the latter, 'way back in "God's country." They lost themselves in reminiscence, and forgot the present, until the wan moon, coming up, cast the shadows of the bars in the window across them. Then with a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... pink-faced bald little man at me right? That's Cornel Escott, C.B., retired. He takes a sea-bath every morning, to live up to the letters; and faith, it's an act of heroism, no less, in weather the like of this. Three weeks have I been here, and but wan day of sunshine, and the mercury never above fifty. The other fellow, him at me left, is what you'd be slow to suspect by the look of him, I'll go bail; and that's a bar'net, Sir Richard Maistre, with a place in Hampshire, and ten thousand a year ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... priest, passing his wan hand over his brow. 'If this be true, what—what can be done to save her? They may not admit me. I know not all the mazes of that intricate mansion. O Nemesis! justly am ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... "Big difference," he said. "Cheditafa don' like boy for boss. He wan' me tell you, if boy is boss, he don' wan' stay. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... was back in the hospital, a little wan, but valiantly determined to keep her life to its mark of service. She had a talk with K. the ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and speaking, And they gaze at my visage wan: 'You must not be cross with our sister, You ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... I had not known that pale Face, had I met it unawares. So thin and wan,—and he hath shot up into a tall Stripling during the last few Months. These two Nights of Watching have tried me sorelie, but I would not be witholden from sitting up with him yet agayn—what and if this Night should be his last? how coulde I forgive myself for sleeping on now and ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Carrie's wan hands, and, as if noticing her borrowed clothing for the first time, looked about the room for the tinsel ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... preach to them without wage, verily for the love of Heaven, as your idiom hath it, when they see that I live pure and lonely, then they will listen to me. Perchance their hearts will be touched and their eyes opened." His face shone with wan radiance. That was, indeed, the want, he felt sure. No Jew had ever stood before his brethren an unimpeachable Christian, above suspicion, without fear, and without reproach. Oh, happy privilege ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lady drew nearer, Mrs. Thorne stood transfixed and bewildered. Could the summer sun or the flickering shade be mocking her? Was she dreaming or awake? Far off still, through the summer haze, she saw a white, wan face; dark eyes, shadowed and veiled, as though by long weeping; lips, once rosy and smiling, rigid and firm. She saw what seemed to her the sorrowful ghost of the pretty, blooming child that had left her long ago. She tried ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Maly answer he request: "My like Chinee Joss-pidgin best: My love Kwan-wan[21] with chilo neat, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... of pole tops wrapped in smoky hide or canvas, their spreading bases littered with the rude crates, "parfleches" and travois, some fourscore Indian wigwams burst into view as the line darts over the crest. "Oh, murther! Six to wan at least," gasps an old growler in the right platoon, and Davies whirls about in saddle. "Silence there, Donovan!" is ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... serve to cook a pot of mojadderah. In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... appointed (November 26) envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to head a Chinese diplomatic mission to the United States and the principal European nations. The embassy, which included two Chinese ministers, an English and a French secretary, six students from the Tung-wan Kwang at Peking, and a considerable retinue, arrived in the United States in March 1868, and concluded at Washington (28th of July 1868) a series of articles, supplementary to the Reed Treaty of 1858, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in the silvery light came along the edge of the wan beach,—one a white-wrapped creature, the other two blotches of blackness following it. They halted, staring. Then I saw M'ling's hunched shoulders as he came round the corner of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... a most important business; so I ordered the brougham and drove here, with the blinds down all the way; and I'm sure, Clary, you won't think that I feel papa's loss any less because I come to see you just now. But I declare you are looking as pale and wan as any of us at Hale. You have not ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... again, as she had said to herself a hundred times, that it was all right and just what she had expected. What else could she have dreamed? That he should ever marry her was beyond possibility; that had been settled long since—there where the tall, dark pines, wan with the shades of evening, cast their haunting shadows across the Silver Fleece and half hid the blood-washed west. After that he would marry some one else, of course; some good and pure woman who would help ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois |
