"Wistfully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not words; Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er both his shoulders drew the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... disused and faded garment, and her soul seemed new-born and steeped in beauty. "Oh, the peace and the loveliness of it all!" she would say to Amias when he came down for his Sunday visit. "Am I really Verity—Verity Westbrook, who used to live in that dreadful Montagu Street?" And then she would look wistfully at him—for she had grown strangely timid and self-distrustful. But he would only laugh at her in his kindly way. "Yea-Verily, my child, it is certainly you yourself," he would answer; "when Nature made you she broke ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... said, a little wistfully. "I sometimes think it was a mistake for Center to do away with sex. It must ...
— Field Trip • Gene Hunter
... tea; they thankfully sat down. The ready-made household of which he suddenly found himself the head imparted a cosy aspect to his room, and a paternal one to himself. Presently he turned to the child and kissed her now blooming cheeks; and, looking wistfully at ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Russian soldiers is the disease of the brain. The camp becomes a vast madhouse, with the peculiar feature that the madmen are at large. The hero of the story loses both his legs, and apparently completely recovered in health otherwise, returns home to his family, and gazes wistfully at his bicycle. A sudden desire animates him to write out the story of the Japanese war; in the process he becomes insane and dies. His brother then attempts to complete the narrative from the scattered, confused notes, but to ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... beside him, even laying it on his bed, and kneeling and asking forgiveness beside it. The Na Wang's son he adopted into his bodyguard. No father could have treated his own child more tenderly. I believe not once but a dozen times in an afternoon he would turn to the boy and ask wistfully, "Who are you?" receiving the same soft answer, "I am your son," each time ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... him. And this morning he was alive again in this room, ready to laugh, to fight, to weep. As I write, do you know, it is the gray of evening; the house is quiet; everybody is out; the room is getting a little dark, and I look rather wistfully up from the paper with perhaps ever so little fancy that HE MAY COME IN.—No? No movement. No gray shade, growing more palpable, out of which at last look the well-known eyes. No, the printer came and took him away ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my eyelids dropped, but I lifted them, in shy innocence, to his face, inquiringly, wistfully. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... improved rapidly, as the schoolboy improves; but Esther's graces were already of mature growth, and rejoiced in their opportunity for development. Though she could not have explained how it happened, she could not but notice that maidens regarded her wonderingly, wives contemplated her wistfully, frowns departed and smiles appeared when she approached people who were usually considered prosaic. Yet shadows sometimes stole over her face, when she looked at certain of her old acquaintances, and the cause thereof soon took a development which was anything ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... man not to know what will please his wife after their marriage? Some women (this still occurs in the country) are innocent enough to tell promptly what they want and what they like. But in Paris, nearly every woman feels a kind of enjoyment in seeing a man wistfully obedient to her heart, her desires, her caprices—three expressions for the same thing!—and anxiously going round and round, half crazy and desperate, like a dog that has ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... rushing stream higher up, presumably, and pervert its fine frenzy to their prosaic uses. There could hardly be a more vivid reminder of the standing quarrel between use and beauty, and of the hard time poor beauty is having. I looked wistfully, as we rattled into dreary Andermatt, at the great white zigzags of the Oberalp road which climbed away to the left. Even on one's way to Italy one may spare a throb of desire for the beautiful vision of the castled ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of no use, Will," she said with gentle firmness. "All that is past forever between us. We had better not speak of it," she added wistfully. "I have so few friends that I cannot bear to lose ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... her light feet with docile obedience. But she lingered to eye Lennon wistfully as he stood up to meet ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Margaret Murray of Elibank, and then they two set off alone, over the hills to the old Tower of Oakwood—he, with high thoughts of anger and revenge in his heart for the trick that had been played him;—she, poor thing, wondering wistfully what the future held in store ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... To Kate there came the memory of the frail, young mother lying, day after day, upon her couch in the solitude of her sick-room, often weeping silently, while she, a mere child, knelt sadly and wistfully beside her, as silently wiping the tear-drops as they fell and wondering at their cause. She understood now, but not for worlds would she have spoken one word ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of all, you need vigorous, noisy, propaganda. Why are art and music, for instance, so much alive and so popular and so powerful? Because the musician or the singer influences thousands directly. Art, wonderful art!" She looked wistfully at the sky and went on: "Art gives wings and carries you far, far away. If you are bored with dirt and pettifogging interests, if you are exasperated and outraged and indignant, rest and satisfaction are only ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... thousands of spectators, expecting every moment when his antagonist would come out upon him. At length a huge monstrous lion leaped out from the place where he had been kept hungry for the show. He advanced with great rage towards the man, but on a sudden, after having regarded him a little wistfully, fell to the ground, and crept towards his feet with all the signs of blandishment and caress. Androcles, after a short pause, discovered that it was his old Numidian friend, and immediately renewed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the green banks where quick Payoshni runs Seaward, between her hermitages, rich In fruits and roots; and yon path leadeth thee Unto Vidarbha; that to Kosala, And therefrom southward—southward—far away." So spake he to the Princess wistfully, Between his words pointing along the paths, Which she should take (O King!). But Bhima's child Made answer, bowed with grief, her soft voice choked With sobs, these piteous accents uttering:— "My heart beats quick; my body's force ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... dark rooms with mud floors—without windows, in fact without anything but their four walls—neither bench, chair, nor table. Although we travel with our own beds, this looked rather uninviting, especially after the pleasant quarters we had just left; and we turned our eyes wistfully towards a pretty small house upon a hill, with a painted portico, thinking how agreeably situated we should be there! Colonel Y—— thereupon rode up the hill, and presenting himself to the owner of this house, described our forlorn prospects, and he kindly consented ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... that will make us feel happy," she said, wistfully, with just the faintest quiver of her baby lip. "Something that will make me not think about mummy and Lydia ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Dresser asked, his eye resting wistfully on a square note that the young doctor had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... have always loved you. I have told you so in a way that leaves no doubts in a man such as you are. You have forgiven me for being simply human and silly before I woke up to understand you. And you don't misunderstand me any more, do you?" she pleaded, wistfully. "Last ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... beneath the tree looking long and wistfully at the peacock's bright feathers. At length he heaved a sigh and began: "Oh, I wish I had such pretty feathers! How I wish I were not I! If only I were a handsome feathered creature how happy I would be! I'd be so glad ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... himself in front of the fireplace, and called the two dogs to his side. It was a signal that they had heard many times and they responded with happy hearts. Each rested his muzzle on the Trapper's knee, and fixed his large hazel, love-lighted eyes wistfully on his master's face. The old man placed a large and age-wrinkled hand on either head, and murmured: "Whether ye be in sorrer or joy, friends come and go, but, ontil death enters kennel or cabin, the hunter and ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... you were going to the blacksmith's shop with me," Twinkleheels told Ebenezer wistfully. "Somehow I'd feel better about being shod ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... said he, wistfully, "for I shall consult the fates. I have here a sacred coin. An old dame found it when she was digging in the side of Soracte. See, it has on its face the head of Apollo, and opposite is an arrow in a death-hand. And the hag had an odd dream of this coin, so she told me—that ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... after inspecting the queer tents and everything else, they turned to look once more at the donkey and wave a good-bye to the gipsy man; and, as Carry said, poor Punch—that was the name of the donkey—was looking wistfully after them, and if the man hadn't held him firm, he seemed almost inclined to run after them. "Poor beast," as Charlie said, "after all his hard years of labour it was no wonder if ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... Josephine wet with tears; when he heard his father's voice saying, "My son, reconcile yourself with my daughter! Josephine is my daughter, and I would not call her so if she were unworthy," and when he saw his handsome son, Eugene, gazing at him wistfully, his head resting on his mother's shoulder, his heart relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he stepped forward to his wife, and, with a loud cry of joy and a blissful greeting of love, Josephine sank on ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... gay, Vincent. One would think that war, the dreadful uncertainty of their movements, absence of friends, and lack of good food would sadden them," Mrs. Sprague said wistfully at one of the stations when raillery like this had been even more ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... The captive looked wistfully after her, as she left the room. She felt disappointed; for something in the woman's ways and tones had excited a hope within her. Again the key turned on the outside; but it was not long before Debby ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... The Warreners lay wistfully watching the battery, whose shots frequently struck the house, and two or three times knocked down a portion of the sandbag parapet—the damage being at once repaired with bags lying in readiness, but always under a ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... steadily, as a child might have done, with no shrinking in her glance, with neither anger nor shame. "And you?" she asked, wistfully. "Were you very ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... wistfully at the men's faces going by,—"stuff! We look like gallants to ride a tilt at the world, and die ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... we missed Antoine's. We missed our curious old rooms. I even missed my chaufbain, and was bored at the commonplace matutinal performance of turning on hot water without preliminary experiments in marine engineering. We thought wistfully of 'Genie's patient smile, and of her daily assurance to us, when we went out, that "when she had made the apartments she would render the key to the bureau, alors,"—which is to say, leave the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... business for so many years that I feared it had grown out of my power to make new friends; but I begin to see that I have not lost the knack. Perhaps my somber presence is tolerated because of my gay, jolly boy," and Mr. Kinsella gazed rather wistfully after Pierce, who had crossed the deck to meet Elise O'Brien, just ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... puzzle; but I'd give half-a-crown for a smoke," said Sartoris, looking wistfully at the Pilot's tobacco-pipes on the mantelpiece. "I wonder if the young lady would object ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... at him, smiling a little wistfully. "It sounds all very well to talk about," he said, "but the world would go to rack and ruin if everybody ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... who raged at the thought of being left behind, steering vaguely. And just as they rounded the harbour-head, the long glassy sweep of the palpitating sea bore inward and homeward the peaceful squadron, so wistfully watched for ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... hours the fisherman awoke from his troubled sleep, which many expected would have been the sleep of death. He raised himself in the bed—he looked around wistfully. Agnes, who had recovered, and returned to the room, fell upon his bosom. "My Agnes!—my poor Agnes!" he cried, gazing wistfully in her face—"but, where—where am I?—and my bairnies, where ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... if not too large," said I, wistfully eying the box, (a foot square,) full of fresh maple-sugar, with its card of direction to "Mrs. Lulu L., by the politeness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mount Vernon, he entertained Lafayette for the last time before he sailed for France. After he had gone, Washington wrote him this letter in which appears the affection of a friend and the reverie of an old man looking somewhat wistfully towards sunset, "and after that ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... in not admitting it—why do I find myself ill at ease, now tense, now irritable over trifles, now sulky, despondent—as plainly sulky and despondent as a wild animal successfully caged and labelled, which must perforce stay put yet which will not afford its spectators the satisfaction of walking wistfully from cage corner to cage corner and yowling ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... book, "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious," I tried rather wistfully to convince you, dear reader, that you had a solar plexus and a lumbar ganglion and a few other things. I don't know why I took the trouble. If a fellow doesn't believe he's got a nose, the best way to convince him is gently to waft a little ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... pleasant successes, needed much resolution. Literary employments are so vexed with uncertainties at best, and it was not until the voice of conscience sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest pebble beach that I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs. Todd. She only became more wistfully affectionate than ever in her expressions, and looked as disappointed as I expected when I frankly told her that I could no longer enjoy the pleasure of what we called "seein' folks." I felt that I was cruel to a whole neighborhood in curtailing her liberty in ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... wistfully at him, and something seemed to rise up in the man's throat and choke him. He made a violent motion, as if to free himself from something. What had happened to him,—was he suddenly possessed, or was he losing his wits? He tried to force ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... on the shore and gazed wistfully on the departing yawl. There was no boat in the vicinity, and only one mode of arresting the progress of the fugitive. I almost wept through vexation. I hesitated one moment on account of the sharks, then plunged into the river, and with rapid and strong strokes ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... besides: a Methodist itinerant in the mountains,—you know all that means? There was nothing irresolute or shabby in Gaunt's voice, however, as he greeted the old man,—clear, thin, nervous. Scofield looked at him wistfully. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I know I laugh too much, sometimes; but I don't mean it, sir. I suppose I couldn't go on with the lessons after you leave here?" She looked at him wistfully. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... told him, speaking wistfully. "But perhaps you are in the right so to be. In other circumstances I should have been proud to have owned you as my son. As it is..." He broke off abruptly, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... of his hold. A soft, warm, brooding day. Roads becoming dry in many places, and looking so good after the mud and the snow. I walk up beyond the boundary and over Meridian Hill. To move along the drying road and feel the delicious warmth is enough. The cattle low long and loud, and look wistfully into the distance. I sympathize with them. Never a spring comes but I have an almost irresistible desire to depart. Some nomadic or migrating instinct or reminiscence stirs within me. I ache ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... "Aye," she returned wistfully, "you are like the rest. You have a long memory for injuries, but a short one for benefits. Had it not been for me, Monsieur, you would not be here now to demand this that you call satisfaction. Have you forgotten ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... was turned back from her paler face, where the veins showed like blue rivers, and her smile was like the flitting of a moonbeam. She was standing very close to Waitstill, closer than she had been to any woman for many years, and she studied her a little, wistfully, yet courteously, as if her attention was attracted by something fresh and winning. She looked at the color, ebbing and flowing in the girl's cheeks; at her brows and lashes; at her neck, as white as swan's-down; and finally put out her hand with a sudden impulse and touched the knot of ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... looking very wistfully straight at a large fine house, when a window opened, and an old woman, putting out her head, exclaimed ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... wistfully along the slender way, Through summer tan of freckled shade and shine, I take the path that leads me as it may— Its every ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... one hand on my knee, looked wistfully into my face, as an inquiring child looks into ...
— Pakia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ambulance laden with dressings and restoratives, and there amid the turmoil and dirt, and under the torrid sun of Washington, toiled day by day, alleviating such suffering as she could. And when the steamers turned their prows down the river, she looked wistfully after them, longing to go to those dread shores whence all this misery came. But she was alone and unknown, and how could she get the means and the permission to go? The military authorities were ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... looked down into the distended pupils gazing so wistfully at her, and wondering what new psychological problem she had to deal with. She knew she must go very warily, or defeat her own longing to help him. At last, she said ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... should ever be married, if you should have children, you are to give it to your eldest daughter. And, oh! my child," the agitated man continued, as he arose and laid his hands upon her shoulders and looked wistfully into her beautiful face, "I hope, I pray, that your life may be ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... over there," he went on, waving his hand towards a long line of seated poilus who were peacefully enjoying their pipes, while wistfully watching the smoke curl upward. "Just look at them, aren't they splendid? Why they've got faces like the 'Drinkers' in the Velasquez picture. See that little fellow rolling his cigarette? Isn't he the image of the Bacchus who forms the centre of the painting? That's Brunot, and he's thinking about ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... day, day after day, I gazed wistfully over the sea for hours at a time, without ever seeing a sail, and at last I began to grow somewhat despondent, and sighed for the companionship of my black friends once more. Yamba was unremitting in her endeavours to make ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... are better this day or two," papa said to me, wistfully. "You are like yourself. What is ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... from Walter Campbell. He seemed so possessed by his own thoughts and reveries that he heard no sound of coming footsteps till he looked up suddenly, and saw little Jean by his side. He jumped up from the turf, and began to look wistfully towards the river side to see if there was nobody else besides Jean coming to ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... passed directly from the stairway into the kitchen, or living- room, her father turned from the hopeless-seeming tangle of soiled and torn netting on the floor before him, and looked at her half wistfully from under the glazed ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... mean these little knots of women and children gazing wistfully after the train? What mean these sobs, these tears, this heart-break? Ah! this is another side to the picture. They have said good-bye, and they know that all of these lads will not return, and that some ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... were about to help themselves to the food, there came some little tired feet over the grass; and a more forlorn figure than Maddie's stood a few yards off, looking shyly, but wistfully, at them. ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... look!" I said, turning his face toward the high pole right in front of him. He gazed up wistfully, and then all at once he ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... does," said he wistfully, "and I know my position too well to offend an enemy. I only wished to know"—and here he paused, evidently trying to find some form of expression which could not possibly disturb the keenest sensibilities—"if there is likely to be any one on board ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... an old country seat," continued Miss Rose, clasping her hands and gazing at him wistfully. "I should be so grateful if your lordship would describe yours ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... spring shall have come again, it is not through the windows of this mansion that the father of such a son, and the son of such a father, shall look upon those green hills on which the eyes of so many a captive have gazed so wistfully in vain; but in their own mountain home again they shall listen to the murmurs of the great Atlantic; they shall go forth, and inhale the freshness of the morning air together; 'they shall be free of mountain solitude;' they will be encompassed with the loftiest images ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... very wistfully. "You are young, child. In time you will understand what place the world assigns to such men as I. It is a place I could ask no woman to share. Such as I am, could I speak of love to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... not happy, and a nervous terror was always upon her which had caused her blue eyes to look out wistfully from delicate hollows and faded the soft pink on her cheeks; still she kept involuntarily to her feminine ways, and wanted ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had an inward shudder. In the dismay of his heart he might have believed his brig to lie under the very wing of the Angel of Desolation—so oppressive, so final, and hopeless seemed the silence in which he and Carter looked at each other, wistfully. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... aloud, with dancing eyes, his last line: "'I should like to own a dog.' I thought," he said wistfully, "that I might ask ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... shot she stole softly downstairs and stood at the hall door gazing wistfully after the young Laird of Logie. Yet not long dare she tarry there, lest the queen should need her services. Noiselessly she crept back into the ante-room. Hark! what was that? The king was moving! Indeed, the pistol-shot ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... dreary prospect, and feels that this dreadful hardening cannot be God's ultimate purpose for the nation. So he humbly and wistfully asks how long it is to last. The answer is twofold, heavy with a weight of apparently utter ruin in its first part, but disclosing a faint, far-off gleam of hope on its second. Complete destruction, and the casting of Israel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... few words for their most vital needs, and I have no words at all—for what—for what vital things I used to know—so that perhaps in time I shall come to forget that I ever knew anything different from—other persons' knowledge." Berber paused, regarding his mistress intently, as if wistfully trying to see what she made of all this. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Undine, who tried to adapt herself to them by combining in her manner a mixture of Apex dash and New York dignity; and the result was so successful that when she rose to go the Princess, with a hand on her arm, said almost wistfully: "You're staying on too? Then do take pity on us! We might go on some trips together; and in the evenings we could make ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... characterised their attitude toward the poorhouse porter. But I wouldn't have it. Step by step I increased their order—eggs, rashers of bacon, more eggs, more bacon, more tea, more slices and so forth—they denying wistfully all the while that they cared for anything more, and devouring it ravenously as ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... goodness sake," replied Lester. "I hope you do.... I'll see you to-morrow before we leave." He paused, and she looked at him wistfully. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... wistfully, as she plucked several of the flowers and held them up to gaze wonderingly at them, as if to see in them some revelation of the mystery that shrouded her birth and her name. Then she stood with dreamy gaze upon ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... has a Perfect Pig with figures?" she asked wistfully, and lifted a hesitant hand in ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the water, while a boiling wreath of milky foam rushes away from her bows, and swathes of white dapple the green river that seems to pour past her majestic sides. The emigrants lean over the rail, and gaze wistfully at us. Ah, how many thousands of miles they must travel ere they reach their new home! Strange and pitiful it is to think that so few of them will ever see the old home again; and yet there is something bright and hopeful in the spectacle, if we think not of individuals, but of the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They were married before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... up rather weakly to go on again, "it is." And he sighed again. "I come here every year. I hope," he added a little wistfully, "I hope, you see, that it may happen to me again ... but ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... her candle and said good night to me very gently and quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,—with my fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,—and on the threshold turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... to be witnessed on that sad, chill, autumn night, was the small boy in a threadbare gray sweater and shabby cap who stood gazing wistfully into the seductive windows of Pfiffel's Home Bakery. The sight of him standing there with his small nose plastered against the glass, looking with silent yearning upon the jelly rolls and icing cakes, was enough to arouse ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... one partition to another. It was a cruel fate to be left to perish in that way,—the fate that many a martyr had had to face,—to be first strangled and then burned. Death had not the terror for him that it has for most young persons. He was accustomed to thinking of it calmly, sometimes wistfully, even to such a degree that the thought of self-destruction had come upon him as a temptation. But here was death in an unexpected and appalling shape. He did not know before how much he cared to live. All his old recollections came before him as it were in one ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... finished her breakfast and was putting up a lunch, Lorraine picked up the nameless gray cat and holding its head between her slim fingers, looked at it steadily. "Ket, you're the humanest thing I've seen since I left home," she said wistfully. "I hate a country where horrible things happen under the surface and the top is just gray and quiet and so dull it makes you want to scream. Lone Morgan lied to me. He lied—he lied!" She hugged ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... granite eye; the lady with the three chins muttered something which I am convinced it would not have added to my personal happiness to hear; but I thought the girl with the lavender poodle watched me a little wistfully as I whirled away upon my husband's ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... them. Most women will accept when a sufficiently pleasing man offers them a sufficiently congenial life. If the offers they receive fall below a certain standard, then they prefer to remain single, wistfully hoping, no doubt, that the right man may come along before it is too late. The preservation of the imaginative faculty in women, to which I have previously alluded, doubtless accounts for many spinsters. It must also be remembered that the more educated women become, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... you," said Charley, wistfully, "but my game leg won't carry me that far." He watched his chum until he disappeared in the shadow of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a little wistfully, Then went her sunshine way:— The sea's eye had a mist on it, And the leaves fell ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... hesitancy, as if she feared that she might lead into waters too deep for him to follow. He quickly relieved her of all danger of embarrassment on that head by telling her of some books which he had not read, but wished to read, holding to the bars as he talked, looking wistfully toward the spot of sunlight which was now growing as slender as a golden cord against the gray wall. His eyes came back to her face, to find that look of growing wonder there, to see her quick blush mount and consume it in her eyes like ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... looked like a very helpless and sorrowful little girl. "Only, it—it isn't goin' to be as easy as you think. He was so pretty," said Mayme McCartney wistfully. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... came again, and the work proceeded as before. As the hour of eleven drew near a person watching her might have noticed that every now and then Tess's glance flitted wistfully to the brow of the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing. On the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children, of ages ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the stubbly convexity of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the location of the landing. Strangely enough, no boats of any kind came out to the ship, not even a native banca, so that our intercourse with Oroquieta was purely telescopic. Through our good lens we saw many a soldier, field-glass in hand, looking wistfully in our direction. Other soldiers walked up and down the beach on sentry duty, still others seemed to be standing guard over a small drove of horses in a palm grove a little to the right of the principal buildings, while many more lounged lazily on the broad steps of the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... short night between my Love and me! I watch the soft-shod dusk creep wistfully Through the slow-moving curtains, pausing by And shrouding with its spirit-fingers free Each well-known chair. There is a growing grace Of tender magic in ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... line does sort of—well, tug at your heart-strings, doesn't it?" She smiled, almost wistfully. "Say, Billy, when you reach the Eagle House at Waterloo, tell Annie, the head-waitress to rustle you a couple of Mrs. Traudt's dill pickles. Tell her Mrs. McChesney asked you to. Mrs. Traudt, the proprietor's wife, doles 'em out ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... her wistfully. "Just about as glad as a man would be to see God's sunlight if he'd been in prison, or starving in a mine that had fallen in on him. Only perhaps a ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... upon the terrace, to the east of Bellegarde, and so came to an unforgotten world of moonlight. They sat upon a bench of carved stone near the balustrade which overlooked the highway: and the boy and the girl gazed wistfully beyond the highway, over luminous valleys and tree-tops. Just so they had sat there, as Jurgen perfectly remembered, when Mother Sereda first used ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... He would have liked to ask for bread at the cottage-door, but he said to himself, Why should he eat, for was he not going to die? Yet why should he not eat, even if he were going to die? He turned his head wistfully, he was so faint with hunger. The force driving him on, however, was greater than hunger—he ran harder. . . . But ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... walked amongst the Trial Men In a suit of shabby grey; A cricket cap was on his head, And his step seemed light and gay; But I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day. ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... additional proof, were it needed, of the prodigious extent of my ignorance!" he reflected in stoically humorous self-contempt. His eyes dwelt, somewhat wistfully, on the glittering stream of traffic, once again those two unbidden guests, Loneliness and Freedom—for whose entertainment he had made inadequate provision—sitting, as it seemed, very close on either side of him. Then that happened which altered all the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... victims. We had yesterday a young man near us who had been in India only a short time, and who was returning invalided. Poor fellow! He lay in the hatchway in his easy-chair from morning until night, gazing wistfully over the sea toward his beloved England. There he would soon get well. Only last night as I passed to bed I stopped to encourage him, telling him how finely we were dancing along homeward. At dawn I heard the pulsations of the engine cease for a few moments only, but in those moments ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... was deserted, save for the skinny little freckle-faced devil, who sat perched on a high stool, gazing wistfully out of the window. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and at what she saw smiled a little, half bitterly, half wistfully. "I'd like to have made ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... will be here and I shan't see as much of you as I'd like," he explained, rather wistfully. "Three is a crowd, you know. I've got so used to having you all to myself, it's hard to break ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the table, Mrs Chester looked wistfully at Rhoda's white face, lighted into a feeble smile by one of her friend's sallies, and was seized with a longing to ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... process analogous to this takes place in our own country. In spring, we begin to look wistfully at the garden, to watch the opening of the lettuces, and count the colours of the pansies. As the season advances, we wander into the fields, examine curiously the thin grass, and turn an admiring eye towards the green ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... He glanced wistfully along the road towards the hills, and then set off walking obediently the other way, buttoning up his coat against the rain. He had never wanted to go; and the idea of standing all by himself in a crowded market, to be stared at, pushed, and hired by some big ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... invited me to the theatre before he knew of the death of his mother," Letty went on. "And I suppose he has been so upset he hasn't thought to notify me. But he might have sent me word," she added wistfully. "I should have done so if ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... rag'd, and kept as heavy a coil as Stout HERCULES for loss of HYLAS; Forcing the vallies to repeat 185 The accents of his sad regret. He beat his breast, and tore his hair, For loss of his dear Crony Bear; That Eccho, from the hollow ground, His doleful wailings did resound 190 More wistfully, by many times, Than in small poets splay-foot rhimes That make her, in their rueful stories To answer to int'rogatories, And most unconscionably depose 195 To things of which she nothing knows; And when she has said all she can say, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... did not; he was misdirected; he made fruitless efforts, in his want of experience; and he was now starving. As he passed the great dust-heap, he gave one vague, melancholy gaze that way, and then looked wistfully into the canal. And he continued to look into the canal as he slowly moved along, till he was out ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of the mothers who have made this nation what it is. The hair was drawn back simply from the broad, clear forehead, and her strong aquiline features were sweet, with all their force. Her dress was plain. She sat there, looking across the blue waters thoughtfully, and at moments wistfully. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... his face wistfully. He held the keys of that beyond.... Something had snapped in his well-ordered mechanism, and he was going, going, drifting will-lessly into feeling and longing. And the next moment he held her, looking into a face that burned ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... child, away over the green fields to a farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. From just such another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman—even in the dumps—was gazing wistfully, issued Caroline Inchbald, a beauty, and a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival on ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... whisper, looking up wistfully and sadly at him. Belding was a raging fire within, cold without. He watched Gale, and believed he could foretell that young man's future conduct. Gale gathered Nell up into his arms and held her to his ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... his own baby standing wistfully aloof, pushed out of his life that this baby he had no right to keep might have all of his affections, all of his poor estate. And Marie, whose face was always in the back of his memory, a tearful, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the stranger looked wistfully into the excited and deeply sympathetic face, and said slowly, "I don't ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... mysteriously altering, the old Constance still lingered in that frame, an innocent soul hesitating to spread its wings and quit for ever the body which had been its home; you could see the timid thing peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Dale's interest with his own anxiety, and looked wistfully at the older man, who seemed sunk in thought and quite forgetful of his presence. Mr. Denner put one hand to his lips and gave a ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... guide, looking wistfully into the face of the generous and impetuous girl, as she held his two hard and sunburnt hands in her own pretty and delicate fingers, and laughing in his own silent and peculiar manner, while anguish gleamed over lineaments which seemed incapable of deception, even while agitated with ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... you before you were born, and I promised her—ah, well, why be a cry-baby? I knew I could manage until you were ready to settle down to business. And you HAVE enjoyed your little run, haven't you?" he concluded wistfully. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... traditional authoritativeness of the mother. Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous. She was too simply honest to acquire stature by standing on her maternal dignity. By a profound instinct she wistfully treated everybody as an equal, as a fellow-creature; even her own daughter. It was not the way to come with credit out of the threatened altercation ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... crawling from one body to the other, with as much watchfulness, as much grief, and almost as much intelligence as the surviving friends; now crouching at the cold feet of Hazlehurst, now licking the stiff hand, now raising himself to gaze wistfully at the inanimate ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... do," replied Florence, calmly. "Have you not noticed that the little girl never comes here without looking wistfully at the opening buds? And don't you remember, the other morning, she asked me so prettily if I would let her mother come and see it, she was so fond ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... looked at the various couples rapidly moving round that open space to the sound of the seductive music, and he said, rather wistfully— ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... perception of Him as He dwelt among men. But too often have theology and art presented a Christ embellished with fantastic colours or obscured by abstract speculations. Recently, however, there has been a revival of interest in the actual life of Jesus. Men are turning wistfully to the life of the Master for guidance in practical matters, and it is beginning to dawn upon the world that the highest ideals of manhood were present in the Carpenter of Nazareth. We must therefore go back to the Gospels if we would know what manner of man Jesus was. The ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... to pay sums at midsummer, which we had been in the habit of paying at Christmas; if, however, a single applicant was refused, a new rumour of inability was started and hunted through the town before night. People walked by our house, looking up wistfully at the windows; others peeped down the area, to see what we had for dinner. One gentleman went to our butcher, to inquire how much we owed him; and one lady narrowly escaped a legal action, because when she saw a few pipkins lying ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... not so flush of help as had been expected. The child of utterly poor Peasants there; whose poverty, shining out as thrift, unweariable industry and stoical valor, is beautiful to me, still more their poor little girl's bits of fortunes, "tending three cows" in the solitudes there, and gazing wistfully into Earth and Heaven with her ingenuous little soul,—desiring mainly one thing, that she could get Books, any Book whatever; having half-accidentally picked up the art of reading, and finding hereabouts absolutely ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Al." The man's arm linked itself through his wife's. The woman smiled wistfully up into the strong ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... "Don't you?" said Gertrude wistfully. "Oh, Reggie, it is a comfort just to see you sitting there; it is indeed! Except at home here—and they've been so good to me—you are the first that has said one kind word to me about it all. I knew you would when you heard. Only I don't feel as if I ought to ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... old carcass has always been in the way," said Wullie wistfully, and she ran out of the hut, unable to bear the pity of that, right up on Ben Grief. But before she reached the top she had to take off the tight bandages, for she found she could scarcely breathe, much less climb in them, and her shoes and stockings she ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... trial of the rebel lords, George Selwyn, seeing Bethel's sharp visage looking wistfully at the prisoners, said, "What a shame it is to turn her face to the prisoners, until they ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... thrown over their arms, bustled down the passage which led to the ante-chamber. The knot of guardsmen in their gorgeous blue and silver coats straightened themselves up and brought their halberds to attention, while the young officer, who had been looking wistfully out of the window at some courtiers who were laughing and chatting on the terraces, turned sharply upon his heel, and strode over to the white and gold door of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be glad to have me—come and live for a time in your home life, dear?" Jane recalled me to the question in hand by saying wistfully. "I feel that I have never had such good friends before, anywhere, as these of yours are to ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... care, to dress for dinner, pausing first to stand in the window of his dressing-room and gaze wistfully upon the lake he loved so well, now dimming slowly in ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous |
