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More "Reflective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its center sucked hollow, exactly as a glass quarter-filled with water behaves when rotated quickly. Thus the outer surface of the dome, coated inside with the milky liquid, gleamed and scintillated as the whirl of light struck it and danced off it: and it even became dimly reflective. ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... further, of many of them, and those the most trustworthy, that though they had apparently much to gain in a worldly point of view by embracing the religion of the court, they held fast to their own. His reflective mind, therefore, was unwilling from the outset to accept the theory that because he, the conqueror, the ruler, happened to be born a Muhammadan, therefore Muhammadanism was true for all mankind. Gradually his thoughts found words in the utterance: ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... with Farfrae and his bearings towards Lucetta had made the reflective Elizabeth more observant of her brilliant and amiable companion. A few days afterwards, when her eyes met Lucetta's as the latter was going out, she somehow knew that Miss Templeman was nourishing a hope of seeing the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... in howsoever quiet and pure a spirit, there of necessity follows depression; all mirth is unnatural to the reflective mind, and even the unconscious suffer a mysterious penalty when they have wrested one whole day from fate. On the Saturday Lydia had no work to go to, and the hours dragged. In the course of the morning she went out to make some purchases. She was passing Mrs. Bower's without ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... singular adventurousness and novelty of my tour, but ten hours or more daily spent in the saddle in this rarefied, intoxicating air, disposes one to sleep rather than to write in the evening, and is far from conducive to mental brilliancy. The observing faculties are developed, and the reflective lie dormant. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... generalisation. Within the walls, on the other hand, you think of your intended ride as the most romantic of all your possibilities; of the Campagna generally as an illimitable experience. One's rides certainly give Rome an inordinate scope for the reflective—by which I suppose I mean after all the aesthetic and the "esoteric"—life. To dwell in a city which, much as you grumble at it, is after all very fairly a modern city; with crowds and shops and theatres ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... down with a reflective air. "Come here, will you?" he said, drawing Hugo aside into a small curtained recess, with a seat just wide enough for two, which happened at that moment to be empty. "I have something to ask you; there is something that you can do ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sense of imprisonment—the deprivation of liberty. But that was all, we thought—all that we should be called to endure. Nobody could leave Kimberley for a little while; it was awkward, certainly; but nothing more. How long would the Siege last? "About a week" was a favoured illusion; until reflective minds put our period of probation at a fortnight. But the higher critics shook their heads, and added—another seven days. Three weeks was made the maximum by general, dogmatic consent. Nobody ventured ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... subject the world to tyranny, and when portraits were already exhibiting the fascinating youths of an earlier generation turned into obsequious and elegant courtiers,—in Venice painting kept true to the ripened and more reflective spirit which succeeded to the most glowing decades of the Renaissance. This led men to take themselves more seriously, to act with more consideration of consequences, and to think of life with less hope and exultation. Quieter joys were sought, the pleasures of friendship and of the affections. ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... such confidence be cultivated? Mainly by cultivating the habit of turning first to self when reflective thought is required. It is presupposed that we must consult the library and the world about us for raw facts of various kinds, for historical events, scientific data, views of men, descriptions, etc.; but when our own ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... when he was but twenty years old. The boiling passion, without a thought of satiety, which marks many of his elegies would also incline us to assign them to youth, and though some of his epistles, and many of his miscellaneous poems, are penetrated with a quieter and more reflective spirit, the richness of fancy in them, as well as the amatory character of many, perhaps the majority, favour a similar attribution. All alike display Donne's peculiar poetical quality—the fiery imagination shining in dark places, the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... beach, and the intense waiting look on the face she turned up to him, made an impression on his mind that stayed with him through life. It seemed to him that he had arrived at a kind of culmination, a starting point, and that all the vague shadowy uncertainties that had, in reflective moments, flitted through his mind, were to be brushed away by some act, some word, from the lips of this woman. With a rush he realised how consistently he had been thinking of her and how enormously he had been counting on her falling in with his plans, and the realisation was followed by a sickening ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... not wish the beast to die," he muttered to himself in low reflective tones, as though he thought aloud, "for of them all it alone liked and did not fear me. I might take it with me but still it would perish of grief in the loneliness of the caves. Moreover, she loved it whom I shall see no more; yes, Yva—" as he spoke the name ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... this: one is impressed with the idea that it has resulted from the collapse of the upper portion of the wall, and the flow of some viscous material over the wreck and down the inner slope. The difference between the reflective power of this matter, whatever may be its nature, and the broad bright declivities of the inner slopes, are beautifully displayed at sunset. The cross-valleys are more easily traced under low morning illumination; but to appreciate the actual structure ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... this time for a longer, an almost reflective, breath. "That being their business, p'r'aps they were all right; but ain't it a fine thing when a gang wants to go seal-hunting that a lot o' gover'ment people must specify where they can kill 'em, and when?—and they swimmin' the wide ocean as the Lord intended! And our little vessel—the Hattie ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... worse than I thought!" And the matter ended in his going back to his picture and painting furiously for a few minutes, with an almost reflective air. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the music to which she listened, and she was almost oblivious of the brilliant throng, the crowded boxes, or of the Duchess of Snowdon sitting near her strangely still, now and again scanning the beautiful face beside her with a reflective look. The Duchess loved the girl—she was but a girl, after all—as she had never loved any of her sex; it had come to be the last real interest of her life. To her eyes, dimmed with much seeing, blurred by a garish kaleidoscope of fashionable life, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... steadiness toward the edge of the woods, only to be lost to the eye in a fold of the carpet or in a changed background. There had been something workmanlike and bold about their rigid, matter-of-fact progress, reflective of man-power in battle as seen very distinctly for a space in that field of baffling and shimmering haze. I thought that I had glimpses of some of them just before they entered the woods and that they were mixing with figures coming ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... sympathies it stirs in us. Greek mythology was the proper form of art for scenery like this. It gave the final touch to all its beauties, and added to its sensuous charm an inbreathed spiritual life. No exercise of the poetic faculty, far less that metaphysical mood of the reflective consciousness which 'leads from nature up to nature's God,' can now supply this need. From sea and earth and sky, in those creative ages when the world was young, there leaned to greet the men whose fancy made them, forms imagined and yet real—human, divine—the archetypes and everlasting patterns ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of August we arrived in Bandjermasin, where several days were spent in packing my collections. For many months I had been in touch with nature and natural people, and on my return to civilisation I could not avoid reflective comparisons. Both men and women of the Mahakam have superb physiques; many of them are like Greek statues and they move with wonderful, inborn grace. When with them one becomes perfectly familiar with nudity and there is no demoralising effect. Paradoxical ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... He handed me a letter from the Prussian philosopher: it was a curious catalogue raisonne of the improbabilities of success in the general war of Europe against the Republic; concluding with the words, so characteristic of his solemn and reflective views of man and the affairs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain. How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with other enemies. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... as men who have learnt the art of a sociable silence. Josephine and Sarah finished their cigarettes and their coffee in a condition of reflective ease. Then Sarah stood up and straightened her hair ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... moment on the after part of the quarter-deck, where the shadow of the White Ensign curved and flickered across the planking. Perhaps the Captain, who stood there, was himself a student of the art. At any rate, as the men marched aft through the screen doors his level eyes passed from face to face, reflective, observant, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Frederick, had given him courage to repress forever the wish with which he had left the Hohenstaufen court. The sacrifice was hard, but he made it willingly as soon as it became apparent to his reflective mind that not only his earthly but his heavenly Father had appointed the task of devoting the full wealth of his talents and the power of his will to the elevation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reflective in his manner, his genial, open-hearted disposition soon made the young officer of Marines a general favourite with every one on board the Triton. The captain of the frigate, one of those gallant old seamen who had distinguished ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... precious vessel and yet more precious wine that it contains." Trench, Notes on the Parables, chap. 1. A good illustration of this we have in the tales of Grecian mythology, once received by the masses of the people as literally true; but which "a later and more reflective age than that in which the mythus had birth" learned to regard as only the vehicle of certain ideas respecting deity. The myth, as thus defined, does not come within the sphere of biblical interpretation. The historic events recorded in the Old Testament may, and often do, shadow forth ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... that long voyage by sail, of the presence and majesty of the Maker. I felt, standing on the deck of the "Beagle," as if I were surrounded by some awful but beneficent power. The grandeur of the sea must make a reflective man religious, as its weirdness might breed superstition in the youthful, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... descriptions of the wilderness. He also was born and bred among the mountains, and though he had neither the poetical nor the philosophical genius of Wordsworth, and was inferior far in the perceptive, the reflective, and the imaginative faculties, still he could see, and feel, and paint too, in water colours and on air canvass, and is one of the Masters." Hear next Wilson's great rival in criticism, Hazlitt. They were, on many points bitter ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... criteria, taken in the nature of the thing enquired, the reflective inquirer will perchance find himself led on to add two furnished from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... came leaping up the path, excited with an imminent question. She halted before the still-reflective Juliana and went at once to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... violet in it, clinging to the paper as if they were fond of each other, and Grizel's mamma had written, "The violet is me, hiding in a corner because I am so happy." The letters were in many moods, playful, reflective, sad, despairing, arch, but all were written in an ecstasy of the purest love, and most of them were cheerful, so that you seemed to see the sun dancing on the paper while she wrote, the same sun that afterwards showed up her painted cheeks. Why ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... when looking with half-shut eyes, the illusion is complete, and in less time than it takes to describe all this one can evoke all the pictures of nature and of our dreams, all the wild conceptions of a diseased mind, or the realities of a reflective brain. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... critical decision;—the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect delusion is to be aimed at,—an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to illustrate its quality and character by reference ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... linguistic criticism, in the serene confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a widening—I fear, an irreparable—breach between the thought and the religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic Christianity which ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... table, their faces glowing in the artificial light. The exclamation "plunging!" "plunging!" was to be heard whispered here and there. Lynde was delightfully cool and straight. His lithe body was quite erect, his eyes reflective, his teeth set over an unlighted cigarette. Aileen was excited as a child, delighted to be once more the center of comment. Lord looked at her with sympathetic eyes. He liked her. Well, let her he amused. It was good for her now and then; but Lynde was a fool to make a ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Jack, in the same reflective tone, as if taking up her thought, "persons who are not good have a perception of the indefinite. I did not think of it in ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... The thousand little occupations it suggests become a necessity of existence; its very worries are like the wholesome opposition that purifies and strengthens the frame of a free state. Then, what is there half so sweet as the reflective flattery which results from our appreciation of an object who in return deems us the ne plus ultra of perfection? There it is, in fact; that confounded bump of self-esteem does it all, and has more imprudent matches to answer for than all the occipital ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... In any case his was an early marriage. It was an ideal alliance from every point of view. The girl was young and beautiful, an orphan heiress of a great name and of a great fortune. The Prince, then an officer in the Guards and distinguished amongst his fellows by something reserved and reflective in his character, had fallen headlong in love with her beauty, her charm, and the serious qualities of her mind and heart. He was a rather silent young man; but his glances, his bearing, his whole person expressed his absolute devotion to the woman of his choice, ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... who has to be patched," replied Fredjim in a reflective tone, "for although it didn't hurt us as much as we expected, it's a terrible mix-up to be in until we become used to our strange combination. You and we are about alike, now, Jimfred, although we were ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... food for thought. Wimperley, dismissing the idea of lunch, sat down. The group became universally reflective, and for a little while no one spoke. Stoughton threw away his cigar, rested his chin on his hand and stared at the model of the pulp mill on Wimperley's desk. Wimperley's eyes wandered to the big map and again he saw Clark's finger sliding over its glazed surface. Riggs twisted his handkerchief ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of any other lyrics. In subjects they display the usual lyric variety. There are songs of delight in Nature; a multitude of love poems of all moods; many pastorals, in which, generally, the pastoral conventions sit lightly on the genuine poetical feeling; occasional patriotic outbursts; and some reflective and religious poems. In stanza structure the number of forms is unusually great, but in most cases stanzas are internally varied and have a large admixture of short, ringing or musing, lines. The lyrics were published sometimes in collections by single authors, sometimes in the series of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Wordsworth and the tonic faith that is omnipresent in Browning. Arnold himself was not wholly satisfied with his creed; but his cool reason refused him the solace of an unquestioning faith. Arnold has been called "the poet of the Universities," because of the reflective scholarly thought in his verse. It breathes the atmosphere of books and of the study. Such poetry cannot appeal to the masses. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... that it was impossible to get rid of this defect, and therefore turned his attention to the construction of reflectors. But the discovery that the dispersive powers of different glasses are not proportional to their reflective powers, supplied opticians with the means of remedying the defect. Let us clearly understand what is the discovery referred to. If with a glass prism of a certain form we produce a spectrum of the sun, this spectrum will be ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... extraordinary degree. She felt a strong suspicion that "the Sachem," as the boat-crews used to call him, "the Recluse," "the Night-Hawk," "the Sphinx," as others named him, must be the author of it. It appeared to her the production of a young person of a reflective, poetical turn of mind. It was not a woman's way of writing; at least, so thought the Secretary. The writer had travelled much; had resided in Italy, among other places. But so had many of the summer visitors and residents of Arrowhead Village. The handwriting was not decisive; it had some ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be," Max went on, in a reflective way. "Suppose, now, some man was on this island, and either couldn't get away, or else for some reason didn't want to go over to the mainland. He'd have to live, some way or other, and if he didn't have a gun and ammunition, why, the only way he could keep alive ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... pleasant indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in man's life: life was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, too sentimental, too full of interest and gaiety and chat. It was an age of talk: "mirth is none," says Chaucer's host, "to ride on by the way dumb as a stone "; and the Trouveur ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... gave Vohrenlorf the slip, and went out on the Boulevards alone. In great cities nobody is known; I enjoyed the luxury of being ignored. I might pass for a student, a chemist, at a pinch, perhaps, for a poet of a reflective type. My natural manner would seem no more than a touch of youth's pardonable arrogance. I sat down and had some coffee. It was half-past ten, and the pavements were full. I bought a paper and read a paragraph about Elsa and myself. Elsa and myself both seemed rather a long way off. It was ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... not wish to draw the ultimate conclusion from all this that it would be better for Americans were their periodical exodus to Europe to cease. Far from it. That cultivated Americans, and Americans particularly of a more reflective than active mind, should find the relative ease, culture and simplicity of European life more congenial to them than the restless, high-pressure life of America, is quite natural. And if there are no interests or ties to make their presence in their own country imperatively necessary, it is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Cancer, and carefully study out the parallel upon its astrological planes and also under its Occult aspects, as given forth in the "Light of Egypt," Vol. I, where we read: "Cancer rules the respiratory and digestive functions of humanity, and governs the reflective organs of the brain." Note the parallel. Within subjective realms the Divine soul has inspired and assimilated all that is possible to that angelic state, and knows a period of blissful rest. But the longings of its immortal nature ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... contrary, old age lends a peculiar charm which renders her company agreeable to, and sought for, by all serious minds. Her conversation and manners still possess all the blitheness, freshness and vivacity of youth. Her steady lightsome gaze, tempered by a benignant and reflective mind, lends her an air of amiability and majesty. Her language is instructive, her counsels encouraging, while her reproaches arouse the heart to a sense of duty. She has friends wherever she is known, friends who revere and respect, without idolizing her. In her youth she never ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... from a battlefield in Flanders to a palace in London and after the briefest of dialogues it could change again to a street in Genoa—all without inconveniencing anyone or necessitating a halt in the presentation of the drama. Any reflective reader of Shakespeare will agree, I think, that this ability to shift scenes, which after all, is only that which the novelist or poet has always possessed and still possesses, enables the dramatist to impart a breadth of view that was impossible under the ideas of unity that governed ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... only add to their account of marriage as the end of a woman's existence—which may be right or it may not—a definition of marriage as an association with a reasonable and reflective being, they would speedily effect a revolution in the present miserable system. To the business of finding a husband a young lady would then add the not less important business of making herself a rational ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... was, almost from the first, in a wholly different case. In its early phases it, too, was imitative, reflective. MacDowell returned to America, after a twelve years' apprenticeship to European influences, in 1888, bringing with him his symphonic poems, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine," his unfinished "Lamia," his two orchestral paraphrases of ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... I think myself now," said the skipper impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave reflective air. "Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way of helping you, with ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... much pleased," she said. "And so am I, of course." Then, after a moment of reflective abstraction, she asked with sudden eagerness, "How long will it ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... and his reflective deliberation had meaning. "There are a lot of us who don't plume ourselves particularly in these days. We are not as innocent as we were when this sort of thing began. We are not as innocent as we were when Rosy was married." And he sighed and rubbed his ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... paused as she knelt down to feed the fire, holding-the fragrant chips in her hand; the flame flickered out and lighted up her reflective eyes while she endeavored to express the distinction she felt: "Purdee's words don't sound ter me like the words of a man sech ez ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... have said, "Were you? You didn't show it." She was half expecting him to say some such thing. But he became reflective, and began: "Well, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... you seem thoughtful. I not wonder much That he who sails the ocean should be sad. I am myself reflective. When I think Of all this wallowing beast, the Sea, has sucked Between his sharp, thin lips, the wedgy waves, What heaps of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls; What piles of shekels, talents, ducats, crowns, What bales of Tyrian mantles, Indian shawls, Of laces that have blanked the weavers' ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... decided, that both sides claimed the victory, that the fighting would soon begin again, and that just one more name, that of Southwold Bay, had been added to the list of battles; when he had estimated how much time is lost simply in shutting his eyes and ears by a man who likes to use his reflective powers even while his fellow creatures are cannonading one another;—Cornelius bade farewell to De Ruyter, to the Ruart de Pulten, and to glory, kissed the knees of the Grand Pensionary, for whom he entertained ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... London, but we only went to another and quieter inn, seeking peace and the absence of fear. I may say we found it, and, in a chair before a good fire, I again took my comfort. Paddy sat on the floor, toasting his shins. The warmth passed him into a reflective mood. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... gracefully resting on one folded hand, and her calm and beautiful, but now deeply-clouded brow, shaded by the white, taper fingers of the other, was abstractedly gazing into the glowing coals on the hearth before her, while the gentle, but less reflective McRea, with a countenance disturbed only by the passing emotions of sympathy that occasionally flitted over it, as she glanced at the downcast face of her friend, sat quietly preparing for bed, by removing ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the Rockies, the one most marvelously eloquent is the solitaire. I have often felt that everything stood still and that every beast and bird listened while the matchless solitaire sang. The hermit thrush seems to suppress one, to give one a touch of reflective loneliness; but the solitaire stirs one to be up and doing, gives one the spirit of youth. In the solitaire's song one feels all the freshness and the promise of spring. The song seems to be born of ages of freedom beneath peaceful skies, of the rhythm of the universe, of a mingling ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... His slow and reflective walk brought us at length within sight of the house. It stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallor of twilight. It looked like an ogre's castle. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... whiskers owned and engineered by Diggs bobbed up and down as he chewed a reflective cud, but he couldn't see the matter ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... lines across it in parts, such as may be seen in the real wood; but previous to wiping out the figure, streaks of light should be wiped out and softened on one side of the panel or across the stiles, in imitation of the reflective lights seen in oak. The color should also be partially wiped off the rails or stiles at their junction; this tends to define the joint. The color is now let to dry hard, when it will be ready for over-combing—that ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... administrative year. The chief literary contribution is "Hail, Autumn!", one of Mr. Arthur Ashby's brilliant and scholarly essays on Nature. The quality of Mr. Ashby's work deserves particular attention for its reflective depth of thought, and glowing profusion of imagery. His style is remarkably mature, and escapes completely that subtle suggestion of the schoolboy's composition which seems inseparable from the average amateur's attempts ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Ivizan tambourine, a small drum painted blue, decorated with flowers and gilded branches. His left arm was resting on the instrument, his chin in his hand, almost concealing his face. He beat the drum slowly with a little stick held in his right hand, and he sat motionless, in a reflective attitude, with his thoughts concentrated on his improvisation, peeping between his fingers at the immense horizon on ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not put off. He was patient and reflective. He had been at sea many years and I verily believe he liked sea-life because upon the whole it is favourable to reflection. I am speaking of the now nearly vanished sea-life under sail. To those who may be surprised ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and not murder 'em, eh?' said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve. 'Sweet boy! We shall have this little gentleman in Parliament now,' said the Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, and looking as reflective as he could, 'before we know where we are. We shall hear of his successes at the poll; his speeches in the House; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make our little orations about him ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... church jutting over a group of elms, or the glint of light on a stream, or pale haystacks dotted round the disorderly yard of a grange—the tillage and the quiet dwellings of close on a thousand years. On all this Lawrence Hyde looked with the reflective smile of an alien. It touched him, but to revolt. More than a child of the soil he felt the charm of its tranquillity, but he felt it also as an oppression, a limitation: an ordered littleness from which world-interests were excluded. He was a lover of art and a cosmopolitan, and though ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... summer time like a great garden. We lived deep in the country, just a little strip of ground brought in from the woods, and all round our little log house was the green trees," she said one day, the pleasant reflective look that I liked to see coming into her kind, strong face. I used to sit and listen to her homely, uncultivated speech, and wonder why I liked her so much better than my natural associates. She was so real, I could not imagine her ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... mind Dr. Johnson's own estimate of his musical knowledge together with his having derived pleasure from listening to the sounds of the bagpipes. If a performance on those droning instruments was in the Doctor's mind when he said that the reflective powers need not be exercised in performing on a musical instrument, there might be some truth in the observation. The labour of thinking, however, cannot be dispensed with in connection with playing most musical instruments, and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... travel. So Dona Concepcion came to us for a year, and, after, I studied with an instructor who came from Mexico to educate my brother and me." She had no intention of being communicative with Diego Estenega, but his keen reflective gaze confused her, and ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... softly when Beverley, on his way back to the fort, departing from a direct course, went along the river's side southward to have a few moments of reflective strolling within reach of the water's pleasant murmur and the town's indefinite evening stir. Rich sweetness, the gift of early autumn, was on the air blowing softly out of a lilac west and singing in the willow fringe that hung here and there ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it. Certain it is that, if ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... took their departure, Mrs. Burnham seemed reflective. Finally she said,—"Poor Mrs. Egerton's mind is not what it was, and it never was remarkably strong. It must be admitted, too, that there is a lack of—of delicacy. Those great plain girls of hers must be ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... speediest way, I consider the question with reference to society, and not at all with reference to the criminal, holding that, in a case of cruel and deliberate murder, he is already mercifully and sparingly treated. But, as a question for the deliberate consideration of all reflective persons, I put this view of the case. With such very repulsive and odious details before us, may it not be well to inquire whether the punishment of death be beneficial to society? I believe it to have a horrible fascination for many of those persons who render themselves liable to it, impelling ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... part in the history of France. I mean M. de Maupeou, the late chancellor, who, in his disgrace, would not resign his charge. M. de Maupeou possessed one of those firm and superior minds, which, in spite of all obstacles, change the face of empires. Ardent, yet cool; bold, but reflective; the clamors of the populace did not astonish, nor did any obstacles arrest him. He went on in the direct path which his will chalked out. Quitting the magistracy, he became its most implacable enemy, and after a deadly combat he came off conqueror. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... served to shelter walkers from the heat of the summer's sun. It was Aminta's favorite retreat, and thither she came in the morning to paint her sisters, the white Bengal roses, the red cactus and the graceful clematides, which surrounded her charming retreat. There in the evening, pensive and reflective, the young girl suffered her glance to stray over the vast horizon of the sea gilded by the sun's expiring rays. On the day we speak of, Maulear found her reading, or rather seeming to read, for her book rested on her knee, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... bluntly called what he really is, "when I take my chamber-candlestick to-night, remind me to be more than usually particular in praying for Mr. Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done me an injustice." No amount of self-indulgence weakens or lowers his pious and reflective tone. "Those are her daughters," he remarks, making maudlin overtures to Mrs. Todgers in memory of his deceased wife. "Mercy and Charity, Charity and Mercy, not unholy names I hope. She was beautiful. She had a small property." When his condition has fallen into something so much ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... confoundedly grotesque and embarrassing, even putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself, which made it come abominably near a criminal offence. Like all men without much imagination, a faculty which helps the process of reflective thought, Lieut. D'Hubert became frightfully harassed by the obvious aspects of his predicament. He was certainly glad that he had not killed Lieut. Feraud outside all rules, and without the regular witnesses proper to such a transaction. Uncommonly glad. At the same time ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... her head slowly. "You'll do," she said, in a reflective tone, and nodded her head again. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... singularly stubborn, heavy as lead and, like lead, most difficult to move. Such being the case, it would have been truly absurd to exact from them much in the way of mental exertion; having short memories, dense intelligence, feeble reflective powers, they recoiled with repugnance from any occupation that demanded close study or deep thought. Had the abhorred effort been extorted from them by injudicious and arbitrary measures on the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... still with his reflective but incurious manner; and when she left the shop a quarter of an hour later the check was in her little bag beside the amethyst necklace. "I am glad I didn't have to sell the necklace," she thought. "Now ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... closed his eyes, and puckered his hemispherical brow, while, with drawn-up knees, he seemed perilously balanced on the high stool. Several times he slowly shook his head, like a dreaming owl, and when his eyes reopened their fire was gone, and a reflective film covered them. He began to speak, more deliberately than before, and in ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... deg.42'. Thus all the light incident from two complete quadrants, or 180 deg., in the case of diamond, is condensed into an angular space of 47 deg.22' (twice 23 deg.42') by refraction. Coupled with its great refraction, are the great dispersive and great reflective powers of diamond; hence the extraordinary radiance of the gem, both as regards white light and ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... business, he rose and left the court. Evidently the barrister to whom he was talking had observed to what this change of demeanour was due, for he looked first at me in the dock and next at Sir John Bell as, recovering his pomposity, he made his way through the crowd. Then he grew reflective, and pushing his wig back from his forehead he stared at the ceiling ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... upwards from its simplest products, the oil-vessel or the urn, reaches its perfection. Yet, though the most abstract and intellectualised of sensuous objects, they are still sensuous and material, addressing themselves, in the first instance, not to the purely reflective faculty, but to the eye; and a complete criticism must have approached them from both sides— from the side of the intelligence indeed, towards which they rank as great thoughts come down into ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... with vivid lustres glow For human weal, and melt at human woe; Late as YOU floated on your silver shells, 300 Sorrowing and slow by DERWENT'S willowy dells; Where by tall groves his foamy flood he steers Through ponderous arches o'er impetuous wears, By DERBY'S shadowy towers reflective sweeps, And gothic grandeur chills his dusky deeps; 305 You pearl'd with Pity's drops his velvet sides, Sigh'd in his gales, and murmur'd in his tides, Waved o'er his fringed brink a deeper gloom, And bow'd ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... actions are forced on them from without, and the external force is grotesquely inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard III, too, is delightful as the whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... The stores and offices, with closed doors, were deserted and still. A solitary policeman on the corner appeared to be meditating, indifferent to his surroundings. The few pedestrians to be seen moved leisurely and appeared as though in a mood for reflective thought and quiet interest in the welfare of their fellows. The hurrying, scrambling, jostling, rushing crowd; the clanging, crashing, roaring turmoil; the racking madness, the fierce confusion, the cruel selfishness of the week day ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... expressed open admiration. "You are a genius and a duck," she exclaimed; then, after a reflective pause, she murmured, "Very likely he met with an accident ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... him, he experiments at will, and often with consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even when his Russian prepossessions ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... occasions. But the majority in every town and village are people of moderate means and quiet habits of living, to whom the extreme formalities of the world of fashion will always remain something of an abstraction, and the knowledge of them is not of much practical use except to the few who are reflective enough to infer their own particular rule from any illustration of the ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Elysees; artists in broad-brim hats smoking cigars; Americans observing Italy, so as to be like Italians; ladies of all nations commanding the attention of mankind as they sweep along the hard-rolled gravel-walks; smiles, bows, looks of love, indignation, affection, coquetry; faces reflective of great deeds and greater dinners ... every face bright in the lambent amber light that streams from the sun dipping his head preparatory to putting on his night-cap, and bidding Rome felicissima ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... injustice and the crass folly of his estimate of her character, and with this perception came a broader and deeper realization of her greatness as an actress. Her real self now became more complex than his wildest imagined ideal of her. That this sweet and reflective girl should be the actress was as difficult to understand as that The Baroness should be at heart a good woman. For five minutes he hardly heard what she said, so busy was his mind readjusting itself to this abrupt displacement of values. With ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... itself on the mind, be uppermost in the mind, occupy the mind; have in one's mind. make an impression; sink into the mind, penetrate into the mind; engross the thoughts. Adj. thinking &c v.; thoughtful, pensive, meditative, reflective, museful^, wistful, contemplative, speculative, deliberative, studious, sedate, introspective, Platonic, philosophical. lost in thought &c (inattentive) 458; deep musing &c (intent) 457. in the mind, under consideration. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sense of smell in reply, and I realized I was not being amused at the right time. Anchoring herself by magnetic processes, she began to weave the atmosphere delicately with her taste-bud tendrils. Quickly she hollowed the air molecules into a reflective mirror, and brought it to focus on our neighboring world. I levitated myself into a position so that I could look ...
— Lonesome Hearts • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... Scattergood twiddled his reflective toes, he looked far ahead into the future of Coldriver Valley; he saw that valley as his own, developed as few mountain valleys are ever developed. Its stage line, already his property, was replaced by a railroad. The waters of its river and tributaries were dammed ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... steadfast. Then as the subjects are primary, so the feeling with which Burns regards them is primary too—that is, he gives us the first spontaneous gush—the first throb of his heart, and that a most strong, simple, manly heart. The feeling is not turned over in the reflective faculty, and there artistically shaped,—not subtilized and refined away till it has lost its power and freshness; but given at first hand, as it comes warm from within. When he is (p. 205) at his best ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... is absolutely vital to the theology which Coleridge sought to erect upon a metaphysical basis. This position is that the human will is to be regarded as the one ultimate fact of self-consciousness. So long as man confines himself to the contemplation of his percipient and reflective self alone—so long as he attends only to those modes of consciousness which are produced in him by the impressions of the senses and the operations of thought, he can never hope to escape from the famous reductio ad inscibile of Hume. He can never affirm anything more than the ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... cannot prove my innocence, for to do so would be to betray my comrades—those who have traded with me and trusted me—and send them to the penal servitude which also awaits me." His eyes had become reflective. He seemed to be talking to himself now rather than to the woman before him. "No, I cannot save myself at such a cost. Even to escape the gallows I will not play the part ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... confounded, Mrs. Betts turned red. Only Miss Burleigh seemed unaffected, and inquired simply whose that little boy was. "Mine, ma'am," replied the milliner with an emphasis that forbade further question. But Miss Burleigh's reflective powers ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... good God designed—strong and bonnie and tender-hearted: betraying no weakness in the duties of the day. His plans shot far beyond our narrow prospect, shaming our blindness and timidity, when he disclosed them; and his interests—searching, insatiable, reflective—comprehended all that touched our work and way of life: so that, as Tom Tot was moved to exclaim, by way of an explosion of amazement, 'twas not long before he had mastered the fish business, gill, fin and liver. And he went about ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... the Jehu, in a fat wheezy voice as Joe crawled into the seat beside him. Joe agreed without qualification. The old man paused a minute, gave him a sober, reflective look of far-away intensity, and then suddenly turned and spat precariously into ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veins by dexterous painting; and never ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... have had a glorious and a refreshing season. I have felt, in the depths of my soul, that the eyes, of all Vermont were on me in a reflective way. As the moon is sometimes permitted to shine before the sun goes down, I have added the light of my little feminine luminary to the flood of public homage that surrounds the greatest and best man that our State ever gave to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air uttering sharp chirrups of terror,—and, leaning on ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... ever, but innumerable rush-lights and sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in nature or art can remain unilluminated,—it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... intuition, over knowledge. Browning never wearies of dwelling on the relativity of physical knowledge, and its inadequacy to satisfy man. This is perhaps best brought out in one of the last things he wrote, the "Reverie" in Asolando; but it is dwelt on in nearly all his later and more reflective poems. His ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... says to Johnny Redlegs, "If I didn't have nine lives Your barrage would have got me With those lousy seventy-fives." He grins and puffs his corn-cob, And then he winks, reflective, And, "Buddy," says he, "you can't blame me If ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge
... delighted to see in it the means of studying the pictural appearance of Nature, and he hailed the discovery as a revelation to promote his improvement in the art of painting. On his return soon after to his father's, he had a box made with one of the sides perforated; and, adverting to the reflective power of the mirror, he contrived, without ever having heard of the instrument, to invent the Camera. Thus furnishing another proof, that although the faculty which enables a man to excel in any particular art or science is a natural endowment, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... his shoulder in a reflective sort of way. "I always thought it was something like that. But, at the time I put it down to an explosion, and let it go ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... biographical writer may continue to improve until his faculties begin to decay. He may get a wider, a more penetrating, a more tolerant view of life; his style gain lucidity, impressiveness, incisiveness, pungency; but in the case of the poetical and the reflective writer it seems to me that something evaporates—some quite peculiar freshness, naivete, indiscreetness, which, can never be recaptured. Take a few typical instances. Coleridge lost the poetical gift altogether when he left his youth ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in his boat, the Merry Maid, and hoisted his sail. In a few minutes he was skimming gaily down the bay. The wind was fair and piping and the Merry Maid went like a bird. Natty, at the rudder, steered for Blue Point Island, a reflective frown on his face. He was feeling in no mood for Victoria Day sports. In a very short time he and Ev and Prue must leave Blue Point lighthouse, where they had lived all their lives. To Natty it seemed as if the end of all things would ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... larger and truer than the earlier poet's. Praed belongs, as has been said, to a period of other men and other manners. Probably he is the wittier of the two; yet this might be contradicted. Locker's humour has the reflective vein, with a suggestion of pathos, of the great writers who flourished in the early and middle Victorian era. We are perhaps a little out of tune now with the sentiment of the middle of the nineteenth century and perhaps, too, with Praed's "antithetical ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... for—we really hardly know what to call it—literature of the present, made up, as it too generally is, of shreds and patches—bits of gold and bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry, to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive rather than reflective, at the best: and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate what our ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... was likely to cost them many lives, and from the account they had heard of the strong position of the fort they were aware that it would give them severe work to capture. Still it was to be done, and no one doubted that it would be done, whatever might be the sacrifice. The more reflective had their minds fully occupied, and all were in a state of anxiety on account of their captain, and the persons he had risked his own safety to rescue from destruction. Adair, who heard what Ben had cried out, had little hopes ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... And, if I ever penetrated into his private room it would be to see him standing, with his coat and waistcoat off and the immensely long line of his perfectly elegant trousers from waist to boot heel. And he would have a slightly reflective air and he would be just opening one kind of case and ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... smooth glazed surface of the golden ground is washed by every shower of rain, but the marble usually darkens into an amber color in process of time; and when the whole ornament is cast into shadow, the golden surface, being perfectly reflective, refuses the darkness, and shows itself in bright and burnished light behind the dark traceries of the ornament. Where the marble has retained its perfect whiteness, on the other hand, and is seen in sunshine, it is shown as a snowy tracery on a golden ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... in sight of Jerusalem. The city and the temple suddenly meet his view, as he reaches the height, and he is deeply moved. Any reflective mind might well have been stirred by the thought of the masses of men gathered there. Nothing is so futile as an arithmetical numbering of people, for after a certain point figures paralyse the imagination, and after that they tell the mind ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... translated a number of the later authors of antiquity, whose works had contributed most to the transmission of scientific culture; in the episodes which he interweaves in them he shows a desire for knowledge that reaches far beyond them; but especially we find in them a reflective and thoughtful mind, solid sense at peace with itself, a fresh way of viewing the world, a lively power of observation. This King introduced the German mind with its learning and reflection into the literature of the world; he stands at the head of the prose-writers ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... more than usual solemnity fixing upon the offender a gaze severe yet pitiful and reluctant, as one who foresees for another a fate deserved indeed, and yet too terrible to contemplate. Perhaps before that astute and reflective mind there rose a vision of the gallows nine years later to be erected by his own order, whereon John Billington, deliberate murderer of John Newcomen, should expiate his crime and open the gloomy record of capital punishment ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the matter to her companion, who seemed to be in a reflective mood that afternoon, and who again remarked upon the change in the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... contain only indeliberate operations, consisting, as they do at the best, but of mere presentative sensible ideas in no way implying any reflective or representative faculty. Such actions minister to and form Instinct. Besides these, we may distinguish two other kinds ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... intelligible, and satisfactory as the Newtonian mechanism of the heavens," exclaims, "Fallen from their elevation, Art and Science and Virtue would no longer be to man the objects of a genuine and reflective adoration." We are led, in reflecting upon the far more probable success of the meteorologist, to similar forebodings upon the dulness and sameness to which social intercourse will be reduced when the weather philosophers shall succeed in subjecting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... tell the king it is inconsistent with their honor, prudence, and conscience, to do what he would have them to do. And if these things be not reflective upon the king and government, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... indifferently by these three terms: the pectus, the prœcordia, and the viscera; as to the cor, it seems to me that it denoted the heart in its grosser and more animal capacities: 'Molle meum levibus cor est violabile relis;' it was the seat of sexual passion; but nobler and more reflective sensibilities inhabited the pectus or prœcordia; and naturally out of these physiologic preconceptions arose corresponding expressions for wounded or ruined sensibilities. We English, for instance, insist on ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the war. She wants an opportunity of shewing to the world that she holds her honour as dear and sacred as her independence, and that she will in no situation forsake those, whom no negotiations could induce to forsake her. Peace, to every reflective mind is a desirable object; but that peace which is accompanied with a ruined character, becomes a crime to the seducer, and a curse upon ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... mouldering columns mark the lingering wreck Of Thebes, Palmyra, Babylon, Balbec; The prostrate obelisk, or shatter'd dome, Uprooted pedestal, and yawning tomb, On loitering steps reflective TASTE surveys With folded arms and sympathetic gaze; Charm'd with poetic Melancholy treads O'er ruin'd towns and desolated meads; Or rides sublime on Time's expanded wings, And views the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Power. Apart therefore from the romantic recollections, with which the singular history of the "Ladies of Llangollen" has invested this fair spot of earth, it presents to the tourist certain attractions, which the reflective explorer of the lovely vallies of the Dee should not neglect. We heard from some of the older inhabitants several anecdotes of the benevolence and charity of the departed "Ladies," whose memory is most affectionately cherished in the neighbourhood. It ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... pleasure the hounds and horses, which I kept in the days of my prodigality. I find nothing new, nor anything that has so much of the gloss and dazzle of novelty, as may rebound in narrative, and cast a reflective glimmer across the channel. Something I will say about people that you and I know. Fenwick is still in debt, and the Professor has not done making love to his new spouse. I think he never looks into an almanack, or he would have found by the calendar that the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... last that at St. Mark's there might be reflective silences and perhaps resolution. He felt it warm from the stored-up veneration of the world, and though he said to himself, as he climbed to the galleries, that it was to give himself the more room to ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... she looked reflective as Tom left her. His good nature had taken off the keenest ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... than from any reflective or calculated intention, I conceived the desire, as soon as I had committed an act of declared hostility, of demonstrating what spirit of government was not foreign to my own views. Many sensible men inclined to think that from the representative system, in ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... same, so that the outward form cannot express both, without in a measure expressing neither; and so there are certain separate virtues of the outward form correspondent with the more constant employment or more prevailing capacity of the brain, as the piercing keenness, or open and reflective comprehensiveness of the eye and forehead, and that all these virtues of form are ideal, only those the most so which are the signs of the worthiest powers of intellect, though which these be, we will not ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... their towering height, their immovable firmness, their cool shade, their safe shelter, spoke to him of the unalterable might and impregnable defence which he had found in God. So there is in this name the same devout, reflective laying-hold upon experience which we have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and dislodge; but are very busy in attacking Sins. These ministers of religion would rout Drunkenness and Want, Ignorance, Idleness, Lust, Covetousness, Vanity, Hate, and Pride, vices of instinctive passion or reflective ambition. Yet the work of these men is to build up; they cut down the forest and scare off the wild beasts only to replace them with civil crops, cattle, corn, and men. Instead of the howling wilderness, they would have the village or the city, full of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... of fortune, went through with perhaps the exact training his genius required. If the atmosphere of the theatre had not almost enwrapt his cradle, and thus become a necessity of his after years, his reflective, brooding temperament and aesthetic sensitiveness might have impelled him to one of the silent professions, or kept him an irresolute dreamer through an unsuccessful life. But while his youth was passed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... work. Down under cover of the ridge were his guns, the keys of the instrument that he played by calls over the wire. Their barking was a symphony to his ears; errors of orchestration were errors in aim. He talked as he watched, his lively features reflective of his impressions. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... wave of the hand prevented any one from following him in his dry-eyed progress to say farewell to these haunts of childhood, manhood, family, and home. There was a strange numbness in his mind and body, and he had a feeling that he moved immense and reflective among material things. Only tragedy can produce that feeling. Happiness makes the universe infinite and stupendous, despair makes it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the gods, or with sacrifices, were sacred beings to them, and became subjects of their surpassing gift in sculpture. In general, nature,—the visible, the sensible, the actual, was to the Hellenic soul, Religion; as inward and reflective emotions were and are, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... see Zumpt, S 662. [50] Ubi—convertit, 'when it had changed (itself).' For ubi with the perfect in the sense of a pluperfect, see Zumpt, S 506; and for the use of vertere in an intransitive or reflective sense, S 145. [51] In the earliest times they were called praetores or leaders, qui praeeunt exercitui; afterwards consules. As two were elected every year, Sallust ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... calm and beautiful, but now deeply-clouded brow, shaded by the white, taper fingers of the other, was abstractedly gazing into the glowing coals on the hearth before her, while the gentle, but less reflective McRea, with a countenance disturbed only by the passing emotions of sympathy that occasionally flitted over it, as she glanced at the downcast face of her friend, sat quietly preparing for bed, by ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Tremaine?—what to Coningsby? In Tremaine, so far as I remember, the didactic portion had sunk like a sort of sediment, and being collected into a dense mass in the third volume, could easily be avoided. As to Coningsby, I deny that it any where calls upon the reader for much exercise of his reflective powers. The novel has some sparkling scenes written in the vivacious manner of our neighbours, the French, and these we read. Some Eton boys talk politics, and as they talk just as boys should talk, their prattle is easily tolerated. Besides, I am not responsible for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... no reply, and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Grace. "I feel reflective. I suppose that's why I haven't anything to say. Did Miriam tell you about the basketball ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... intense waiting look on the face she turned up to him, made an impression on his mind that stayed with him through life. It seemed to him that he had arrived at a kind of culmination, a starting point, and that all the vague shadowy uncertainties that had, in reflective moments, flitted through his mind, were to be brushed away by some act, some word, from the lips of this woman. With a rush he realised how consistently he had been thinking of her and how enormously he had been counting ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... pretension of a better right to being heard, but simply because he was full to overflowing of his own momentary thought and it sprang from his lips without asking leave. There were persons who waited on your periods much more deferentially, who were a hundred times more capable than Roderick of a reflective impertinence. Roderick received from various sources, chiefly feminine, enough finely-adjusted advice to have established him in life as an embodiment of the proprieties, and he received it, as he afterwards listened to criticisms ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... her mouth as if to speak to him, and each time she dropped again her head in reflective silence. She did not talk to this young man as she might to any number of her more intimate acquaintances. Even the very silence was magnetic. Further utterance would dispel the charm. That she would enlist in his service she knew as well as she knew her own existence, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... combining the attractiveness of romance with the reliableness of history, and which, taking a place midway between the 'frescoed galleries' of Thierry, and the 'philosophic watch-tower of Guizot,' has all the pictorial brilliancy of the one, with much of the reflective speculation of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... to her companion, who seemed to be in a reflective mood that afternoon, and who again remarked upon the change ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... usual, been a most clear-eyed observer of everything; and found the business, as appears, not of tragical nature, but of expensive-farcical, capable to shake the diaphragm rather than touch the heart of a reflective on-looker. He has a considerable Poem on it,—WAR OF THE CONFEDERATES by title (in the old style of the PALLADION, imitating an unattainable JEANNE D'ARC),—considerable Poem, now forming itself ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... his reflective but incurious manner; and when she left the shop a quarter of an hour later the check was in her little bag beside the amethyst necklace. "I am glad I didn't have to sell the necklace," she thought. "Now I'll find a hotel ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... time for casting up and readjusting. Likewise it is a good time for going over, in the calm, reflective light of second judgment, the purchases he has made for personal use and gift-making purposes. These things seemed highly attractive when he bought them, and when displayed against a background of home surroundings will, no doubt, be equally impressive; but just now they appear as rather a ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... detriment of its own native character. Eventually it was entirely lost in the art of the Greco-Roman world. It was never other than conventional, produced by a method almost as unvarying as that of the hieroglyphic writing, and in this very respect characteristic and reflective of the unchanging Orientals. Technically it had its shortcomings, but it conveyed the proper information to its beholders and was serviceable and ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... sophistry? It can mislead only such as wish to be misled. The lovers of sunlight are in little danger of rushing into the professor's dungeon. Those who, having something to conceal, covet darkness, can find it there, to their hearts' content. The hour can not be far away, when upright and reflective minds at the South will be astonished at the blindness which could welcome such protection as the Princeton ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the right to it. But that did not comfort him. He was not thinking about the land itself, but about the men who had been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was not for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power of any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad, reflective mood, considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we must break down a multitude of molehills and how desirable and unreplaceable was the life of ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... put off. He was patient and reflective. He had been at sea many years and I verily believe he liked sea-life because upon the whole it is favourable to reflection. I am speaking of the now nearly vanished sea-life under sail. To those who may be surprised at the statement I will point out that this life secured for the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... was actually a giant balloon eight thousand feet in diameter, one-half "silvered" with a greenish reflective surface inside that reflected only that light that could be utilized by the ruby rods at its long focal center; and that absorbed the remainder of the incident solar radiation, dumping it through to its black outside surface, and on into the ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... something at the same time nave and impressive, and the simplicity of it was increased by a bouquet, huge and gorgeous, which some admirer had attached to his coat, and which forced upon the mind of a reflective observer the idea of a ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... confidence be cultivated? Mainly by cultivating the habit of turning first to self when reflective thought is required. It is presupposed that we must consult the library and the world about us for raw facts of various kinds, for historical events, scientific data, views of men, descriptions, etc.; but when our own thought is wanted on a ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... grey light when Guapo climbed up to the rock. Against the sky his tall, lank form could be traced in all its outlines. For some moments he sat in a serious and reflective mood—evidently busy with thoughts about the "poison-trees." His appetite, however, soon got the better of him; and he set to work to prepare his coca supper. It ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Green, &c., is a cupric aceto-arsenite, prepared on the large scale by mixing arsenious acid with acetate of copper and water. It differs from Scheele's Green, or cupric arsenite, in being lighter, more vivid, and more opaque. Powerfully reflective of light, it is perhaps the most durable pigment of its class, not sensibly affected by damp nor by that amount of impure air to which pictures are usually subject: indeed it may be ranked as permanent both in itself and when in tint with white. It works better in water ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... psychological rather than scenic. Especially is this the case with "Tasso," one of the author's noblest works, where the characters are not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures. Schiller, in his plays, had always the stage in view. Goethe, on the contrary, wrote for readers, or cultivated, reflective ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... an enigma until the appropriate idea is struck upon them from the mind of a Newton, or a Cuvier, the genius in whom sympathy with the universal reason becomes entire. In the next place, he conceives that this reason or intelligence in nature becomes reflective, or self-conscious. He fancies he can trace, through all the simpler forms of life, fragments of an eloquent prophecy about the [78] human mind. The whole of nature he regards as a development of higher forms out of the lower, through shade after shade of systematic change. The dim stir of chemical ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... features, and a very intellectual expression"—(im hoechsten Grade gisntreich.) In his manner there was something remarkably calm and cool, almost phlegmatic. He spoke with great slowness and deliberation, but often with much point, and a great deal of reflective wit. He was thus a thorough German in his temperament; so at least as Englishmen and Frenchmen, of a more nimble blood, delight to picture the Rhenish Teut, not always in the most complimentary contrast with themselves. As it is, his merit shines forth only so much the more, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... date of the above letter (1847) on to the early part of 1855—nearly eight years later—no reference is found either in his Life or correspondence to the one absorbing idea towards which all his reflective powers were being directed. Then, during a quiet time at Sarawak, the accumulation of thought and observation found expression in an essay entitled "The Law which has regulated the Introduction of Species," which appeared in the Annals and Magazine of Natural ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the plan of merely three movements. Nor is there a return to the original form, without the Scherzo. To judge from the headings, the "slow" movement is absent. In truth, by way of cursory preamble, the chronic vein of Cesar Franck is so ingrainedly reflective that there never can be with him an absence of the meditative phrase. Rather must there be a vehement rousing of his muse from a state of mystic adoration to rhythmic ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... a reflective look at the sun and considered how much time Julian of Ephesus had lost for him upon the road, or else how long he had slept, that this pair, who had camped all night and had journeyed afoot by day, had caught up ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... temperament called the Reflective, which works slowly, and with little apparent result. The very gift of expression is a practical gift: with the gift of expression the reflective man becomes a writer, a poet, an artist; without ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... imagine what she was going to do with him. For such entanglements Helen's advice had always shown a way out, and for his uncertainties—though she never took the responsibility of actual guidance—her reflective questionings, her mere reflective silences, were illuminating. They made clear for him, as for her, that recklessness could only be worth while if one were really—off one's own bat, as it were—'in love'; and that, this lacking, recklessness was ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... it is not by perception and intelligence, but by sensibility, that the highest and purest truths are reached. That is why women, who, generally, are less reflective but more sensitive than men, rise more easily to the knowledge of things divine. In them is the gift of prophecy, and it is not without reason that Apollo Citharedes, and Jesus of Nazareth, are sometimes represented ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... them down. Nor did he really belong to this novel, quick, variegated, involved world which was so pleased with its own excitement and entanglement. He was the child of a world which was then passing away, out of which life was fading, which was tired like Obermann, and sought peace in reflective solitudes. Sometimes he felt, as in The New Age, the pleasure of the coming life of the world, but he was too weary to share in it, and he claimed quiet. But chiefly he saw the disturbance, the unregulated life; and, unable to realise that it was the trouble and wildness of youth, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... face. Then he looks up and seeing us, makes a grave gesture of salutation. His glance sweeps over to his house, his own inviolate home, and drops once again to his children tugging at his hands. And then, with a reflective air, he steps across to the sidewalk, and walks ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... great change took place in the lively, fun-loving boy. He seemed to lose his gay spirits and become reflective, silent and reserved. This condition of mind never left him, but grew into a deeper reserve as ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... were "The Fate of Amy," "Address to Plenty in Winter," "Summer Morning," "Summer Evening," and "Crazy Nell." The minor pieces included the sonnet "To the Primrose," already quoted, "My love, thou art a Nosegay sweet," and "What is Life?", a reflective poem produced under circumstances with which the reader has been made acquainted. The compositions last named are inserted here as examples of Clare's style at this early period of ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... expected you to be beautiful." There was a hint of coldness in her voice, as if she disliked the implication that her son might be lacking in taste. "It's the other things I'm surprised at: that you're clever, that you're reflective, that ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Christianity with an invention in cookery of which he was never capable. I approved the new-comer, who was writing half a dozen notes with his mouth full, for his nicety in nomenclature: to get the right term, even in kitchen affairs, shows a reflective mind and tenderness of conscience. My friend the engineer arrived, and placed himself in the chair I had turned up beside my own. I was ashamed of the rate at which I advanced through my capon, but I recollected that Anne Boleyn, when she was a maid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... owned and engineered by Diggs bobbed up and down as he chewed a reflective cud, but he couldn't see the matter in my ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... the reader may anticipate, will be our future hero, was born the first year after marriage, and was their only child. He was a quiet, thoughtful, reflective boy for his years, and had imbibed his father's love of walking out on a dark night to an extraordinary degree: it was strange to see how much prudence there was, mingled with the love of adventure, in this lad. True it is, his father had trained ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... was so mortified at being refused, that he made an attempt to cut the balloon with his sword. The story has but a flimsy support, and indeed does not accord well with the character of the hero, which was deep and reflective, as well as bold and determined, and not likely to suffer its energies to escape in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... bit of a talk with him just now," said Lorry, with a reflective smile. "She asked him point blank if he knew who she was. He did not hesitate a second. 'I remember seeing you in the audience chamber recently.' That was a facer for Yetive. 'I assure you that it was ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... having excused himself to Miss Carleton, Mr. Whitney hastened to the grove, where he found the detective sauntering up and down the winding walk, his hands behind him in a reflective mood, absorbed in thought and in the enjoyment of a fine cigar. He nodded ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... merely translated a number of the later authors of antiquity, whose works had contributed most to the transmission of scientific culture; in the episodes which he interweaves in them he shows a desire for knowledge that reaches far beyond them; but especially we find in them a reflective and thoughtful mind, solid sense at peace with itself, a fresh way of viewing the world, a lively power of observation. This King introduced the German mind with its learning and reflection into the literature of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... for. He coolly replied, "I don't know. God knows." The camels browse or crop herbage all the way along, daintily picking and choosing the herbage and shrubs which they like best. My chief occupation in riding is watching them browse, and observing the epicurean fancies of these reflective, sober-thinking brutes of The Desert. I observe also as a happy trait in the Arab, that nothing delights him more than watching his own faithful camel graze. The ordinary drivers sometimes allow them to graze, and wait till they have cropped their favourite herbage and shrubs, and at other ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... enough the individual does not recognize and may even rebel against; that instinct is without reflection, but that purpose, which is an outgrowth of instinct guided and controlled by intelligence, is reflective and self-conscious. Purpose seeks the good of the individual as understood by him and is often against the welfare of the race, whereas instinct seeks the good of the race, often against the welfare of the individual. Intelligence is the path ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... out of the protection of our first taboos, grow into a world very largely in the hands of older people; strong men and experienced women are there before them, and we are justified in any effectual contrivance to save them from being "gobbled up"—against their real instincts. That works—the reflective man will discover—towards whittling the previous polygamy to still smaller proportions. Here, indeed, our present arrangements fail most lamentably; each year sees a hideous sacrifice of girls, mentally scarcely more than children—to ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... misery, preach you pure homilies about the cruelty of taking life. But you are quite right about the combination of pleasures—the excitement, too, of quick motion through the fresh air—the sense of liberty amid wide plains, or tangled woods, or on the wild hill tops—this, surely, to the reflective sportsman—and who can be a true sportsman, and not reflective—is the great ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... There occurred to him various objections to this rather fanciful argument. Still, he said nothing. He was naturally chary of words; it was so interesting to listen to other people! And at this particular period he was more than usually reflective and absorbent. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... executive, who are to fulfil their behests; and the commonalty, bent on gain and selfish gratification. In other words, the ruler, the warrior, and the craftsman, are, according to him, the analogues of our reflective, volitional, and emotional powers. Now even were there truth in the implied assumption of a parallelism between the structure of a society and that of a man, this classification would be indefensible. It might more truly ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... believe that the latter course is the only one we can follow as reflective men. Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? I am, therefore, myself a complete empiricist so far as my theory ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... correction at South Boston, that he might, if possible, be reclaimed from intemperance; and, on his leaving it, he published a small work, called "The Rat-Trap, or Cogitations of a Convict in the House of Correction." This work bears the mark of a reflective, although buoyant mind; and as he speaks in the highest terms of Mr Robbins, the master, and bestows praise generally when deserved, his remarks, although occasionally jocose, are well worthy of attention and I shall, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... cost them many lives, and from the account they had heard of the strong position of the fort they were aware that it would give them severe work to capture. Still it was to be done, and no one doubted that it would be done, whatever might be the sacrifice. The more reflective had their minds fully occupied, and all were in a state of anxiety on account of their captain, and the persons he had risked his own safety to rescue from destruction. Adair, who heard what Ben had cried out, had little hopes that he would succeed, and was afraid ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... their marriage, in the year 1809, a change appeared in Balthazar, but so gradually that Mme. Claes did not at first question it. He became thoughtful, reflective, silent, preoccupied. When Josephine Claes noticed this change, it was too late for her to ask questions; she waited for Balthazar to speak. She began to fear. Balthazar, whose whole heaven had lain in the happiness ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... with his hands as with his head. He used the latter frequently, throwing it with him, this way and that. . . . He never sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and rags, as some orators do. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, considerate, reflective—in time, self-possessed and self-reliant. . . . As he moved along in his speech he became freer and less uneasy in his movements; to that extent he was graceful. He had a perfect naturalness, a strong individuality, and to that extent he was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... he was apt to be commonplace, and there are not many such energetic lines in his purely reflective verse as these famous ones from ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... you'd rightly call it that, either," says Hubbs, runnin' his long fingers reflective through his heavy mop of wavy hair. "I was station agent and dispatcher out at Kayuse Creek the only time we met up—and of all the forsaken, dreary, one-mule towns along the line that was the worst. I'd been there a year and a half, with no signs of ever gettin' out, and I'd got so ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the doctor in the same reflective voice, "I agree with you, I let him pass as a gentleman. But I repeat, Why did you bring them here when with one more word it would have been so easy—" ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... as four year," said Captain Jim with slow reflective contentment. "Let's see. It was in the fall o' '54 I first met him, and he's allus been the same ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... peculiar form of literature, entirely different from critical essays like those of Matthew Arnold and from purely reflective essays, like those of Bacon. It is a species of writing somewhat akin to autobiography or firelight conversation; where the writer takes the reader entirely into his confidence, and chats pleasantly with ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... provided fresh material for a reflective mind. The dining-room was large and lofty, and the table must have dated back to the early days at the Cape, when every great family had its scores of retainers and slaves. It was composed of time-stained ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Bouillon had a warmth of expression and a confidence of manner which captivated those who heard him. His valor, his keen perception in the field, the profundity of his political views, his knowledge of the affairs of Europe, his reflective and decided character, all rendered him one of the most capable and imposing men of his time-the only one, indeed, whom the Cardinal-Duc really feared. The Queen always listened to him with confidence, and allowed him to acquire a sort of empire over her. She was now ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... that's what I think myself now," said the skipper impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave reflective air. "Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way of helping you, with all my ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... a cigar and blew reflective rings into the air. "When a man is bitten with the germ of ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... the beast to die," he muttered to himself in low reflective tones, as though he thought aloud, "for of them all it alone liked and did not fear me. I might take it with me but still it would perish of grief in the loneliness of the caves. Moreover, she loved it whom I ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... "As a reflective broad-minded woman's faithful description of another woman's private life and brilliant literary career, this critical sketch is ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... college during these five-and-twenty years than if he had been one of the venerable academic abuses of the worst days before reform. But his temperament, his reading, his recoil from Catholicism, combined with the strong reflective powers bestowed upon him by nature, to produce a personality that was unlike other people, and infinitely more curious and salient than many who had a firmer grasp of the art of right living. In an age of effusion to be reserved, and in days of universal professions of sympathy to show a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... and the snakelike Hottentot raised his head ever so little and peered out with his beady black eyes through the straw-like grass stems. They fell on Muller's cold face. It was evident that he was in a reflective mood—in an angrily reflective mood. So absorbed was he that he nearly let his horse, which was also absorbed by the near prospect of a comfortable stall, put his foot in a big hole that a wandering antbear had amused himself on the previous night ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... work is everywhere replete with "the modest charm of not too much"; its beauty, like that of the heroine, being of the still, deep, retiring sort, which it takes one long to find, forever to exhaust, and which can be fully caught only by the reflective imagination in "the quiet and still air of delightful studies." Thus all things are disposed in most happy keeping with each other, and tempered in the blandest proportion of Art; so ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... blood of any of your kin should be upon my hands. I know how much you have suffered, dearest, with the thought that this unhappy business may separate us for a time. Think you that the eye of affection could fail to notice your dejection and reflective ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... inevitable that henceforward his feelings will be more alive to the miseries of mankind. But how obstinate is an inveterate habitual state of the mind against any single impressions made in contravention to it! Both the thoughtless and the more reflective man may probably find, that a comparatively short lapse of time suffices, to relieve them from anything more than slight momentary reminiscences of what had struck them with such painful force, and to restore, in regard to the general view ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... one, and possibly break the bank. Quite a crowd swarmed about the table, their faces glowing in the artificial light. The exclamation "plunging!" "plunging!" was to be heard whispered here and there. Lynde was delightfully cool and straight. His lithe body was quite erect, his eyes reflective, his teeth set over an unlighted cigarette. Aileen was excited as a child, delighted to be once more the center of comment. Lord looked at her with sympathetic eyes. He liked her. Well, let her he amused. It was good for her now and then; but Lynde was a fool to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must be first-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... chancellor, who, in his disgrace, would not resign his charge. M. de Maupeou possessed one of those firm and superior minds, which, in spite of all obstacles, change the face of empires. Ardent, yet cool; bold, but reflective; the clamors of the populace did not astonish, nor did any obstacles arrest him. He went on in the direct path which his will chalked out. Quitting the magistracy, he became its most implacable enemy, and after a deadly combat he came off conqueror. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... was not in her class. She some time since had ceased in her attempts to gratify ambition by reflective honors from her husband and had marched forth under the leadership of Mrs. Catt as a most trusted lieutenant. She was head of the Woman's Suffrage Organization of Kentucky; was in great demand as a public speaker and heralded by an extensive following ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... instinct is sound; for he is keying up the pitch; and verse, even when mediocre in quality, has its pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse to a mere ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Toulon. He spoke of the Directory, of intrigues, and of what would be said of him. He accounted his enemies those who envied him, and those who could not be reconciled to his glory and the influence of his name. Amidst all these anxieties Bonaparte was outwardly calm, though he was moody and reflective. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the French world had satisfied me, what was not my wonder and joy at discovering in it a reflective side; and for half an hour I remained in a leafy alcove listening to her refined converse,—dealing with books like "Corinne," and "La Chaumiere Indienne,"—La Fontaine, Moliere, Montesquieu,—and especially interesting me in the society ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... of medicine as with that of law, and was quite the right look for either. Occasionally a bright flash of sudden intelligence lightened up his deep-sunk eyes, but even this was quickly extinguished as by some inward repression, and the habitually reflective, subdued expression returned to the face. As soon as he came into his situation, he first began quietly to arrange the papers, and next the business of which they were the outer sign, into more methodical order than they had been in since old Mr. Wilkins's death. Punctual to a ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sir," said Jack, in a half-reflective mood. "I dare say I should have a shy at the doctor if he tried to prove something too idiotic, but we must draw the line at the doctor. I couldn't argue with the undertaker at my own funeral, but I'll tell ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... course of active and careful (s)peculations on the philosophy and economy of pockets, has led us to the conviction that their intention and use are but very imperfectly understood, even by the intelligent and reflective section of the community. It is, we fear, a very common error to regard them as conventional recesses, adapted for the reception and deposit of such luxurious additaments to the attire as are detached, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... evidently understood all the relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that the pattern was imperceptible—a costume that was casual but not by any means careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat over-refined, was the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy hair and moustache were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a broad, black ribbon, drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as he communed with himself, with a self-content which was rare ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, and the light in the little room brightened slowly. Pilch's face was reflective. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... subjects they display the usual lyric variety. There are songs of delight in Nature; a multitude of love poems of all moods; many pastorals, in which, generally, the pastoral conventions sit lightly on the genuine poetical feeling; occasional patriotic outbursts; and some reflective and religious poems. In stanza structure the number of forms is unusually great, but in most cases stanzas are internally varied and have a large admixture of short, ringing or musing, lines. The lyrics were published sometimes in collections by single authors, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... be a touching spectacle, as, indeed, it always is to the reflective mind, to see the new Judge sitting among the wrecks, like "Marius among the Ruins." Fine subject for Sir FREDERICK, P.R.A., in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... said her father, and his reflective deliberation had meaning. "There are a lot of us who don't plume ourselves particularly in these days. We are not as innocent as we were when this sort of thing began. We are not as innocent as we were when ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sad, after her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was aroused from a brown study—reflective mood, perhaps, would be a more select phrase—by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston. There was a sort of "Ah! have I caught you alone!" expression about this adventurer's eye, even while he was making his bow, that struck me. I looked for great events, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... from which they came, as well as that in which they live; the concurrent historic causes which have conspired to form and influence the literature. We shall find, as we advance in this study, that the life and literature of a people are reciprocally reflective. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... developed and refined by studies of which Jane had no conception. Imperfect as his instruction remained, the sources of spiritual enjoyment were open to him, and with all his feeling there blended that reflective bitterness which is the sad privilege of such as he. Jane's delight was as simple as the language in which she was wont to express herself. She felt infinitely more than Pennyloaf, for instance, would have done under the circumstances; but her joy consisted, in the main, of a satisfaction ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the fourteenth century by Anne, wife of Richard II. She washed her face, arms, shoulders, and neck, in sugar-candy, diluted in white of egg, after the fashion of Castile. There came over her face, after any one had spoken wittily in her presence, a reflective smile of singular grace. She was free from malice, and rather ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... accounts of the first months at Jamestown, too much, perhaps, has been made of faction and quarrel. All this was there. Men set down in a wilderness, amid Virginian heat, men, mostly young, of the active rather than the reflective type, men uncompanioned by women and children, men beset with dangers and sufferings that were soon to tag heavily their courage and patience—such men naturally quarreled and made up, quarreled again and again ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... into the fire, his shoulders thrust forward as if he were about to spring at something. Wilson watched him, wondering. His old pupil always stimulated him at first, and then vastly wearied him. The machinery was always pounding away in this man, and Wilson preferred companions of a more reflective habit of mind. He could not help feeling that there were unreasoning and unreasonable activities going on in Alexander all the while; that even after dinner, when most men achieve a decent impersonality, Bartley had merely closed the door of the engine-room and come up for an airing. ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... description possess a high order of intellectual endowments, the unhealthy element seems to impart force and piquancy to their mental manifestations, and thus increase the embarrassment touching the true character of their mental constitution. When the defect appears in the reflective powers, it is often regarded as insanity, though not more correctly than if it were confined to the emotions and feelings. The man who goes through life creditably performing his part, but feeling, all the while, that everybody with whom he has any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... terminated their inductive labours by assigning that unity and correlation which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read thought in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... family, so in these pleasant Genevese ones our family returned the attention. Of this also more anon; my particular point is just the wealth of Wilky's contribution to my rich current consciousness—the consciousness fairly made rich by my taking in, as aforesaid, at reflective hours, hours when I was in a manner alone with it, our roomy and shadowy, our almost ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... And somehow she got quiet then, and I watched her gather them checkens up, an' take 'em into the house. Then when she came out an' see me again, she says, 'Light you right out o' here, you imp o' Satan! I fair hates the sight o' you.' So I lit out. Say, Eve," he added, after a reflective pause, "why does folks all hate ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... that a perfect delusion is to be aimed at,—an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have before distinguished by the term illusion, and have attempted to illustrate its quality and character by reference to our mental state when dreaming. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Bannerbridge invariably served up the dish in a sauce that did not agree with it, by advising me of the wish of the donator that I should abandon my Case. I consequently, in common with my friends, performed a little early lesson in arithmetic, and we came to the one conclusion open to reflective minds—namely, that I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Canary. All were markedly of the type called Caucasian, and some belonged to exceptionally tall men. The shape was dolichocephalic, with sides rather flat than rounded; the perceptive region was well developed, and the reflective, as usual amongst savages and barbarians, was comparatively poor. The ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... "I shall be ready for him in just a second. Have Whitecap held here in the anteroom while you bring Armstrong into the laboratory. By the way, Walter, that was another of the Binet tests, putting a man at solving puzzles. It involves reflective judgment, one of the factors in executive ability. If Whitecap had been defective, it would have taken him five minutes to do that puzzle, if at all. So you see he is not in the class with Miss Sawtelle. The test shows him to ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... He wiped the butcher knife on the dead sheep-killer's shirt, making a little whistling, reflective sound through his teeth. "I'll have to scour that knife before we cut bacon with it ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... impatient drivers spoke gutturally to their horses and the car- riages whirled out of Arta. Coleman, his dragoman and the groom trotted in the dust from the wheels of the Wainwright carriage. The correspondent always found his reflective faculties improved by the constant pounding of a horse on the trot, and he was not sorry to have now a period for reflection, as well as this artificial stimulant. As he viewed the game he had in his hand about all the cards that were valuable. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the publication of all his works. He did much towards the great musical development in Germany. Following in his footsteps came Sebastiani, at the end of the century, and Keiser at the commencement of the eighteenth. In Keiser's Passion we find, in addition to the Bible narrative, reflective passages for a chorus, holding much the same functions as the old Greek chorus, with interpolated solos for "the Daughter of Sion" and "the Believing Soul," some of which are used later on by Bach, especially in his setting of the subject according to St. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... powers and his knowledge; no fatal divorce had yet taken place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; he writes readily even for the public, without labor, without affectations. Eight years later the reflective faculty has outgrown his control; composition, which represents the practical side of the intellectual life, has become difficult and painful to him, and he has developed what he himself calls "a wavering manner, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... duty and eternal life, change themselves for us into grotesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the Elysian fields, although we do not disclose the true opinion of our hearts, because we think it more advisable to keep the people in outward decency by means of these images. Or if we are less reflective, and ourselves fettered by the bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to the true plebeian level, by believing that which, so understood, would be foolish fable; and by finding, in those purely spiritual indications, nothing but the promise of a continuance, to all ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... way to an impulse contains a slight element of the mischievous or ridiculous; whence, for this reason too, the pleasant is also the comical. In fact, most of the pleasures of highly complex and reflective persons are ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... end of August we arrived in Bandjermasin, where several days were spent in packing my collections. For many months I had been in touch with nature and natural people, and on my return to civilisation I could not avoid reflective comparisons. Both men and women of the Mahakam have superb physiques; many of them are like Greek statues and they move with wonderful, inborn grace. When with them one becomes perfectly familiar with nudity and there is no ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... well," added the captain, noticing the boy's reflective manner. "A sailor's life is by no means easy, yet a bright, active lad can rise. Many a captain ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... Coleridge, Clough, Blake, Browning, Swinburne, Tennyson. There are only a very few of the English poets, Pope and Gray, for example, in whom the free instincts of genius are kept systematically in check by the laws of the reflective understanding. Now Italian literature is in this respect all unlike our own. It began, indeed, with Dante, as a literature pre-eminently of genius; but the spirit of scholarship assumed the sway as early as the days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and after them Italian has been consistently a literature ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... is a certain spirit in expression that must stand inevitably associated with the collected mind. When it was wondered why Johnson cared for some unhappy mortal who had no charm or talent, Goldsmith said, in his quiet and reflective way: "The man is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough for Johnson." Concerning one who was undeserving, according to the manner of the world, who had no honour, and had forfeited all claim to character, yet still retained Johnson's ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... American magazine never attains. He is free to be various. When the mood of gloom is off him, he experiments at will, and often with consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even when ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... hands round his knees, and went swaying himself backwards and forwards in a queer kind of way that was more reflective ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... feels that it is in the presence of a reality rather than a fiction. To an audience an ounce of genius has more weight than a ton of talent; for though it respects the latter, it reverences the former. But the creative power, divine as it may be, should in common gratitude pay due regard to the reflective; for Art is the handmaid of Genius, and only asks the modest wages of respectful consideration in payment for her valuable services. A splendid torrent of genius ought never to be checked, but it should be wisely guided into the deep channel of the stream, from whose ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... exquisite faces, such languishing, brilliant eyes, such snow- white necks and arms, such graceful voluptuous forms, that Theos caught at the tapestry near him in reeling dazzlement of sight and sense, and wondered how Sah-luma seated tranquilly in the reflective attitude he had assumed, could maintain so unmoved and indifferent ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... obtained such a clear and comprehensive grasp of legal and political rights as, united with an unwavering tenacity of purpose, made them able to administer with profound intelligence their vast and heterogeneous empire. But in the meantime reflective thought had received ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... fruit, together with just enough farming as kept his household in vegetables, milk, butter, and eggs. Living thus amongst insects, birds, cows, and the peace of trees, he had become queer. His was not a very reflective mind, it distilled but slowly certain large conclusions, and followed intently the minute happenings of his little world. To him a bee, a bird, a flower, a tree was well-nigh as interesting as a man; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as the cortex, is the interpretative and reflective center, the abode of memory, intellect ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... extrapolated from there. A normal telepathic reception will be accompanied, by a slight feedback. A completely black body, however, will neither radiate nor feed back. It merely absorbs energy and, unless it's super-imposed on a reflective background, it leaves no trace. Since nothing in nature other than a telepathic mind can reflect telepathy, no background would survive for long." ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... knew two brothers who were equal," said Carvel, in reflective tones. "I do not know why the ideal freedom and equality, attaching to the ideal brothers, should not be as good as any other visionary aim for tangible earthly government; but it certainly does not seem so easy of realization, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the author was learning still. At the age of forty, approximately, and a year or two after Hamlet, Shakespeare produced Othello, the most perfect, although not necessarily the greatest, of all his great tragedies. It is less profoundly reflective than Hamlet and less passionately imaginative than King Lear or Macbeth; but no other of his masterpieces shows such perfect balance of taste and judgment, or is so free from any jarring note. Hence, through the histories and tragedies taken together, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... poetry, or the nature epic, as it has been called, may be classed under didactic poetry. It is devoted to the description not of successive events but of successive scenes in nature. It is sober and reflective in character. Beginning with Chaucer, who delights in May time and the daisies, nature occupies a prominent place and displays an ever-unfolding richness in English poetry. Pope's "Windsor Forest" is ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... its objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us only successively the relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, its elements decomposed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the ground before he had time to recollect that he had a sword. He got up eventually and drove off, but he could eat no supper, no doubt because he had a blow to digest. I was to have supped with him, but after this scene I had really not the face to go. I went home in a melancholy and reflective mood, wondering whether the whole had been concerted; but I concluded that this was impossible, as neither Branicki nor Binetti could have foreseen the impoliteness and cowardice ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cast furtive glances at Mollie now and then. But Mollie was in a new mood, and had very little to say; and half an hour after, when her elder sister went into the family sitting-room, she found her curled up in an easy-chair by the fire, looking reflective. Dolly went to the hearth and ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Op. 41. In the later ones we look in vain for the beautes sauvages which charm us in the earlier ones—they strike us rather by their propriety of manner and scholarly elaboration; in short, they have more of reflective composition and less of spontaneous effusion about them. This, however, must not be taken too literally. There are exceptions, partial and total. The "native wood-notes wild" make themselves often ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... complotting. But she dared not reject the means Providence had put in her hands. And yet, how use them, and avoid throwing suspicion upon her father in cautioning Elkins not to approach him? She was not equal to the invention of a plan on the moment, and said in a doubting, reflective way: ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in man's life: life was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, too sentimental, too full of interest and gaiety and chat. It was an age of talk: "mirth is none," says Chaucer's host, "to ride on by the way dumb as a stone ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we could find out also the way of escape for you. For there is a way of escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives say; it is a ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... smile as of admiration came over the stern old face. Whether he really felt the justice of the hit I know not, but he was evidently pleased at the manner in which it was delivered, and it was with a deeply reflective and not displeased air that he replied, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... lays claim to, or whether, on the contrary, it is characterized by a windy inflation of sentiment, a showy superficiality of thought, and a ridiculous and petty egoism. These are the unhappy questions which beset the mature and reflective reader of Victor Hugo's works. To the young and enthusiastic one the case is different. For him it is easy to forget—or even not to observe—what there may be in that imposing figure that is unsatisfactory and second-rate. He may revel at will in the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... after a doctor," continued Joe, who was almost as much absorbed in his story as were his listeners, and spoke in a reflective, musing way, "and he succeeded in finding one who was stopping for a few days at the hotel. Poor Bob was very kind to us in our trouble, and I never heard him mention a word about his own losses, which must have been severe. After the funeral was over, and I found I had nothing to inherit but the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... along in a quiet and reflective way, as if he also was making plans, was greatly startled by this sudden flash of a light-colored mass, this rustle, this waving, this thud upon the ground, and he bounded sidewise entirely across the road, stopping with his head in the ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest examination of conscience in a reflective mind. Refutations and proofs depend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered explicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. On any different acceptation of those terms, these proofs and refutations ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... charm which renders her company agreeable to, and sought for, by all serious minds. Her conversation and manners still possess all the blitheness, freshness and vivacity of youth. Her steady lightsome gaze, tempered by a benignant and reflective mind, lends her an air of amiability and majesty. Her language is instructive, her counsels encouraging, while her reproaches arouse the heart to a sense of duty. She has friends wherever she is known, friends who revere and respect, without idolizing her. In her youth she never pandered to flattery, ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... for the trees have grown up on Cooper's Hill, which lies between. To the north the church spire on the hill at Harrow stands beautifully up from the horizon; the Wembley Tower, which used to scar the distance, has gone. Eastward lie two familiar towers; and you are reminded of Mr. Max Beerbohm's reflective observation that "the great danger of travelling on the South Eastern Railway is that you might put your head out of the window and catch sight of the Crystal Palace." So much the greater by contrast is the loss of Windsor Castle to ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... were laughing now, while Mr. Page, running his fingers through his hair, wore a smile—arrested, reflective, considering. But it broadened; there are Principals, here and there, who ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... cast loose in his boat, the Merry Maid, and hoisted his sail. In a few minutes he was skimming gaily down the bay. The wind was fair and piping and the Merry Maid went like a bird. Natty, at the rudder, steered for Blue Point Island, a reflective frown on his face. He was feeling in no mood for Victoria Day sports. In a very short time he and Ev and Prue must leave Blue Point lighthouse, where they had lived all their lives. To Natty it seemed as if the end of all things would come then. Where would life be worth living away from lonely, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... It did not, indeed, strike the spirit with that religious awe which is apt to fall upon us as we gaze along the vaulted aisles of great cathedrals, but it appealed perhaps with equal strength to the softer and more reflective side of our nature. For generation after generation that house had been the home of men like ourselves; they had passed and were forgotten, but it remained, the sole witness of the stories of their lives. Hands of which the very bones had long since crumbled ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... library at Munich. The first represents Albert V., Duke of Bavaria, the founder of the library, and a great patron of science. Of course, he is presented in middle-age costume; his head is bare, his face reflective, and his right hand supports his chin,—an image of repose, after a work is accomplished. The other statue is of King Louis (of Lola Montes memory), in royal robes, the left hand resting on his sword, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a very amiable, reflective girl, quiet without being sad, not often indulging in conversation, except when alone with her sister Emma. She was devotedly attached to her uncle and aunt, and was capable of more than she had any idea of herself, for she was of a modest disposition, and thought humbly ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... was reflective if not morose. I wondered what his schemes were concerning Barrie, for I imagined uneasily that he was working with some idea; and if I didn't mean to sit still and let him cage the dove while it fluttered ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... reflection upon them. Cousin even goes so far as to say that the Pensees of Pascal would never have been published in that form had not the Maxims enjoyed such favor. Pascal often visited Port-Royal and naturally followed the general reflective tendency of its society. His Discours sur les Passions de l'Amour possibly originated at the salon of Mme. de Sable, because the subject of which that work treated was one much discussed there. La Rochefoucauld was in the habit of sending his maxims to Mme. de Sable with the message: "As ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... written in English, and after English prototypes, by a native convert. In fact, the Latin language was almost as important to the new departure as the Latin models. While the old English literary form, restricted entirely to poetry, was unfitted for any serious narrative or any reflective work, the old English tongue, suited only to the practical needs of a rude warrior race, was unfitted for the expression of any but the simplest and most material ideas. It is true, the vocabulary was copious, especially in terms for natural objects, and it was far ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... He perceived that society is now passing through a transitional period 'of weak convictions, paralysed intellects, and growing laxity of principle,' the consequence of the discredit in the more reflective minds of the old opinions on the cardinal subjects of religion, morals, and politics, which have now lost most of their efficacy for good, though still possessed of life enough to present formidable obstacles to the growth of better opinion on ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... lived a life of great retirement and seclusion. Her work, the fruit of long solitude, bears the impress of a strong, reflective mind. It is deeply ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... nature affords, without entering into any discussion of the questions, whether Physical or Metaphysical, which have been raised respecting it. But this method, although it might be sufficient for many, perhaps for most, of our readers—for all, indeed, who come to the study of the subject with reflective but unsophisticated minds—could scarcely be expected to meet the case or to satisfy the wants of those who stand most in need of instruction; the men, and especially the young men, in all educated communities, who, imbued with the spirit ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... freshness and vivacity in the San Giobbe picture. Both Virgin and child are alert and eager, welcoming the future with smiling and youthful enthusiasm. The Frari Madonna is of a more subdued type, but is not less true to her ideal. The Virgin of San Zaccaria is more thoughtful and reflective, but she holds her child up bravely, that he may give his ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... this universalism that makes The Twelve Words of the Gypsy his best expression and at the same time the most difficult to understand thoroughly. The poem is reflective both of the growth of the poet himself and of the development of the human spirit throughout the ages with the history and land of Hellas as its natural background. Consequently, its message is both ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Perkins was sent in a boat one day to take a chaplain's part in the burial of one of the victims. "When we got out to sea," he wrote, "I read some prayers over him, and then he was thrown over the side, the sailors saying 'God bless you!' as the body sunk." This sad duty made him feel solemn and reflective, but more than likely as not he was called upon immediately on arrival on board, as "master's mate of the spirit-room," to attend the serving out of grog to the ship's company! Extremes meet on board a man-of-war, and the times for ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... Reflective Faculties. (34) Comparison. (35) Causality. The judgment of the phrenologist is determined by the size of the brain in general, and by the size of the organs that have been formulated, and these are estimated ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... common with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of Abraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each other, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective and modern minds, I reply that although in certain specifically philosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more properly to be termed religious the development has followed quite another path. The whole history of evangelical Christianity is ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... it is not the dinner, it is the world that is awry," Peter went on, in reflective melancholy. "'T is the times that are out of joint. 'T is the sex, the Sex, that is not well, that is not good, that needs a ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Then in a reflective, somewhat sorrowful manner, he continued, "But the Roman Enterprise has two enemies that are thorns in the flesh, the bath-tub and the printing-press. Wherever they march in, she marches out. ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... and essence, shell and kernel, the precious vessel and yet more precious wine that it contains." Trench, Notes on the Parables, chap. 1. A good illustration of this we have in the tales of Grecian mythology, once received by the masses of the people as literally true; but which "a later and more reflective age than that in which the mythus had birth" learned to regard as only the vehicle of certain ideas respecting deity. The myth, as thus defined, does not come within the sphere of biblical interpretation. The historic events recorded in the Old Testament ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... we went along, was telling me more of her strange country, pointing out birds or flowers and naming them to me. "Now that," she said, pointing to a small grey owl who sat reflective on a floating log we were approaching—"that is a bird of omen; cover your face and look away, for it is ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... gathering brush, they built a tiny fire. Glover appeared nervous and worried, and when the meal was ended turned to mount and be off again. But Johnson called him back. Johnson was seated on the ground, close beside Jim, and Glover sat down with them. Thus they waited, silent, reflective, watching, while about them pressed the close night, seeming by its touch to impart to them something of its solemnity. Off at one side the horses, bridled and saddled, waited also—watching and waiting, motionless, and over them all brooded a stillness that was mighty and portentous. Thus ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... thus compared you. You resemble none of the rest, Lina. There are some prettier faces than yours here. You are not a model beauty like Harriet Sykes, for instance—beside her your person appears almost insignificant—but you look agreeable, you look reflective, you look ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... by which we render ourselves an intelligent account of what we feel and do, and so represent experience that we for the first time make it ours, they had only a loose and troubled possession. They beheld or took part in great events, but there was no answerable commotion in their reflective being; and they passed throughout turbulent epochs in a sort of ghostly quiet and abstraction. Feeling seems to have been strangely disproportioned to the occasion, and words were laughably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such as it was. Juvenal ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conduct gained The Master's confidence—which he retained; And so, in services requiring trust He was employed, and still continued just. Sometimes to distant places he was sent— And well he did enjoy the time thus spent. It scope afforded to reflective powers— And thus he profited by these spare hours. Greatly did it delight him to behold Fair Nature glittering in green and gold: And the pure melody in different groves Reminded him of his own early loves; Or led him to break out, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the Human Mind among others, pass through three Successive Stages correspondential with each other in the different domains of Being. As respects the Mind, these are: 1. Intuitional (or Instinctive); 2. Intellectual (or Reflective); and 3. Composite (or Integral). It is another of these demonstrations that the Intuitional (Unismal) development of Mind, and the Intellectual (Duismal), proceed in opposite courses or directions; so that the highest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... experience of Shakespeare, and as one might expect in this case it does not accelerate but retard the action of the drama; it is, indeed, altogether foreign to the drama, an excrescence upon it and not an improvement but a blemish. Moreover, the reflective, disillusioned, slightly pessimistic tone of the narrative is alien and strange to the optimistic temper of the play; finally, this garb of patient sadness does not suit Claudio, who should be all love and eagerness, and diminishes instead of increasing our sympathy with his later actions. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... balance of the present administrative year. The chief literary contribution is "Hail, Autumn!", one of Mr. Arthur Ashby's brilliant and scholarly essays on Nature. The quality of Mr. Ashby's work deserves particular attention for its reflective depth of thought, and glowing profusion of imagery. His style is remarkably mature, and escapes completely that subtle suggestion of the schoolboy's composition which seems inseparable from the average amateur's attempts at ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... sometimes wondered, being of a reflective turn, on the—er— far-reaching consequences of events which, to the casual eye, might appear insignificant. An infant is born in the remote island of Corsica. Years roll on, and we find our gardens denuded of a bulb, the favourite ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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