"Contemplative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assumed. A certain nonchalance announced that he easily laid aside these faculties from the conviction of his ability to recover all his forces at the moment when he should require them. His brow was contemplative, his look composed, his mouth serious and somewhat sad; the deep inspiration of antiquity was mingled in his physiognomy with the smiles and the carelessness of youth. At the foot of the tribune he was loved with familiarity; as he ascended it each man ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... still less a Prophet, the kind of truth he divined was, in fact, on the scale of the prophets. It seemed to me that over the last decade of his life he found himself more and more in the dilemma that in the life of his mind he was living with ideas, the fruit of a contemplative preoccupation with the Incarnation and the Sacraments, which he shrank from talking about, from a natural humility and a clear and grateful understanding of the Catholic tradition ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... patient observation of Nature is the secret of his power as a writer. He disdained nothing, for nothing seemed too small for him. Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low as the little child whose rosy cheek he patted, and who then became to him a teacher and a study. An insect crawling on a leaf,—a bit of grass bringing the joy of its short life around the stones of the pavement,—a cloud floating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and contrast between contemplative life and actual existence was quite in the Rasmus Nielsen spirit; the use that was made of it here was strange. One would suppose that the example adduced established that similar natural qualifications, similar family and other conditions, in other words, the actual essential conditions ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... and versifying," it is obvious that we have been dealing with the first two. If we prefer to use the famous terms employed by Ruskin in Modern Painters, we have been considering the penetrative, associative and contemplative types of imagination. But these Ruskinian names, however brilliantly and suggestively employed by the master, are dangerous tools for the beginner ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... on apace. A knot of those amphibious human-creatures who appear to have some mysterious power of extracting a subsistence out of tidal water by looking at it, were gathered together about the causeway. As her father's boat grounded, they became contemplative of the mud, and dispersed themselves. She saw that the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... nor offended, but be "reinstated in the apostolic grace," met with no response. It was this quarrel with Julius II. which prevented the completion of the sepulchral monument. The "Moses" and the figures supposed to represent the Active and the Contemplative Life, and three Caryatides (since removed) represent the whole of the original design, "a parallelogram surmounted with forty statues, and covered with reliefs and other ornaments."—See Duppa's Life, etc., 1856, pp. 33, 34, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the directly physical facts of the universe would take men a very short way towards reconstruction. And he struck the key-note in such admirable passages as this: "One consideration especially that we ought never to lose from sight is that, if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and contemplative being, from above the surface of the earth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no more than a scene of melancholy and silence. The universe is dumb; the darkness and silence of the night take possession of it.... It is the presence of man that gives its interest ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... gold watch-chain, and thought that here was love, and beauty, and richness, and elegance, and great wisdom, calling for reverence but no fear. She answered not one word to the teacher's question, but continued to gaze at her with that look of wide-eyed and contemplative regard. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... its original Greek form (aisthetikos) it means what has to do with sense-perception as a source of knowledge; and this is still its meaning in Kant's philosophy ("Transcendental Aesthetic''). Its limitation to that function of sensuous perception which we know as the contemplative enjoyment of beauty is due to A. G. Baumgarten. Although the subject does not readily lend itself to precise definition at the outset, we may indicate itsscope and aim, as undeibtood by recent writers, by saying that it deals successively ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be a little Academe, Still and contemplative in living Art.' 'What is the end of study? ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... a straggling village of many dogs and swarthy, grimy-faced children, he tarried until well after dark, making his meal of coffee, frijoles, and chili con carne, thereafter smoking a contemplative pipe. Abandoning the little lunch-room to the flies and silence he crossed the road to the saloon kept by Pete Nunez, the brother of the man whom it was Norton's present business to make answer for a crime committed. Pete, a law-abiding citizen nowadays, principally for the reason ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... those in which opposing tendencies co-exist in almost equal strength: the passionate sensibility which, impatient of definite thought, floods every idea with emotion and tends towards contemplative ecstasy, alternated in him with a keen perception of outward facts and a vigorous practical judgment of men and things. And in this case of the Trial by Fire, the latter characteristics were stimulated into unusual activity by an acute physical ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... intellectual prospects. For a companion I had found a book, not bemused with the cleverness of the day—a fine-weather book, simple and sincere like the talk of an unselfish friend. But looking at little Fyne seated in the room I understood that nothing would come of my contemplative aspirations; that in one way or another I should be let in for some form of severe exercise. Walking, it would be, I feared, since, for me, that idea was inseparably associated with the visual impression of Fyne. Where, why, how, a rapid ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in the current now and floating by his side. "It's Mamie—so far as I've had it from you—who'll be their great card." And then as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she significantly added: "I think I'm sorry ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... this brotherhood Dwelling for ever underground, Silent, contemplative, round and sound, Each one old and brown with mould, But filled to the lips with the ardour of youth, With the latent power and love of truth, And with virtues fervent ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... charmed thought away from all vain questionings; the fascination of outward things had for a while cooled the useless ardour of introspection. But it was inevitable that the bland ease of such a contemplative life should bring no enduring satisfaction to the mind; it was not an end in itself, but a mere means to serenity, a breathing-space useful to the recovery of a long-lost fortitude. The time was now come when the hunted deer, refreshed in ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... duties, that the forester sometimes ventured to think, when Mrs. Gray complained of Elsie's "handlessness," that seeing the mistress was so well able for "her own turn," it was fortunate his little daughter chanced to be of a more contemplative disposition. ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... says Syrianus, do ideas subsist according to the contemplative lovers of truth? We reply, intelligibly and tetradically ([Greek: noeros kai tetradikos]), in animal itself ([Greek: en to antozoo]), or the extremity of the intelligible order; but intellectually and decadically ([Greek: noeros kai dekadikos]), in the intellect of the ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect;—for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakespeare, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... not my way." And he listened in a silence that might be taken either for awed or bored to Manske's expatiations. Manske, of course, interpreted it as awed. "Our young vicar," he said to his wife, "thinks much. He is serious and contemplative beyond his years. He is not a man of many and vain words." To which his wife replied only by a ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the dining-room, and thence to the hall, where she stood peering up the stairway at the skylight. "Yes," she continued presently, in a judicial, contemplative tone, "I think it will do very well on the whole. I am not perfectly sure that the laundress will be satisfied with the arrangement of the laundry, and I don't see exactly, Fred, what you are to do for a dressing-room, when we have more than one visitor. I am out of ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... illuminates the contents of the volume. The poetic fancy and what were then the politics of the original, appear in the choice of subject and attitude. Dr. Darwin sat to Mr. Wright about the same period. That was a simply contemplative portrait, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of your meditations, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... high class, he yet never talked from the loquacious instinct, or encouraged others so to employ their time and talents in his presence. Even his lively and rattling brother Humphrey, his almost constant companion when on shore, caught, from long habit, the great man's contemplative and self-communing gait and manner; and when his friends rallied him on the subject in after-years, he used to say, that he had caught the trick of silence while walking by the admiral's side in his long morning musings on Knoll Hill. A plain dinner satisfied his wants. Religious conversation, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... different passions and desires. Practical work involves a love of glory and honor. We are so organized that we find enjoyment only in what our own peculiar endowment can yield. A very sensible organization which you may take as an example. My work is contemplative, speculative and affords enjoyment through the satisfaction of correct discoveries and clear vision. In practical life I am unhappy, with money, honor, glory and all. But you, Judge Elkinson, have need of me for this very quality. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... says that angling is the contemplative man's recreation, and, having had in these later years much to con over in my mind, I know that he is right. But it is no occupation for a fuming man, and as I marched up and down I forgot all about my cork, till, with a short laugh that had the tail of a curse in it, I noted ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... outside work must go on, and somebody must do it. But of course we have the hardest time, since while in the world we must not be of it. I have come, of late, to think that both classes are needed, the contemplative and the active, and God does certainly take the latter aside now and then as you suggest, by sickness and in other ways, to set them thinking. Holiness is not a mere abstraction; it is praying and loving and being consecrate, but it is also the doing kind deeds, speaking friendly words, being ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... influences into which they may be thrown. This was probably the case even where that influence tended to degrade him from the plane he would have occupied, if left to himself. His spiritual life seemed to lack that vigor and buoyancy so infinitely important to contemplative men. He appeared to be ever yearning for something which should add robustness to his convictions. After a pause of some moments, Clifton again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... some distance along the road towards Mont Blanc, and, in a tranquil and contemplative mood, had paused to watch the various effects of sunset. He leaned against a tree by the roadside, at the corner of a path which led from the highway to a private residence. Again it was August, exactly four years since he had quitted C——, exactly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... positive dogmas about God, we should have an easy time of it. Man's perfection would be the fulfillment of his end; and his end would be union with his Maker. That union could be pursued by him along three paths, active, purgative, and contemplative, respectively; and progress along either path would be a simple matter to measure by the application of a limited number of theological and moral conceptions and definitions. The absolute significance and value of any bit of religious experience we might hear of would thus be ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... personage for the sake of the symbol, it is absurd to suppose that the "ten years' thirst" which the sight of her relieves, "the eyes whence Love once took his weapons," and such-like expressions were intended primarily as references to a neglected study of theology or a previous devotion to a contemplative life. The omission, therefore, of the commentators who interested themselves mainly in the allegory to tell us about the real Beatrice cannot be used ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... loved the two sisters and their brother as well.[914] Both these women were devoted to Jesus, and each expressed herself in her own way. Martha was of a practical turn, concerned in material service; she was by nature hospitable and self-denying. Mary, contemplative and more spiritually inclined, showed her devotion through the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of authors, however, concerns you less, dear public, than the state and prospects of literature. You are a contemplative body of men, and can see into a millstone as far as most nations. You make leagues and anti-leagues for the sake of your morsel of bread; and teach the million to sing to your own tune; and, weary of keeping your heads above water, tunnel your way below it; nor will you allow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... (Q. 2, A. 5) that the being of a man, no matter in what it may consist, is not that man's happiness; for of God alone is it true that His Being is His Happiness. Secondly, life means the operation of the living, by which operation the principle of life is made actual: thus we speak of active and contemplative life, or of a life of pleasure. And in this sense eternal life is said to be the last end, as is clear from John 17:3: "This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... himself says: "Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht hoffte."[62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood.[63] It is certainly un-Hellenic that Hoelderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity. In the poem "Der ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... was a mere surface trick. The real man, Byron, and his poems are perfectly unconscious, as unconscious as the wind. The books which have lived and always will live have this unconsciousness in them, and what is manufactured, self-centred, and self-contemplative will perish. The world's literature is the work of men, who, to use Byron's ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... willing,—I said,—to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.—No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous tractate, "De Sancto ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... country arrives at a certain state of perfection, it looks as if it were made so; and curiosity is not excited. Besides, in social life too many objects occur for any to be distinctly observed by the generality of mankind; yet a contemplative man, or poet, in the country—I do not mean the country adjacent to cities—feels and sees what would escape vulgar eyes, and draws suitable inferences. This train of reflections might have led me further, in every sense of the word; but I could not escape from the detestable ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and Verisschenzko grew contemplative, "that the result of deliberately turning the current of events like that must have some momentous consequence. Mind you, I think you were right. I should have advised it as I have told you, because ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... This is that special phase of the imagination that gives to abstract being consistency and reality. Through the contemplative imagination the child gains the significance of meaning and discerns the true message of the tale. When merely external resemblance is caught, when the likeness is forced, and the image created believed in, we have fancy. The contemplative imagination interprets the past in the tale and relates ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... be a deal less mean to arrange it that way than to bring a race of free blacks from their own country and make every child they have a slave because he happens to be a nigger." She remarked that his mild blue eye lit up with the true flash of the indignation of contemplative justice. "There's one thing certain," continued he, "in my Church of the Latter-Day Saints no man shall be a slave to his brother because he happens to have a black skin, for, as the Scripture says, 'Can ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... chance of ennui in the week in London before a voyage; you have packing, shopping, insuring, and buying tickets and general bustling round—what charming occupations for the contemplative mind! Then you throw in visits to friends, and acquaintances call on you, all in the concentrated week; you breakfast late, lunch heavily, rush off to a hurried dinner somewhere, then rush off to a play or some function or other, supper somewhere else and then home, too late for half a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... superior to all the reservations of civilization. No wonder that the stern moralists who would keep beauty for the clean and holy have been afraid of art! Yet the delight of sense, because its emotional effect is diffused, does not interfere with the contemplative serenity of art, as unbridled passion does; it even quiets passion by diverting the attention to itself; hence may always be employed by the artist. A good example of the aesthetic fascination of sensation is Von Stuck's ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... juvenile classic. She ranks very high among the women poets of the nineteenth century, her only equal being Mrs. Browning. Besides the brief poems in Sing-Song, Miss Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and "Uphill" please young people of a contemplative mood. While there is an undercurrent of sadness in much of her work, it is a natural accompaniment of her themes and is ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... breast, so full of song, 70 Singing above me, on the mountain-ash. And thou too, desert stream! no pool of thine, Though clear as lake in latest summer-eve, Did e'er reflect the stately virgin's robe, The face, the form divine, the downcast look 75 Contemplative! Behold! her open palm Presses her cheek and brow! her elbow rests On the bare branch of half-uprooted tree, That leans towards its mirror! Who erewhile Had from her countenance turned, or looked by stealth, (For Fear is true-love's cruel ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... right of the "Grand Etablissement," to the Promenade Horizontale, the great summer rendezvous, and passing the "Hospice de Ste. Eugenie" began the ascent up the easy zigzags of the "Allee Verte." We had not made much progress when we startled, from what was doubtless a contemplative mood, a very fine jay. He did not seem to like the disturbance at all, but kept flying from branch to branch in the vicinity, repeatedly uttering his ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... are a stranger? Sir, to your very good health and our better acquaintance!—there is, in this city of Dunedin, a certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on the designer and the publicans—at every hundred yards is seated the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment. I have been doing a trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature. A few chosen comrades—enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine—obliged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Ann Penhallow was silent. The clergyman thinking too of his own bitter experience lapsed into contemplative cleaning of a much valued meerschaum pipe. The Squire not given to morbid or other psychological studies made brief reply. "I hope that Leila will remain ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Contemplative men seem to be fond of amusements which accord with their habits. The thoughtful game of chess, and the tranquil delight of angling, have been favourite recreations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with a rod and line in his hand; a strange ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to assemble about him: for this was one of his characteristics, that although the duke himself was not learned, yet he never wanted for knowledge; too early in life a practical man, he had not the leisure to become a contemplative one; he supplied this deficiency by perpetually "sifting and questioning well" the most eminent for their experience and knowledge; and Lord Bacon, and the Lord Keeper Williams, as well as such as Gerbier, were admitted into this sort of intimacy. We have a curious letter by Lord Bacon, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... words the same rule holds that applies to fashion,—"Alike fantastic if too new or old." Fashion changes, not only the fashions of millinery but of literature also. When the world is tired of the brilliant wit of Byron, it turns in relief to the contemplative verse of Wordsworth; when Longfellow and Tennyson have had their artistic day and a thousand imitators have produced romantic ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... unstrapping the bag of gold which was attached to the holsters, he placed it by his side on the rock, while he splashed his hands and face in the cool water. By-and-by he drew up the girths, mounted his horse dreamily, for he was a man of contemplative moods, and rode away from the way-side well, forgetful of his treasure, which lay temptingly on the flat rock, ready to the hand of the first comer. Not so his faithful dog, who, having in vain tried to lift the bag, which was too heavy for him, ran swiftly after the rider, whose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the worthies, "freshened the nip," as Captain Truck called it, and then the conversation soon got to be too philosophical and contemplative for this unpretending record of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... each most cunning rhetorician delivered his opinions ex cathedra, and lay in wait for any passer whom he could insnare into an argument. The groves of the great western court were probably used by the lounger, the contemplative, and the studious, if we may judge by numerous seats and benches, at convenient intervals. On the south side of these was again a double portico; and on the north, outside the pillars, the xystus, or covered porch, where the athletes exercised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... lights or tricksy reflections on every object, and favors a dreamy mood which vaguely weds itself to the play of light and shade. The silence which generally prevails at that time makes it particularly dear to artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few paces back from the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass judgement on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite meaning then flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who has never stood pensive ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... lozenge-box, said "Good morning," and went on up the pier. I watched him go—English-Americano- Germano-Franco-Prussian-Russian-Chinese-New Zealander that he was. But he was not a man of genius; you could choke him off by talking. Still he had effectually jogged me and spoiled my contemplative enjoyment of the bathers' courage; upon the whole I thought I would go down on the beach now and see them a little closer. The truth is, I suppose, that it is people like myself who are in the wrong, or are in the way. What business had I to make a note in the Tower ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... desired to imitate. More than once he felt the seduction of the purely contemplative life, but each time his own spirit warned him that this was only a disguised selfishness; that one saves oneself only in ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... look at the old place," I said, one day in August as I was passing the lodge, and rode at a quiet contemplative walk down the avenue. I hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps, and passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of them famously supplied with potatoes and other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... the mountain and the bald rock would be productive of emotions only of strength and sternness, their softer featurings of brawling brook, bending and variegated shrubbery, wild flower, gadding vine, and undulating hillock, mould the contemplative spirit into gentleness and love. The scenery of the South below the mountain regions, seldom impresses at first, but it grows upon acquaintance; and in a little while, where once all things looked monotonous and unattractive, we learn to discover sweet influences that ravish us from ourselves ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... immerse herself in that atmosphere of contemplative eternity, and so strangely did it affect me that I should not have been surprised to have awaked a century or so later and found her just beginning to ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... and re-reads the letter; then heaves a sigh as she lays it upon the table at her side. As if discussing the matter in her mind, her face resumes a contemplative seriousness. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... derive nothing from pure contemplation. There is mystery and wonder in the veil of the occult. The earth, our life, is merely a vestibule of the universe. Contemplation alone will hold us all as inapt and as impotent as the old Monks of Athos. We have mountains of literature behind us, all contemplative, and whatever its wisdom, it has given us not one thing outside the abstract. From Plato down to the present our philosophy has given us not one tangible proof, not one concrete fact which we can place our hands on. We are virtually ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... residence of Charles Fox, is a charming object; and upon the ridge which the traveller ascends, is the spot which has given a name to Denham's celebrated poem. "Cooper's Hill" is not shut out from the contemplative searchers after the beauties of nature; and, however the prospect here may be exceeded by scenes of wider extent, or more striking grandeur, certainly the locale of the earliest, and perhaps the best, descriptive poem of our language, is calculated to produce the warmest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... are examples of what maybe termed Ali Baba's contemplative mood, the villager's life being revealed to us in all its pathos and interest, otherwise than through an atmosphere of statistics and reports—the daily life of probably two hundred million of the ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... had come round to the marble fireplace. The mantel-piece was a handsome work by a Princhester artist in the Gill style—with contemplative ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... indeed. The truth, you will agree with me, gentlemen and most honored ladies, is rare! It is only the quiet, unimpassioned things of nature that seem what they are. Clouds rolled in massy radiance against the blue, pines shadowed deep and darkly green, mirrored in still waters, the contemplative mystery of the hills—these things which exist, absorbed but in their own existence—these are ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... common men. Whether the artist becomes poet or philosopher, moralist or founder of a religion, his sexual doctrine is nothing but a barren special pleading for pleasure, excitement, and knowledge when he is young, and for contemplative tranquillity when he is old and satiated. Romance and Asceticism, Amorism and Puritanism are equally unreal in the great Philistine world. The world shown us in books, whether the books be confessed epics ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... altogether different from the spirit of the master. In 1876 the rococo setting of Baireuth seemed the correct atmosphere for Siegfried and Brunhilde, perhaps even for Parsifal. Baireuth was out of the world, calm, contemplative, and remote. In 1901 the world had altogether changed, and Wagner had become a part of it, as familiar as Shakespeare or Bret Harte. The rococo element jarred. Even the Hudson and the Susquehanna — perhaps the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... then made on me is now perfectly revived. He was six feet and one inch high, broad and athletic, with very large limbs, entirely erect, and without the slightest tendency to stooping; his hair was white, and tied with a silk string; his countenance lofty, masculine, and contemplative; his eye light gray. He was dressed in the clothes of a citizen, and over these a blue surtout of the finest cloth. His weight must have been two hundred and thirty pounds, with no superfluous flesh; all was bone and sinew; and he walked like a soldier. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... on the summer-clad landscape can gaze, In the orison hour, nor break forth into praise,— Who, through this fair garden contemplative rove, Nor feel that the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... most delectable. It is honorable, it is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable. To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... seemed to Mallet that he wholly lacked the prime requisite of a graceful flaneur—the simple, sensuous, confident relish of pleasure. He had frequent fits of extreme melancholy, in which he declared that he was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. He was neither an irresponsibly contemplative nature nor a sturdily practical one, and he was forever looking in vain for the uses of the things that please and the charm of the things that sustain. He was an awkward mixture of strong moral impulse and restless aesthetic curiosity, and yet ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... turned their attention to other and more trifling matters. Coffee was served in the living room, and through the fragrant smoke of Pennington's fifty-cent perfectos a sprightly three-cornered conversation continued for an hour. Then the Colonel, secretly enraged at the calm, mocking, contemplative glances which Bryce ever and anon bestowed upon him, and unable longer to convince himself that he was too apprehensive—that this cool young man knew nothing and would do nothing even if he knew something—rose, pleaded the necessity for ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... confined to the ungrateful task of analyzing the uniform play of human passions, is occasionally rewarded by the appearance of events which strike, like a hand from heaven, into the nicely adjusted machinery of human plans and carry the contemplative mind to a higher order of things. Of this kind is the sudden retirement of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene—stopping for a time the whole movement of the political machine and disappointing all the calculations of human prudence. Yesterday, the very soul, the great and animating ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... of the amatory and contemplative class, was somewhat chary of putting forth his strength in the ballad. We have already selected almost every specimen of this most popular and fascinating description of poetry which is at all worthy of his genius;—at least all of them which we thought likely, after making every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... a capacious and solid building, surmounted by a belfry-tower, and commanding the most charming prospect in the vicinity. It is surrounded with orange groves and cypress-trees, and looks like a place fitted for the enjoyment of a contemplative life. He will not long remain in doubt as to the purpose of the building whose site is so delightfully chosen; for walking slowly along the shady path, or seated in some pleasant nook, singly or in groups, he will perceive the long-robed ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... learned the small gossip which varies little with a thousand people in the same circumstances. But he had a naive fresh sense, everything interested him, and he said what he thought with taste and tact, sometimes with wit, and always in that cheerful contemplative mood which influences women. Some of his sayings were so startling and heretical that they had gone the rounds, and certain crisp words out of the argot of the North were used by women who wished to be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. "I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Mediterranean, appearing between the yellow houses at the end of the street, intensely blue, and sparkling in the rays of the afternoon sun. It was altogether a soothing scene; and had he been alone he would have sunk into that state of intellectual apathy which is so often miscalled contemplative. The homely duties of hospitality, however, compelled him to exert himself for the entertainment of his guest. Several of the people they had just met at Mrs. Beale's went past together, laughing and talking, and a propos of this he remarked, "It's a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of business or abstract thinker, reveal a lack, even a total lack, of such impressions as I am speaking of; nor even if among those who love art a great proportion be still incapable of identifying those vague contemplative emotions from which all art is sprung. It is not merely the special endowment of eye, ear, hand, not merely what we call artistic talent, which is exceptional and vested in individuals only. It takes a surplus of sensitiveness and energy to be determined in one's moods by ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Ceadmon sang O'er-awed, the Father of all humankind Standing in garden planted by God's hand, And girt by murmurs of the rivers four, Between the trees of Knowledge and of Life, With eastward face. In worship mute of God, Eden's Contemplative he stood that hour, Not her Ascetic, since, where sin is none, No need for spirit severe. And Ceadmon sang God's Daughter, Adam's Sister, Child, and Bride, Our Mother Eve. Lit by the matin star, That nearer drew to earth and brighter ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... pleasing; and would strike us, perhaps, as more impassioned and exalted, if it were not regulated and harmonized by the most beautiful taste. It is singularly sweet, elegant, and tender—touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather than vehement and overpowering; and not only finished throughout with an exquisite delicacy, and even severity of execution, but infused with a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain sober and humble tone of indulgence and piety, which must satisfy ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... of twilight's contemplative hour, I have mused in a sorrowful mood, On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower, Where the home of my forefathers stood. All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode, And lonely the dark ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... was a teamster, but likewise a thoroughly independent and capable citizen. He was of the lank, hewn, lean-faced, hawk-nosed type, deliberate in movement and speech, with a twinkling, contemplative, appraising eye, and an unhurried drawl. He told Nan he ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... a man of venerable appearance, with flowing, white beard that descended to his waist. And yet, although his face was furrowed with the lines of old age, his eyes were wonderfully youthful in their contemplative calm. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... flowing lines of her figure more striking than the beauty of her face. The long slim throat, the sloping shoulder, not to be disguised even by the clumsy folds of a thick shawl—these the traveller noted, in a lazy contemplative mood, as he lolled in his corner, meditating an easy opening for a conversation ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... interposition of Providence. History, too often confined to the ungrateful task of analyzing the uniform play of human passions, is occasionally rewarded by the appearance of events, which strike like a hand from heaven, into the nicely adjusted machinery of human plans, and carry the contemplative mind to a higher order of things. Of this kind, is the sudden retirement of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene;—stopping for a time the whole movement of the political machine, and disappointing all the calculations ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... ascertained that we were now quite near Hartington and Dovedale. Hartington was a famous resort of fishermen and well known to Isaak Walton, the "Father of Fishermen," and author of that famous book The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, so full of such cheerful piety and contentment, such sweet freshness and simplicity, as to give the book a perennial charm. He was a great friend of Charles Cotton of Beresford Hall, who built ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... you so?" I asked. I thought it very possible he had not inquired the terms. But he appeared not to have heard me; he sat there, clasping his knee and blinking, in a contemplative manner, ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... love of a husband for his wife, or of a lover for his sweetheart, is a sweet bond of agreement and exchange trade in a lovely contest. The love of a father for his son or daughter, where it is love at all, is a broad, generous, sad, contemplative giving without thought of return, a hail and farewell to a troubled traveler whom he would do much to guard, a balanced judgment of weakness and strength, with pity for failure and pride in achievement. It is a lovely, generous, philosophic blossom which rarely ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... your lobster." We are very much in the same position with reference to the age; we say, whistle to the age; we cannot make it let go; we have got to run. We feel very much like the little boy in the asylum, standing by the window, forbidden to go out. He became contemplative, and said, "If God were dead and there were not any rain, what fun orphan boys would have." We feel very much that way about these New England traditions. If God were only dead; if it didn't rain; if the times were only good, what times ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... oblong square, it is girdled round by a well-trimmed hedge of limes, from which, at intervals, pollarded trees shoot up; while the corners are thickly woven each into a shady arbour, where seats are arranged for the accommodation of the contemplative. It is, however, after you have passed beneath the arch, that the holy quiet of the spot strikes you most forcibly. Laid out with singular good taste into parallelograms, and having the paths which divide them one from another, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... the world around him would have been a very different affair; however obscure, however reserved, his own personal life, his sense of the life of his fellow-mortals would have been almost infinitely more various. The negative side of the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative saunterings and reveries, might, indeed, with a little ingenuity, be made almost ludicrous; one might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... man of the world, had too powerful a leaning to the virtues of active life, was governed by too partial a sympathy with the whole class of active forces in human nature, as contradistinguished from those which tend to contemplative purposes, under any circumstances, to have become a profound believer, or a steadfast reposer of his fears and anxieties, in religious influences. A man of the world is but another designation for a man indisposed to religious awe or contemplative enthusiasm. Still it is a doctrine which ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... remains of Marvell's travels during these years. Up and down his writings the careful reader will come across pleasant references to foreign manners and customs, betokening the keen humorous observer, and the possession of that wide-eyed faculty that takes a pleasure, half contemplative, half the result of animal spirits, in watching the way of the world wherever you may chance to be. Of another and an earlier traveller, Sir Henry Wotton, we read ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the tomb before which they were standing. It showed a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend was touching. In the background was another, contemplative, woman and a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face. For epitaph there was one word cut ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... most young people of her age. Her father's disappointed and impoverished life, consequent upon his political opinions, and her mother's illness and depression, had made the Hoze always a mournful home, and naturally this had affected her, making her a serious, contemplative girl, older than her years, and one who found her pleasure in sitting on a fallen trunk in the sheltering woods, listening to the roar of the wind in the pine boughs, watching the birds and squirrels, ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... off the ash from his cigar, and took a long contemplative whiff, as if he were about making a plunge into views even more profound. Mr. Newt, half pleased with the show of philosophy, listened with less ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... beautiful dream of hope to come here silently, to let every man, every house and every brick of the houses silently teach me, and, after having learned many fair and useful things, to return silently and thankfully home. Unfortunately I cannot now be a silent and contemplative pupil in this place, as I desired to be, but I must speak, forced by the time in which we are living and suffering. I will speak in order not to teach you, but to thank you. And I have to thank you much in the name of the Serbian nation ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic |
