"Musing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somewhat superannuated image of HONOR; he was irresistibly entertaining and enlivening, and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it, as he was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures of our human ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it. Bellegarde did not in the least cause him to modify his needful premise that all Frenchmen are of a frothy and imponderable substance; he simply reminded him that light materials may be beaten up ...
— The American • Henry James
... We paddled to the other side: Where being Landed safe by hap, As Sol fell into Thetis' Lap. A ravenous Gang bent on the stroul, Of (f) Wolves for Prey, began to howl; This put me in a pannick Fright, Least I should be devoured quite; But as I there a musing stood, And quite benighted in a Wood, A Female Voice pierc'd, thro' my Ears, Crying, You Rogue drive home the Steirs. I listen'd to th' attractive sound, And straight a Herd of Cattel found Drove by a Youth, and homeward bound; ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... I have been musing upon "my sorrow was stirred." Can it be that every heart is a treasury of sadness which has but to be stirred up to set us in mourning? Is it proportionate to the amount of evil? Does a certain amount ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... at the will of French Pete. He was half tempted to cry out for help; but the foolishness of such an act struck him, and he held his tongue. Turning his head, his eyes wandered along the smoky heights of the city, and he fell to musing on the strange way of men and ships ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... the past. Hence an involution rather than an elucidation of the play. There can be no doubt that Shakspere, in heightening and deepening the theme, has obscured it, making the scheming barbarian into a musing pessimist, who yet waywardly plays the mock-madman as of old, and kills the "rat" behind the arras; doubts the Ghost while acting on his message; philosophises with Montaigne and yet delays his revenge in the spirit of the Christianised savage, who fears to send the praying murderer ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... moonbeams bent each night beneath the weight of angels' feet, there lived a good, wise man. Or rather, I should say, there had lived, for at the time of which I speak the poor old gentleman lay dying. Waiting each moment the dread summons, he fell a-musing on the life that stretched far back behind him. How full it seemed to him at that moment of follies and mistakes, bringing bitter tears not to himself alone but to others also. How much brighter a road might it have been, had he been wiser, had ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... aloof from the cottage fire, and up among the mists on the mountain top. The still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed his youth, inspired him with ever-brooding visions of fairy-land, till, as he lay musing in his lonely shieling, the world of phantasy seemed, in the clear depths of his imagination, a lovelier reflection of that of nature, like the hills and heavens more softly shining in the water of his native lake." Hogg was in his ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... she is!" he said to himself, as he sat musing over the fire, after sending her to bed. "I cannot understand her; it is very odd how often I wound, when I intend ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... she sat musing over her wants, she was aroused from her reverie by the ringing of the near-by church bell. The good, old shepherdess came running into the room saying that the clergyman from over the hill would hold services in the chapel that day. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... it could live!" murmured Lulli, softly, with a musing pain in the broken words. "But look! the scroll was as dear to its writer as his score to Beethoven,—the child of his love, cradled in his thoughts night and day, cherished as never mother cherished her first-born, beloved ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... came to the end of the valley. Now I saw in my dream, that at the end of the valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly; and while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied a little before me a cave, where two giants, Pope and Pagan, dwelt in old time; by whose power and tyranny the men, whose bones, blood, ashes, etc., lay there, were cruelly put ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... she disappear'd; and left him there Musing in anger on the lovely form Tom from his ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... a-musing; and the Bride looked at him anxiously, but spake not. Sooth to say her heart was sinking, as though she foreboded some new thing, which should thrust itself into ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... deprived me of such rich possibilities of mutual love. I felt keenly that, had she continued to live, my life would, in all probability, have been widely different and very much happier than it ever had been. Musing thus, I turned the case over in my hand, and found that there was a contrivance for opening it at the back. I soon discovered the spring, upon pressing which the back flew open, disclosing a circlet of glossy chestnut ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... "Henriade" of M. de Voltaire, a book upon the Indies, one on the mathematics, far beyond where I have studied: these were what I observed with very mingled feelings. But in the open portmanteau, no papers of any description. This set me musing. It was possible the man was dead; but, since the traders had carried him away, not likely. It was possible he might still die of his wound; but it was also possible he might not. And in this latter case I was determined to have the means ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this unlooked-for outbreak, and musing over the abrupt ending of her cherished plans, Mrs. Campbell hastily withdrew and went to meet the superintendent, whose voice could be heard in cheery greeting ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and interest Edith listened to the story of my dream. When, finally, I had made an end, she remained musing. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Fairfax fell a-musing upon those apocryphal men who might be subjugated by the charms ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... General. But what you say is true: we are all prisoners here, or sentries at the best." And Dorothea, resting her fan on her lap, let these lines fall from her, not consciously quoting, but musing on ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... out his watch. It was then after midnight. Musing a moment, he said: "You say you are an office boy; what time must you be ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... Musing over this new aspect of the situation, the young engineer hastened back to his hotel and breakfast. In the dining-room, a few minutes later, a waiter was leaning over him, and asking, for the third time, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... pipe into the garden, and, pacing slowly up and down the narrow paths, determined, at any costs, to save Dr. Murchison from such a father-in-law and Kate Nugent from any husband except of his choosing. He took a seat under an old apple tree, and, musing in the twilight, tried in vain to think of ways and means of making ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... had been wed, when it happened that as Sir Guy lay by a window of his tower, looking out upon the landscape, he fell to musing on his life. He thought, "How many men I have slain, how many battles I have fought, how many lands I have taken and destroyed! All for a woman's love; and not one single deed done for my God!" Then he thought, "I will go a pilgrimage for the sake of the Holy Cross." And when Felice ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... keenly. He longed to do some great thing. "Why did not the good God give me a voice like Vittorio or a skilled hand like Angelo?" he would often inquire of himself bitterly. One day as he sat sadly musing on these things, a voice within him said clearly and earnestly: "Do the little things, Valentine; there the blessing lies." "What are the little things?" asked Valentine, much perplexed. But no answer came to this question. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the letter over in his hands, musing upon it, then laid it under his pillow, undressed, and lay down. For a long while he could not get to sleep, and then he slept very lightly, and it was not yet five ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... dinner until she could, in decency, retire, she sat a while within the family circle, quietly musing upon the day's adventures. What a strange, delightful, interesting sort of a place the world was, to be sure, with all its fiery Janet McFaddens, and sweet Rosie O'Briens, and paradoxical Willie Joneses! My but she was glad that ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... acting intelligent and con amore. The passionate intensity of the Italians soon enthused Miss Blair into forgetfulness of those around her. While her brother and O'Dwyer sat stoically, the doctor contentedly, and Mrs. Latimer indifferent in her secret musing, Arthur and Philip followed, with her, the fortunes of Leonora. Not until the curtain fell on act three did she readily join in the chatter of her friends, and then only when Judge Latimer said ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... sound of the carriage. Heriot fell to musing. He remarked that the accident took away from Mr. Salter the responsibility of delivering him at Surrey House, but that he, Heriot, was bound, for Mr. Salter's sake, to conduct me to the doors; an unintelligible refinement of reasoning, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... musing, the bright red sun of summer sank down behind the top of the Pentland Hills, and all looked bluish, dowie, and dreary, as if the heart of the world had been seized with a sudden dwalm, and the face of nature had at once withered from blooming youth into the hoariness ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... midnight. Good-bye, God bless and keep you!" And the Major retired to his bed-room, and did not stir off his knees for two full hours. After which he went to Pennington's, and thence somewhere else; and Tom met him at four o'clock that morning musing amid unspeakable ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... o'clock on the next morning that young doctor Lane sat in his office, musing on the events of the previous night, of which he had only a confused recollection, when a young man entered, and presented a note. On opening it, he found it to be a ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... durst speak, And show their fear or grief; but as the fields 260 When birds are silent thorough winter's rage, Or sea far from the land, so all were whist,[598] Now light had quite dissolv'd the misty night, And Caesar's mind unsettled musing stood; But gods and fortune pricked him to this war, Infringing all excuse of modest shame, And labouring to approve[599] his quarrel good. The angry senate, urging Gracchus'[600] deeds, From doubtful Rome wrongly expell'd the tribunes That cross'd them: both which now approach'd the camp, 270 ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... North America was peopled by tribes having the same customs and speaking the same language as the Greenlanders. This statement made a deep impression on his mind, and during his stay at Hernhaag, 1750, while musing on the state of that people sitting in the darkness of heathenism, and on how the light of the gospel might be communicated to them, a description of the journey undertaken by Henry Ellis, 1746-7, at the desire of the Hudson's Bay Company, to try to ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... have been a great many Oberons," Belinda went on, musing; "the melancholy packboy, the toll-man, the young gentleman! Ah! it is of no use thinking about ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in his great chair and his face grew harsh. As he sat there musing, his virility and iron figure gave him rather the appearance of the soldier than the emperor. This impression his surroundings further emphasized, for the walls of the tent were covered, not with the gorgeous-colored Gobelins of the pleasure-loving French, but with severe ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... be," said Katie, musing, "if we could only manage to mix up this mission of Mr Queeker's in the plot of our romance; wouldn't it? Come, I will put away my drawing for to-day, and finish the copy of papa's quarterly cash-account for those dreadful Board of Trade people; then we shall go to the pier ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... great master of the art of composition. In the little picture before us the grouping of the figures is not what may be called inevitable, like that in the 'Knight's Dream.' It seems as though one day when Giorgione was musing on the beauties of the world, and the blemishes of life, even life in Venice, he thought of some far-off time beyond the dawn of history when all men lived in peace. The ancient Greeks called this perfect time the 'Golden Age' of the world. In many ways their idea of it tallies with the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... the little girl in musing over novels, or listening to talk on this subject, until she dreams herself in love. There is indeed little danger of this where friends have not made it a theme for perpetual inuendos and jests, but spoken frankly, simply, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... the General, as if musing with himself, "it is strange, but these very young creatures seldom do give their first preferences to persons of corresponding age. Girls love to look up to men with ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... his beautiful estate; and it was thus my father became acquainted with the amiable descendant of the most successful of colonisers, and with that classic domain which the genius of Gray, as it were, now haunts, and has for ever hallowed, and from which he beheld with fond and musing eye, those ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Grumpy (musing). Could it have been his own? In the fierceness of the struggle might he have torn it off in order to give himself greater freedom? Was he offering it to his assailant as a bribe? Was he—but first we must find if he was wearing one at all. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... And, musing upon that mystery, our frail feminine imagination seemed to us like a landscape fading into the mist: when the day is clear, we can distinguish the chain of blue mountains whose summits touch the sky, but our imagination, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... stepped, and they pushed out from the shore, the two men rowing and the lad steering. As soon as they were far enough out to catch the breeze the sail was set, and the little craft went bowling along over the fast-darkening sea. The oars were shipped, and Dan fell to musing. He tried to recollect the occasion of his last visit to the Cornish village from which his family had sprung, and was astonished to find that, in the sum of ten thousand leagues of travel since manhood, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Westminster Hall; and this wood, enjoying the universal Irish exemption from vermin, is said never to harbor a spider. Morogh was once told that William Rufus intended to make a bridge of his ships, and conquer Ireland. After some musing, Morogh asked, "Hath the King, in his great threatening, said, 'If it please God?'" "No!" "Then, seeing he putteth his trust only in man, and not in God, I fear not ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... liked him by the indulgent name of dreaminess. By his mother and sisters, for instance, his dreaminess was constantly noted. He is the more welcome to the benefit of such an interpretation as there is always held to be something engaging in the combination of the muscular and the musing, the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... back and forth between Boomtown and the farm like mad. Their steady zeal made up for her moody and fitful enthusiasm. However, she grew more resigned to the idea as the days wore on toward the departure, though her fits of dark and unusual musing were alarming to Anson, who feared a desperate ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... I watched them go. I only remember myself left there somehow—horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell into a deep shapeless musing. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... evermore, in days like these, When musing on your face, My sad imagination sees Another in my place. Say, do you listen to his prayer, Or slay him with a frown? At any rate I can't be there. Come back ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... While I was musing amidst these scenes in the mood of Hamlet, two old men, as my little ghost called them, appeared on the scene to answer to the gravedigger and his companion. They christened a mountain or two for me, "Kearnsarge" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had been musing and castle-building in the coals she scarcely knew, when a step on the polished floor made her look up, and with a little exclamation she rose to her full, slim, young height and turned to face a man who had come in with the unannounced surety of a member of the household. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... store see how the practised Hannibal derided when lectured he with wealth of bellick lore and on big words and books himself he prided. Senhor! the soldier's discipline is more than men may learn by mother-fancy guided; Not musing, dreaming, reading what they write; 'tis seeing, doing, fighting; teach to ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... triumphs, their rivalries, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in which they ruled—"all dead, all buried, all forgotten," I find a cloud of melancholy stealing over the present gaieties around me. I was gazing, in a musing mood, this very morning, at the portrait of the lady whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair Julia entered the gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain. The sun shone through the row of windows on her as she passed along, and she seemed to beam out each time into brightness, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... Loue; He leaues his friends, to dignifie them more; I loue my selfe, my friends, and all for loue: Thou Iulia, thou hast metamorphis'd me: Made me neglect my Studies, loose my time; Warre with good counsaile; set the world at nought; Made Wit with musing, weake; hart sick ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Warkworth, musing, "with half a dozen different forces tugging at him? Well, dear lady, be the moon to these tides, while this humble mortal looks ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Thus, musing in silence and solitude on the wild mountain-side, now looking back into my distant past, and now hazarding a glance into the fast-approaching future, the hours slipped by quickly for me, and I heard the bells ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... to be shaken! I ask myself,' said Mr. Gradgrind, musing, 'does the real culprit know of these accusations? Where is he? ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... "Strange romance, indeed, it would be," she mused to herself, "if, after having refused the poor artist, he having gained riches should prove loyal, and lay his heart and fortune at my feet! Would I reject him? No, indeed! He has gold now." Thus musing to herself before the mirror, she gave final touches to her toilet, and stepped down into her sister's sumptuous parlor to wait for a lover, restored from the depths ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... England again, and really was quite cast down on Traddles's account. There seemed to be no hope for him. I meekly ordered a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... discussion of right and wrong were itself a wrong, as if the letting in of light upon the darkness were a deed of darkness. Nevertheless, the Nation became thoughtful over the question of the rights of man. While it was musing the fire burned, and an irrepressible conflict came. In the issue it was settled that no man should be held by another man in involuntary servitude in ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... it was," Miss Oliver continued in a musing voice, searching her memory—"the awkward part was, poor Mrs ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... street, but since the evening was well along, the walk below the window was deserted. Back in my chair again, I sat musing idly when a faint sound that was not the rumbling of the professor's voice attracted my attention. I identified it shortly as the buzzing of a heavy fly, butting its head stupidly against the pane of glass that separated the small laboratory ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Wolf found himself musing about this undefined and nebulous happiness that began to tremble, like a growing brightness behind clouds, through all his days and nights. Had there ever been a time, he wondered, when he had taken her for granted, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... whom had never before been exhibited these samples of imperial riches craned their necks, and the looks of some were musing and of others keenly eager. The room fell silent, and still they gazed and gazed at the small heap of glistening stones and those few grains of gold. They were busy men in the vanguard of a quickened age, and theirs ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... us.[46] The travellers over this great work now see all we saw on that long morning, and a great deal more besides, while the carriage windows are soused by the all-pervading spray, thus carrying out one of Mr. Rhodes's cherished sentiments. Finally—musing at the marvellous and confusing twists and turns of the river, changing in character and appearance so as to be wellnigh unrecognizable—we walked on a hundred yards, and came upon a deep, deep gorge, rocky, barren, and repelling, at the bottom of which, sluggish and dirty in colour, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her stranger sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all the favourite spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in them; introduced other persons, and marked their comment on her ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... was not the only time that our conversation took a remarkable turn. There was an evening when he came in, at first seeming gay and in good spirits, but afterwards as he sat and smoked by the fire falling into a musing way; out of which to rouse him I said pleasantly that I supposed he had had no meetings of late with his odd friends. A question which did effectually arouse him, for he looked most wildly, and as if scared, upon me, and said, 'You were never there? I did not see you. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... whether the rest of the meal was good or ill. I suppose I ate: but it was only when the landlord swept the cloth, and produced a bottle of port, with a plate of biscuits and another of dried raisins, that I woke out of my musing. While I drew the arm-chair nearer the fire, he pushed forward the table with the wine to my elbow. After this, he poured me out a glass and fell to dusting a high-backed chair with vigour, as though he had caught it standing at ease ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... walked on, musing with myself On life and art, and whether, after all, A larger metaphysics might not help Our physics—a completer poetry Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants More fully than the special outside plans, Phalansteries, material institutes, The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... least idea," said Richard, musing, "what I had better be. Except that I am quite sure I don't want to go into the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... we hain't got a tent, or bosses, or wagons, or nothin', an' I don't see how you could get a circus up that way;" and the speaker hugged his knees as he rocked himself to and fro in a musing way on the rather sharp point of a large rock, on which he had seated himself in order to hear what his companions had to ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... disputed," rejoined the young man, musing. "Their pickets were as low as the White Plains when I passed through in disguise. It is true my purposes are innocent; but how is it to appear? My visit to you would seem a cloak to other designs. Remember, sir, the treatment you received not a year ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... indications which they afford us. It would be a mistake to write to Liege [2] for corks, and to Pau for gloves. Miss Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa. A flower should smell sweet, and woman should have wit. I say nothing of Fantine; she is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person; she is a phantom possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions, and who sings and prays and gazes into the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Bertha, musing. "Squire Wriggs came to see father yesterday morning. They went out together, and were speaking of you as they ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... not a dark one, overshadowed the spirits of Belles Demoiselles' plantation. The old master, whose beaming presence had always made him a shining Saturn, spinning and sparkling within the bright circle of his daughters, fell into musing fits, started out of frowning reveries, walked often by himself, and heard ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... get into the way, so thou shouldst also be much in studying and musing on the way. You know men that would be expert in any thing, are usually much in studying of that thing; and so likewise is it with those that quickly grow expert in any thing. This ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... Sir Adam, turning to the window again. "So the girl refused you," he said, musing, as he looked out. "Just like her ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... are?" he continued. "Hope they got here all right. But, of course, they did. Bud is too good a leader to let them get off the trail. Besides, they have been long enough on the way to have got here and back again." Again he paused, musing. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Breathing out fragrance—he was wont to stray; Or climb a bill with firm, elastic tread, While Sol his early beams in radiance shed. The Castle hill he mostly did prefer, As quite accordant with his character. Upon its ruins he would musing sit, Till he was seized with a strong rhyming fit; Then frame his welling thoughts to some rude verse— Which friends were anxious he should oft rehearse. If thus his leisure was not always spent, He read what books ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... "but it means too much scrimp for you. It is what I did not anticipate. If I had more time for outside practice"—he stopped, as if musing. "And if it weren't for ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... looked for the leper and could see nothing; so he returned into the bed, leaving the light burning. And he began to think within himself what had happened, and of that breath which had passed through him, and how the leper was not there. After a while, as he was thus musing, there appeared before him one in white garments, who said unto him, Sleepest thou or wakest thou, Rodrigo? and he answered and said, I do not sleep; but who art thou that bringest with thee such brightness and so sweet an odour? Then said he, I am Saint Lazarus, and know that I was ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... unjust, cruel, wicked; it was so in Ireland. Here the vices of the few are ingrafted on the many, and, like the small-pox, they do not become weaker, but stronger, by universal propagation. I wish I never saw you, America," said he, musing, his head resting against the wall; "I wish I was in the grave with my two sisters and mother, rather than here to witness the slavery, corruption, and vice of America." The remainder of his musings were lost in the sighs and emotions that ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... the tall, bent, spare figure, musing and botanizing along the country lanes and fields, he was known as "Monsieur Emile." Before he left the city on his periodical visits to England, Mill was wont to leave 300 francs with M. Rey, pastor of the Protestant ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Marquis de Cinq Mars and Marie de Gonzague meeting in this court, under the friendly branches of the great cedar, and so with a tender thought for these hapless old-time lovers, we turned away from Chaumont. Still musing and dreaming over its numerous and varied associations, we motored along toward Cheverny. This was an afternoon in which to dream,—the air was full of a delicious drowsy autumnal warmth, and a soft haze hung over the Loire and ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... reflectively, "or suffered it," and both of them began to see that we can rarely lift more than our one corner of the whole truth at a time. "In your way," he added, still musing, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... encouraged Lucille; she opened her heart to him; she told him all. The good priest was much moved by her simplicity and earnestness. He questioned her minutely as to the peculiar species of blindness with which St. Amand was afflicted; and after musing a little while, he said, "Daughter, God is great and merciful; we must trust in His power, but we must not forget that He mostly works by mortal agents. As you pass through Louvain in your way home, fail not to see there a certain physician, named Le Kain. He is celebrated ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not seem to hear the regretful echo in her sister's voice, nor did she take her to task for the idle hands that lay folded on her lap, nor disturb by word or look the times of silent musing, that grew longer and more frequent as those uneventful days passed on. What was to be said? The doubts and fears that had made her unhappy in the spring, and even before the spring, were coming back again. Rose was not at peace with herself, nothing ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... coast, as it was here that we first found broken sea shells, of the genus Cytherea. After dinner, Messrs. Roper and Calvert retired to their tent, and Mr. Gilbert, John, and Brown, were platting palm leaves to make a hat, and I stood musing near their fire place, looking at their work, and occasionally joining in their conversation. Mr. Gilbert was congratulating himself upon having succeeded in learning to plat; and, when he had nearly completed a yard, he retired with John to their tent. This was about 7 o'clock; and ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... way of design took the form of Christmas cards, then beginning their now somewhat flagging career, and she exhibited pictures at the Dudley Gallery for some years in succession, beginning with 1868. In 1877 she contributed to the Royal Academy a water colour entitled "Musing," and in 1889 was elected a member of the Royal Institute of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... creaked from rust. "The Guv'nor must be cracked," he thought, "to think we can get anywhere in this old geyser. Well, well, it's summer; if we break down it won't break my 'eart. Government job—better than diggin' or drillin'. Good old Guv!" So musing, he lit his pipe and examined the recesses beneath the driver's seat. "A bottle or three," he thought, "in case our patriotism should get us stuck a bit off the beaten; a loaf or two, some 'oney in a pot, and a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... appeared quite a tame, commonplace person beside her. When Jill went out of the room to fetch something, he asked me, rather curiously, how old she was, and when I told him that she was a mere child, not quite sixteen, he said, half musing, that she seemed older than that. She knew so much about things, but he supposed ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be better, after all," said my friend, pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the matter in hand. "Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three dollars a ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... precinct; saw a rosy English lad come forth and lock the door of the old foundation school, which marries its hoary basement to the soaring Gothic of the church, and carry his big responsible key into one of the quiet canonical houses; and then stood musing together on the effect on one's mind of having in one's boyhood haunted such cathedral shades as a King's scholar, and yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty meadows by the Severn. On the third morning we betook ourselves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... wander along by my ain sel,'" returned the old gentleman laughingly as he lifted his hat to Annis and the others, then went on his way, musing as to the best course to pursue to bring about an ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... of arrowroot in silence; then he looked at me with wistful, musing eyes. "Cumberledge," he murmured at last; "after all, I can't help admiring that woman. She is the only person who has ever checkmated me. She checkmates me every time. Steadfastness is what I love. Her steadfastness of purpose and her ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of her undying love— (Perchance her happy spirit oft would stray Round their dear footsteps wheresoe'er they rove) And Europe's turf grow green her heart above. No more could grief or joy disturb her breast. Soft by her tomb let musing Fancy move! Let not a sound of thoughtlessness molest The melancholy spot of ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... village burying-place, With briers and weeds o'ergrown, I saw a child, with beauteous face, Sit musing all alone. ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... theological ancestors took their origin. Septimius, the rather disagreeable hero of his last romance, is a peculiar example of a similar change. Brought up under the strict discipline of New England, he has retained the love of musing upon insoluble mysteries, though he has abandoned the old dogmatic guide-posts. When such a man finds that the orthodox scheme of the universe provided by his official pastors has somehow broken ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... strength of his character, the enduring courage of his soul, and the inspiring joyousness that, born of his strength, characterised him to the last poem he wrote. While the other poets were tossing on the sea of unresolved Question, he rested, musing and creating, on a green island whose rocks were rooted on the ocean-bed, and wondered, with the smiling tolerance of his life-long charity, how his fellows were of so little faith, and why the sceptics made so much noise. He would have reversed ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... potential in that luxurious torpor? Who has not attributed some little romance to the passer-by? Who has not sometimes exchanged places even with things inanimate, and drawn some new moral experience from following the movement of stars or of daffodils? All this is idle musing or at best poetry; yet our ordinary knowledge of what goes on in men's minds is made of no other stuff. True, we have our own mind to go by, which presumably might be a fair sample of what men's minds are; but ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... girl was self-educated through her own natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine passage in "Paradise Regained" which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... keen as Evelina's, when the latter was not too self-absorbed to exert them. As Miss Mellins always said, Evelina could "take patterns with her eyes": she could have cut that new sleeve out of a folded newspaper in a trice! Musing on these things, Ann Eliza wished the lady would come back and give her another look at the sleeve. It was not unlikely that she might pass that way, for she certainly lived in or about the Square. Suddenly Ann Eliza remarked a small neat handkerchief ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... weak and sickly, that is languishing and consumptive; this, of all the rest, as counted not fit for any coarse employment, shall be picked out as a Choice Vessel for the Church! Whereas, most evidently, he is much more able to dig daily in the mines, than to set cross-legged, musing upon his book. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... day while he was brooding and musing and quarrelling without definite reason, in the arms of his beloved, that the profound, melancholy motif in the first movement of his symphony in D minor came to him. This symphony gradually grew into the great vision of his life, and, many years later, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... sure of five hundred—that you may depend,—I shouldn't wonder if my brother promised him," said Solomon, musing aloud with his sisters, the evening before ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the other, musing, "it oughtn't to, but, on the other hand, it is not likely she is on her second voyage to Rio, and both times in ballast. That's all stuff about ballast. No man would be such a fool as to sail pretty nigh all around this continent in ballast. He could ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... toil precarious.'—'I go not back,' Said I, 'while health and liberty are left. The home that's grudged is not the home for me. Give me but love, and like the reed I yield; Deal with me harshly, you may break, not bend me.' 'Ah! there is something wrong in all these things,' Replied he, musing. ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, I was not heard, I saw them not— When, musing deeply on the lot Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming,— Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; I shrieked, and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... a spike from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the Celts who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. It seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night with the rest ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... gravity, as though thinking that this was her downfall and very strange and improper. Her features seemed to sink and wither, and on either side of her face her long hair hung mournfully down; she sat crestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... good deal withered and worn by his sister's state; he had never, by any means, ceased to hope, and he is much afflicted. She and Jennie may live a week or more, or go at any moment. In my long hours of silent musing and prayer, as I go from place to place, I think often of you. I think one reason why we do not get all the love and faith we sigh for is that we try to force them to come to us, instead of realising that they must be God's free gifts, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... carriage," a commissionaire shouted, and, beckoning to me, the girl moved imperiously down the steps to the courtyard. There was no longer a smile on her face, which had a musing and withdrawn expression. Sir Cyril stood stock-still, holding the dagger. What the surrounding lackeys thought of this singular episode I will not guess. Indeed, the longer I live, the less I care to meditate upon what ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... He walked about musing awhile, and then turning back, asked me if the clergy did not devote much of their time to the instruction of our youth—very seldom, sir—our young students of divinity, and theological candidates very often instruct youth; but when a gentleman ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Musing upon the sordid mystery which seems to underlie the whole of this dingy quarter, Seton pursued his way, crossing inlets and circling around basins dimly divined, turning to the right into a lane flanked by high eyeless walls, and again to the left, finally to emerge nearly opposite a dilapidated ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... first for me a mental change, disturbing a quieted-down imagination, in which strange forms, sharp in outline but imperfectly apprehended, appeared and claimed attention as crystals will do by their bizarre and unexpected shapes. One fell to musing before the phenomenon—even of the past: of South America, a continent of crude sunshine and brutal revolutions, of the sea, the vast expanse of salt waters, the mirror of heaven's frowns and smiles, the reflector of the world's ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... time they sat in silence, musing on the many phases of this curious project; then Beth came to Mr. Merrick's ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... spake and King Leodogran rejoiced, But musing "Shall I answer yea or nay?" Doubted and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw, Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew, Field after field, up to a height, the peak Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king, Now looming, and now lost: and on the slope ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... I stood musing. More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn't charge ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... musing on her new half-crown—it was strange how long she looked at it—had heard with real amazement that uproarious huzzaing! and, just as her father had levanted for the beer, glided down from her closet, and received the wondrous tidings from her step-mother. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... deep-haired As rosy dawn, and whiter than a rose, Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love, Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon, Like Danae within the golden shower. Seated beside her aromatic rest, In rapture musing on her loveliness, Her knight and troubadour. A lute, aslope The curious baldric of his tunic, glints With pearl-reflections of the moon, that seem The silent ghosts of long-dead melodies. In purple and sable, slashed with solemn gold, Like ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... name!" said the smuggler, musing. "I beg your lordship's pardon—If I may require your assistance for any ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this prairie that he first saw animals and birds of every kind; he also there made first acquaintance with thunder and lightning. He would sit by the hour watching the clouds as they rolled by, musing on the shades of light and darkness as the day ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... must have passed through the mind of the lonely pastor as he sat musing upon his sermon throughout the night, for he appeared unusually cheerful as he ascended his pulpit Christmas morning, preached a joyful sermon, and said, at its conclusion, that he had that night begotten a song which he wished to read to them. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... days when spring was in her glee, And hope was strong, we knew not why or how, And earth, the mother, dreamed with brooding brow. Musing on life, and what the hours might be, When love should ripen to maternity, Then like high flutes in silvery interchange Ye piped with voices still and sweet and strange, And ever as ye ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... and flatten into indistinguishable mire, after the established custom of builders in gardens since the world began. She would sit in the rockery where she had sat with Mr. Brumley and recall that momentous conversation, and she would wander up the pine-wood slopes behind, and she would spend long musing intervals among Euphemia's perennials, thinking sometimes, and sometimes not so much thinking as feeling the warm tendernesses of nature and the perplexing difficulties of human life. With an amused amazement Lady Harman reflected as ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Isabel walked on the lawn in the pale moon's silvery beams, musing of all that had taken place that day, and thinking how very happy Everard must feel to-night. Suddenly that gentleman accosted her: "Why did you refuse to be present at the ordination to-day?" he asked. ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... two hours before her excitement allowed her to sit down and begin to knit. Even then—and naturally enough—while she was musing the fire burned. It never occurred to her to reflect that there must have been some reason for Austin's extraordinary prank, and that the first thing to be done was to discover what that was. She was too angry to take this obvious ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... memory that shrinks. You were all too brave, methinks, Climbing solitudes of flowering cistus and the thin wild pinks, Musing, setting to a haunting air in one vague reverie All the life ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... my tomb, where the willow trees wave, And, far in the Island, the streamlet meanders; If ever, by stealth, to my green grassy grave Some kind musing spirit of sympathy wanders— "Here rests," he will say, "from Adversity's pains, Napoleon Buonaparte's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Musing upon my couch, this lovely stream I liken to the truly good man's life, Amid the heat of passions, and the glare Of wordly objects, flowing pure and bright, Shunning the gaze, yet showing where it glides By its green blessings; cheered by happy thoughts, Contentment, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and resolved. You are to push with all your power: not to absorb ideas, but to pour forth will and love. With this "conative act," as the psychologists would call it, the true contemplative life begins. Contemplation, you see, has no very close connection with dreaminess and idle musing: it is more like the intense effort of vision, the passionate and self-forgetful act of communion, presupposed in all creative art. It is, says one old English mystic, "a blind intent stretching . . . a privy love ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... Musing I stand upon his lowly grave, Who, though he fought no battle—though he pour'd No hostile thunders on his country's foes, Achieved for Britain triumphs, less array'd "In pomp and circumstance," nor visible To vulgar gaze—the triumphs of the ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... indeed may to musing incline, Now that grey-bearded Winter makes Autumn resign; The hills all around us their russet put on, And the skies seem in mourning for loss of the sun. The winds make the tree, where thou sitt'st, shake its head; Yet tho' with dry leaves mother earth's lap is spread, Her bosom, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... excuses, Griggs," said the doctor, rousing himself from his musing fit. "It was an act of Christian charity, and I am glad that we were able ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Charles sat musing for a little while. "How happy William seems!" thought he; "and yet I dare say at this moment he has not half-a-crown he can call his own. It is very fine of him, indeed, to talk of turning out the closet, he who has got nothing ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... continually set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, and detain them, they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholising, and carried along, as he (they say) that is led round about a heath with a Puck in the night, they run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... studied the slip issued to him by the Quarter. Then in a slow, mystified voice he read out, "No. I Section, 19 men. Bread, loaves, six." He looked puzzled and soliloquized in a musing voice: ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... voice musing, "But even that isn't the important thing. The Co-ordinator sent us here to find a method of bringing backward cultures to industrialization. Have you got a blueprint to show him, when you return? ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to do with Janus than with Jupiter), and the temple of Vesta, back again over the site of the Circus Maximus, between the Palatine and the Aventine (the scene of the Rape of the Sabines), to the baths of Caracalla, where I spent an hour, musing, sketching, and poetizing; thence to the church of San Stefano Rotundo, once a temple dedicated to Claudius by Agrippina; over the Celian Hill, covered with masses of ruins, to the church of St. John and St. Paul, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... breathless interest, and when she saw the old warrior turn away, and knew that Captain Smith had foiled her father's intent, she knew that the brave Caucarouse was in great danger. That night, while all the Englishmen except their leader were out hunting, the Captain sat alone in his wigwam musing on ways and means to gain his end. There was a sound in the still forest—a crackling of underbrush—he roused at a light touch on his arm. Pocahontas stood by his side, alone in the darkness; swiftly she whispered ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... can tell whether girls are conscious or not," said Mrs. Corey. "But I am not saying the Miss Laphams are not——" Her son sat musing, with an inattentive smile on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Beloved, while gratitude Is garrulous with coming good, Or ere the tongue of happiness Be silenced by your soft caress, Relate how, musing here of you, The clouds, the intermediate blue, The air that rings with larks, the grave And distant rumour of the wave, The solitary sailing skiff, The gusty corn-field on the cliff, The corn-flower by the crumbling ledge, Or, far-down ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... If Great Foutsa ever, ever Thou but seek with mind sincere, Thou the mists of sin shalt sever, All shall lie before thee clear. Whosoe'er his parents losing From his early infancy, Cannot guess with all his musing, Where their place of birth might be; He who sister dear nor brother, Since the sun upon him shone, And of kindred all the other Shoots and branches ne'er has known— If of Foutsa Grand the figure He shall shape and colour o'er, Gaze upon it rapt and eager, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... impossible to you, Donna Beatrice," he said, in a musing tone. "Well, I daresay it does. Many things must seem impossible to you which are rather startling facts to me. I am older than you, I am a man, and I have been a soldier. I have lived a life such as you cannot dream ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... of self-examination and prayer, as I lay upon my bed. Many hours together I sweetly spent in contemplating subjects for preaching, and in musing over discourses in Bengali; and when my animal spirits were somewhat raised by the fever, I found myself able to reason and discourse in Bengali for some hours together, and words and phrases occurred much more readily than when ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... to the chapel floor, Kept musing half asleep, till suddenly A sharp bell rang from close beside the door, And I leapt up when ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... explains that religion and politics were forbidden topics. 'To have been always tossing about some theological question would have been to make that their private diversion of which they had had more than enough in public; to have been musing on the Civil Wars would have made them melancholy; therefore Nature alone could entertain them.' After the Restoration a meeting was held at Gresham College in London, and a committee was appointed, with Wilkins as chairman, to draw up a scheme for ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... rise ere gleams the tardy light, Winter's pale dawn;—and as warm fires illume, And cheerful tapers shine around the room, Thro' misty windows bend my musing sight Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white, With shutters clos'd, peer faintly thro' the gloom, That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume, Rising from their dark pile, an added height By indistinctness given.—Then to decree The grateful thoughts ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... escaped from his uncle, he relapsed into musing upon the position to which he was condemned when the new session came round. Again Chilvers would be in the same classes with him, and, as likely as not, with the same result. In the meantime, they were both 'going in' for the First B.A.; he had no ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... beauty or interest he had shown her; were, if possible, even more constantly together, reading, writing, or engaged with music in library or drawing-room, seated side by side on veranda or lawn enjoying conversation, book or periodical; or, it might be, silently musing, hand in hand, by the soft moonlight that lent such a witchery to the lovely landscape. A pleasanter honeymoon could hardly ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... by the sole power of their tenderness they would easily penetrate each other's most secret thoughts. This would continue forever in the calm of an enduring affection. It seemed to her that she felt him there beside her. And an unusual sensation came over her. She remained long musing thus, when suddenly she thought she heard a footstep behind the house. "If it were he." But it passed on and she felt as if she had been deceived. The air became cooler. The day broke. Slowly bursting aside ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... sat musing his eye fell upon the axe, and he started up and seized it as if suddenly reminded of some forgotten urgent duty. He fell to work at the big tree again, and laboured doggedly till nightfall. Inexperienced as ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray |
