"Pensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their way into the sitting room when the guests entered, Miss Sherwin looking pretty and pensive in her big apron, Miss Moore as flyaway and merry ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... wiry tinkle of a mandolin distantly heard, sudden clatter subsiding again into a general humming quiet, the happy sense of solitude in multitude, these are the partial ingredients of that feeling no alumnus ever forgets. In his pensive citadel, my friend J—— would be sitting, with his pipe (one of those new "class pipes" with inlaid silver numerals, which appear among every college generation toward Christmas time of freshman year). In his lap would be the large green volume ("British Poets of the Nineteenth ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... very quietly, as Mr. Upton had said. It was a buckskin, fat and hearty from long resting. Nothing could be more docile than the pensive lower lip, and the meek curve of the neck; nothing could be more contradictory than the light of its eye; a brooding, baleful fire, quietly biding ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... big arm-chair, Would spin for us yarns unending, Your voice and accent and pensive air With the narrative ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... pressing grief. Mourning is a grief at the bitter death of one who was dear to you. Sadness is a grief attended with tears. Tribulation is a painful grief. Sorrow, an excruciating grief. Lamentation, a grief where we loudly bewail ourselves. Solicitude, a pensive grief. Trouble, a continued grief. Affliction, a grief that harasses the body. Despair, a grief that excludes all hope of better things to come. But those feelings which are included under fear, they define thus: There is sloth, which is ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... he never was afraid; His country's weal, his country's laws obeyed; A pensive calm reigned on his noble brow, While in his eye you read the ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... exhibition which had been announced in so singular a preamble; and the squire, having previously insisted on every gentleman tossing off a half-pint bumper, adjourned the whole party to the library, where they were not a little surprised to discover Mr Cranium seated, in a pensive attitude, at a large table, decorated with ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... silvery day, fair, mild, pensive, with light shadows and a capricious sun. There had been a storm of rain the night before, and it was as if Nature had repented of her wildness, and sought forgiveness by all sorts of winsome arts, insinuating invitations, soft caresses, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... monuments of brave men, and such as had well deserv'd of the publick, erected by the Romans even in their highways; since doubtless, such noble and agreeable objects would exceedingly divert, entertain, and take off the minds and discourses of melancholy people, and pensive travellers, who having nothing but the dull and enclosed ways to cast their eyes on, are but ill conversation to themselves, and others, and instead of celebrating, censure their superiors. It is by a curious person, and industrious friend of mine, observ'd, that the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... had all glutted themselves with the murder of the poor man, and that they ought to be used like murderers. Upon these words, away ran eight of my men, with the boatswain and his crew, to complete their bloody work; and I, seeing it quite out of my power to restrain them, came away pensive and sad; for I could not bear the sight, much less the horrible noise and cries of the poor wretches ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... him, You Who have so many worshippers! At least, he is a monstrous clever fellow," said Jurgen: and boldly he said it, in the highest court of Heaven, and before the pensive face of the God ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 4. Gladly stoop the pensive willows Those bright river-ripples o'er, Thanking for its cooling water, Telling how they thirst ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and a tall lady in black, with plain linen collar and wristbands, rose to receive him. They confronted each other. Time and trouble had left their trace, but there were the glorious eyes, and jet black hair, and the face, worn and pensive, but still beautiful. It was the woman he ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and fresh as morning rose, But somewhat sad and solemne eke in sight, As if some pensive ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... well-grown well-made men, strong and agile, the countenance pleasing, rather square of mould, eyebrows straight and thick, nose well cut and short, chin firm and resolute-looking, and the complexion very dark in Raymond, Frank, and the absent Miles. Frank's eyes were soft, brown, rather pensive, and absent in expression; but Raymond's were much deeper and darker, and had a steadfast gravity, that made him be viewed as formidable, especially as he had lost all the youthful glow of colouring that mantled in his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sleeping Venus seemed Dudu ... But she was pensive more than melancholy ... The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was holy. Unconscious, albeit turned of quick seventeen. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... came to see Ernest Churchouse upon the matter of the marriage. She found him pensive and a little weary. According to his custom he indulged in ideas before approaching the subject just then uppermost in all ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... to a better understanding of that man if his likeness is impressed upon our memory. The portrait made by his friend Giotto, shows him as a young man perhaps of twenty to twenty-five years, with a face noble, beardless, strong, intelligent and pensive—a face which would not lead one to suspect an appreciation of humor. Yet writers find two distinct forms of that quality—a playfulness in his eclogues and a grotesqueness in certain of his assignments to punishments in Hell. Contrasting with this picture of his early life ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... never made a pig for I," sobbed the little maid, with her head dolefully inclined to her left shoulder, and her oval face pulled to a doubly pensive length. "I axed my vather to let me get him a posy, and a said I might. And I got un some vine Bloody Warriors, and a heap of Boy's Love off our big bush, that smelled beautiful. And vather says a can have some water-blobs off our pond when they blows. But Tommy Green met I as a ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a man of his own age, and hearing things that were very pleasant to hear about his latest work, and yet, as he leaned back in his chair and looked across at Katharine Normaine, whose own expression was a little pensive, he sighed. It was a great deal—he told himself it was nearly everything—to have what he had now in the line of effort which he loved and had chosen. It was not so good as the work itself, of course, but the recognition was grateful. And as his eyes dwelt again upon the distinction ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... were they going to start out as robbers at that late day? Maurice and Jean, too, were deeply interested in those details about an enemy whom the girl had seen, and whom they had not succeeded in setting eyes on in their whole month's campaigning, while Honore, pensive and with dry, parched lips, was conscious only of the sound of her voice; he could think of nothing save her and the misfortune that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... all had excruciating headaches. Their legs dangled, and they did not seem to be able to stand on them. Only the Indian—Miguel—seemed to have any strength left. He was a nasty-looking individual, always sulky and pensive as if under some great weight upon his conscience. Miguel and I walked in front, he with a big knife opening the way in the forest for the others to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... King; and long within his breast His pensive counsels balanced to and fro: He grieved the land he freed should be oppress'd, And he less for ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the Latin poet satirizes that wickedness which Jeremiah mourned over. Horace's satire, however, is not entirely applicable to conditions in England; "he never saw that with the view of his eye which his pensive translator cannot but overview with the languish of his soul." Moreover Horace's style is capable of improvement, an improvement which Drant is quite ready to provide. "His eloquence is sometimes too sharp, and therefore I have blunted it, and sometimes too ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... most eventful period in French history. The storms of 1789 consigned his father to the guillotine, his mother and brothers to imprisonment, and himself and sister to poverty and exile. There are few romances more replete with pensive interest than the wanderings of Louis Philippe to escape the bloodhounds of the Revolution far away amidst the ices of Northern Europe, to the huts of the Laplanders, and again through the almost unbroken wilds ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... night we had Charlotte, Lily, and Ruth Swain into supper. Charlotte resembles a Swede in appearance. Lily, the second, is a good-looking girl with rather a long, pensive face. Ruth is very dark but has a fine face. She is backward in learning and very diffident. All three are very capable girls; they cut out and make their own clothes, and can turn their hand to most things in the house ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... Apollodorus is to be credited. On looking over that album, the majority of the faces are distinctly those of Aaronites, and most favourable specimens of the family, too There are melting black orbs curtained with pensive lashes, luxuriant black hair, regular features, and straight, delicately chiselled noses. These Jewesses generally wear handkerchiefs disposed in curving folds over their heads, and are as fond of loudly-tinted raiment and the gauds of trinketry as their sisters who parade the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of a boy who threw a fork at his brother and put his eye out. But he didn't mean to, and the brother forgave him, and he never did so any more," observed Jill, in a pensive tone, wishing to show that she felt all the dangers of impatience, but ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... live woman. She supported herself by writing for the newspapers articles of a morally utilitarian character—for instance a winter's series, published every Saturday, "Hints on Health and Culture," or again, "Receipts for the Parlor and the Kitchen." She also contributed poetry of a pensive cast, and chatty special correspondence flavored with personal allusion. She was one of the pioneers in modern society journalism, which at this time, however, was comparatively veiled and delicate in its methods. Besides, she was a woman of tireless energy, with theories on many subjects ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... out into the center of the track, and his eyes were turned westward, toward the bend round the great hill. They were pensive eyes, almost regretful, and somehow his whole face had changed from its look of daring to match them. The exhilaration had gone out of it; the command, even the determination had merged into something like weakness. His ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... little encouragement to a sentimental view of life. Its writers had too much to do, and too much besides to think about, for undue occupation with pensive remembrances or imaginative forecastings. They bid us remember as a stimulus to thanksgiving and a ground of hope. They bid us look forward, but not along the low levels of earth and its changes. One great future is to draw all our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... look. Nor has Volpatte changed, with his leggings, his shouldered blanket, and his face of a Mongolian tatooed with dirt; nor Tirette, although he has been worried for some time by blood-red streaks in his eyes—for some unknown and mysterious reason. Farfadet keeps himself aloof, in pensive expectation. When the post is being given out he awakes from his reverie to go so far, and then retires into himself. His clerkly hands indite numerous and careful postcards. He does not know of Eudoxie's end. Lamuse said no more to any one of the ultimate ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... there is a spire On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire The Fiddle, and its spoils, the case,[9] In manner of a trophy, place. That done, they ope the trapdoor gate, And let Crowdero down thereat; Crowdero making doleful face, Like hermit poor in pensive place. To dungeon they the wretch commit, And the survivor of his feet, But the other that had broke the peace And head of knighthood, they release, Though a delinquent false and forged, Yet b'ing a stranger, he's enlarged, While his comrade that did not hurt Is clapp'd up fast in prison ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... of over-bookishness, was full of humour, extraordinarily affectionate, and extremely natural. There is moreover a great deal of interest in this skit on poor Mrs. Coleridge: for "lingos" of the kind, though in her case they may have helped to disgust her husband with his "pensive Sara," were in her time and afterwards by no means uncommon, especially—physiologists must say why—with the female sex. The present writer, near the middle of the nineteenth century, knew a lady of family, position and ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... pecuniary difficulties. George Vertue, the eminent engraver, in one of his commonplace-books, now preserved in the British Museum,[62] thus feelingly refers to the embarrassed circumstances of the Earl:—'My good Lord, lately growing heavy and pensive in his affairs, which for some late years have mortify'd his mind.... This lately manifestly appeared in his change of complexion; his face fallen less; his colour and eyes turned yellow to a great degree; his stomach wasted and gone; and a dead weight ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... lament in a pensive and apologetic sort of way, "Yes, I have a great weakness for fine books." The very presence of this mis-called weakness, however, is unmistakable proof of great mental strength, and those who suffer from it may find ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... which is the reason that the most brilliant display of them soothes the observer, instead of exciting him. And I know not whether it be more a moral effect or a physical one, operating merely on the eye; but it is a pensive gayety, which causes a sigh often, and never a smile. We never fancy, for instance, that these gayly-clad trees might be changed into young damsels in holiday attire, and betake themselves to dancing on the plain. If ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... beautiful, and the love which the pensive tenant of the villa disdained, the Pharaoh would willingly have purchased at a great price. In exchange for the priest's daughter he would have given Twea, Taia, Amense, Hont-Reche, his Asiatic captives, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... when busy crowds retire To take their evening rest, The hermit trimm'd his little fire, And cheer'd his pensive guest: ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... showers And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... it? How long before—?" She started to ask, how long before she was married, but caught herself. "What did he look like? He must have been good-looking, or you would not be so pensive." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... he sought the lonely maid, Who plied her labors in the silvan shade; Her locks loose rolling mantle deep her breast, And wave luxuriant round her slender waist, Gay wreaths of flowers her pensive brows adorn, And her white raiment mocks the light of morn. Her busy hand sustains a bending bough, Where cotton clusters spread their robes of snow, From opening pods unbinds the fleecy store, And culls her ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... always been a haunting suggestiveness to me about the expression Rue du Temps Perdu—the Street of Lost Time. Down this shadowy vista we all come to peer with tear-dimmed eyes sooner or later. Usually this pensive retrospection is the premonitory sign that one is nearing the last milestone before the downhill side of life begins. But to some this yearning backward glance comes early; they feel its compelling power while still in the vigor of middle life. Why this is so it is not easy to say, but imaginative, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... general vanish like the morning mist before the sun; whereas, if you quail before it, it is sure to become more imminent. I have fervent hope that the words of my mouth sank deep into the hearts of some of my auditors, as I observed many of them depart musing and pensive. I occasionally distributed tracts amongst them; for although they themselves were unable to turn them to much account, I thought that by their means they might become of service at some future time, and fall into the hands of others, to whom they might be ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... bent and grey, Whose pensive lips speak only when they pray Doth sad November pass ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... profile, dimly lighted by the flickering oil lamp; a very perfect profile, he thought; a forehead that was neither too high nor too low, a small aquiline nose, a short upper lip, and the prettiest mouth and chin in the world. It was just a shade too pensive now, the poor little mouth, he thought pityingly; and be wondered what it was like when it smiled. And then he began to arrange his lines for winning the smile he wanted so much to see from those thoughtful lips. It was, of course, for the gratification of the idlest, most vagabond curiosity that ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... plaintive chants in the world than the recitation of the Psalms by the "Sons of the Covenant" on Sabbath afternoons amid the gathering shadows of twilight. Esther often stood in the passage to hear it, morbidly fascinated, tears of pensive pleasure in her eyes. Even the little jargon story-book which Moses Ansell read out that night to his Kinder, after tea-supper, by the light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos. "These stories ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Clanwilliam, who Agar said was the quickest man he had ever known; Luttrell said he and Rogers were 'the quick and the dead.' Looking over the 'Report of the Woods and Forests and the Cost of the Palaces,' somebody said 'the pensive' (meaning the public: see Rejected Addresses) must pay; Luttrell said 'the public was the pensive and the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... said, puzzled me. He had not the pensive air of one who has seen better days. He was more than cheerful in his present life: he was full of spirits; and yet it was plain that he had been brought up for something different. I asked him once to tell ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... powers, became absorbed in that weary watching; long before she died, she was childish, and only conscious of one wish—to sit in that long high window, and watch the road, along which he might come. She was as faithful as Evangeline, if pensive and inglorious. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... from the castle joined Benefico, he declared to them in what manner their deliverance was effected; and, as a general shout of joy resounded through the neighbouring mountains, Fidus, lifting up his eyes, beheld in the midst of the multitude, standing in a pensive posture, the fair disconsolate. Her tender heart was at the instant overflowing in soft tears, caused by a kind participation of their present transport, yet mixed with the deep sad impression of a grief her bosom was full fraught with. Her face, at first, was almost hid by her white handkerchief, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... reflect that there are only a few planks between you and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it makes you feel sort of pensive." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... catch glimpses of grouse cropping heather buds, of whirring flocks of partridges, of the sooty coot and the speckled teal, of the fisher herons, of the green-crested lapwing, of clamoring craiks among fields of flowering clover, of robins cheering the pensive autumn, of lintwhites chanting among the buds, of the mavis singing drowsy ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the remnants of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng; Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thy annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; Boast ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... not gay," Felix admitted. "They are sober; they are even severe. They are of a pensive cast; they take things hard. I think there is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or some depressing expectation. It 's not the epicurean temperament. My uncle, Mr. Wentworth, is a ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... with the skins of seals, the strong teak-wood sideboard, and the heavy round table, upon which stood a quaint Dutch spirit bottle and a couple of horn drinking cups. He looked at the several pictures of ships battling with terrible storms, and at the pensive porcupine in its dusty glass case, and then at the array of firearms and harpoons above the door of the press bed. My dog Selta lay sound asleep upon a large polar-bear skin before the fire. Had he approached her and looked up the wide chimney he might have seen there the remains ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... appeared painful. She is ever cheerful, though I sometimes wish she would be more lively, and cannot help fancying, notwithstanding her melancholy as a child was remarkable, that her sufferings, both bodily and mental, the last eighteen months have made her the very pensive character she is. I had hoped before that unfortunate affair she was becoming as animated and light-hearted as my Emmeline, but as that cannot be, I endeavoured to be thankful for the health and quiet, and, I trust, happiness she now enjoys. We receive, every opportunity, from Edward very satisfactory ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Clement groan; and yet that canal journey had a pensive joy about it, as we sat beside our sleeping brother and conversed freely and fearlessly, as we had never been able to do for ten minutes together in all the long years that we had loved one another. There ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reason for anxiety. The circumstances, owing to the number of the royal retinue, were unfavourable, yet, as the story of the pot of gold had been told by Ruthven, the plot could not be abandoned. James even 'chaffed' Gowrie about being so pensive and distrait, and about his neglect of some little points of Scottish etiquette. Finally he sent Gowrie into the hall, with the grace-cup for the gentlemen, and then called the Master. He sent Gowrie, apparently, ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... past' of wasted opportunities and neglected duty. But the sudden transition to the sharp, short command and broken sentences of the last verse is to be accounted for by the sudden appearance of the flashing lights of the band led by Judas, somewhere near at hand, in the valley. The mood of pensive reflection gives place to rapid decision. He summons them to arise, not for flight, but that He may go out to meet the traitor. Escape would have been easy. There was time to reach some sheltering fold of the hill in the darkness; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a tapestried stool, a young girl with long, fair hair hanging in plaits over her neck, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that, while her agile fingers worked, her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Ned Marshall had mounted and ridden happily away in the dusk, Sally came back with me from the door, and stood, silent and pensive, for a moment, while ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... cast a hurried glance round that strange assembly, if by chance her eye might rest upon some dear familiar face; but she saw not the kind but grave face of Hector, nor met the bright sparkling eyes of her cousin Louis, nor the soft, subdued, pensive features of the Indian girl, her adopted sister. She stood alone among those wild, gloomy-looking men; some turned away their eyes as if they would not meet her woe-stricken countenance, lest they should be moved to pity her sad condition. No wonder that, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... intently and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her... In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh—at a most inopportune moment—pretending not to notice ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... often weary of these complainings, and turned for relief to the placidity and cheerfulness of her mother's mind. Here she found repose—a soothing, calm, and holy submission. Still the gloom of her father's spirit cast a pensive shade over her own feelings, and infused a tone of melancholy and an air of unnatural reflection into her character. By nature, Jane was endowed with a soul of unusual delicacy. From early childhood, all that is beautiful or sublime in nature, in literature, in character, had charms ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... not help remarking the strong contrast between them. He, with his sallow, delicately-shaped features—the thin mouth and long straight nose, of that form I have heard called the "melancholy nose," which usually indicates a feeble, pensive, and hypochondriac temperament; while his daughter—But I ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... object of beauty, notoriously compelled to be of the fair sex in his tactics, and must practise the arts and whims of nymphs to preserve himself: and no doubt it was the case with the famous Captain Baskelett, in whose mind sweet ladies held the place that the pensive politician gives to the masses, dreadful in their hatred, almost as dreadful in their affection. But an heiress is a distinct species among women; he hungered for the heiress; his elevation to Parliament made him regard her as both the ornament and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bark him away, but only dreams of barking, in his cozy kennel. Close by are the windows of the mansion, glowing with light. There beat the philanthropic hearts; there smiles the pale, pensive lady; there beams the aspiring face of her son; and there sits the Judge, with his feet on the rug, pleasantly contemplating the good his speech will do, and thinking quite as much, perhaps, of the fame it will bring him,—happily unconscious alike of his neighbor's malicious ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... me plain 'C', or picture, if you like, in place of your sounder, a blonde, fairy-like girl talking to you, with pensive cheeks ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... father was very loath to grant this boon, but he let me go sometimes, perhaps to get a sample of my conduct. I don't remember ever doing anything at these times which could have displeased him; I was particularly careful about it, since I saw him sad, pensive, and afflicted owing to the misfortune which had befallen him, and soon be began to accord me his confidence, which I was most anxious ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... what she would see: the fine, cross upper lip lifted backwards by the moustache, the small grizzled brown moustache, turned up, that made it look crosser. The narrow, pensive lower lip, thrust out by its light jaw. His nose—quite a young nose—that wouldn't be Roman, wouldn't be Sutcliffe; it looked out over your head, tilted itself up to sniff the world, obstinate, alert. His eyes, young too, bright and dark, sheltered, safe from age under the low straight eyebrows. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... within my bosom's core The thought—as hitherward I strayed; And pensive 'mid the waving store, I mused, of autumn's yellow glade:— These gifts of nature's bounteous reign,— The teeming earth, and golden grain, Yon elms, among whose leaves entwine The tendrils of the clustering vine;— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... stockholder in the New-York Tribune. Mr. GREELEY conceives some of his most brilliant editorial articles while churning the mercurial milk of the Chappaqua farm into butter; or vexing the gracious grain with the flying flail; or listening to the pensive murmurings of the plaintive pigs, and the whispered cadences of the kindly cattle. RICHARD GRANT WHITE can't write, it is said, until a towel moistened with Cologne water is applied to his nostrils. Sometimes, however, he varies the monotony of this method by riding several miles in a Third Avenue ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... it is that you find such people so fickle and uncertain in their spirits; Now on the mount, then in the valleys; now in the sunshine, then in the shade; now warm, then frozen; now bonny and blithe, then in a moment pensive and sad; as thinking of a portion nowhere but in hell. This will cause smiting on the breast; nor can I imagine that the Publican was as yet farther than thus far in the Christian's progress, since yet he was smiting upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... works being produced under such prosaic conditions. One buyer—a most worthy man, to be sure, and a true friend of Rossetti’s, but full of that British superstition about the saving grace of clothes which is so wonderful a revelation to the pensive foreigner—had to be humoured in his craze against the nude. After having painted a beautiful partly-draped Gretchen (which, we may remark in passing, had no relation, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti supposes, to the Marguerite alluded ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Mariana, is very fair, her face not so finely rounded, but has a gayer expression than her sisters', whose countenances, except when the conversation has something of mirth in it, may be said to be rather pensive. Their persons are elegant, and their manners pleasing and lady-like, such as would be fascinating in any country. They possess very considerable powers of conversation, and their minds seem to be more instructed than those of the Greek women in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... who still rule 40 Our spirits from their urns. 'Twas such a night! 'Tis strange that I recall it at this time; But I have found our thoughts take wildest flight Even at the moment when they should array Themselves in pensive order. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... lean for that," responded Theron, with a pensive smile. "I WAS going to ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an extra allowance. I don't see how I can go on as it is. The sum fixed by the last Quarterly Conference of the old year, and which I am getting now, is ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... remember is that I was content not, for the time, to open the question, and that contentment must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking show of cleverness. He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson's daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest thread in the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some influence operating in his small intellectual life ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... sulks, a luxury that even a black boy may become bloated on. Tom does not tolerate that frame of mind in others. The attentions of "divinest melancholy" he likes to monopolise for himself, and when Jimmy becomes pensive without just cause, Tom's mood swerves to paternal and active indignation—which is ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... upon the green, New weary sleep below; And still the pensive spring returns, And ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... kitchen-drudge or a soft-eyed maiden? a prudent housewife or a thoughtful heartsweet? 'a special breeder' (POPE) or a trusted bosomer? Cattle and machinery are for this labor-saving. The true end of woman is feminity. Therefore, if she is any brighter and heartsomer for playing in the fields, any more pensive and sober for meditating there, who shall deny her God's free air ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for centuries civilization in a greater or less degree has exercised sway, arises from the contemplation of the various monuments of by-gone days, some slowly mouldering into dust, others still proudly defying the assaults of the great destroyer. The mind dwells upon them with a species of pensive delight, and that peculiar charm which their association with the fictions and annals of times past inspires. It would seem, that France should be especially rich in the relics of that feudalism of which for a long time it was the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring's absence. The listlessness and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that of idleness, and taste no scenes But such as art contrives, possess ye still Your element; there only ye can shine, There only minds like yours can do no harm. Our groves were planted to console at noon The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve The moonbeam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music. We can spare The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes. The thrush departs ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Half-an-hour later Esther came into the study with her mistress's tea. She brought over the wicker table, and as she set it by her mistress's knees the shadows about the bookcase and the light of the lamp upon the book and the pensive content on Miss Rice's face impelled her to think of her own troubles, the hardship, the passion, the despair of her life compared with this tranquil existence. Never had she felt more certain that misfortune was inherent in her life. She remembered all the trouble she had had, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... sad and pensive face, almost the dearest face in the world to him; and he gazed into it with penetrating and loving eyes. Would it not be best to tell the child the secret this grave covered, here, by the grave itself? Better for her ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the placid Avon, which the centuries have invested with their pensive and resistless charm, and over which genius has cast its enchanting spell, an impassable gulf seems fixed between the Shakespeare of Stratford and the Shakespeare of London. They appear like two entirely different and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... forth, where the cold dew of heaven Lay on the humbler graves around, what time The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds, Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse, Twere brooding on the dead inhumed beneath. There while with him, the holy man of Uz, O'er human destiny I sympathised, Counting the long, long periods prophecy Decrees to roll, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... pensive, having but one only boy with him, suddenly there appeared his spirit Mephistophiles in likeness of a very man, from whom issued most horrible fiery flames, insomuch that the boy was afraid, but being hardened by his master, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... heartily,—laughter in which he was joined by all the assembled maidens, including the gentle, pensive-eyed Niphrata. Standing erect in his glistening princely attire, with one hand resting familiarly on Theos's arm, and the sparkle of mirth lighting up his handsome features, he formed the greatest contrast imaginable to the little shrunken old personage, who, clinging convulsively to his staff, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Alephane; but what passed between them, and whether it was some divine apparition, or merely a man of flesh and blood, was never discovered, for he seems to have kept his mother in ignorance of the whole affair. From that time onward his conduct changed. He grew pensive, mild, and charitable. He entered, as youthful acolyte, a neighbouring Convent of Salacian monks, and quickly distinguished himself for piety and the gift of miracles. In the short space of three years, or thereabouts, he had healed eight lepers, caused the clouds to rain, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings, The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... autumnal day, When o'er the woods the northern tempest beat— The spoils of autumn rustling at our feet, And Nature wept to see her own decay. The pliant poplar bent beneath the blast; The moveless oak stood warring with the storm, Which bow'd the pensive willow's weaker form; And naught gave token that thy love would last, Save the mute eloquence of forcing tears; Save the low pleading of thy ardent sighs, The fervent gazing of thy glowing eyes; A firm assurance, spite of all my fears, That, as the sunshine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his too, again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the table in a pensive attitude. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... thinking alone in his own room, with Oscar lying across the rug at his feet, his mind refused to be quieted. One picture after another presented itself to his imagination: the proud-souled enthusiast longing for the wild winter nights and the dark Atlantic seas; the pensive maiden, shuddering to hear the fierce story of Maclean of Lochbuy; the spoiled child, teasing her mamma and petting her canary; the wronged and weeping woman, her frame shaken with sobs, her hands clasped in despair; the artful and demure coquette, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... their poetical and literary merits. Much as we admire "his wit, his festive merriment, and inimitable satires, and the ingenious imagery, and the elaborate melody and finish of every period of his prose"—we are disposed to think him pre-eminently successful in delineating the plaintive and pensive woes of deep and settled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... evening," said he to himself; and so he did. Emma stood at the window, beside a stand of magnificent plants, whose blossoms filled the room with fragrance. The lamps had not been lighted, and the moonlight fell like a halo of glory around her, as she stood in sad reverie that cast a pensive shade over her face, usually so brilliant in its beauty. So absorbed was she, that she did not hear the door open, and was unconscious of Saville's presence till he was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... woman, and she ended by finding pretexts for daily excursions past the Clematis House, always arrayed in the most fetching street costumes. When on the third day she encountered Justin, that gentleman responded gallantly to her pensive tender reproach. His was no Jericho heart, to demand a seven-day siege. He had found Persis Dale unexpectedly interesting, but Annabel was unexpectedly pretty, and a liking for pickles does not ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... began to love the little girls, and after a time they became the pets of the establishment. While the locks of the other children were cut close to the head, Isabel still possessed her long and flowing tresses. Day by day her exquisite beauty deepened into health again, and the pensive cast which grief had given to her features rendered them ideal as ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... pensive and doubtful still "So help me! you couldn't have made all this up out of ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... Poppy felt all right; but presently she grew rather pale, and began to look rather pensive. She stopped running, and walked slower and slower, while her eyes got dizzy, and her hands ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... in that instant, and presently observed Madam de Cleves's condition; he came up to her, and told her softly, he had that respect for her, he durst not ask what it was made her more pensive than usual. The voice of the Duke de Nemours brought her to herself again, and looking at him, without having heard what he had said to her, full of her own thoughts, and afraid lest her husband should see him with her, "For God's sake," says ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... with so frolic and hearty a laughter given me your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me seem to me no less than Homer's gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas before, you sat as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from consulting an oracle. And as it usually happens when the sun begins to show his beams, or when after a sharp winter the spring breathes afresh on the earth, all things immediately get a new face, new ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... faint, he had cut a hole in the ice, had put in his hook again and again, and yet again, and coming home had delighted the waiting family with an unexpected breakfast. The good parson made no rebuke, nodded pensive, and drove straightway ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... suffering. Each season brings its moods—Spring is hopeful; Summer luxurious; Autumn contented; and then comes that strange time when our thoughts run on solemn things. Can it be that we associate the long decline of the year with the dark closing of life? Surely not—for a boy or girl feels the same pensive, dreary mood, and no one who remembers childhood can fail to think of the wild inarticulate thoughts that passed through the immature brain. Nay, our souls are from God; they are bestowed by the Supreme, and they were from the beginning, and cannot ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... exposure of his daily wanderings. His cheek-bones, a trifle high, asserted their place above the softly concave cheeks. His mouth was closed and the lips were slightly compressed; the chin small, gracefully turned, not weak,—not strong. His eyes were abstracted, deep, pensive. His dress told much. The fine plaits of his shirt had sprung apart and been neatly sewed together again. His coat was a little faulty in the set of the collar, as if the person who had taken the garment apart and turned the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... sad; here come the children leaping from the boat; they've "caught few fish," but a great deal of sunshine, (judging from their happy faces.) God bless the little voyagers, all; the laughing Agnes, the pensive Emma, the dove-eyed, tender-hearted Mary, the rosy Bell, the fearless Harry. In the green pastures by the still waters, may the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... arrived at the proper age to undertake the ceremony of the Ke-ig-uish-im-o-win, or fast, to see what kind of a spirit would be his guide and guardian through life. Wunzh, for this was his name, had been an obedient boy from his infancy, and was of a pensive, thoughtful, and mild disposition, so that he was beloved by the whole family. As soon as the first indications of spring appeared, they built him the customary little lodge at a retired spot, some distance from their own, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature. It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty—a face of exquisite refinement, of calm and pensive beauty. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... down among grapevines covered with ripe clusters, they heard a woman's voice which called, or rather sang in pensive notes: ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... she stood there in the open with pensive eyes following the movements of scurrying, toddling legs, many of them encased in the minutest of buckskin, chap-like pantaloons and the tiniest of beaded moccasins. It was a sight that yielded her a tenderness of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... while the war was proceeding without, and these troubles within, Niccolo Barbadoro desirous of inducing him to consent to the ruin of Cosmo, waited upon him at his house; and finding him alone in his study, and very pensive, endeavored, with the best reasons he could advance, to persuade him to agree with Rinaldo on Cosmo's expulsion. Niccolo da Uzzano replied as follows: "It would be better for thee and thy house, as well as for our republic, if thou and those who follow thee in ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... these deep solitudes and awful cells, Where heav'nly pensive contemplation dwells, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... off, leaving a pensive Bertram Wooster standing motionless in the shadows. It seemed to me that it was hard to know what ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... long pensive. The day was too bright and fine for him to be sorrowful or reflective for any length of time; so, after staying by the side of Fritz for a short while on the shore, sharing his thoughts about the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... heaven again, the light it got from heaven. When the ten lepers were cleansed, and one returned to lavish love on his healer, that healer, while he enjoyed the single penitent's devotion, permitted a sigh to escape his lips, articulated in the sad pensive question, "Where are the nine?" I love the Lord for uttering that complaint. It proves to me that he counts it no intrusion when we burst in upon him with our glad thanksgiving. In the bold in-bursting of this woman; in her premeditated anointing, and unpremeditated tears, the Lord ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... nor that of those beings divine, But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine; With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place, A pensive smile on her sweet, small, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy |
