"Pensively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... put him under guard, of course," said Goldberger, pensively, "for I'm sure he'll prove to be a very important witness; but if you will be personally responsible for ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... intercourse on his side—with a playful turn of the phrase concealing the profound trouble of his whole being caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in the afternoon General D 'Hubert walked home between the fields of vines, sometimes intensely miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes pensively sad; but always feeling a special intensity of existence, that elation common to artists, poets, and lovers—to men haunted by a great passion, a noble thought, or a new vision ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... shuddered slightly as his eye fell on the finger-marks; and without a word he went into his bathroom again. He emerged after an interval of ten minutes in sky-blue pyjamas, slippers, and an Old Etonian blazer. He lit a cigarette; and, sitting down, stared pensively into ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... it is," Billy remarked pensively; "I'm sure to have such a fine time of it at your house that I can't seem to get up much ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... awakened. The Com-tech appeared to accept his bonds philosophically. He was quiet and flat on his back, staring pensively at the ceiling. But the other agent had made a worm's progress half across the room and Rip had to halt in haste to prevent stepping ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... Rochow starts to his habiliments, or perhaps has them ready on; in a minute or two, Rochow also is forth into the gray of the morning;—finds the young Prince actually on the Green there; in his red roquelaure, leaning pensively on one of the travelling carriages. "Guten Morgen, Ihro Konigliche Hoheit!" [Ranke, 1. 305.] —Fancy such a salutation to the young man! Page Keith, at this moment, comes with a pair of horses, too: "Whither ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... it," added Mabel pensively, "and you should have followed their advice; for, after all, they are ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... you are a very bold young man," she answered pensively, and when I would have proved the truth of her assertion, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... stood at the gate, looking pensively after his employer; then he reseated himself upon his camp-stool, and, lighting his pipe, resumed his meditations. "I can't make nought of it," he muttered, scratching his head, "It do seem uncommon queer, to be ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a theatre, brilliantly illuminated. I see posters on the wall advertising the performance. A gendarme, in full uniform, as if he had come out after playing Sergeant Lupy in Robert Macaire, is pensively airing himself under the facade, but there is no one else within sight,—no one; not a cocher with whom Sergeant Lupy can chat, nor even a gamin to be ordered off; and though, from one point of view, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... this point, and Hilda stooped to put it on again. She kept her foot in her hands and regarded it pensively. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... girls of my day as one could imagine, and I do wish she wouldn't drive about the country bareheaded, looking like a colt or a young Indian," said Miss Rebecca pensively one morning, just after Mabel's departure for the tennis-court. "But I must confess that she's the life of the place, and we couldn't get on without her now. I don't think, though, that she has done three hours of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of course," he said pensively—"I mean glad that we're going to have a baby. But this means a ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... by this delay, but no one except Tommy Thompson complained. Tommy complained for the sake of saying something. She teased Margery so unmercifully that Miss Elting was obliged to rebuke her, after which Tommy went off by herself and sat pensively down by the roadside until the order to ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... the Christmas vacation, spreads and jollifications were the order in the campus houses. As Jerry pensively observed, after a feast in Leila's room, the world seemed principally made of fruit cakes, preserves and ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... whispered that he was to look between two rocks, for a jackal was there, slinking away—turning his pointed muzzle to us now and then. To see he isn't followed, Azariah added: and the observation endeared him so to Joseph that the boy walked for a moment pensively in the path they were following. It turned into the forest, and they had not gone very far before they became aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... sighs. While he is sighing his very loudest, Josephine enters. Sir Joseph has been making love to her, and she is telling herself and everybody who happens to be leaning against the bulwark sighing pensively, that the Admiral's attentions oppress her. This is Ralph's opportunity. He immediately tells her that he loves her, and she tells him to "refrain, audacious tar," but he does not refrain in the least. In short he decides upon the spot to blow out his ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... returned to his absinthe and Tartarin pensively trotted his mule down the road to his little house. Although in his loyal heart he refused to believe any of the insinuations made by the Captain, they had upset him, and his rough oaths and country accent had combined to awake in him a vague feeling of remorse. When he reached home, Baia ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the nature of a jeu d'esprit, a glorious game, a kind of Fleet Street doll's-house affair, that gave a sense of gay adventure to the pursuit of politics. When the paper had been suppressed, a boy who had never contributed to it said to me, "What a shame!" and he added very pensively, "It was ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... word of this conversation was lost upon Wolfert Webber. He returned pensively home, full of magnificent ideas. The soil of his native island seemed to be turned into gold dust, and every field to teem with treasure. His head almost reeled at the thought how often he must have heedlessly rambled over places where countless sums lay, scarcely ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... persons, who had remained true to Lord Selkirk and the Colony—went forth from their homes as sadly as the Acadian refugees from Grand Pre. They were allowed to take with them such belongings as they had, and in boats and other craft went pensively down Red River with Lake Winnipeg and Jack River in view as their destination. The house of the Governor, the mill, and the buildings which the settlers had begun to build upon their lots were all set on fire ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... corner, near the grey City window edged with a sooty maze, they praised the wine, in the neuter and in the feminine; that for the glass, this for the widow-branded bottle: not as poets hymning; it was done in the City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men travelling to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a dell in infinite nether), and still masters of themselves ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to herself, looking back at the grand, gray pile from the train, "except for the fright I gave them, it was worth it all—worth it all, dear St. Michel, to see you from out there." And Jean, looking pensively out of the window, was thinking that since it was safely over, the adventure was one which any youth might be proud to tell to his companions, and which few were fortunate or ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... the choristers,' said the Owl. 'If you fly down a moment you can look in; but don't wait long, because of the dynamite. It would be just like them,' he added pensively, 'to blow it up when we ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... gazed pensively over the water, and with conspicuous amiability, something seemed to suggest that the present conversation had reached a natural end. So the ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... of Prothero returning from all this foreign travel meekly, pensively, a little sadly, and yet not without a kind of relief, to the grey mildness of Trinity. He saw him, capped and gowned, and restored to academic dignity again, nodding greetings, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... that attracted a young and handsome cavalier, with a violet cap, red plume, and gray mantle, who, after stopping for some minutes to hear this noise, went on slowly and pensively toward the house of Robert Briquet. Now this noise of brass was that of saucepans; these vague murmurs, those of pots boiling on fires and spits turned by dogs; those cries, those of M. Fournichon, host of the "Brave Chevalier," and of Madame Fournichon, who ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... the true gift," observed Froom Karlkammer, shaking the flames of his hair pensively. "For the letters of his name have the same numerical value as those of the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... grandfather and for the Armenian, even for the girl herself, and I had a feeling as though we all four had lost something important and essential to life which we should never find again. My grandfather, too, grew melancholy; he talked no more about manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pensively ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... other such expressions. One of my friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house,—bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was a statoo of her deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... some mistake," she murmured pensively to herself, thinking of the photograph Flirty had given her. "Oh, why did I send him away? Why ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... He will if He's a good God, because He'd know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only," she added severely, "you mustn't keep saying it's wicked to lie 'cause it ain't. Sometimes I lies," she reflected pensively, "and sometimes I ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... She nodded pensively once or twice. Then she turned to him with a bright smile. "I understand entirely," she said. "May I too speak quite freely? Yes? Well, I am so glad you have spoken out. Of course, we are quite accustomed to being ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... with a shout of laughter from the window above, where a red-haired girl leaned pensively upon the rail of a broken balcony. The speaker, in her turn, moved away with a youth who asked her, with much unnecessary emphasis, "what the 'ell she had to do with Albey's feet and why she ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... of government it would be necessary to wage war against the bigoted professors who formed a power in his own empire. 'Impressed,' writes Professor Blochmann, 'with a favourable idea {156} of the value of his Hindu subjects, he had resolved when pensively sitting in the evenings on the solitary stone at Fatehpur-Sikri, to rule with an even hand all men in his dominions; but as the extreme views of the learned and the lawyers continually urged him to persecute instead of to heal, ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... Tell him so kindly, and don't let him send the manuscript. I have seven on hand now, and barely time to read my own,' said Mrs Jo, pensively fishing a small letter out of the slop-bowl and opening it with care, because the down-hill address suggested that a ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... luxuriantly wreathed by garlands. The Belgian stared greedily. He did not see quite what Driscoll had seen, yet he saw enough to draw his brow to a narrowing fold of keenest interest. Jacqueline was seated on the raised edge of the basin, pensively dipping a hand into the water. Her plump wrist showed rosy, like coral, and glancing sideways now and again at a poor agitated prince striding up and down, she looked as she did that day in the small boat, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... between her and the law. In those days it was customary to assess tithes on every pane of glass in a window, and a portion of the money thus collected went to the support of the Church. Year after year my intrepid grandmother refused to pay these assessments, and year after year she sat pensively upon her door-step, watching articles of her furniture being sold for money to pay her tithes. It must have been an impressive picture, and it was one with which the community became thoroughly familiar, as the determined old lady never won her fight and never abandoned it. ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... horsemen come forth from the forest. When they had beheld them, one of them said to the other, "Behold, here is a good occasion for us to capture two horses and armour, and a lady likewise; for this we shall have no difficulty in doing against yonder single knight, who hangs his head so pensively and heavily." And Enid heard this discourse, and she knew not what she should do through fear of Geraint, who had told her to be silent. "The vengeance of Heaven be upon me," she said, "if I would not rather receive my death from his hand than ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... put the whole matter aside, as she sat in her room, rocking pensively. Her own lamp had not been filled and was burning dimly, so she put it out and sat in the darkness, ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... queen of the fairies. Rosalie found herself alone in the morning and she resolved to take a walk. While musing upon the happiness of the morrow, she involuntarily approached the green-house. She entered, smiling pensively, and found herself face to face with the cloth which ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... square in the sand with his staff, and wrote in it a few words out of the Koran, and then the whole caravan passed over the consecrated spot. A young merchant, a child of the East, as I could tell by his eye and his figure, rode pensively forward on his white snorting steed. Was he thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife? It was only two days ago that the camel, adorned with furs and with costly shawls, had carried her, the beauteous bride, round the walls of the city, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... like that," said Miss Mapp pensively. "She would be so pleased, too. She and the Queen would both be pleased. Quite a pair ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the American, putting a chew of tobacco in his mouth pensively, "of a bull fit I once see in Carthagena when I was to Spain some years ago. That air thresher is jist like the feller all fixed up with lace and fallals called the Piccador, who used to stir up the animile with squibs and crackers ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... me. Day before yesterday I ate at Biberich, with the Duke of Nassau, the first fresh herrings and the first strawberries and raspberries of the season. It is certainly a delightful piece of earth along the Rhine, and I looked pensively from the castle windows over to the red cathedral of Mayence, which, almost four years ago, we both went to see very early in the morning, in times for which we were not then sufficiently grateful to God; I remembered how, on board ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... that people have when sitting on the rear platform of a train of cars makes them feel, by force of contrast, nearer to each other and more identified. How pretty she looked sitting there in the doorway, her eyes bent so pensively on the track behind as the car-wheels so swiftly reeled it off! He had tucked her in comfortably. No cold could get to the sweet little girl, and none ever should so long as he lived to make her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to make me nervous: The Imperial child, the gorgeous rosy sleeves The Maid of honor wore, Duroc, the breast— In short, the tuft was shivering on my bearskin; So much so that your Highness noticed it. You gazed upon it pensively: what was it? And while you hailed it with a milky laugh You seemed uncertain which to admire the more About this moving scarlet miracle: Its motion, or the fact that it was scarlet. Suddenly, while I stooped, your little hands Began lo pull the precious tuft about. Seeing ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... vigorous, and the sledge hammer was his toy; and as Drusilla, when she was practicing, gloried in the range of her voice and her effortless bravuras and trills, so Denver, swinging his sledge, felt like Thor of old when he broke the rocks with his blows. Drusilla gazed at him and sighed and walked pensively past him, then returned and ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... at it pensively I pictured the tired boy holdin' the onhandy handles of the plow and trudgin' along behind his team through the long sultry days, and thought to myself, what hopes and dreams and ambitions wuz turned over by that old ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... turned her face away. The colour vanished from her cheeks, the youth from her figure. Pensively, she gazed across the valley to the vineyard, where the black, knotted vines were blurred against the soil in the fast-gathering twilight. His eyes ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Rather pensively she followed the Winnebagos into Mateka after supper for evening assembly, which had been called by Dr. Grayson. Usually there was no evening assembly; Morning Sing was the only time the whole camp came together in Mateka with the leaders, when all the announcements ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... Nibbling pensively at her cinnamon toast, Palla pondered this. But the girl's mind worked too directly for ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... to a steady one hundred and the car sped silently and easily along the police lane. Across the cab, Clay peered pensively at the steady stream of cars and cargo carriers racing by in the green and blue lanes—all of them moving ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... for what you might call grave poetry," said he, pensively. "Yes, sir; an obituary like that is like an all-day sucker to me. Say, don't you reckon they make the people they're written about feel glad they're dead and done for good with folks that could spring something like that on a poor stiff? Wait a minute, parson—you ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... wiedersehen, I fear, with his Highness," Miss Vance said, folding the note pensively. She had not meant to drive a marriage bargain, and yet—to have placed a pupil upon even such a bric-a-brac throne as that of Wolfburgh! She looked thoughtfully at Lucy's chubby cheeks. A princess? The man was not objectionable in himself, ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... pensively. "That's just my case. I also am caught in a trap and know that I must die soon, but I cling to life nevertheless. Well, I have now attained a blessed old age, as the wild rose said. If only I knew where all the dear creatures who grew in ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... to forget his companion, and flicked the old brown horse pensively, as they jogged along, saying ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... their weak minds in the steward's room at Bellamont, if they could see all this, John,' said Mr. Freeman, pensively. 'A man who travels has very ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... bent head, moving slowly, pensively, she passed out of the infernal circle, the splendid lynx ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... a minute rubbing his nose pensively with a small forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. He slipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish gray hair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicately ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... the other. Although both of them were provided with a certain amount of railway literature, neither of them made any pretence at reading. The older man, with his feet upon the opposite seat and his arms folded, was looking pensively through the rain-splashed window-pane into the impenetrable darkness. The young man, although he could not ignore his companion's ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he felt decidedly 'out of it.' He wandered down to the river, and stood watching. He was beside the dark-brown water in the latest twilight, beside a long pool with a boat moored on the near bank. He sat down in the boat pensively, and then—what was that? It was the sound of a heavy trout rising. 'Plop, plop!' They were feeding all ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... to America," said Lord Brompton, pensively, as he entered the familiar library now renovated by the taste of Jawkins. "My views have changed materially on many questions since we last met. I can see that things here are likely to be in a chaotic state for a long time to come, whereas ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... this lovely creature, whose name was Gerda, and who is considered as a personification of the flashing Northern lights, vanished within her father's house, and Frey pensively wended his way back to Alfheim, his heart oppressed with longing to make this fair maiden his wife. Being deeply in love, he was melancholy and absent-minded in the extreme, and began to behave so strangely that his father, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... rolling a smoke before he cranked up. "They tell me up in Lund that no man livin' ever got the chance to look back and see Casey Ryan swallowing dust. I've heard of some that's tried. But I reckon," he added pensively, while he rubbed the damp edge of the paper down carefully with a yellowed thumb, "Fords is out of your line, now. Maybe you don't toy with nothin' cheaper than ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... else could hardly have failed to be impressed with the loveliness of such a morning in such a spot, on Master Frederick Parson, head monitor's fag of Parrett's House, as he kicked the bedclothes pensively off his person, and looked at the watch under his pillow, the beauties of nature were completely lost. Parson was in a bad frame of mind that morning. Everything seemed against him. He'd been beaten in the junior hundred yards yesterday, so had Telson. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Banks found his disappointment at not going into Mazatlan languidly shared by Mrs. Brimmer. That lady even made a place for him on the cushions beside her, as she pensively expressed her belief that her husband ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... settling his spectacles farther back on his nose; and Vickers murmured that you couldn't have it too strong, as he knew from the point of view (as he said) of cows. "It's wonderful what you can get for cows," he added pensively. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... evident fervor, as if conscious of the delights that await him. These mellow notes are all the sounds he titters for several weeks, seldom chirping, crying, or scolding like other birds. His song is discontinued in the latter part of summer; but his peculiar plaintive call, consisting of a single note pensively modulated, continues all day, until the time of frost. This sound is one of the melodies of summer's decline, and reminds us, like the notes of the green nocturnal grasshopper, of the fall of the leaf, the ripened harvest, and all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... said Dr. Johnson. Here is Charing Cross, but without the full tide of life. A perpetual stream of figures leaves no definite shapes upon the picture. But on one side of this stereoscopic doublet a little London "gent" is leaning pensively against a post; on the other side he is seen sitting at the foot of the next post;—what is the matter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... himself from tumbling on his nose, and then pulling suddenly up, and throwing up his arms in order to avoid falling on his back. Sometimes he halted altogether,—and swayed to and fro, gazing, meanwhile, pensively at the ground, as if he were wondering why it had taken to rolling and earthquaking in that preposterous manner; or were thinking on the bald-headed mother he had left behind him in the African wilderness. When the loud laugh of the men saluted his ears, Jacko ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... the green campagna, over which the moon now rose large and red, while the towers and domes of the city stood, dark and solemn, in the foreground. The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore were tolling slowly and pensively, and the sound lingered with long vibrations in the still air. A mighty, shapeless longing, remotely aroused or intensified by the sound of the bells, shook his soul; and the glorious sight before ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... pensively than ever, and rearranged the muffin-dish on the little wrought-iron stand in font of the grate. "And yet," she murmured, looking down, "what life can be better than the service of one's kind? You think it ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... I, devoted to her image, can scarcely write a line now and then, or pensively read aloud to the people of Birmingham. (To him.) And they applaud her, no doubt they applaud her, sir. And she—I see her! Curtsies and smiles! And they—curses on them! they laugh and—ha, ha, ha!—and clap their hands—and say it's very good. Do they not say it's ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... she returned to Marie, she found her standing pensively in the center of the room, the heavy folds of a dark red gown falling about her graceful figure, her head sunk on her breast in reverie. Eveley put her ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... Ju-Kiouan was leaning pensively on the balcony of her pavilion, precisely at the same time when Tchin-Sing was standing by his. The day was clear as crystal, and not a cloud floated in the blue space above. There was not sufficient wind to move the lightest twigs of the ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... called him a darling. There was a smacking exchange of kisses; and the coaches, having been packed at length, started for home to the strains of the cornet and a chorus of cheers. Mr. Jope sprang in beside me, and leaning out of the farther window, waved his neckerchief for a while, then pensively readjusted it, and called to ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the good merchant, whose eyes were pensively resting upon the gay tables in the distance, broke the spell by saying that, from the spectacle before them, one would little divine what other quarters of the boat might reveal. He cited the case, accidentally encountered but an hour or two previous, of a shrunken old miser, clad in shrunken ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... ate her toast, tossing a few crumbs at the robins; pensively she disposed of two eggs, a trout, and all the chocolate, and looked into the pitcher for ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... said quietly, pensively, with an air of mild consideration. Margaret looked at her, wondering. No one had ever crossed Mrs. Peyton before. One "companion" after another had been engaged, been tyrannized over for a few weeks, and then dismissed. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... people went out under the low doorway she looked after them pensively, and remained long looking up at the evening sky, which the open door revealed. At last she tied up her herbs and began washing her bowls, and while engaged at her work she sang. Her voice had the pathetic tremble ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... fun gettin' married," said the chief bridesmaid pensively to the best man. "Why don't you go ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... she was staring rather pensively at the second button from the top of Poopendyke's coat, and so prolonged and earnest was her gaze that I looked down in some concern, at the same time permitting myself to make a nervous, jerky and quite involuntary digital examination of the aforesaid ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... carried out his bat for thirty-seven, though!—and he misses Billabong, and he sends his love and all sorts of messages to you, Dad. I guess Brownie and I will fix up a hamper for him," concluded Norah, pensively, weighing in her mind the attractions of plum or seed cake, and deciding on both. "And mice pies," she ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... set upon the neck like a flower, but not bending pensively. It was rather thrown back with a kind of firmness, and with a peculiarly open air, as if it had nothing to conceal and wished the world to conceal nothing. The body was shown down to the waist, and was ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... rather more of gravity than the nature of the conversation warranted, and her lips were slightly compressed as she observed that Arthur's blue eyes were fixed pensively, but ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... should be over and a mutual understanding reached, so as to waste no more of the time already so short. However that might be, though the talk began with Lance's health and Cherry's talents, there was a tendency towards topics closer still; nor did she start aside, but rather listened pensively as to a strain that touched her quiet soul more deeply than she showed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the king and ascended the steps into the palace. The king sniffed pensively at the rose which Katherine had given to him. The perfume seemed to sooth him and he mused, sunning himself and feeding his fancy with the entertainment which playing with the lives of others always afforded ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be in good form to-day. One really never can tell, you know. An opening that is a scream with some people falls as flat as ditch-water with others." She looked at him pensively for a moment or two, tapping her small white teeth with a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... page served me with some luncheon in my own apartment, and by the time all was ready for my departure, Heliobas returned. I went down to him in his study, and found him sitting pensively in his arm-chair, absorbed in thought. He looked sad and solitary, and my whole heart went out to him in gratitude and sympathy. I knelt beside him as a daughter might have done, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... advanced to meet me, so slowly and so softly that I hardly knew it again. Miserrimus Dexter languidly held out his hand. His head inclined pensively to one side; his large blue eyes looked at me piteously. Not a vestige seemed to be left of the raging, shouting creature of my first visit, who was Napoleon at one moment, and Shakespeare at another. Mr. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Lady was standing in front of the closet in her room, in which hung a row of frocks, on little hangers covered with pale blue ribbon. She sighed pensively as she gazed at the garments. Then she looked at me with a smile. "Would you mind if I keep to my room while Camellia is here?" ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... This poetic reflection, which would have been creditable to Mr. Fopling, never occurred to Richard; he was too full of Dorothy to have room for Bess. However, the good Bess found no fault with his loving preoccupation; she, too, was pensively thinking on poor Dorothy, and at once abandoned the invalid flower to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... as it seems to me as I look back on't," David resumed pensively, "the wust on't was that nobody ever gin me a kind word, 'cept Polly. I s'pose I got kind o' used to bein' cold an' tired; dressin' in a snowdrift where it blowed into the attic, an' goin' out to fodder cattle 'fore sun-up; ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... forward. So out went Mr. Pickwick's head again. The prospect was worse than before. The middle-aged lady had finished arranging her hair; had carefully enveloped it in a muslin nightcap with a small plaited border; and was gazing pensively on ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... who have begun to gaze pensively at railway posters, to furrow your brows over maps and guide-books, or hover sheepishly about the inquiry offices of Holiday Touring Agencies, I would whisper: "Go to a small ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... pensively, her eyes upon the fire. Suddenly she raised them to his face. "Berthaud was none the less trusted. Yet, with no more than a promise of reward at some future time should she succeed in escaping from us, did she bribe him to carry her letter to the Queen. What happened ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... later, and Randall is pacing the deck of an ocean steamer, outward bound from New York. It is the evening of the first day out. Here and there passengers are leaning over the bulwarks pensively regarding the sinking sun as it sets for the first time between them and their native land, or may be taking in with awed faces the wonder of the deep, which has haunted their imaginations from childhood. Others are already busily striking up acquaintances with fellow-passengers, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... her cloak of sombre shading In her reluctant hands. Her beauty heightens, fairest in its fading, As pensively she stands Awaiting Easter's benediction falling, Like silver stars at night, Before she can obey the summons calling Her to her upward flight, Awaiting Easter's wings that she must borrow Ere she can hope to fly— Those glorious wings that we shall see to-morrow ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... that during the last two weeks a subtle change had taken place in Kirk. He was less genial, more prone to irritability than of old. He had developed fits of absent-mindedness, and was frequently to be found staring pensively at nothing. To slap him on the back at such moments, as Wren ventured to do on one occasion, Wren belonging to the jovial school of thought which holds that nature gave us hands in order to slap backs, was to bring forth a new and unexpected Kirk, a Kirk who scowled and snarled and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... unwearied in chanting the praises of the stranger knight, nay, many of them would willingly have incurred the danger of the dragon to have enjoyed the happy deliverance of the duchess. As to the latter, she rode pensively along, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Clara frowned pensively. "Olaf has to do something that looks like the square thing, now that he's a public man!" She glanced drolly at Nils. "But he makes a good commission out of it. On Sundays they all get together here and figure. He lets Peter and Anders put in big bills for the keep of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Quiberon, immense in the gathering darkness of a boisterous evening. Well hidden under the stone table of a Druidical men-hir glows a small camp-fire sedulously kept alive by Rene for the service of The Lady. She, wrapped up in a coarse peasant-cloak, pensively gazes into the cheerless smoke and holds her worn and muddy boots to the smouldering wood in ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... inter you ef you act this way," said Troop, pensively. "Sence we've come ashore this time you've bin a heap ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... at his retreat. The air seemed full of love, and in the midst of his proud, gay hopes, he felt smitten with sudden isolation, such as youth knows in the presence of others' passion. He walked back to Burton's rather pensively, and got up to his room and went to bed after as little stay for talk with his hosts as he could make decent; he did not like to break with ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... seated herself; and then pensively moved to the other end of the bench, because a slanting sunbeam fell there. Since it was absolutely necessary to blast Mr. Kennaston's dearest hopes, she thoughtfully endeavoured to distract his attention from his ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... "You may lay to that. We had to club half a dozen of them as soon as they were lifted aboard. When I say 'we' I ought to add that I was in my hammock and never heard a word of it, being a heavy sleeper. That," said Mr. Strangways pensively, "is my one fault." ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now if she had lived? She tried to think how her own name would look on a stone. It was still and peaceful on that sunny hillside; it reminded her of "Sharon's lovely rose." The idea of a grave here was not unattractive. She was considering it pensively when her eyes fell on a long-stemmed, creamy rose, lying not far from her on the ground. With instant pleasure in its beauty she took it up and held ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... my sister. And if my true friends, such as your brother Charles, are willing to second me—" The princess remained pensively silent. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... lucky chap, Vermont," said Standon pensively. "No one really knows what he is or where he springs from; yet he always seems to have plenty of money, and apparently the whole of Leroy's ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... over it, indulging reminiscences or fostering hopes. Once in a twelvemonth or so, he made up his mind to marry, but never went further than the intention. It was doubtful whether he would ever commit himself irrevocably. "It seems such a pity," he often said, with his pensively humorous smile, "to limit the scope of one's emotions—borner la carriere a ses emotions!" Then he sighed, and was in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... were overjubilant, and they sat before the cabin watching the lake as it shimmered in the moonlight. Claire was pensively silent, though her heart sang. She was dreaming out her days, painting them on the moonlit water, and she paid very little heed to the two men, though unconsciously her whole personality leaned toward Lawrence. What they were saying she did not at first know, ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... good Ecuyer—Master of the Ceremonies—what do you call him—the man in the large boots and the uniform, who goes round the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a military figure. I recollect," Becky continued pensively, "my father took me to see a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child, and when we came home, I made myself a pair of stilts and danced in the studio to the wonder of all ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lesson which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart—if she had any heart. What is the kind of "care" which the mean one bestows on her dependants? "That's my little woman a-giving it to 'Tilda," pensively observed Mr. Snagsby; and I suspect that a very great many little women employ a trifle too much of their time in "giving it to 'Tilda." That is the "care" which poor 'Tilda gets. Consider the kind of life which a girl leads when she comes ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... farewell (which also served as a greeting), he stepped onto the sidewalk and was borne off. Ludovick looked after him pensively for a moment, then shrugged. Why should the Belphins surrender their secrets to gratify the idle curiosity ...
— The Blue Tower • Evelyn E. Smith
... and interest he was welcomed back when his wrongs and wanderings were known. For several days he held regular levees, that curious boys and sympathizing girls might see and pity the changed and curtailed dog. Sancho behaved with dignified affability, and sat upon his mat in the coach-house pensively eying his guests, and patiently submitting to their caresses; while Ben and Thorny took turns to tell the few tragical facts which were not shrouded in the deepest mystery. If the interesting sufferer could only have spoken, what thrilling adventures and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... having a select tea party in their own recess, the entrance to which was barricaded with chairs to keep out the "babies," as they called the little ones, who were much offended at being excluded and sat up in the cushioned window-seat pensively watching the rain. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... to and fro, scratched the wall with my nail, leant my head carefully against the door for a while, tapped with my forefinger on the floor, and then listened attentively, all without any object, but quietly and pensively as if it were some matter of importance in which I was engaged; and all the while I murmured aloud, time upon time, so that I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun |
