"Reverie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fell silent and seemed lost in reverie. I regarded him with intense excitement, silently analyzing his strange facial expression. Leaning his elbow on the corner of a valuable mosaic table, he no longer saw me, he ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... went to church; and Harry saw, as in a dream, the sacred table spread with spotless cloth and silver cups and flagons, and the dim place decked with holly, and the smiling glance of welcome from his old acquaintances in the village. And he fell into a reverie which was not a Christmas reverie, and had it suddenly broken by his sister singing high and clear the carol the angels sung on the hills of Bethlehem,—"Glory be to God on high!" And the tears sprang into his eyes, and he looked stealthily at his father and mother, who were reverently listening; ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... must be repaired; the exhausted soil must be transported from the surface of the land; and fertility must be restored by the gradual decay of solid parts, and by the successive removal of soil from stage to stage. What a reverie, therefore, is that idea, of bringing the earth to perfection by fixing the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Cosmo reply. Reverie does not agree well with manners, but it would besides have been hard for him to answer the old lady's question—not that he did not know something at least of what was going on in his mind, but that, he knew instinctively, it would have sounded in her ears ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... His reverie was interrupted by the sound of a slight scream. It was Miss Husted. She had met Mr. Costello on the stairway, and that gentleman had frightened her by playfully poking her in the ribs and bursting ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... there, aridly complete, the limitations of the lady to whom she was helping Lindsay to bind himself without a gleam of possibility of escape or a rift through which tiniest hope could creep to emerge smiling upon the other side. When she saw him, in fatalistic reverie, going about ten years hence attached to the body of this petrifaction, she was almost satisfied to abandon the pair, to let them take their wretched chance. But this was a climax which did not occur often; she returned, in most ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... later, 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 ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... and she, waiting for it, had fallen into a reverie. She was sure she had done right, yet, without doubt, the girl would feel it keenly. What matter? "Women must weep," it was part of their lives. Whoever paused or cared for a woman's tears? Women had wept before and would weep again. She looked round ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... astronomical meditations, and thinking more about the celestial than the terrestrial world, when a distant sound aroused him from his reverie. He listened attentively, and to his great amaze, fancied he heard the sounds of a piano. He could not be mistaken, for he distinctly ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... out of this unpleasing reverie by the approach of Joceline, who, being possibly a seasoned toper, had made the additional arrangements with more expedition and accuracy, than could have been expected from a person engaged as he ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the avocat called it. On the Friday evening of this particular week, all were seated in the front garden of the Cure's house, as Valmond came over the hill, going towards the Louis Quinze. His step was light, his head laid slightly to one side, as if in pleased and inquiring reverie, and there was a lifting of one corner of the mouth, suggesting an amused disdain. Was it that disdain which comes from conquest not important enough to satisfy ambition? The social conquest of a village—to be conspicuous and attract the groundlings in this tiny theatre of life, that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... our way. The evening before we were to leave Elmwood, I was seated beneath my favorite tree in my mother's garden, and leaning backward against its grey trunk, with its thick and wide-spreading canopy of green branches above my head, I indulged in a long and deep reverie. Memory ran backward over the careless happy days of my childhood, the struggles of my youth, and the exertions of mature manhood; and although bereft, at a very early age, of my earthly father, I could not fail to observe the guiding hand of a ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... many pleasantries from his colleagues, called out by his habit of absent-mindedness. St. Augustine was one night the subject of an elaborate eulogy, which La Fontaine lost the benefit of, through a reverie of his own indulged meantime on a quite different character. Catching, however, at the name, La Fontaine, as he came to himself for a moment, betrayed the secret of his absent thoughts by asking, "Do you think St. Augustine had as much wit as Rabelais?"—"Take care, Monsieur La ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... more sonorous, the magic of the words more vivid. The purified meaning of the author, the exaltation he himself must have felt, were realised with a clearer apprehension. But the very novelty of the emotional undertaking drew me reluctantly from that which was becoming a lulling musical reverie. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... brightly-shining lamp-the Queen City gas works had been destroyed by the shelling guns-he clasped his arms across his breast, and looked steadily up toward the ticking clock upon the mantel. Thus absorbed in reverie, he sat for an hour; and was only disturbed then by a loud rapping ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... reading the journal of their father, remained for some moments silent, sad, and pensive, contemplating the leaves yellowed by time. Dagobert, also plunged in a reverie, thought of his wife and son, from whom he had been so long separated, and hoped soon ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... had spoken of, and which, by something in his mode of alluding to it, assumed such a weird, spectral aspect to their imaginations that they never wished to hear of it again. Coming back at length out of his reverie,—returning, perhaps, out of some weird, ghostly, secret chamber of his memory, whereof the one in the old house was but the less horrible emblem,—he resumed his tale. He said that, a long time ago, a war broke out in the old country between King and Parliament. At that period there were several ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so memorable in itself by its features of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden Death occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third summer after Waterloo. I find it necessary ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... placing her sketch-book on her lap, but it lay there idly as, unconscious of the passing time, she gazed dreamily at the great falls and listened to their vibrating deafening roar. Suddenly the consciousness of some one near startled her from her reverie. She sprang to her feet, and had so completely forgotten her companion that she stared at him for a moment in dumb amazement. He stood back some distance from her, and beside him on its slender tripod was placed a natty little camera. Connected with the instantaneous shutter was a long black rubber ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... boot-boy could not have been so idiotic as to have left that ancient, broken-down pair at Littimer's threshold! And yet it was possible. Crombie felt another flush of humility upon his cheeks. Then he wandered off into reverie upon the multifarious errands of all the pairs of boots and shoes that had gone forth from the great apartment house that day. Patter, patter, patter! tramp, tramp!—he imagined he heard them all walking, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... little surprised at finding he was not alone, after a minute of profound reverie; "to what request am I indebted still for ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... observing what he was doing, started up from her reverie, and exclaimed: "Not so! my parents have not sent me into the world quite destitute; on the contrary, they must have anticipated with certainty that such an evening as this would come." Thus saving, she quickly left the room and reappeared in a moment with two costly rings, one ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... stubborn pride so often stand between us and our best intentions. I let the moment pass, and my heart remained true to its stern determination, not to yield one inch of what I falsely termed independence. My reverie was dispelled by Alice. She took my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... murmur of human voices, by the chime of the vesper bells, borne over the water, and the sounds of music raised at intervals along the canals. The poetry, the romance of the scene stole upon me unawares. I fell into a reverie, in which visionary forms and recollections gave way to dearer and sadder realities, and my mind seemed no longer in my own power. I called upon the lost, the absent, to share the present with me,—I called upon past feelings to enhance that moment's delight. I did wrong—and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... During his reverie, several persons, solitary and in groups, men, women, and children, had begun to assemble themselves on both sides of the river, and were loitering there, as if expecting some spectacle. There was also much bustling at the Fleming's mills, which, though at some distance, were also completely under ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and, after suffering King Robert to indulge for two or three minutes in a reverie which he did not attempt to interrupt, he added, in a more lively tone: "But, cheer up, my noble liege; perhaps the feud may be made up without farther fighting or difficulty. The widow is poor, for her ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... collie!" cried Mollie's voice, interrupting her reverie. "That means that the evening post is in. I'll run down and see ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the attorney, the stranger started, with the convulsive thrill that comes over a poet when a sudden noise rouses him from a fruitful reverie in silence and at night. The old man hastily removed his hat and rose to bow to the young man; the leather lining of his hat was doubtless very greasy; his wig stuck to it without his noticing it, and left his head bare, showing his skull horribly disfigured by a scar beginning at the ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... intruding sounds, attuning the heart to love and praise. They paced the walk in mutual and embarrassed silence. Sir Henry's thoughts would at one time revert to his brother, and at another to that parting, which the morrow would assuredly bring with it. He was lost in reverie, and almost forgot who it was that leant thus heavily upon his arm. Julia had loved but once. She saw his abstraction, and knew not the cause; and her timid heart beat quicker than was its wont, as undefined images of coming evil and sorrow, chased each other ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... sad reverie, and letting his body go where it would, he lost his way; but presently meeting a crowd of persons all moving in one direction, he mingled with them, for he argued they must be making for the Stadthouse. Soon the noisy troop that contained the moody Gerard emerged, not upon ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... in a voice of thunder, and starting from a reverie. After a moment's silence, the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fans, were passing and repassing; the perfect absence of resemblance in any dwelling-house, or shop, or wall, or post, or pillar, to anything one had ever seen before; and the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay; perfectly confounded me. I fell into a dismal reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and bewildered vision of saints and virgins' shrines at the street corners—of great numbers of friars, monks, and soldiers—of vast red curtains, waving in the doorways of the churches—of always ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... woman came out of her own separate reverie. 'It would be a mistake—I think it would be ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... lost in reverie, I have no idea: hours no doubt. I must have fallen into a doze, for I was awakened by the brisk, incisive strokes of the ship's bell, echoed, a moment later, by eight fainter strokes coming from the deck below. Then the soft patter of bare feet which meant the changing of the watch. Though ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... contented silence, watching the firelight, and thinking tenderly each of the other. But at last Helen roused herself from her reverie with a long, pleasant sigh of ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... midst of a reverie when she was brought to her feet by that most dreaded of sounds—the howl ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... over the lea, nor yet the elysean landscape were seen or heard; and not until the carriage drew up at Stillyside, and the bark of a lap-dog, on the top of the distant steps, that led to the verandah in front of the house, struck her ear, did she fully awake from her mournful reverie. Then, alighting, she passed through a postern that hung at the side of folding gates, and, winding her way up a walk bordered with shrubs and flowers, approached the dwelling, that stood upon a knoll. At that moment the sound of a cowbell in the contiguous mountain coppice ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in reverie, who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had one day formed our earth. Pomponace said: "Se il mondo non e eterno, per tutti ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... thy reverie What gracious form Will fly the errand of our love to thee, By ways with winged messengers aswarm Through dawn of opalescent skies, To say the time is come and bid thee rise ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... From this careless reverie Dave was suddenly aroused by a ghost of sound that drifted towards him through the trees. It was a long, wailing cry, which somehow stirred the roots of his hair. He did not recognize it. But he felt that it was nothing human. It came from somewhere ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the little ones ran off to their beds, while Uncle Jack leaned back in his easy chair in a pleasant reverie, which we will leave ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... the river's bank, my thought Still dwelling on those troublous times of yore, Until my mind by slow degrees is brought To present times and scenes. A distant roar At first recalls me from my reverie, Then bids me trace my ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... Margaret saw that in a twinkling; but she missed out of them all hearty and genial atmosphere. They were to be preserved, however, as valuable; so she laid them carefully on one side. When this little piece of business was ended, she fell into a reverie; and the thought of her absent father ran strangely in Margaret's head this night. She almost blamed herself for having felt her solitude (and consequently his absence) as a relief; but these two days had set her up afresh, with new strength and brighter hope. Plans which had ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... consciousness was no longer accompanied by the blank dismay and the blind anger of the early days. He had argued himself into new beliefs; and he had made for himself a mental atmosphere of gloomy and sardonic reverie, a sort of murky medium through which the event appeared like a featureless shadow having vaguely the shape of a man; a shape extremely familiar, yet utterly inexpressive, except for its air of discreet waiting in the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... his reverie he heard footsteps, and he walked leisurely aside. His big ulster in the darkness was a sufficient disguise; he had no fear of being known by any passer-by. But these footsteps stopped at John's door and then went inside the cottage. That circumstance roused in ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... He sank into a reverie for a moment. He was roused by the sounding of the noon whistle. What, noon already? So swiftly had the time gone! He turned to his desk bewildered and picked up his letters, glanced over them hurriedly, and gave directions for the answers of some of them to ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... night smoking a pipe. Owing to constant quarrels among my men, I had turned him into a cook. When in camp he had to sit hour after hour watching the boiling of the feijao. Enveloped in clouds of smoke, Filippe with his pipe sat in a reverie, dreaming about the mallettinha. He was quite a good fellow, and at any rate ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in the delicious hours of our meeting. A thousand vows cover the paper, where all the roses of aurora are reflected; a thousand kisses are planted on the words, which seem born from the first glance of the sun. Not an idea, an image, a reverie, an accident, a disquietude, which has not its letter. Lo! one morning, something almost imperceptible steals on the beauty of this passion, like the first wrinkle on the front of an adored woman. The breath and perfume of love expire in these pages of youth, as an ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... necessary here. They sat in a circle round the kettle, each man armed with a large wooden or pewter spoon, with which he ladled the robbiboo down his capacious throat, in a style that not only caused Charley to laugh, but afterwards threw him into a deep reverie on the powers of appetite in general, and the strength ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... "for breaking in upon your reverie; but, if you could spare us a moment of your valuable time, there are one or two things which we should ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare's Walks and Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been trying to realise, she said, that she was actually going to Rome, but she perceived at Helen's suggestion that she was hungry, and they lunched out of their baskets very cheerfully. In the afternoon they were tired and silent until Helen made tea. Miss Winchelsea might have dozed, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... seemed the more unassailable that it was sweet and gentle. Before he could speak she withdrew herself from his arm, and glided from the room. When quite alone, Jameson fell into an unpleasant reverie, from which her return in the black silk dress, with a bonnet and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... doing there? Is that a door frame? It's a cross!" So Joseph awoke him out of his reverie, and Jesus was terrified to see that he had nailed ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... close under the cliff's shadow, and, climbing the rocks, between the cove and the East Porth, sat down to wait. Vashti sat in reverie, plucking and smelling at small tufts of the thyme; then, rousing herself with a happy laugh, she challenged the Commandant to name her all the islets, rock by rock, lying out yonder in the darkness. He tried, and she corrected omission after omission, mocking him. What did he care? It was ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... crimps of the country-girls, to the small Newport ties with their cardinal-red bows, the only bright color about her. She was just beginning to wonder what kept the doctor so long, when, raising her eyes from a reverie which had been almost a nap, she saw him driving by at a fast trot, with a farm-boy galloping on horseback beside him. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... sought the grassy glade At the break of summer day; No more neath the chesnut spreading shade In reverie sweet she lay; But in abodes of wealth and pride, With serious, stately mien, That envy's rancorous tongue defied, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... their appearance on the poop-deck of the Indiaman, on which she was seated. It is possible that, while the pilot vessel continued in sight, she might have taken an occasional glance to ascertain how the little vessel was performing her voyage, and afterwards it is certain that she was lost in a reverie, from which she was not aroused till her mother had several times addressed her with the inquiry whether she was not excessively hungry, and would go down and get ready for dinner. Mrs Armytage was a very good-natured woman, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... instincts of a sailor," said his superior officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie. He would stand with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... when Milly entered the library, but the bright firelight showed her the figure of her uncle leaning back in his easy chair, and indulging in a reverie. ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... reached them. The cuckoo's note was distinctly audible in the distance; a brown bee had buried himself in the calyx of one of the lilies; and some white butterflies were skimming over the flower-beds. The sweet stillness of the summer afternoon seemed to lull her into a reverie; how impossible it was to realise sin and sorrow and broken hearts and the great hungry needs of humanity, when the sky was so blue and cloudless, and the insects were humming in the fulness of their tiny joy! 'Will sorrow ever come to me?' thought the girl dreamily; 'of course, I know it must ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to Alice Windham. In a kind of reverie he left the Blue Wing, walking without sense of direction. It was getting dark; a chilling touch of fog was in the air—almost, it seemed to Broderick, like a premonition. On Clay, near Montgomery, he passed two men standing in a doorway; it was too dark to see their faces. Some impulse bade him ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... intruded-the two big, yellow-winged monoplanes. Even they appeared, in this wild, outre setting, to have taken on the likenesses of giant scarabs, monsters indigenous to the baked earth and starving vegetation. She was roused from her reverie by Mr. Bell's voice cutting incisively the half unconscious silence into which ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... exclaimed voice after voice. The Elder said nothing; he had stood a little apart from the crowd, watching for his ideal Draxy; as soon as he saw that she was not there, he had fallen into a perplexed reverie as to the possible causes of her detention. He was sorely anxious about the child. "Jest's like's not, she never changed cars down at the Junction," thought he, "an' 's half way to Montreal by this time," and the Elder felt hot with ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... one-masted shallop, which was buffeting the waves in a south-westerly direction. I presumed it was a New England trader, on a voyage to some part of the Republic of Colombia: and, by way of diverting my friend from his melancholy reverie, I told him some of the many stories which are current respecting the enterprise and ingenuity of this portion of my countrymen, and above all, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Aroused from his doleful reverie by the sound, Daniel jumped from his chair and, going to the hall, shouted for Azuba. Then he remembered that Azuba was not on the premises and answered the ring himself. He had forgotten to push the button of the porch ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out of his reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... o'clock on the afternoon in question Denny was aroused from his reverie by the sounder opening up and calling "FN" like blue blazes. He answered and ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... eyes wandered over them all with that strange sense of unreality, and that mingling of sweet and bitter fancy, with which we revisit a scene familiar in very remote and early childhood, and which has haunted a long interval of maturity and absence, like a romantic reverie. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... upon former occasions, had been his favourite evening walk. He remained while the light permitted, admiring the prospect we attempted to describe in the first chapter, and comparing, as in his former reverie, the faded hues of the glimmering landscape to those of human life, when early youth and hope have ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... courted trash and trumpery. Greatness gave way to triviality. This pitiful condition preyed upon her. The flame of genius never for a moment became less dim, but her eyes grew larger, brighter, more melancholy. Sometimes she would fall into a painful reverie and I knew too well the subject of her thoughts. With tender solicitude she would regard her daughter, thinking, thinking! She was her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... nails of all of his ten fingers with extreme voracity; and taking it up sharply, read it again. The second perusal was to all appearance as unsatisfactory as the first, and plunged him into a profound reverie from which he awakened to another assault upon his nails and a long stare at the child, who with her eyes turned towards the ground ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... visitation of cool airs, and sufficiently above the trees to allure the stars down closer, down at least into brighter shining. So the roof became a resort—became playground, sleeping-chamber, boudoir, rendezvous for the family, place of music, dance, conversation, reverie, and prayer. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did not press me ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... sitting alone in the library at the Towers. She had been reading, but the book had failed to hold her attention and lay unheeded on her lap while she was plunged in a profound reverie. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... then—a few suns more, and the fruit must be gathered. The Aventine,—the Lateran,—and then the solitary trumpet!" Thus saying, Rienzi, with folded arms and downcast eyes, seemed sunk into a reverie. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had been away for three days, visiting her sister in Dayton, Illinois, and on the train, coming back, she fell into a reverie. Little dramas of memory were reenacted in her pensive mind, and through all of them moved the figure of Penrod as a principal figure, or star. These little dramas did not present Penrod as he really was, much less did they glow with the uncertain but glamorous ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Miss Brannan insisted that you were hiding, but I had no doubt that you had wandered off in a reverie." He laughed. "Happy you!" he ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... yield themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's chance and it broods down into a solitary reverie, saying,—"You may force me into hotels and market-places, if you will, but I know the business of this town is to hold its tongue." Even the curiously beautiful women wrap themselves in the uniform of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... have laughed fondly when thinking of her, like boys brought back. You ladies who are everything to your husbands save a girl from the dream of youth, have you never known that double-chinned industrious man laugh suddenly in a reverie and start up, as if he fancied he were being ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... in reverie, too. The word "submarine" had sent her back into her haunting remembrances of the Lusitania and of her own helpless entanglement in the fate of other ships—their names as unknown to her as the names and faces of the men that died with them, or perished of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... who led primitive Christianity astray, by substituting faith for science, reverie for experience, the fantastic for the reality; and the inquisitors who for so many ages waged against Magism a war of extermination, have succeeded in shrouding in darkness the ancient discoveries of the human mind; so that we ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... his reverie. "Say, cap'n, Ah've been readin' in this magazine about a trick they used to use, called skip bombin'. They'd hang a bomb on the bottom of one of these airplanes, and fly along the ground, right at what they wanted to hit. Then they'd let the bomb go and get out of there, and the ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... spoken a word since he had lifted her from the wreck. She was in a deep reverie, but from the occasional gleam of her eyes Gordon knew she was passing through some great crisis. He wondered what the effects of this hour face to face with death would be ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... knew because at one place the foot-mark showed plainly in the gray alkali dust which had accumulated upon a projecting stone a few feet below the ledge. Obviously whoever the visitor was, he had entered and left by this pass. Returning to camp I sat down on a log lost in thought. My reverie was at last broken by the voice of my guide quietly remarking. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... being the old eagerness had stirred him; the pride he had taken in his own work. But now that was passed from him; he had relinquished his stewardship; and as he absently gazed out into the black night before him, his thoughts drifted far away. He was startled from his reverie by some one knocking at the door. Immediately after ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... intermediate tragedy of blood, the circuitous action had been preserved, and withal the revenge was attained only in the general catastrophe, by that daimonic "fortune" on which Montaigne so often enlarges. For Shakspere, then, with his mind newly at work in reverie and judgment, where before it had been but perceptive and reproductive, the theme was one of human impotence, failure of will, weariness of spirit in presence of over-mastering fate, recoil from the immeasurable ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... from his reverie by a cry, and beneath the dim light of a lantern, suspended over the narrow street, he saw a man feebly defending himself against two others. He sprang forward just as the man fell, and with his stick struck a sharp blow on the uplifted wrist ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... it wasn't often he got the chance of being alone with her, and she might immediately rejoin the others; but just then Cecil, coming out of her reverie, looked up, and said,—"Don't you want to smoke? Not here, but come over to the summer-house where the children ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... experience, but we are relieved from the necessity of accepting it as having an inner meaning. De Quincey's singular hold on our affection seems, therefore, to be his rare quality of presenting the unusual but typical dream or reverie as a beautiful object of interest, without endeavoring to give it the character of an allegory ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... in the midst of her reverie. She was just saying to herself, "If there was just one man and one woman in the world, and I had the picking out of the man and the woman, this world would suit me pretty well." She resented being ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and the dreary occupation of being as extravagant as possible had commenced,—they were no notes of weird pathos, but billets containing many brave promises, that made strong coffee the most delectable of drinks. Of course all these changes from dreamy reverie to tremulous joy could not escape the searching eye of Pluto; and of course, when questioned, no Eurydice of spirit would think of denying the mate for ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... tender feelings, yet a hard heart. I once knew a young lady of polished manners and accomplished education, who would weep with sympathy over the fictitious woes exhibited in a novel. And waking from her reverie of grief, while her eye was yet wet with tears, would call her little waiter, and if she did not appear at the first call, would rap her head with her thimble till ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... He was amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of it. In this vivid being, carried away by an impulse to speak, talking with her whole personality, he had seen the real woman in a temper of activity, as he had already seen the real woman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded emotion. In both she was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of majesty that she had been to the world. With that amazement of his went something like terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled into an appearance scarcely mortal in his eyes. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... moments. But the stretch of time indicated by "waking moments" is only a minor part of the twenty-four hours. Even during the time we are not asleep we are often abstracted, day-dreaming, letting moments go by in reverie. Only during a limited part of our waking moments are we keenly and alertly "all there" in the possession of our faculties. There are thus, even apart from sleep, many unguarded moments when these so-called "repressed wishes" may ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... personal interest in the affair; and she had generally found that people are easily satisfied about any wrong or insult, public or private, in which they have no immediate concern. But all the charms of her conversation were now tried in vain to reclaim him from the reverie into ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... looking at the picture, and secretly wondering how any person with such a face could bear to see it transferred to canvas, she was suddenly roused from her reverie by the pressure of a heavy hand upon her shoulder, and a gentleman in a very gruff, but by no means an ill-natured or morose voice, thus ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... her now from her happy reverie, footsteps rustled the grass, cool hands, with a touch as light as the blowing ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... as Beauty is impersonated in Hellas, Mystery in Egypt, so this attribute which we may name Reverie is impersonated in the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... it all is!" he at length resumed, as though starting from a reverie. "This past fortnight seems already as dim and vague to me as the recollection of something that happened long years ago. I never believed myself capable of such follies. Tell me frankly." He leaned towards Constance, gazing at her in an ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... things that Nellie Morgan gave me to fix up a poor little Mother Only in the village," she came back from her reverie to say cheerfully, as she saw me with the bundle in my hand. Mother Spurlock always refers to the children without the sanction of the law for their birth as the Mother Onlies, and somehow, when she speaks ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... enforced. It was a hard fate, which sometimes continued the whole voyage, especially if no redeeming features presented themselves. The sailor's calling makes superstition a part of his nature. The weird moaning of the wind suggests to him at times saintly messages from afar; and he is easily lost in reverie. He holds sweet converse with souls that have long since passed into another sphere, but the hallucinary charm causes him to fix his faith in the belief that they are hovering about him, so that he may convey to them some message to transmit ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... was just going to cry out at its hardness, when he remembered that it was one which he himself had sold to Colline for a deputy's speech. As the Jew sat down, his pockets re-echoed with a silvery sound; melodious symphony, which threw the four friends into a reverie of delight. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... pantheistic vertigo begins to appear. Many dark superstitions, no doubt, bubbled up in the torrent of that plastic reverie; for this people, clean and natural as on the whole it appears, cannot have been without a long and ignoble ancestry. The Greeks themselves, heirs to kindred general traditions, retained some childish and obscene practices in their worship. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a very sober part in the noisy feasting. A devout, regretful after-taste of what had been really beautiful in the ritual he had accomplished took him early away, that he might the better recall in reverie all the circumstances of the celebration of the day. As he sank into a sleep, pleasant with all the influences of long hours in the open air, he seemed still to be moving in procession through the fields, with a kind of pleasurable ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... while; yet I fancied your thoughts were elsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last she left you, you lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out at the thick-falling snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not dark: there was a pleasurable illumination ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... little evil and much good; but what does it matter?" And, opening her fan, the domino relapsed into her reverie. ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... teaching. But he was again so possessed of Jesus that he could not keep his mind on the lesson before him: a pupil was often forced to put a question to him in a loud voice, and perhaps to repeat it, before Joseph's sick reverie was sufficiently broken for him to formulate an answer. The pain of the effort to return to them was so apparent in his face that the pupils began to be sorry for him and kept up a fire of questions, to save him from the melancholy abstractions to which ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... was their chief characteristic, and especially judgment in national affairs. I cannot believe that so universal an attitude of the mind could have arisen had it not been justified. But as for information, they had the Press ... a free Press!" Here he fell into a reverie, so powerfully did his supposed memories ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... was finished, and the Persian began to comment upon the spiritual doctrine embodied in it, Ashe sat so completely absorbed in reverie that he gave no heed to what was being said. In his ascetic life at the Clergy House he had been so far removed from the sensuous, save for that to which the services of the church appealed, that this enervating and luxurious atmosphere, this gathering to which its ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... at a tavern, where the talk turned upon Ossian. Some one mentioned as an objection to its authenticity that no mention of wolves occurred in it. Johnson fell into a reverie upon wild beasts, and, whilst Reynolds and Langton were discussing something, he broke out, "Pennant tells of bears." What Pennant told is unknown. The company continued to talk, whilst Johnson continued his monologue, the word "bear" occurring ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... out some chocolate, took it hurriedly, and quitted the room, leaving her husband in a disheartening reverie. That Lady Hartledon and Maude Kirton were two very distinct persons he had discovered already; the one had been all gentleness and childlike suavity, the other was positive, extravagant, and self-willed; the one had made a pretence of loving him beyond all other things in life, the other ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... all the accessories without exception were good—but oh, that exquisite vision of Queen Catherine's! I almost held my breath to watch: the illusion is perfect, and I felt as if in a dream all the time it lasted. It was like a delicious reverie, or the most beautiful poetry. This is the true end and object of acting—to raise the mind above itself, and out of its petty cares. Never shall I forget that wonderful evening, that exquisite vision—sunbeams broke in through ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Roused from his reverie by this quaint and unexpected declamation, Philip turned his quick glance at his neighbour. He saw a man of great bulk and immense physical power—broad-shouldered—deep-chested—not corpulent, but taking the same girth from bone and muscle that a corpulent ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The young man's reverie was indeed a painful one. It had lasted for more than an hour when he was aroused by a servant who now approached him, bearing a tray upon which was a cup of delicious coffee and some tempting cakes, ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... glances at them with an expression of pain and hatred. An attendant approaches the QUEEN, who breaks sharply out of her reverie.] ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... his wife were in their coach before the Hotel-Dieu, waiting for a reply that their lackey was a very long time in bringing them. Madame Chardon glanced by chance upon the grand portal of Notre Dame, and little by little fell into a profound reverie, which might be better called reflection. Her husband, who at last perceived this, asked her what had sent her into such deep thought, and pushed her elbow even to draw a reply from her. She told him then what she was thinking about. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... branches of the neglected fruit-trees gave no sign of fruit. Grass grew in the paths. Such ruin and desolation cast a weird poesy on the scene, filling the souls of the spectators with dreamy thoughts. A poet would have stood there long, plunged in a melancholy reverie, admiring this disorder so full of harmony, this destruction which was not without its grace. Suddenly, the brown tiles shone, the mosses glittered, fantastic shadows danced upon the meadows and beneath the trees; fading colors revived; striking contrasts developed, ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... night, instead of working, I find myself listening for her tapping at the door; and yesterday an incident occurred that makes me fear for my own common sense. I had gone out for a long walk alone, and the twilight was thickening into darkness as I neared home. Suddenly looking up from my reverie, I saw, standing on a knoll the other side of the ravine, the figure of a woman. She held a cloak about her head, and I could not see her face. I took off my cap, and called out a good-night to her, but she never moved or spoke. Then, God knows why, for my brain was full of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of Wilmington have resorted to? And for what?" Thus she soliloquized as she watched the day die. The clock in the old Presbyterian Church slowly chimed the hour of six. A long jingle of the doorbell awoke Mrs. McLane from her reverie. "Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Engel, missis," said a servant, slightly pulling the door ajar and pushing her head in. "All right, Margaret, I'll be right down," answered the lady. "Tell Aunt Susan that the guests I expected to tea are here." "Yes m'm." The servant disappeared, and Mrs. McLane ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... His reverie was broken in upon by the voice of a sentry summoning a non-commissioned officer. Captain Jacot raised his eyes. The sun had not yet set; but the shadows of the few trees huddled about the water hole and of his men and their horses stretched ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... declared Mrs. Blanchard, escaping from her reverie. "What's to be spent landlord must spend," she continued. "A little whitewash, and some plaster to fill them holes wheer woodwork's poking through the ceiling, an' you'll be vitty again. 'Tis lonesome-like now, along o' being deserted, an' you'll ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... out with a light step, erect brow, and sparkling eye, prouder and more insolent than ever. Charming sank again into his reverie, thinking that, in spite of all, he was not the most unhappy of princes, since Heaven had ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... emerging from his pallid reverie, straightened out, shaking his broad shoulders as though to free him of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Vale, for summer day-dreams high, For reverie in solitude Fashion'd in Nature's finest mood; Or, sweeter yet, for fond excess Of glee, and vivid cry, Whilst happy children ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the evening Nina was standing with Giovanni a little apart. Giovanni was unusually quiet, and both had fallen into reverie, from which Nina was aroused by the sudden announcement of a jarring name. Like the ceaseless beating of the waves upon a beach, she had heard the long rolling titles, "Sua Excellenza la principessa di Malio," "Il Conte e la Contessa ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... was away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the Prince found her, and whither we should all like to make a tour, when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie, and, looking up, he saw Cuff before ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... fell, Gascoyne went forward, and, seating himself on a forecastle carronade, appeared to fall into a deep reverie. Montague paced the quarter-deck impatiently, glancing from time to time down the skylight at the barometer which hung in the cabin, and at the vane which drooped motionless from the masthead. He acted with the air of a man who ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... reverie that night Sue burst with a dozen radical friends. Others kept arriving, and our small rooms were soon a riot of color and chatter. Banners were stacked against the wall, bright yellow ribbons were everywhere, faces were flushed and happily ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... time I had been sitting alone with these reflections—it may have been ten minutes or it may have been half an hour—when I was aroused from my reverie by the knowledge that someone was again in the room standing close beside my chair. My first thought was that Smith had come back again in his swift, unaccountable manner, but almost at the same moment I realised ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... each crowd sits in Madison Square Garden alone—holds a vast lonely reverie all alone, hypnotizes itself and ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a reverie. I, meanwhile, busied myself with supper; and as soon as this was prepared, the two of us enjoyed ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... serial, 'The British Magazine'; the other was Johnson's 'Jack Whirler,' bustling Mr. John Newbery from the 'Bible and Sun' in St. Paul's Churchyard, with a new daily newspaper, 'The Public Ledger'. For Smollett, Goldsmith wrote the 'Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern' and the 'Adventures of a Strolling Player,' besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a happy recollection of the 'Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, or some of his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... impression of his good nature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical atmosphere, we find ourselves thinking of him at first as a little too good-humored, a little too easy-going, a little prone to fall into reverie. We are not surprised when we find his favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... in the plaza awoke him from his reverie. With startled eyes he saw the confused movements of the people, while their voices came up to him faintly. A breathless servant informed him of what was happening. A thought shot across his mind: ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... one of his more abstracted moods; he ceased to speak aloud, but his lips moved, and his eyes grew fixed in reverie on the ground. Walter gazed at him for some moments with mixed and contending sensations. Once more, resentment and the bitter wrath of jealousy had faded back into the remoter depths of his mind, and a certain interest for his singular rival, despite of himself, crept into his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blessed those labours the more that they upheld her from the absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de Grantmesnil's command—did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into green fields and along flowery river-banks, and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... music that distinguished him from them. Milton, it is true, whom he most resembles in this respect, had a knowledge of music, but not the same passion for it. Milton's music was more a recreation, an accompaniment of reverie; Lanier's was a fiery zeal; a yearning love, a chosen and adequate form of expression of his soul's deepest feeling. Combined with this passion for music was his technical knowledge of the art, and these combined formed at once the foundation and the framework of his poetry. He seems ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... too, very much for the pheasant which flew into the window of the mail coach, and startled me in St. Stephen's Street. George, who is a good lad, had put on his best legs, and soon overtaking the mail, threw it in 'sans ceremonie.' It was a pleasant disturbance from no very pleasant reverie, which my mind set out on the moment the coach set out from the inn; and which would, but for this agreeable interruption, have lasted me at least as long as the first stage. For the rest of the good things which you gave me while I was in Norwich, and sent me laden away with, I must thank ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... west, and each in his own way thought over these things. Assuredly the Angel of Silence hung over that little vessel then, for no sound from earth or sea or sky came to wake those two thinkers from their reverie. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman |
