"Wan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some irresistible attraction to that window; at which, each time he approached it, he was greeted by that terrible salvo of artillery that rent and tore his being. His pallor was greater even than it had been before; his poor, pinched, wan face, on which were still visible traces of the rouge which had been applied that morning, bore witness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said "They ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause; and the cold dank drops of dew that hung half-melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there was ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to the bank and took up the note for the six hundred dollars she had originally borrowed. It left her nothing, but she was free. She had lived the summer and was where she had started. A little wan, feeling a little empty, she caught the train for Bloomfield. All during the trip she gazed from the window, dizzily conscious of the shifting landscape, dimly aware ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... understandest. How oft And many a time I've told thee Jupiter, That lustrous god, was setting at thy birth. Thy visual power subdues no mysteries; Mole-eyed thou mayest but burrow in the earth, Blind as the subterrestrial, who with wan Lead-colored shine lighted thee into life. The common, the terrestrial, thou mayest see, With serviceable cunning knit together, The nearest with the nearest; and therein I trust thee and believe thee! but whate'er Full of mysterious import Nature weaves, And fashions in the depths—the spirit's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was pinched, it seemed thin, and the brilliancy and size of her eyes were exaggerated. One arm, clumsy and inanimate in splints, was extended over the cotton spread; but with the other hand she was feverishly busy with her appearance. She smiled, a wan tremulous movement that again shut the pain like a leaden casket ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... off'—he must have some doubts about the matter, else he would not even suppose such a thing. God knows what I should do then. There are other ways—other ways." He passed his hand over his eyes as he spoke, as though to shut out some ugly vision. Such a wan, strange expression played over his grim features that he was hardly to be recognized as the revered elder of the Trinitarian Chapel or the esteemed man ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Crying to soldiers, "Wear these gifts of ours." This proves that Richard had no need to wrong, Or force the people, that with willing hearts Gave more than was desir'd. And where you say, You [do] guess Richard's victories but lies, I swear he wan rich Cyprus with his sword; And thence, more glorious than the guide of Greece, That brought so huge a fleet to Tenedos, He sail'd along the Mediterran sea, Where on a sunbright morning he did meet The warlike Soldan's[218] well-prepared fleet. O, still, methinks, I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... passionate earnestness. Life without my mother! The very thought was death! I looked in her pale, beautiful face. It was more than pale,—it was wan—it was sickly. There was a purplish shadow under her soft, dark eyes, which I had not observed before, and her figure looked thin and drooping. I gazed into the sad, loving depths of her eyes, till mine were blinded with tears, when throwing my arms across her lap, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... was approaching when this pleasant interchange of courtesies between the three sovereigns, Ostrogothic, Frankish, and Burgundian, was to be succeeded by the din of wan Alaric the Visigoth, alarmed at the victorious progress of the Frankish king, sent a message to this effect: "If my brother is willing, let him consider my proposal that, by the favour of God, we should have an interview with one another". Clovis accepted the offer, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the Virgins of Fra Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there was something in them mean or abject even, for the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness, and the colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the "Desire of all nations", is one of those who are neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... looked very white and ill and might have started at anything. For an instant Captain Stewart made as if he would go on his way without taking notice, but he seemed to change his mind and turned back. He held out his hand with a rather wan ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... believe you," Janey would make answer. "She knows dat you's a heathen, an' won' go to church. Cut off your great long plat, ef you don' wan' me to pull it no mo'. I cyarn' help it, ef it gits in my way, all de time." And then she would slyly lift the tip of the offending member and lay it across the table, before setting her heavy iron dish pan upon it. "Don' you year ol' mis' ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... "G'wan! You're crazy!" Branch slipped to the ground, seized the bundle in his arms, and bore it to the roadside. With shaking hands he tugged at the knotted corners of the comforter. "Pure imagination!" he muttered, testily. "There's nothing in here but bedclothes. I just grabbed ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Eli Kirke to the docks. 'Twas a wan hope, but in a twinkling I was riding like wind for the barking behind the hill. A white-faced man broke from the brush ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared suddenly, "I hate David Forsythe!" Gilbert Penny was obviously startled. Caroline half ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... I might be—well I might be," grumbled the man. "'Tis me needs fower pair of hands, instead of wan pair, and as many legs as a cinterpig." Tony evidently meant centipede. "'Tis 'Tony, here!' and 'Tony, there!' iv'ry blissid minute av th' day. An' 'tis movin' trunks an' boxes, and the like—Mis' Grace should hire a nelephant at this time of the year, ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... and came upon a field of sleek purple lava sown all over with little lemon jets of silent smoke, which in their wan and melancholy glow might have been the corpse lights of those innumerable dead whose tombstone ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... will, chile! But, w'at you wan' it fer?" answered Aunt Connie, smiling down at the little girl ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... your kindness. You are the first friend I have seen this many a year," said the poor woman, while hot tears trickled down her wan cheeks. ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... ancestor-worship, of which we find no traces among Pawnees. For ancestor-worship among the Sioux, it is usual to quote a remark of one Prescott, an interpreter: 'Sometimes an Indian will say, "Wah negh on she wan da," which means, "Spirits of the dead have mercy on me." Then they will add what they want. That is about the amount of an Indian's prayer.'[10] Obviously, when we compare Mr. Grinnell's account of Pawnee religion, based on his own observations, and those of Major ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... and put his hands to his head. Lulie, the tears streaming down her face, tried to comfort him. Martha, also weeping, essayed to help. Cabot, walking over to where his cousin was standing, laid a hand on his arm. Galusha, pale and wan, looking as if the world had slipped from under him and he was left hanging in cold space, turned a haggard face in ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... when he came, though pale and wan, He look'd so great and high,{C} So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye;— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... gladly rendered him the service, and, as she gazed into his face, wan with anxiety and suffering, and thought of the beautiful surprise which she had in store, she waved back, unnoticed by her royal brother, the pages and courtiers who were following close behind. Then looking up at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when the door opened and Mr. Lee came in silently. A slight shudder went through him, as he came to the coffin and bent over it. What a change had three days made in the man! Ten years would not have taken so much youth and life from him and made him look so old and wan. He looked upon her as a man who looks his last upon what he loved best in the world;—his whole soul was in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... friendless want was not to be life, but a continual struggle-with-death. For she had no resources, and was put to bitter shifts if she would live. Hunger nosed at her door, and she had need of her pride to clothe her. For the more she went wan and naked, the more men mocked her to see her hold herself so high; and out of their hearts she shut that charity which she would never have endured of them. If she had gone kneeling to their doors with pitiful hands, saying, "I starve, not having ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... my heart to the man— That sallow virgin-minded studious Martyr to mild enthusiasm, As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious That woke my sympathetic spasm, (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) And stood, surveying his auditory With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,— Those blue eyes had survived so much! While, under the foot they could not smutch, Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, Till the auditory's clearing of throats Was done with, died into a silence; And, when each glance was ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... is," Mrs. Mixon was wont to say, "my man, Madison, was nevah no han' to wo'k. He was de settin'-downest man you evah seed. Hit wouldn't 'a' been so bad, but Madison was a lakly man, an' his tongue wah smoothah dan ile; so hit t'wan't no shakes fu' him to fool ol' Mas' 'bout his wo'k an' git erlong des erbout ez he pleased. Mas' Madison Mixon, hisse'f, was a mighty 'dulgent so't o' man, an' he liked a laugh bettah dan anyone in de worl'. Well, my man could mek him laugh, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... after that a small and partly ruinous tenement in the outskirts of A. received a new family. The group consisted of four children, whose wan and wistful countenances, and still, unchildlike deportment, testified an early acquaintance with want and sorrow. There was the mother, faded and care-worn, whose dark and melancholy eyes, pale cheeks, and compressed ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this was the case, he always rode to the Capitol, surrendered his horse to his groom—the ever-faithful Juba, who always accompanied him in these rides—and, with his ornamental riding-whip in his hand, a small cloth or leathern cap perched upon the top of his head, (which peeped out, wan and meagre, from between the openings of his coat-collar,) booted and gloved, he would walk to his seat in the House—then in session—lay down upon his desk his cap and whip, and then slowly remove his ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... this view, for it is self-evident and no one calls it in question. Its truth has daily and sorrowful confirmation in the wan faces and dreary eyes and wrecks of a once noble and promising manhood one meets at ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... thee, now thou nam'st thy son: Thou art the lively image of my grief; Within thy face my sorrows I may see: Thy eyes are gumm'd with tears, thy cheeks are wan, Thy forehead troubled, and thy muttering lips Murmur sad words abruptly broken off; By force of windy sighs thy spirit breathes; And all this sorrow riseth for thy son. And selfsame sorrow feel I for my son. Come in, old man, thou shalt to Isabel; Lean on my arm; I thee, thou me, shalt stay; And ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of his wife, whose end had been hastened by the sudden and complete disappearance of her darling sister Esther, the wan colourlessness of his face had been intensified; his stern enthusiasm, once latent, had become visible; his heart, tenderer than ever towards the victims of the misery around him, grew harder towards the employers, whom he believed to be the cause of that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hidden by a crimson shawl, there sat the vestal, the philosopher. What did she there? But the boy's eager eyes, accustomed but too well to note every light and shade of feeling which crossed that face, saw in a moment how wan and haggard was its expression. She wore a look of constraint, of half-terrified self-resolve, as of a martyr: and yet not an undoubting martyr; for as Orestes turned his head at the stir of Philammon's ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... beginning to steal on night, to penetrate with a pale ray its brown obscurity, and give a demi-translucence to its opaque shadows. Pale enough that ray was on this particular morning: no colour tinged the east, no flush warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted, what a wan glance she flung along the hills, you would have thought the sun's fire quenched in last night's floods. The breath of this morning was chill as its aspect; a raw wind stirred the mass of night-cloud, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... tension of my thoughts towards one object, the want of sleep at night, but, above all, the moral exhaustion of a heart too weak to bear a continuous ecstasy of ten months, had undermined my constitution. A consuming flame, which burned unfed, shone through my wan and pale face. Julie implored me to leave Paris, to try the effect of my native air, and to preserve my life, even at the expense of her happiness. She sent me her doctor, to add the authority of science ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in dismay. She looked very wan and fragile sitting there; whatever the truth, he could not but ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... you do, my dear!" she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak, wan voice, with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying from love and from consumption. "Sit down here ... I am glad to see you ... Only don't be angry—I am almost dying from migraine, and from my miserable heart. Pardon my speaking with difficulty. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... was well up, though still on the flood, as I desired; and each visible tuft of marsh-grass might, but for its motionlessness, have been a prowling boat. Dark as the night had appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... moment that he spoke these words that Seton Pasha entered the empty building above and found the spaniel scratching at the paved floor. So that, as Sin Sin Wa stood looking down at the wan face of the unfortunate woman who refused to die, the dog above, excited by Seton's presence, ceased to whine and ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... there out of complaisance; and, to inform Brisacier of his fate, she raised often to her head her victorious hands, adorned with the gloves we have before mentioned: but, if they were surprised to see her in a head-dress that made her look more wan than ever, she was very differently surprised to see Miss Price partake with her in every particular of Brisacier's present: her surprise soon turned to jealousy; for her rival had not failed to join in conversation ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Wake veki. Wake of ship sxippostsigno. Waking time (reveille) vekigxo. Walk marsxi, promeni. Walk (path) aleo. Walking stick bastono. Wall muro. Wallet sako, tornistro. Wallow ruligxi, ensxlimigxi. Walnut juglando. Walrus rosmaro. Waltz valso. Wan pala, palega. Wand vergo, vergego. Wander erari, vagi. Wander (be delirious) deliri. Wanderer nomadulo, vagisto. Wandering nomada, eraranta. Wane ekfinigxi. Wanness paleco. Want seneco, mizerego. Want (need, require) bezoni. Wanton malica. War milito—ado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more than probably from his immoderate indulgence in the "newe weede," which he drank[9], though I never discovered that it was drank up by him. He generally wore a doublet and breeches of satin, slashed and lined with coloured taffata; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... interference was given to the rest of the Eleven and substitutes, who had arrived meanwhile. Remsen and Joel left Bancroft together and crossed the yard toward the latter's room. The sky was bright with myriads of stars and the buildings seemed magnified by the wan radiance to giant castles. Under the shadow of University Remsen paused to light his pipe, and, without considering, the two found themselves a moment later seated on ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sky, but the sun did not shine forth brightly. It remained wan and cold, like a moon behind ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... hours' work, and he takes five hours to do it in; no more, and no less. P'r'a'ps I might get him up sooner if I used the whip; but how would you like any one to use a whip on you when you was picking apples or counting baskets of strawbys into a wan?" ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... Next day at half-past ten; Men whispered that the Freshman cut A different figure then:- That the brass forsook his forehead, The iron fled his soul, As with blanched lip and visage wan Before the stony-hearted Don ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... the Sea of Wan lies a high mountain called Kraput-Koch ("Blue Ridge," from its blue color). Probably there was a dukedom or kingdom of Kraput-Koch which served as a city of refuge for the wandering Assyrian princes. Perhaps the legend has preserved in the person of the King of Kraput-Koch the memory ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... that she prayed the Dean to listen to her touching the child of the old man who was slain on May Eve, he consented; and she was at once admitted to an inner chamber, where Colet, wrapped in a gown lined with lambskin, sat by the fire, looking so wan and feeble that it went to the good woman's heart and she began by an apology for ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... seems as if the sense of pure joy banished the very thought of pain and foreboding from all living things. The sleepy afternoons glide away, the sun droops, and the quiet, coloured evening falls solemnly. Then comes the hush of the huge and thoughtful night; the wan stars wash the dust with silver, and the brave day is over. Alas, for those who are pent in populous cities throughout this glorious time! We who are out in the free air may cast a kindly thought on the fate of those to whom "holiday" must be as a word in an unknown tongue. Some of us are ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... they drank A drug infused, antidote to the pains Of grief and anger, a most potent charm For ills of ev'ry name. Whoe'er his wine So medicated drinks, he shall not pour 280 All day the tears down his wan cheek, although His father and his mother both were dead, Nor even though his brother or his son Had fall'n in battle, and before his eyes. Such drugs Jove's daughter own'd, with skill prepar'd, And of prime ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... approached the place. The one was a man who seemed weak and sickly. His threadbare coat was buttoned to the chin, but hung large on his shrunken breast. The other was a girl, who might be from twelve to fourteen, on whose arm he leaned heavily. Her cheek was wan, and there was a patient, sad look on her face, which seemed so settled that you would think she could never have known the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... many were the grievous things upon that hill I bare: I saw the God of Hosts Himself stretched in His anguish there: The darkness veiled its Maker's corpse with clouds; the shades did weigh The bright light down with evil weight, wan under sky that day. Then did the whole creation weep and the King's death bemoan; Christ was ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... am in dismay, for he has hardly a limb without a wound." Gawain replies: "This grieves me much. It is perfectly evident from his face, which is all pale and colourless. I could have wept myself when I saw him so pale and wan, but my joy effaced my grief, for at sight of him I felt so glad that I forgot all other pain. Now start and ride along slowly. I shall ride ahead at top-speed to tell the Queen and the King that you are following after me. I am sure that they ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... made for it. Little country thing, allus frightened to death an' ready to bust out cryin'. Gents ain't goin' to stand that. A lot of 'em wants cheerin' up as much as she does. Gent as was in liquor last night knocked 'er down an' give 'er a black eye. 'T wan't ill feelin', but he lost his temper, an' give 'er a knock casual. She can't go out to-night, an' she's been 'uddled up all day ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... somehow in the essence of things, an eternal rightness which would keep me safe from Captain Magnus. And as I looked across at Dugald Shaw and met for an instant his steady watchful eyes, I managed a swift little smile—a rather wan smile, I dare say, but still ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... two boys appeared in the doorway, the woman stopped her machine and the children set up a howl of pleasure. "Sammy! Ikey!" cried the woman, smiling a wan welcome, as the babies crept and toddled toward the newcomers. "Where ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... lacertis, my Elinor? Nay," George added, a faint smile illumining his wan but noble features, "why speak to thee in the accents of the Roman poet, which thou comprehendest not? Bright One, there be other things in Life, in Nature, in this Inscrutable Labyrinth, this Heart on which thou leanest, which are equally unintelligible to thee! Yes, my pretty ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thousands and thousands and thousands of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ones; I ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... care?" She stood in her place before him without speaking. If she had looked at him she might have stricken him blind. When Lady Maria came in, she moved away, and returned to the window. The glow had almost gone; nothing remained but wan blue, white towards the horizon. It was the colour of death; but a single star shone out ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... animal defending its young. I could almost hear the cry of terror which died down in her throat ere it reached her lips. But then, monsieur, to see the light of hope gradually illuminating her pale, wan face as the stranger took her hand and spoke to her—oh! so gently and so kindly—was a sight which filled my poor, half-broken ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... does not wander away O'er meadows so grassy and green; 'Mid the factory din, face wan, white and thin, My little Bo-Peep can ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... civilization usually regarded as onerous, and he felt quite comfortable where he lay. He knew that it was growing cold in the gorge, and the shelter of the cabin was acceptable. He saw a little strip of wan twilight through a crack in the window, but it soon faded and pitchy darkness ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... few straggling locks of black hair, straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness, and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the lashes upon her wan cheeks. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... but smiling in a wan fashion. "I am all right now," she said. "It was silly of me—let us go, dear," she added to the young girl; "I shall be better for the open air—I have had a headache all morning. * * * No, please, don't accuse yourself, Mr. Baron, you are not at ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... not how our play may pass this stage, But by the best of poets [5] in that age THE MALTA-JEW had being and was made; And he then by the best of actors [6] play'd: In HERO AND LEANDER [7] one did gain A lasting memory; in Tamburlaine, This Jew, with others many, th' other wan The attribute of peerless, being a man Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong) Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue,— So could he speak, so vary; nor is't hate To merit in him [8] who doth personate Our Jew this day; nor ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... profoundly dark; but the wind, which had begun to blow with some violence, chased the clouds rapidly across the heavens, and dispersed the vapours hanging nearer the earth. Sometimes the moon was totally eclipsed; at others, it shed a wan and ghastly glimmer over the masses rolling in the firmament. Not a star could be discerned, but, in their stead, streaks of lurid radiance, whence proceeding it was impossible to determine, shot ever and anon athwart the dusky ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders, on its far sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a deeper grief to man Than when his mother, faint with years, Decrepit, old, and weak, and wan, Beyond the leech's art appears; When by her couch her son may stay, And press her hand and watch her eyes, And feel, though she revive to-day, Perchance ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Charles V of a young man who was committed to prison in 1546 for seducing his girl companion, and while there was in great fear and grief, expecting a death-sentence from the Emperor the next day. When brought before his judge, his face was wan and pale and his hair and beard gray, the change having taken place in the night. His beard was filthy with drivel, and the Emperor, moved by his pitiful condition, pardoned him. There was a clergyman of Nottingham whose daughter ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... self-distrust! You—reign? Come, come! You would be pale and wan; One of those timid, introspective kings Who are ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... She was clothed; her head was adorned with a wreath of coral, and her arms and ankles with strings of beads. She struck me at once as being very beautiful, though, as I saw her nearer, I perceived that her eye had lost its lustre, and that her face was wan and emaciated. The canoe was a very large one, capable of carrying a hundred and fifty people, though not more than sixty were on board, and of that number nearly half lay dead or dying on the deck. It was easy to divine what had ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... 1) Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man; Over the surging sea, with a whitening south wind wan, Through the foam of the firth, man makes his perilous way; And the eldest of deities Earth that knows not toil nor decay Ever he furrows and scores, as his team, year in year out, With breed of the yoked horse, the ploughshare ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... period of the "Wan of the League," as the four later civil wars are often called. The last of the four is alone ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... door or I'll die here." Of course after that every man in the hospital worked for it, and in two weeks he was honorably discharged. When he came home at last, his mother's heart was broken to see him so wan and changed. She would tell us of the long quiet days that followed his return, with the windows open so that the dying eyes might look over the orchard slope to the meadow beyond where the younger brothers were mowing the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... large and dark and mysterious. Her face bore unmistakable traces of sorrow. Deep lines were graven on her pale forehead, and on her wan, thin cheeks. Her hair was white as snow, and her complexion was of an unearthly grayish hue. It was a memorable face—a face which, once seen, might haunt one long afterward. In the eyes there was tenderness and softness, yet the fashion of the mouth ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and over-fitted with mechanical appliances for the gratification of fantastic requirements, while the comforts of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a desert. Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from "art exhibit" to dress-maker's ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... seen the clerk, no one but Giles seemed to recognize him. In fact, this recognition was rather due to an instinct than to any tangible reason. But in his own mind he was convinced. He recalled how the man had suddenly removed his scarf as though he were stifling on that night. He remembered the wan face, the dark, anxious face, and the rough red ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... said Jem, melting under the happy allusion, "a gintleman of your grate expayrince in building should know that, of all things else, a laddher is the wan ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... that she was very fair and very good to look at; she found, half-consciously, that her beauty had its drawbacks. There did not seem to be any reason why she should spare her strength in any way. So, a little wan and tremulous, she appeared at the early morning service, and then, after walking back in any weather, there was a dull little breakfast, and soon after that she got to work. Every post brought begging letters in crowds, and these hurt her dreadfully. It was her wish to live for God ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... looked where she pointed. A dull, grey light topped the waters, and the sky above held a faint tinge of crimson. The wan glow accented the loneliness, and for the moment left him depressed. Was there ever a more sombre scene than was presented by that waste of tumbling waves, stretching to the horizon, arched over by a clouded ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... earthly life to shadow forth this great truth, and has bid us see a pledge and a symbol of it in that scene on the Lake of Galilee: the disciples toiling in the sudden storm, the poor little barque tossing on the waters tinged by the wan moon, the spray dashing over the wearied rowers. They seem alone, but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... as you breed roe-deer; Example, but not meddling. See that hollow— I knew it once all heath, and deep peat-bog— I drowned a black mare in that self-same spot Hunting with your good father: Well, he gave One jovial night, to six poor Erfurt monks— Six picked-visaged, wan, bird-fingered wights— All in their rough hair shirts, like hedgehogs starved— I told them, six weeks' work would break their hearts: They answered, Christ would help, and Christ's great mother, And make them strong when weakest: So they ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... all right," he said jerking a wan smile, but he looked as though the last of his own nerve had gone into the telephone receiver. "She wanted to put in an extra check, but I told her we'd be generous and let it go at what she could find without her name on it. Gosh, what fools some wommen are! I thought ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... gives a moan like a dyin' child; and then she lifts up her wan, brokenhearted face, an' stretches out both her ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... few complaints of Christ. "Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" All one has ever felt is said for one in a phrase, all that one finds most isolating in the world is put into one sentence. There is a wan feeling of wonder in it; "so long," and yet you think that of me! "so long," and yet such absolute inability to read my character! "so long," and yet still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in the little side of it! The dear people who "thought ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... man. They were slim, nervous, sensitive hands, pink-tipped, tapering, blue-veined, delicate. As Emma McChesney stared at them the man turned slowly on the revolving stool. His plump, pink face was dolorous, sagging, wan-eyed. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... day; thanks to Lady Morley-Frere, Mary Darragh, and the other busybodies who had the royal ear, and hated me. If I coquetted with the King 'twas but to see my heart's real master frown, and his face grow wan and sad, for by those very tokens I knew ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... Duneland became peopled indeed. The extraordinarily mild day had drawn out hundreds—had given the moribund summer-excursion season a new lease of life. Every stoppage brought so many more young men in soiled khaki, with shapeless packs on their backs, and so many more wan maidens, no longer young, who were trying, in little bands, to capture from Nature the joys thus far denied by domestic life; and at one station a belated squad of the "Lovers of Landscape"—some forty or fifty ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her impulse to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wan as death, With broken steps of care; And oft' he check'd his quick-heav'd breath, And turn'd ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... her own head might have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to see. Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not refuse again. She will not have ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... from himself soon. I shall only spare her some unnecessary pain; it is cruel to see her thus, and to keep her in suspense. Besides, her weakness might be her ruin, in his opinion, if it were to extinguish all her energy, and deprive her of the very power of pleasing. How wan she looks, and how heavy are those sleepless eyes! She is not, indeed, in a condition to meet him, when he comes to us to-morrow: if she had some hopes, she would revive and appear with her natural ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Disdain Returned Thomas Carew "Love Who Will, for I'll Love None" William Browne Valerius on Women Thomas Heywood Dispraise of Love, and Lovers' Follies Francis Davison The Constant Lover John Suckling Song, "Why so pale and wan, fond Lover" John Suckling Wishes to His Supposed Mistress Richard Crashaw Song, "Love in fantastic Triumph sate" Aphra Behn Les Amours Charles Cotton Rivals William Walsh I Lately Vowed, but 'Twas in Haste John Oldmixon The Touchstone Samuel ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... girl said golf bored her pallid. She said she thought it was the silliest game ever invented." He paused to mark the effect of his words. Peter merely smiled a faint, wan smile. "You ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... past; then Kay, a man of mien Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself Root-bitten by ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... do," replied the little girl, spitefully. "Ey hate yo now warser than onny wan else. Ey hate yo because yo are neaw lunger my sister—becose yo 're a grand ledy's dowter, an a grand ledy yersel. Ey hate yo becose yung Ruchot Assheton loves yo—an becose yo ha better luck i' aw things than ey ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... so ye have; it's no wonder, with the tramp ye took. Come, let me put on another frock. I'll take this wan an' clane it for ye, so the misthress will niver know a bit of ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... as beautiful as ye'd find in a day's thravel, an' 'twas herself that'd dhrive men crazy afther wan look at her. An' she was good to the poor, but divii a bit av love did she have for a redcoat. Whin she'd take human form an' a bowld buck av a British dragoon would come making love to her, 'tis herself would say to him: 'Captain, alannah, would ye oblige ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... own thought, Whence very death can take off nought, Nor sleep, with bitterer dreams than death, What though thy thousands at thy knees Lie thick as grave-worms feed on these, Though thy green fields and joyous places Are populous with blood-blackening faces And wan limbs eaten by the sun? Better an end of all men's races, Better the world's whole work were done, And life wiped out of all our traces, And there were left to time not one, Than such as these that fill thy graves Should sow in ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds for the fancy; and many devious and alluring ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... that the harsh weeds and brambles may be kept away from my sanctuary, the other often bringing me small offerings with open hand. On me is placed a many-tinted wreath of early spring flowers and the soft green blade and ear of the tender corn. Saffron-coloured violets, the orange-hued poppy, wan gourds, sweet-scented apples, and the purpling grape trained in the shade of the vine, [are offered] to me. Sometimes, (but keep silent as to this) even the bearded he-goat, and the horny-footed nanny sprinkle my altar with blood; for which honours Priapus is bound in return ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... round by a hundred shrines Glittering at the great Shwe's base Falls the sound of his feet mid lines Droned from the sacred Wisdom. Round and round where the idols gaze So pitiless on his pained distress He passes on, Pale-eyed and wan— A pariah like the dogs ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... marys' on her journey. We suddenly realise how little there was to amuse the Burd Isbels of yore. Twa marys provide a week's diversion. Otherwise her only occupation would have been to kemb her golden hair, or perhaps, like Fair Annie, drink wan ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Italian's fruit-stand on the corner he stopped and cast a contemptuous eye over the display of papered oranges, highly polished apples and wan, sun-hungry bananas. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... through thick, silver-rimmed glasses, and demanded: "For why do ye be readin' a buke about it? For why don't ye get down wit yer pick, man, and see what's in the ground? My gorry, I been minin' now for forty-wan year, ever sence I come from the auld country, an' I never read no buke t' see what I had in me claim. I got down inty the ground, an' I seen for meself what I got there—an' whin I found out, my gorry, I didn't need no buke t' tell me was she wort' ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain; The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, War's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry To her proud soul no common fear can bring; Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord, the King, Her soul aflame with ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... stood watching. His was the only lamp still glowing: only the starlight, wan and pale, lay over the town. The night wind came stealing, an icy ghost, up the dark street; and it chilled his uncovered throat. The moon rose over the spruce forest, ringed with white. Already the frost was growing ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... all the guns and swords were black And the uniforms had faded out to gray, And the faces of the men who marched through that street again Seemed like faces of the dead who lose their way. For the dead who lose their way cannot look more wan and gray. Oh the sorrow and the pity of the sight, Oh the weary lagging feet out of step with drums that beat, As the regiment comes marching from ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... her soft white robes, with her long, dark hair flowing over her shoulders, so fair, so wan, so spiritual she looked, that it seemed as if the very breeze from the lake might have ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... first hint of dawn in the east. But her merriment was of short duration. When the moon was at the full, she was in glorious spirits, and as beautiful as it was possible for a child of her age to be. But as the moon waned, she faded, until at last she was wan and withered like the poorest, sickliest child you might come upon in the streets of a great city in the arms of a homeless mother. Then the night was quiet as the day, for the little creature lay in her gorgeous cradle night and day ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... the dejected day, Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot His struggling rays, in horizontal lines, Through the thick air; as clothed in cloudy storm, Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky; And soon descending, to the long dark night. Wide-shading all, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... go far to seek, and then he reached the mountains of barayung and balati wood. From these peaks, exultant over his foes, he gave a good war-cry that re-echoed through the mountains, and went up to the ears of the gods. Panguli'li and Salamia'wan [73] heard it from their home in the Shrine of the Sky (Tambara ka Langit), and they said, "Who chants the song of war (ig-sungal)? Without doubt, it is the Malak T'oluk Waig, for none of all the other malaki could shout just ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... prowling for the life of one poor little insect. We did not find him, however, though we succeeded in silencing him. But no sooner were we back in our bunks than he began it again, and such was the turmoil of our nerves that day found us sitting wan about a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... known it was wrong,' he returned, a little bewildered by these extraordinary statements. If she had not looked so wan and haggard, he would have accused her of ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my spirit seeks, Through cold reproof and slander's blight? Has she Love's roses on her cheeks? Is hers an eye of this world's light? No: wan and sunk with midnight prayer Are the pale looks of her I love; Or if, at times, a light be there, Its beam is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... from God's eyes Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights. Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed, Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense; Or if a young face yearned from out the mist Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan With desolate fore-knowledge of the end. My life lay waste about me: as I walked, From the gross dark of unfrequented streets The face of my own youth peered forth at me, Struck white with pity at the thing I was; And globed in ghostly fire, thrice-virginal, ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... who linger—follow The phantom pale and wan. O'er hill and dale, and rill and vale ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... and strong in those days, a trained shoulder-hitter, and could run like a deer. He was hunted to the Thames, "and there they thought they had him." But the Romany rye made for the edge, and, leaping into the wan water, like the Squyre in the old ballad, swam to the other ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... his daughter? Where had she wandered that night when the pitiless rain fell and the sullen wind moaned? Was that the last he should ever see of her, with the white, wan, pleading face under the yew-tree? And would that despairing voice, saying 'Father!' haunt his ears till his dying day? And would the wailing cry that followed him as he went to his house that night be the only thing he should ever know of his grandchild, the real little ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... lace in the neck and sleeves of my parmetty and gray alpaca and got down my hair trunk, for I knew that I must hang onto that apron string no matter where it carried me to. Waitstill Webb come and made up some things I must have, and as preparations went on my pardner's face grew haggard and wan from day to day, and he acted as if he knew not what he wuz doin'. Why, the day I got down my trunk I see him start for the barn with the accordeon in a pan. He sot out to get milk for the calf. He was ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... in his magazine: "And there's the other wan I saw jokun' wid um, and puttun' um up ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... or graceful. Port, manner of movement or walk. At-tire', dress, clothes. Tar'-nish, to soil, to sully. Av'a-lanche, a vast body of snow, earth, and ice, sliding down from a mountain. Vouch-safes', yields, conde-scends, gives. Wan'ton, luxuriant. Net'ted, caught in a net. Fledge'ling, a young bird. Rec-og-ni'tion, acknowledgment of ac-quaintance. Pre-con-cert'ed, planned beforehand. Cai'tiff (pro. ka'tif), a mean villain. Thral'dom, bondage, slavery. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... we are to keep?" she asked, with a wan smile. Her kind blue eyes had that glitter in them which is caused by a constant and continuous hunger. Six months ago they had only been gay and kind, now they saw the world as it is, as it always must be so long as the human heart is capable of happiness and the human reason recognizes ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... through the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of slanting light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The black shadows of the pediments between each window, alternating with the strips of light, heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the floor. Toward its lower end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was lost to view; the yawning fire-place, the overhanging mantel-piece, the long row of battle pictures above, were all swallowed ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins |
