"Wistfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little ruffle at neck and sleeves, that it did more than adequate service toward maturing her. Indeed, there was no youth about Miss Amabel, except the youth of her eyes and smile. There were childlike wistfulness and hope, but experience chiefly, of life, of the unaccounted for, the unaccountable. She had, above all, an expression of well-wishing. Now she sat ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... belonging to Lesbia had been accidentally shot while straying in some wood. The poor animal had dragged himself with pain and difficulty to the garden-gate, and there we found him. I shall never forget the wistfulness of the poor creature's eyes when his mistress knelt down and caressed him. He died a few minutes afterwards, licking her hand. I could not help thinking of Tito when I first saw Phoebe Locke; for the same unreasoning anguish seemed ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was white and drawn, and her eyes were wet. Her husband started forward as she extended her hand to him. He clasped them in his own and looked down into her face with the deepest tenderness and wistfulness in his own. Her body swayed suddenly and his expression changed to one of surprise ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the day, for people in the Hollow Land enjoy their pleasures as much by quantity as quality, especially their friends' society; and I could only hope that a certain wistfulness of expression, as she looked back from the tonneau of the red car, meant that Nell would rather have remained with some of those who were ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the clear, vivid sunlight on the mountain tops, and the serried battlements of the castle, now rising into larger proportions as the boys dropped down the hillside towards the postern door, which led out upon the wild fell. There was something of mute wistfulness in his own gaze ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was broken by the sound of a voice singing, a full, rich contralto, that rang through the air with the clearness of a golden bell. The sweet liquid notes were those of an old Norwegian mountain melody, one of those wildly pathetic folk-songs that seem to hold all the sorrow, wonder, wistfulness, and indescribable yearning of a heart too full for other speech than music. He started to his feet and looked around him for the singer. There was no one visible. The amber streaks in the sky were leaping into ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... knows," he interrupted. "This last week we have had to exert our wits and bodies in more ways than we ever did before in all our lives. True, I do miss my modeling somewhat." He spoke the last with a soft mellowness in his voice and a wistfulness that made her look ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them—the wistfulness of exiles, conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... and fearless, lad!" continued the trapper, looking up into the eyes of his companion, with a wistfulness that bespoke the delight he received in listening to the praises of one, whom it was so very evident, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... turned to go her eye fell upon the telephone. She hesitated. But the memory of Drene's eyes, their wistfulness and trust decided her. ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... hit at Claire, but she received it in silence, being a little touched by the unaffected note of wistfulness in the other's voice as she regretted her lonely estate. It was hard to be a widow, and to see so little of an only child, especially if that only child happened to be ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... quite past the days of flat immaturity. A veritable young goddess one might have called her, with her high, short mouth and upright head, and her shoulders carried back with a certain haughtiness. Yet only a gracious, pensive goddess might have had this wistfulness in the deep eyes, this little pensive droop of the mouth corners, this piteous quality of the eye which left one saying that here, after all, was a maiden most like to the wild deer of the forest, strong, beautiful, yet timid; ready to ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... looking after him with an odd wistfulness in her eyes. She was seeing him in a new light which made her feel strangely uncertain of herself also. Was it possible that all these years of misunderstanding, which she had regarded as inevitable, might have been avoided ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... book aside completely and gazed at her in patient thought. "Linda," he said finally, "I have never heard anything that stirred me so much; not what you said, my dear, but the recognition in your voice." A wistfulness of love for her enveloped him; an ineffable desire as vain as the passion she struggled to give him in return. She smiled in ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... back. Taking my hand with a gesture half-caressing, she raised her face to mine. Our eyes met, and in hers was a gentle, trustful appeal, a pathetic and entrancing wistfulness, which sent a sudden thrill through me. Her clasp of my fingers tightened ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... stared at the woman, as her abrupt reply reached my ear. Though trembling for the consequences of her boldly spoken wish, Jean did not shrink from my astonished gaze; and when I saw the wistfulness of that wan face, the smile died on my lips, checked by the tender courage which had prompted the utterance of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... look at the English, and beyond them at the six maidens on their platform of marble. Then they went on talking again, but presently hesitated, came back, and stood not far off, gazing at the Porch with a mixture of reverence and quiet wistfulness. Dion drew Rosamund's attention ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... her eyes darkening as she recurred to the baby. "If he cries, 'twon't do no hurt up there. Well!" She seemed to remind herself that there was much to say. "I must be gittin' along with my story." She looked at him in a most moving wistfulness, and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... whispered. "If—if you only could." There was a great longing, a mighty wistfulness in his voice. Death was trying to place its hand over his mouth. With a mighty effort Waterbury slipped past it. "If you only could," he reiterated. "It—it means so little to you, Miss ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... upon her frank impulses and emotions at an age when a woman feels rather than thinks, and the depths of passion in her heart had never been stirred. In this lay the secret of her greatest charm, a youthfulness of the inmost soul, betrayed at times by her face, and a certain tinge of innocent wistfulness in her ideas. She was reserved in her demeanor, but in her bearing and in the tones of her voice there was still something that told of girlish longings directed toward a vague future. Before very long the least susceptible fell in love with her, and yet stood somewhat ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that you are within half an hour of the boulevards. One afternoon, however, in mid-spring, some five years ago, a young man seated on the terrace had preferred to keep this in mind. His eyes were fixed in idle wistfulness on the mighty human hive before him. He was fond of rural things, and he had come to Saint-Germain a week before to meet the spring halfway; but though he could boast of a six months' acquaintance ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... note, only a few words, that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time; but though we had been estranged she had not been forgotten; a little commonplace note, relieved perhaps by a touch of wistfulness, of regret. And this note was sent by a messenger duly instructed to ask for an answer. The news the messenger brought back was somewhat disappointing. The lady was away, but the letter would be forwarded to her. "She ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Thursday which accounted for his absence. And then: "Oh, I do. Much. All right now." An errant moonbeam came straggling in between a break in the screen of vines and lighted up her face, looking up into his, flooding it with a sort of holy wistfulness. Softly she moved ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... within several steps of Jane, who, with an odd mixture of wistfulness and scare, had been studying Eleanor's attire. When she saw both women looking at her, she began to take a defiant attitude, but the toss of her head was met by one of Mrs. Prency's heartiest smiles, accompanied by a similar recognition from Eleanor. Short as was the time that could elapse ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... pause in the Banbury Cross ride. The Crier was looking around the room from one familiar object to another with the gentle wistfulness which creeps into old eyes when they peer into the past for something that has ceased ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fiercely, "I am quite well." And then, with a change to wistfulness, she added, "Oh, I would I had come ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... in its use of the 'I,' hints at the fuller unveiling of the depths of His gracious personality, which the disciples had experienced, and implies, 'Surely you, who have been beside Me, and known Me so closely, have reached a deeper understanding.' It has a tone of the same wistfulness and wonder as that other question of His, 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?' For their sakes, He seeks to draw out their partly unconscious faith, that had been smouldering, fed by their daily experience of His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and then my mother crept to the winder, and got her face agin the pane, and such a look of wistfulness come to her eyes as I had never seen in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... above the cottage, which nestled below with its roof on a level with the hedge-roots, and watched the sun dip. The red light from the west stained her torn old dress, her thin face, her eyes, till she seemed to be dipped in blood. The fox, wistfulness in her expression and the consciousness of coming supper in her mind, gazed obediently where her mistress gazed, and was touched with the same fierce beauty. They stood there fronting the crimson pools over the far ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... rude. I was still a cad. She eyed me, with a certain whiteness, a certain puzzled intentness, a certain fugitive wistfulness—a mute estimation that made me too conscious of her clear appraising gaze and rack my ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... was Nina Boucicault, who played the part with great wistfulness and charm. She was the first of a quartet which included Cissy Loftus, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... At the wistfulness in his voice the girls felt the tears rise to their eyes, and to save them from a breakdown ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... a low bow. The men who had sat to judge me rose; only the King's favorite kept his seat. With Lady Wyatt's arm about her, the King's ward passed between the lines of standing gentlemen to the door, there hesitated, turned, and, facing them with I know not what of pride and shame, wistfulness of entreaty and noble challenge to belief in the face and form that were of all women's most beautiful, curtsied to them until her knee touched the floor. She was gone, and the sunlight ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... out her arms, for a longing so fierce had awoke in her that it gave her power to move again. Never in her life had she felt such a hunger of wistfulness. But Jeanne evaded her embrace. She ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... muscle—whereas this fellow seemed as light of body as he was of hand. He sat now watching Strann with the utmost gravity. He had very large brown eyes of a puzzling quality; perhaps that was because there seemed to be no thought behind them and one caught the mystery and the wistfulness of some animals ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... she was, he thought. How perfect in her direct and simple dignity. Yet there had crept into her tone a wistfulness ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... her adequate for her unpretentious role of mother! All her humour and independence and self-possession had left her, and in their stead, on what was to have been her great night, had settled only the immemorial wistfulness. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... contained in their liquid lustre no suggestion of the knowledge of disappointment. She had been troubled in a way by doubt and longing, but these had made no deeper impression than could be traced in a certain open wistfulness of glance and speech. The mouth had the expression at times, in talking and in repose, of one who might be upon the verge of tears. It was not that grief was thus ever present. The pronunciation of certain syllables gave to her ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... brawn and zeal, to see what muscular Christianity could accomplish. But muscular Christianity, losing its head, came off with a black eye. After that the Buttons were left alone, and no friendly hand drew Paul within the gates of his Sunday Paradise. He thought of it with aching wistfulness. The only thing that the superintendent could do was to give him surreptitiously a prayer-book, bidding him perfect himself in the Catechism in view of future Confirmation. But, as emulation of his fellows and not religious zeal was ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... help him, though his plaint Brings tears of wistfulness; Still must he grieve and mourn, forlorn and faint, None may ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... glanced about him, with a certain good-natured wistfulness which might have indicated, to those who understood the countenances of the sea-going classes, a desire to wet his whistle; but if this expression were so intended it was thrown away, for blacksmith Fryker took no spirits himself, nor furnished them to anybody else. ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... meadows and the blue haze, a faint rose-color of animation darted over the pallor and made the moist eyes flash. The sea! That stood in her mind for the mysteries of change, of the unknown. Thornton knew that this wistfulness after change had nothing definite in it, was merely a girl's hunger for motion; yet that had divided her in ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Denham peering cautiously from behind a screening mass of fern. And Denham looked sick at heart. His eyes lifted suddenly to the heavens, and he stared off into the distance again, and then he regarded the heavens again with an expression that was at once of the utmost wistfulness and the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... looking at a book not one of whose pages she could read. And yet she thought he had what is sometimes called an "open" face. There was nothing sly in the expression of his eyes. They met other eyes steadily, sometimes with a sort of frank audacity, sometimes with—apparently—an almost pleading wistfulness. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... remembrance of my final submission, though it is the faintest ghost of an impression and consists but of the bright blur of a dame's schoolroom, a mere medium for small piping shuffling sound and suffered heat, as well as for the wistfulness produced by "glimmering squares" that were fitfully screened, though not to any revival of cheer, by a huge swaying, yet dominant object. This dominant object, the shepherdess of the flock, was Miss Bayou or Bayhoo—I recover but the alien sound of her name, which memory ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... patriotic societies as does "The Wearing of the Green," and even the outlander, little sympathetic to the cause of Ireland and holding patriotism a provincial thing, is moved in some strange way he does not understand. Performance brings out its homeliness, its touches of humor, its wistfulness, its nobility. It is with this thought of its nobility that every thought of "Cathleen ni Houlihan" ends, that is every thought of it on the stage. Off the stage it is, except to him to whom the cause is all, something that falls ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... women's eyes for far-off sails! That gaze, so eager, so steadfast, that it would almost seem as if it must conjure up the ghostly shape of glimmering canvas from the mysterious distances of sea and sky, and draw it unerringly home by the mere force of intense wistfulness! And those gentle eyes, that were never to see the light of another sun, looked anxiously across the heaving sea till twilight fell, and then John's messenger, Emil, arrived—Emil Ingebertsen, courteous and gentle as a youthful knight—and reassured them with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Whittington returned, And stood with Alice, by the silent tomb In little Pauntley church. There, to his Arms, The Gules and Azure, and the Lion's Head So proudly blazoned on the painted panes; (O, sirs, the simple wistfulness of it Might move hard hearts to laughter, but I think Tears tremble through it, for the Mermaid Inn) He added his new crest, the hard-won sign And lowly prize of his own industry, The Honey-bee. And, far away, the bells Peal softly from the pure white City of God:— Ut ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... still have full confidence in him, Ford Campbell. Still, there was the stubborn streak which would not explain or defend. So he left the table, and went into his own room without any word save a muttered excuse; and that in spite of the fact that Josephine looked full at him, at last, and with a wistfulness that moved him almost to the point of taking her in his arms and kissing away the ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... swept a harp, and a music of piercing sweetness runs with a sudden cry along his blood. But by and by he comes to learn that he has made a comical mistake about this wonder. With his head bent low in worship, he had not seen the wistfulness of her gaze on him; and one day, lo! it is she who presses close to him with the timid appeal of a fawn. Indeed, she has all this time been to him as some beautiful woodland creature might have seemed, breaking for the first time upon the sight of primitive man. Fear, wonder inexpressible, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... plighted their troth beside the dying bed of John de Brocas. As a young girl she had looked older than her years; as a woman she looked scarce more. Perhaps in those great dark eyes there was more of softness; weary waiting had not dimmed their brightness, but had imparted just a touch of wistfulness, which gave to them an added charm. The full, curved lips were calmly resolute as of old, yet touched with a new sweetness and the gracious beauty ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to go, and he tried to look as though he too were oozing out to a Crane-Simplex, Claire slipped beside him, soft as a shadow, and whispered, "Please don't go. I want to talk to you. Please!" There was fluttering wistfulness in her voice, though instantly it was gone as she hastened to the door and was to be heard asserting that she did ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... a moment Maza hesitated, but when the call was repeated he came out from behind the screen of flowers and so towards us across the court-yard; and as he advanced I perceived that he was lame. In his face was the look of wistfulness which cripples so often have, and there was a rare sweetness and intelligence in the expression of his large brown eyes. In a moment I understood why it was that Tizoc resented so bitterly the abrogation by the ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... left a single essay of high genius, a fantastic historical work, a few books of school exercises. A privately printed volume of Letters and Journals reveals the extraordinary quality of his mind, its delicacy, its beauty, its wistfulness, its charm. There remains but the little volume of verse which is here presented, which stands apart from the poetical literature of the age. We see in these poems a singular and original contribution ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... say sick much," answered Mother, with a touch of wistfulness in her gentle eyes, "but it looks like, day by day, I can see Mis' Bostick slipping away from us, same as one of the white garden lilies what on the third day just closes up its leaves when you ain't looking and when you go ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to play cricket," said Drusie in a tone from which she tried to keep the wistfulness ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... misunderstand." A note of wistfulness sounded in the high voice. "You won't misunderstand, will you, Jack? I ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the very draught? He turned away as he dropped this interrogative sigh, and in doing so perceived that in another part of the pier two ladies and a little boy were gathered with something of the same wistfulness. The little boy indeed happened to look round for a moment, upon which, with the keenness of the predatory age, he recognised in our young man a source of pleasures from which he lately had been weaned. He bounded forward with irrepressible cries of "Geegee!" and Peter lifted ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... and after a word or two exchanged with him Dolly began to go round the room, looking to see if anything needed her ordering hand. Truly she found nothing. Coming to the window, she paused a moment in idle wistfulness to see how the summer sunshine lay upon the oaks of the park. And standing there, she saw Mr. Shubrick, slowly going over the bridge. She turned away and went on with her progress ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... was troubled with a sense of regret, noticed that there was a suggestive wistfulness in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... says a Daily Mail correspondent, "is gloriously, tenderly, wistfully beautiful." We rather gather that it is the lid of Carmelite House that gives it just that little note of wistfulness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... Ermentrude's length of limb forbade Christina to suppose her less than fourteen or fifteen. "What, wilt not look at her?" he said, trying to raise her head; and then, holding out one of her wasted, feverish hands to Christina, he again asked, with a wistfulness that had a strange effect from the large, tall man, almost ten years her elder, "Canst thou ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pasture a fox barked distinctly and a coon answered the plaint of the screech owl in a voice not unlike his. It always seems to me that the night hunters of pasture and woodland bewail the passing of such a night as much as I do. The whippoor-will began to voice his petulant wistfulness again. He had been silent for hours, feasting I dare say on myriad moths and unable to call with his mouth full. The whippoor-will chants matins as querulously as he does vespers. Far in the east the stars that had been gleaming brighter as the moon descended paled again. The ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... and restful there in that sunny hollow on the breast of the mountain. The wind swept through the worn branches of the dwarfed spruce with immemorial wistfulness; but these young souls heard it only as a far-off song. Side by side on the soft Alpine clover they rested and talked, looking away at the shining peaks, and down over the dark-green billows of fir beneath them. Half the forest was under their eyes at the moment, and the man said: ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... and wearisome. This Christmas was different. The year was dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature. Cockhoolet stood high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... with girlish wistfulness in the blue depths of her eyes, with the something tragic in the lines of her face that little Patience's death had written there irradicably, with poverty speaking from every fold of the blouse and skirt, yet with all the indescribable charm of girlish beauty at fifteen, Lydia ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... change in Sidney. Le Moyne was quick to see it. She was a trifle subdued, with a puzzled look in her blue eyes. Her mouth was tender, as always, but he thought it drooped. There was a new atmosphere of wistfulness about the girl that made his ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... exactly how you're feeling, old chap," he said sympathetically. "I get a dash of the same thing sometimes—generally in the springtime. It begins with a sort of wistfulness, a sense of expansion follows, you go about all the time with your head in the clouds. You want to collect all the beautiful things in life and express them. Oh, I know all about it. It generally means a girl. Where were you ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her large, gray, and childlike eyes, at Banneker, eating his oysters in peaceful unconsciousness of being made a subject for discussion. Miss Forbes was a Greuze portrait come to life and adjusted to the extremes of fashion. Behind an expression of the sweetest candor and wistfulness, as behind a safe bulwark, she preserved an effrontery which balked at no defiance of conventions in public, though essentially she was quite sufficiently discreet for self-preservation. Also she had a keen little brain, a reckless but good-humored ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... otherwise might have lived in peace, just as well without a church as with one. But the girl listened listlessly and unsmilingly, hardly hearing what was said. Going out of the room she sat for a long time on the doorstep, watching the forest path with patient wistfulness. But there was no sign of the young doctor's coming back and it was a relief when David came up the river bank. He reminded her that she had asked him to go with her to the Sisters' house, and she arose and went indoors ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the wistfulness of his voice), "Ain't it time you were riding again, Kit, and playing cards with the boys? They like to have you 'round. They're getting jealous of ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... little romance if you like," the girl said, a faint wistfulness in her sweet voice. "Sixty or seventy years ago, Mr. Wildred tells me, a very dashing ancestor of his fell in love with a Miss Cunningham. That is not a very uncommon name, you know. He was penniless, and she an heiress. Her father would have nothing ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... A troubled wistfulness showed itself upon the young man's face. "You speak so confidently," he said, "that I almost feel I ought to believe you. Why do you tell me that I am the only one of her suitors who would certainly be rejected ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors; and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness, and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... too old," he said. "I have not been upon the seas these two years past. Who can say that I may not have lost the art of victory. No, no." He shook his head, and his face grew overcast and softened by wistfulness. "Sakr-el-Bahr commands this time, and if Marzak ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... and Costobarus regarded her with growing wistfulness. At this last moment his love was to become his obstacle, his fear for ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... himself absolutely indifferent. Was he falling in love? Had he been asked the question, he would honestly have answered that he was about the last person in the world to form a romantic attachment. There was no kind of sentimental wistfulness in his nature; his imagination had no poetical trick of investing the face and form of any passably good-looking girl with a halo of rainbow-hues; even as a lad his dreams had concerned themselves more with the possibility of his becoming a great musician than with his sharing his fame and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... new love put forth its strength, not the pale beatitude of his dream, with its sweet wistfulness, its shy desires. That was large and vague and insubstantial, permeating like an odor the humdrum purlieus of the day. This was savage, triumphant, that leaped like flame from his heart to his mouth, that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... his gesture, and sank down in a chair with that inimitable noiseless grace which made every attitude of hers a study for an artist, and waited for his next words; while he, standing opposite to her, bent his eyes upon her face with a certain wistfulness ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... leave me all alone, would you, children?" asked Lady Warburton, and there was a certain wistfulness in her sharp face that seemed ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... the carriage Phoebe looked at David. The appealing wistfulness of her face touched him. He patted her arm reassuringly and whispered to her, "Don't you worry. It'll come out all right. Mother ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... her own Orient. I had noted the widening of her intellect, the quickening of her sympathies. I had been conscious of the expansion of her soul in the great silences when the stars flamed over the infinite sea of sand. But a growing wistfulness that was no longer the old doglike pleading of her glorious eyes, a gathering sadness that was not an aftermath of grief for the child that had gone—into this, if I did remark it, I did not choose to inquire. Instead, I continued my study of Arabic and cultivated the acquaintance ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... when the automobile returned for her. Then the heart of that frivolous woman was stricken for a moment with wistfulness. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Huldah's most palatable dishes, Ptolemy came in. There ensued on our part a silence which the lad made no effort to break. Silvia and I each slipped him a side glance. He stood statuesque, watching us with the mute wistfulness of a hungry animal. There were unwonted small red specks high upon his cheekbones, symptoms, Silvia ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a smile, but in spite of her effort not to appear depressed, there was a touching wistfulness in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... standard, Mary Burton should have been a very happy young woman, sitting crowned and in state, while before her Life passed in review. This afternoon, however, certain reflections brought the harassment of unrest to her eyes and a droop of wistfulness to the curve ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... all a feverish anodyne to still some inward unease. Since they must (not being fools) be aware that these antics were mere subtraction of time from their business, the obvious conclusion was, they were not happy with business. There was some strange wistfulness in the conduct of Big Business Dogs, he thought. Under the pretence of transacting affairs, they were really trying to discover something ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... there, keeping up the fire and uttering, with some acumen, comments on the obvious aspects of the weather, of the climate, of the visible universe. The bookkeeper was a young man, very ready to agree with Ebenezer for the sake of future favour, but with the wistfulness of all industrial machines constructed by men from human potentialities. Also, he had a cough and thin hands and a ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... laughed, but there was just a shade of wistfulness in their laughter, for they knew that the boys were only skirting the outer edge of the hardships they would be called upon to ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... And the wistfulness of her silence touched him. He felt contrition. He did not stop to analyze his own emotions, but he had an inkling that once this strange situation was ended he would have food for reflection. What struck him most now was the girl's blanched face, the strong, nervous clasp ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale, sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talk with such a fairylike creature was a happiness too great to ever be their lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... made to a ship in Conrad's works is always a sailing-ship, a merchant ship, a ship about which from the very beginning there is something human, mellow, rich, traditional, idiosyncratic, characteristic, full of imaginative wistfulness and with an ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... adventures and more than Spartan hardships to assure the future reader that, "ye peale of his laugh was as clear and tuneful as ye fox horn with which our Virginia gentry were wont to go afield with horse and hound." There had possibly been a touch of wistfulness in that mention of a renounced life of greater affluence and pleasure for hard upon it ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... wife, and the wistfulness in her voice hurt me—'David, would you be very, very disappointed if we went from here—without trying to find out ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... at a little table. A scroll lay on it open before her, but her eyes were not fixed on it. With hands clasped under her chin she gazed into the vacancies with eyes of far-away reflection and longing. There was something pathetic in the intensity and wistfulness of the lonely figures. She turned and rose to meet them, a smile of rare tenderness lighting up her face as she saw Liban. The dim glow of a single lamp but half revealed the youthful figure, the pale, beautiful face, out of which the sun-colours had faded. Her hair of raven ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... edge of the pavement looking up with a curious wistfulness at the old house; a very pathetic figure, I thought, with her handsome face and proud carriage, her threadbare dress and shabby gloves, standing at the threshold of the home that had been her family's for generations, that should ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... moment, for she had at other times called up considerably more than she had expected or desired from the unsounded depths of the man's nature. For a second or two there was a great wistfulness, which changed into a little glow she shrank from, in his eyes. He turned them upon her, and then away, and they were once more grave when he looked back again. Still, she guessed what that effort had ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... said the vegetable, waking from a reverie. He had been watching Nelly's face. Its wistfulness ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... together and hold them between his own. But most of all he loved to see Harris bending over him, moving about him, and when Lilian came and gave him drink and touched his fevered head, his glittering eyes would soften and follow her with such a world of wistfulness as though they would speak the longing of his heart. Then he would look from her to Harris, and from Harris back to her, in a way that sent the blushes surging to her forehead, and the sight of those blushes set that young soldier's heart ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... true. By what they had suffered, apart, by what they had tested and rejected, they had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be accepted. No wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that which had been given. And resolved hearts ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... long enough to make up for the ills of our brief troubled life here. But his mind seemed preoccupied. These future joys did not take that hold upon him that she earnestly desired. His eyes seemed to grow dim in tender, tearful wistfulness, rather than become inspired with immortal ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... "Isn't it lucky he has himself drawn a red-herring across the track? I didn't mind his blows—you were safe!" Then, with one of her adorable transitions, "I am dreaming of another ice," she cried with roguish wistfulness. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Also you may see me at other times, but if so, unless I speak to you, do not speak to me. Now go your ways, fearing nothing. However great may seem your peril, I say to you—fear nothing. Soon you will hear ill things spoken of me, yet"—and here a touch of human wistfulness came into his inhuman voice—"I pray you believe them not. When I am named Murgh the Fiend and Murgh the Sword, then think of me as Murgh the Helper. What I do is decreed by That which is greater than I, and if you could understand it, leads by terrible ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... long at the sketch, a strange wistfulness in his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever do as ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... my mother?" Tony asked suddenly, with a shadow of wistfulness in her dark eyes. There were so few people whom she met that had known her mother. It was as if Laura LaRue had moved in a different orbit from that of her daughter. It always hurt Tony to feel that. But ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to remember," returned Mrs. Wilder gently. Yet there was a wistfulness in her voice that caused Horace to look up, and, at the sight of her face, he left his chair, ran and put his arm ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... question of there being so disgustingly much to get over. If we had, for people like them, but the one ugly spot and the one weak side; if we had made, between us, but the one vulgar kind of mistake: well, I don't say!" She reflected with a wistfulness of note that was in itself a touching eloquence. "To have our reward in this world we've had too sweet a time. We've had it all right down here!" said Julia Bride. "I should have taken the precaution to have about ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... ambition for hazardous undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something that he was pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an air of wistfulness. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... up with that wistfulness which so draws me. Her look said: "I pity you. I wish you were as happy as I." And a thought leaped out in answer to her look which would have smote her had it spoken. It was, "You, too, are awakened by a false dawning." Why is she so sure of herself and of you? Is she sure? The puny bit of writing ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next morning, and often bears in its rear a trail of wistfulness which may endure a week. Only within the last few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before that period there was a series of other recurrent dreams. What will the next be? For I mean to oust ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... else the story of that last year of struggle against love which had ended in her unconditional surrender to it. To her it was as something bitter-sweet, to be locked in her memory for all time. Yet the wistfulness of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the defile at her back, her hands clasped over her knee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sun was ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Her lashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama at her feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from the intimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was the silence which held her in a spell as still ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. "I am afraid of myself, Howat," she told him; "all that I have been, my life—against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different. Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... girl whose nose never turns red on a frosty morning. A little, white, exquisite nose, purest example of the degree of perfection which may be attained by that vulgarest of features. Under her great gray eyes were faint violet shadows which gave her a look of almost poignant wistfulness. If there is a less hackneyed way to describe her head on its slender throat than to say it was like a lovely flower on its stalk, you are free to use it. Her slow, sweet smile gave the beholder an actual physical pang. Only her family knew she was lazy as a behemoth, untidy about her person, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... said the Baron simply, with half a bow. "And Hugh Bethune, now—well, well! I am proud that he should mind of his old friend in the tame Highlands. Good Hugh!"—a strange wistfulness came to the Baron's utterance—"Good Hugh! he'll wear tartan when he has the notion, I'm supposing, though, after all, he was no Gael, or a very far-out one, for all that he was in the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... a running pen, and sometimes he smiled as he wrote. More than once he paused and looked across the Neuer Markt above the trees and the roofs, towards the western sky, with a sudden grave wistfulness. He was thinking of some one in the west. It was assuredly not of war that this soldier wrote. Then, again, his attention would be attracted to some passer in the street below. He only gave half of his attention ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... suddenly given to him in the midst of Autumn. Her lips, her eyes, her hair; her touching confidence; above all—quite unbelievable—her love. Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy. But on the wings of fancy this child would fly far, too far—all wistfulness and warmth beneath that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... spring as she heard the rush and splash of the creek, saw the flash of wings and felt the mystery of awakened life throbbing about her. The heart of a girl in spring is the home of dreams, and Shirley's heart overflowed with them, until her pulse thrilled and sang in quickening cadences. The wistfulness of April, the dream of unfathomable things, shone in her brown eyes; and a girl with dreams in her eyes is the divinest work of the gods. Into this twentieth century, into the iron heart of cities, she still comes, and the clear, high stars of April nights and the pensive ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... creature, why won't you take us seriously?" laughed Julia, but her voice still held an undercurrent of wistfulness. "Does the fact that we are twins have this ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... have bullied you." There was an odd note of wistfulness in the harsh voice, and for a moment the handsome, arrogant old face softened incredibly. "I shouldn't have ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... her eyes about the room as if from the extremity of martyrdom or the wistfulness of some deep thought. Yet when she spoke it was with a different expression, an expression that would have served for an observer as a marked illustration of that disconnectedness of her parts which frequently was laughable even to the degree of contributing to her social success. "You've spent ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... with father, of course; and I think she's—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn't get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said it, and it struck me all at once that I'd been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... over the past. Swiftly he reviewed his memories of Mme. de Plougastel, her singular if sporadic interest in him, the curious blend of affection and wistfulness which her manner towards him had always presented, and at last he understood so much that ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and not the youth of the supposed hilarity, the attributive recklessness, the daring hopes. Perhaps there is some such youth as this, but it has not its home in the breast of any young poet, and he rarely utters it; at best he is of a light melancholy, a smiling wistfulness, and upon the whole, October is more to his mind ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... correct little world—not only the shopkeepers but the buyers therein. She represented youthful love. Her life must be, and was, an idyll! True, she had no perambulator, but middle-aged ladies greeted her with wistfulness in their voices and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... nights I didn't come across them, but the night after that I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... day at last when thought and recollection began to struggle back—when she had strength to lie awake and think. More than once Trix caught the dark eyes fixed in silent wistfulness upon her—a question in them her lips would not ask. But Miss Stuart guessed it, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the Tyro surprised in her face a change; a look of infinite wistfulness and tenderness, the yearning of the eternal mother that rises in every true woman when she gazes upon the child that might have been her own; and suddenly a great longing surged over his soul and mastered him for the moment. But the baby ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... these years, swept him to a harsher revolt than he had conquered in the library. In the face of Graham, in spite of his own intolerable position he knew he couldn't fight that truth eternally. She must have noticed his struggle without grasping its cause, for she touched his hand, and the wistfulness of her ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... smile would touch her lips and linger in her eyes. There were times when she felt that she herself was the only real thing among shadows; as if all these pleasant things must vanish, and only her lonesome self remain. She watched with a certain wistfulness the few people she knew. Marcia, now—so admired, so sure, with so many interests, so many friends, and with Jason Vandervelde's quiet love always hers—did she ever have that haunting sense of the impermanence of all possessions; of having, in ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range At the back of my life's horizon, where the ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... you're not, dear," commented Billie with a look which quickly brought an answering light to his eyes. Yet, behind her remark there was a certain wistfulness which the doctor ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... The wistfulness of the fair little face touched the general's gallant soul to the quick. "'Pon my word," he declared. "If you care as much as that for their friendship, you shall have it. I'll conduct a campaign into the enemy's quarters, and capture ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... found herself watching with curious wistfulness the girl who had really had an offer of marriage, who was engaged, openly adored and desired. What had he said to her—and she to him— what emotions crossed their hearts when they went to watch the building of the beautiful home that was to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... was a man of a very brave, fearlessly outspoken character. Some of his practical applications in his sermons before the Magistrates are daring in their directness of reproof, and melting in their wistfulness of entreaty. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... now there was only the ghost of that finer, gentler man she had helped to bring into being. The piercing dark eyes he bent upon her burned her, went through her as if he were looking into her soul. Then Madeline's quick sight caught a fleeting doubt, a wistfulness, a surprised and saddened certainty in his eyes, saw it shade and pass away. Her woman's intuition, as keen as her sight, told her Stewart in that moment had sustained a shock ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... to put her hand on my shoulder. She was looking at me with an expression of wistfulness, and a big tear was trickling down her cheek. I threw myself on my knees and tried to speak, but that was still impossible. I could do no more than mutter the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... once did she doubt the motive which prompted such neglect. From the moment of their meeting the consciousness of his love had enveloped her. He might set a seal on his lips, but he could not control his eyes, and the wistfulness of that ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... men's faces, controlled and expectant, with a certain every-day expression in anticipation of what, in its blind terror and life and death importance to him, was a familiar occurrence to them, and on the one woman's face, controlled too, but with an indescribable wistfulness under the control. Then he made his childish appeal, shrill with misery, "Oh, gentlemen, will you not stop till ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... ain't to expect anything special from now on?" asked the skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... upon him by mysterious forces, drew him also by her beauty and a certain wistfulness in her eyes. He had once had a dog, Amber Witch, whose eyes had held always a wistful question. He had tried to answer it. She had grown old on his hearth, yet always to the end of her eyes had asked. He hoped now that in some ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... of raillery was a trace of wistfulness, "we've lived like Guinea Negroes here for three years, and yet I believe you like it. I don't believe you'd go back right now as professor of ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... not vain, for he was neither afraid nor ashamed to expose his ignorance, his amazing lack of experience. He had a greater trouble, one that I had not fathomed. Sometimes there came over his face a look of importunate wistfulness and distressed perplexity, and he seemed on the point of breaking out with something that he wished to tell me—or to ask me, for it might have been a question—but he always kept it back. Keredec's training seldom lost ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... round quickly, and took up a position in the prow, where I leant with careless grace upon the hitcher, in an attitude suggestive of agility and strength. I arranged my hair with a curl over the forehead, and threw an air of tender wistfulness into my expression, mingled with a touch of cynicism, which ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... had made the praise sound terribly sincere. He had not spoken to her at all after the first careless nod of recognition when he rode up. And although her reason had approved of his caution, her sore heart ached for a little kindness from him. She turned her eyes toward him now with a certain wistfulness; but though Ramon chanced to be looking toward her she got no answering light in his eyes, no careful little signal that his heart was yearning for her. He seemed remote, as indifferent to her as were any of the others dulled by accustomedness ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... is only one door to the kingdom of heaven, there is many an entrance to scientific divinity. There is the gate of Free Inquiry as well as the gate of Spiritual Wistfulness. And although there are exceptional instances, on the whole we can predict what school the new-comer will join, by knowing the door through which he entered. If from the wide fields of speculation he has sauntered inside the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... that stabs every true sportsman as he realizes that he has extinguished a spark of life shadowed Terry's thin, sensitive face. It was a face of singular appeal, dominated by a queer twist of upper lip that stamped his mouth with a permanent wistfulness. Even in the bracing cold of the winter morning his skin was white, but the clear pallor was belied by the swift energy with which he moved and the eager sparkle of his dark gray eyes. He picked up the fluffy bundle and stroked the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... disturbed me. Ruth rose in the morning, after some of those protracted sessions, suspiciously quiet and subdued. In place of the radiance that so lately had shone upon her face, often I perceived a puzzled and troubled expression. In place of her almost hilarious joy, a wistfulness stole into ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that he ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... is a tone of wistfulness in David's voice as he tells how his heart's desire had been prohibited. The account is substantially the same as we have in 2 Samuel vii. 4-16, but it adds as the reason for the prohibition David's warlike career. We may note the earnestness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... before? There was nothing remarkable about the face except its peculiarly gentle and placid expression—yet it was a face of considerable resolution as well, and there were lines about the mouth which told of endurance and fortitude, almost contradicting the wistfulness of the boyish-looking blue eyes. Jack grew more and more puzzled. Something seemed ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... at the interminable spin of the landscape with a certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what skill and patience ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... near him, but wisely refrained from saying anything just at that moment. Silence seemed to favor the change that was taking place for the better in Mat's temper. He looked up, after awhile, and regarded Zack with a rough wistfulness and anxiety working ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins |
