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More "Reflective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a score of impossible trees, turned midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the Chinese New-year in Canton a drab and sober event in comparison. He hated Flora Desimone, as all Nora's adherents most properly did, but with a hatred wholly reflective ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... reception of my poetry. I have tried it every way—ballades by the bale, sonnets by the dozen, loyal odes, seditious songs, drawing-room poetry, an Epic on the history of Labducuo, erotic verse, all fire, foam, and fangs, reflective ditto, humble natural ballads about signal-men and newspaper-boys, Life-boat rescues, Idyls, Nocturnes in rhyme, tragedies in blank verse. Nobody will print them, or, if anybody prints them, he regrets that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... part of the quarter-deck, where the shadow of the White Ensign curved and flickered across the planking. Perhaps the Captain, who stood there, was himself a student of the art. At any rate, as the men marched aft through the screen doors his level eyes passed from face to face, reflective, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... there are?" "Say! why, I shall say ten to be sure." To which the other rejoined, with great triumph, "Ten! Try ye him wi' ten! I tried him wi' a hunner, and he wasna satisfeed." Another answer from a little girl was shrewd and reflective. The question was, "Why did the Israelites make a golden calf?" "They hadna as muckle siller as ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... on behalf of her servants, was either, 1st, the danger from the simple fact, now suddenly made known to them, that it was possible for a person unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This general fact was appreciable by those who would forget, and never ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... that hallowing of Sunday as a day of sacred and joyful observance which is coeval with the earliest traditions, and antedates all records, is an attestation as significant as any monumental marble. No hallucination theory, no gradual rise and growth of hope in the minds of a reflective few, can account for that solid primeval monument. But what occurred, the reality in distinctness from any legendary accretions, we shall be better able to conclude, when the truth shall have been threshed out concerning the reality, at present strongly attested, and ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... anything which William Morris wrote. He preserves little of the directness or fierce temper of the early epic. Rather does his Ulysses think and speak like some bold adventurer of the Renaissance, with the combination of ardent curiosity and reflective thought which was the mark of that age. Even so Tennyson himself, as he passed from youth to middle life, and from that to old age, was ever trying to achieve one more 'work ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... reflective. "You wouldn't be thinkin' about writing us up or anything. I mean, this is a ...
— Dream Town • Henry Slesar
... even in London. Then he had plenty of courage, which made the men respect him; and, above all, was very good-looking—an advantage which, doubtless, has a certain weight even with our far-sighted and reflective sex. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... it, the Prime Motor, Who was nothing else than God, intervened to decide the channel of the current. The only difference between man and a vegetable was the reflex action of the complicated mirror which was called mind, and the mark of mind was reflective absorption or choice. The apparent freedom was an illusion arising from the extreme delicacy of the machine, but the motive power was in fact the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... peaked cap making a spot of colour against Audrey's white gown. 'So that is the island where Kester found the forget-me-nots for Mollie? It looks as though one could carry it off bodily in one's arms,' he continued, after a reflective pause. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... odd smile, reflective, yet anticipatory; amused, absent-minded, barely disturbing the lines of her beautifully modeled red lips. Had any of Mrs. Ennis's enemies, and they were not few in number, seen it, they would have surmised mischief afoot; had any of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that it was impossible to get rid of this defect, and therefore turned his attention to the construction of reflectors. But the discovery that the dispersive powers of different glasses are not proportional to their reflective powers, supplied opticians with the means of remedying the defect. Let us clearly understand what is the discovery referred to. If with a glass prism of a certain form we produce a spectrum of the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... went along, was telling me more of her strange country, pointing out birds or flowers and naming them to me. "Now that," she said, pointing to a small grey owl who sat reflective on a floating log we were approaching—"that is a bird of omen; cover your face and look away, for it is not well to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Japanese have never been spiritually gifted. We are neither meditative and reflective like the Hindus nor individualistic like the Anglo-Saxons. Nevertheless, like all mankind we have spiritual yearnings. They will be best stirred by impulses ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... revelations are imperatively needed in order to tell this simple history, in which we seek to interest those souls that are naturally grave and reflective and find their sustenance in tender emotions. If the writer, like the surgeon beside his dying friend, is filled with a species of reverence for the subject he is handling, should not the reader ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... were his relations. He possessed a vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, and the work short. His nature was not adapted either to lay an extensive plan, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gentry an animated receipt-book. Some of the information she communicated, indeed, was so valuable and important that she could not trust the air with it, but whispered the most important portions in a confidential tone. Among the crowd, Cerinthy Ann's theological admirer was observed in deeply reflective attitude; and that high-spirited young lady added further to his convictions of the total depravity of the species by vexing and discomposing him in those thousand ways in which a lively, ill-conditioned young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... not mind; she understood. She looked at his glowing face, all alight with enthusiasm for the work to which he was going back. She was never tired of thinking how Karl's face was just what Karl's face should be—reflective of a clear-cut, far-seeing, deeply comprehending mind. It seemed all written there—all those things of mind and character, and something too of those other things—the things which were for her alone. Ernestine held that one could tell by looking at ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... yourself, please let me have a list of three or four of those most likely to respond, and I will address them through the Post Office. May I also ask you to favour me with any critical observations that have ever presented themselves to your reflective faculties, on "Cain, a Mystery," by the Right Honourable ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... who, though enriched by trade, had come of an old Border race, he had had the best education money could procure. More fortunate still in the endowments of nature, he was well formed, strong, active, and blessed with perfect health; while mentally he was intelligent and reflective, thoughtful rather than brilliant, and by temperament profoundly calm. He had never got into scrapes or committed extravagance. He was the despair of managing mammas and fascinating young married women; yet he was not unpopular ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... midst of these things even now as I write this book. I am not in a reflective mood, living in the past or glorying in deeds of other days. I am writing this today and of today, even as you ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... but in the depths and amongst the mazes of science, it was but seldom that these men of the study and the library found leisure and nerve to escape from seclusion, and to take their share of the duties of active life in which their less reflective brethren were feverishly engaged. And when they attempted the competition, their failure was signal. They presented an extraordinary exhibition of awkward genius and blundering sagacity, and exposed themselves at once to the painful ridicule of those whose calling and pursuits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... solemnity of its peace. It did not, indeed, strike the spirit with that religious awe which is apt to fall upon us as we gaze along the vaulted aisles of great cathedrals, but it appealed perhaps with equal strength to the softer and more reflective side of our nature. For generation after generation that house had been the home of men like ourselves; they had passed and were forgotten, but it remained, the sole witness of the stories of their lives. Hands of which the very bones had long since crumbled into dust ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... had toddled up and addressed the reflective guest. Sir William never knew exactly how the house party was composed; and sometimes a man had been staying at the Grange for a fortnight without Sir William comprehending that the man was sleeping beneath ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... ladies, and not murder 'em, eh?' said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve. 'Sweet boy! We shall have this little gentleman in Parliament now,' said the Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, and looking as reflective as he could, 'before we know where we are. We shall hear of his successes at the poll; his speeches in the House; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... silent while the priest helped himself to snuff. The little man's eyes became tenderly reflective ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... result. Verena's genius was a mystery, and it might remain a mystery; it was impossible to see how this charming, blooming, simple creature, all youth and grace and innocence, got her extraordinary powers of reflexion. When her gift was not in exercise she appeared anything but reflective, and as she sat there now, for instance, you would never have dreamed that she had had a vivid revelation. Olive had to content herself, provisionally, with saying that her precious faculty had come ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... haven't been able to sit down anywhere down-stairs for three months without sitting on some dam boy; but they don't even know we're alive! Well, thank the Lord, it's over—after to-night!" His voice became reflective. "That Baxter boy was the worst, until he took to coming in the daytime when I was down-town. I COULDN'T have stood it if he'd kept on coming in the evening. If I'd had to listen to any more of his talking or singing, either the embalmer or the lunatic-asylum would ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... ease, his left elbow resting on an arm of the sedilium, his forefinger supporting his cheek, his cloak across his lap. The attitude was reflective; the countenance exposed under the lifted visor of the helmet, was calm and benignant; except there was no suggestion of an evil revery holding the current of his thought, or casting a shade of uncertainty over his soul, he looked not unlike the famous ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Poppy, in a reflective tone; "they are all in the dining-room as snug as possible over their high tea. They have shrimps for tea, and a wonderful new kind of paste that Aunt Flint brought in to-day. It's called Gentlemen's Relish, and eats well on hot toast, and I made a lot. Oh, my! won't the ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the issue of national life or death. The stand of the heroic Greeks at Thermopylae denying passage to the hosts of Persia was not more vital to the cause of civilization than this storied defense of Verdun. The reflective writer can but notice that in every campaign of the war, when further success of the German armies meant victory, it was as if an unseen Power decreed "thus far and no further." It was so at Verdun. The French soldier, calmly going to death, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... used to be intimate enough. But my nephew and niece have been away a great deal, and old people can't be expected to do much in the way of visiting. But I have a notion," she said, after gazing a few moments in a reflective way at the corner of the house, "that it would be well now to be a little more sociable again. My niece has no company here of her own sex, except me, and I think it would do her good to know a young lady like Miss March. Mr Brandon has asked me to let ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... powers; as frequent occasions occur, in which the incidents of the narrative, and the conversations arising from them, are intended to awaken and engage the reasoning and reflective faculties ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... must understand, sir," continued Jurgen, smoothly, "that, whatever the first impulse of the moment, it was apparent to any reflective person that in the past of each of these ladies there was much to suggest inborn inaptitude for domestic life. And I am a peace-loving fellow, sir; nor do I hold with moral laxity, now that I am forty-odd, except, of course, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... but a reflective description. Yet how it illuminates! If we had never thought of it before we know now, once and for all, the essential difference between a Gothic church and one of Wren's building. And further, since Mrs. Woods is writing of an age that slighted Gothic for the architecture of Wren ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though I have attempted to state rather than to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, those which, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modern thought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the more instructed and reflective men of ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... mind may by courtesy be called a religion, for it is his reaction on the whole nature of things, it is systematic and reflective and it loyally binds him to certain inner ideals. I think you will recognize in him, coarse-meated and incapable of wounded spirit as he is, a ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Nevertheless there remained to him enough lucidity to alarm him at his own progress. An artist yields more through his sensibility to waves of emotion which reach him from without, but to resist them he has also weapons which others have not. For the least reflective, he who abandons himself to his lyrical impulses, has in some degree the faculty of introspection which it rests with him to utilise. If he does not do this, he lacks good-will more than power; he is afraid to look too clearly at himself for fear of seeing an ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her. His good nature had taken off the keenest edge ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... incessantly, and it was the pivot on which the imperial policy revolved; it exercised a spell scarcely less powerful and disastrous upon monarchists like Thiers and republicans like Gambetta. Long foreseen, the dread shock, like all grave calamities, came nevertheless as a surprise, even upon reflective minds. Statesmen and soldiers who looked on, while they shared in the natural feelings aroused by so tremendous a drama, were also the privileged witnesses of two instructive experiments on a grand scale—the processes whereby mighty armies are brought into ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... one element in the question which the author has omitted to notice; that is, the parallel passage in St. Mark. This differs so widely from the text of St. Matthew as to show that that text cannot accurately represent the original; it also wants the reflective comment altogether. Accordingly, if the author will turn to p. 275 of Ewald's book [Endnote 120:1] he will find that that writer, though roughly assigning the passage as it appears in both Synoptics to the 'oldest Gospel,' yet in reconstructing ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... difference between the activity of consciousness in the "drifting" process of association of ideas and its power to stem the association current, and to turn it into new directions by means of the reflective power of ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... the human mind, as comprehensive, intelligible, and satisfactory as the Newtonian mechanism of the heavens," exclaims, "Fallen from their elevation, Art and Science and Virtue would no longer be to man the objects of a genuine and reflective adoration." We are led, in reflecting upon the far more probable success of the meteorologist, to similar forebodings upon the dulness and sameness to which social intercourse will be reduced when the weather philosophers shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... enjoying the singular adventurousness and novelty of my tour, but ten hours or more daily spent in the saddle in this rarefied, intoxicating air, disposes one to sleep rather than to write in the evening, and is far from conducive to mental brilliancy. The observing faculties are developed, and the reflective lie dormant. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... a doctor," continued Joe, who was almost as much absorbed in his story as were his listeners, and spoke in a reflective, musing way, "and he succeeded in finding one who was stopping for a few days at the hotel. Poor Bob was very kind to us in our trouble, and I never heard him mention a word about his own losses, which must have been severe. After the funeral was over, and I found I had nothing to inherit but the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... drear, a November day is a carnival for the reflective observer; the very falling of the leaves, intercepted in their descent by a little whirl or hurricane, is to him a feast of meditation, and "the soul, dissolving, as it were, into a spirit of melancholy enthusiasm, acknowledges that silent pathos, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... it well," added the captain, noticing the boy's reflective manner. "A sailor's life is by no means easy, yet a bright, active lad can rise. Many a ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... out-of-doors, who had lost with her baby softness all her resemblance to her mother. Her hair and eyes had darkened as she grew, and she was to be a larger woman, graver, deeper, more reserved; perhaps better calculated for the Kingdom by reason of a more reflective mind. He adored her, and was awed by her even when he taught her the truths of revealed religion. He closed his eyes at night upon a never-ending prayer for her soul; and opened them each day to a love of her that grew insidiously to enthrall him while he was all unconscious of its power—even ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... told that he could stand aside, and a murmur went round the ring of spectators to the effect that Cormac was the winner. Then Champion Munster was told to stand aside, and the crowd placed him second. And then the Judge spent five reflective minutes in pondering over Champion Dermot Asthore, the most famous Irish Wolfhound of his day, and young Finn, his son, and the son of beautiful Tara. The crowd wondered which of these two was to have third prize, the celebrated old champion or ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... terminated their inductive labours by assigning that unity and correlation which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read thought in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... for thought. Wimperley, dismissing the idea of lunch, sat down. The group became universally reflective, and for a little while no one spoke. Stoughton threw away his cigar, rested his chin on his hand and stared at the model of the pulp mill on Wimperley's desk. Wimperley's eyes wandered to the big map and again ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of an eager, observant, reflective, aspiring, and always original young woman whose formative years have been divided between the stifling restrictions of the 'Pale' and the glorious freedom of America. The infectious optimism and high courage of the book, as well as the vigor and picturesqueness of its style, with its frequent ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... have been used, see Zumpt, S 662. [50] Ubi—convertit, 'when it had changed (itself).' For ubi with the perfect in the sense of a pluperfect, see Zumpt, S 506; and for the use of vertere in an intransitive or reflective sense, S 145. [51] In the earliest times they were called praetores or leaders, qui praeeunt exercitui; afterwards consules. As two were elected every year, Sallust uses ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... grotesque and embarrassing to justify; putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself which made it come dangerously near a criminal offence. Like all men without much imagination, which is such a help in the processes of reflective thought, Lieutenant D'Hubert became frightfully harassed by the obvious aspects of his predicament. He was certainly glad that he had not killed Lieutenant Feraud outside all rules and without the regular witnesses proper to such a transaction. Uncommonly ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... was, almost from the first, in a wholly different case. In its early phases it, too, was imitative, reflective. MacDowell returned to America, after a twelve years' apprenticeship to European influences, in 1888, bringing with him his symphonic poems, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine," his unfinished "Lamia," his two orchestral ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... 25. The machine.—A Cartesian expression. Descartes considered animals as mere automata. According to Pascal, whatever does not proceed in us from reflective thought is a product of a necessary mechanism, which has its root in the body, and which is continued into the mind in imagination and the passions. It is therefore necessary for man so to alter, and adjust this mechanism, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... his knowledge; no fatal divorce had yet taken place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; he writes readily even for the public, without labor, without affectations. Eight years later the reflective faculty has outgrown his control; composition, which represents the practical side of the intellectual life, has become difficult and painful to him, and he has developed what he himself calls "a wavering manner, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Duality of the Brain," hoping that I could train one side of my head to do these outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties. For Richard Greenough once told me, that, in studying for the statue of Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has repeated this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is the portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of poor Richard. ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... Revolutions in a German style. People say the book is very deep: but it appears to me that the meaning seems deep from lying under mystical language. There is no repose, nor equable movement in it: all cut up into short sentences half reflective, half narrative; so that one labours through it as vessels do through what is called a short sea—small, contrary going waves caused by shallows, and straits, and meeting tides, etc. I like to sail before the wind over the surface of an even-rolling ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... that this was the complete answer. The reflective tone in which she spoke made it clear that there was more ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... as well as men who have learnt the art of a sociable silence. Josephine and Sarah finished their cigarettes and their coffee in a condition of reflective ease. Then Sarah stood up and straightened her hair in front of ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which was, that he, Alfred Bourdon, was the most gifted and the most ill-used of all God's creatures. To genius, in any intelligible sense of the term, he has in truth no pretension. He is endowed, however, with a kind of reflective talent, which is often mistaken by fools for creative power. The morbid fancies and melancholy scorn of a Byron, for instance, such gentry reflect back from their foggy imaginations in exaggerated and distorted feebleness of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... into a world very largely in the hands of older people; strong men and experienced women are there before them, and we are justified in any effectual contrivance to save them from being "gobbled up"—against their real instincts. That works—the reflective man will discover—towards whittling the previous polygamy to still smaller proportions. Here, indeed, our present arrangements fail most lamentably; each year sees a hideous sacrifice of girls, mentally scarcely more than children—to our delicacy in discussion. We give ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of an hour in profound silence, her head resting on her elbows, and her eyes fixed on mine. She did not seem either angry or astonished, but as far as I could judge was lost in thought. I was glad to see her reflective, for thus she would be able to give me a decided answer: At last ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... said John Campbell, reverently. "It is the best of teachers. The generations to whom Scotland owes everything, had no other book. It made her men calm, reflective, courageous unto death. It made her women gentle, faithful, pure, ideal. I remember my mother, Allan; she came from the same school. Her soul lived so much in the Book, that I am sure if an angel had suddenly appeared to her, she would scarcely have been surprised. What domestic ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... cultivated? Mainly by cultivating the habit of turning first to self when reflective thought is required. It is presupposed that we must consult the library and the world about us for raw facts of various kinds, for historical events, scientific data, views of men, descriptions, etc.; but when our own thought is wanted ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... only verses supposed to be chanted by the characters in the tale. It is improbable that the Yaos and Nyamwezis borrowed the custom of inserting verse into prose tales from Arab literature, where the intercalated verse is usually of a moral and reflective character. ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... sought vainly for some compliment to pay her; he busied himself with her daughter, filled her glass, waited upon her, and the child, more dignified than her mother, thanked him gravely saying, "You are very kind, Monsieur," while she listened to the conversation with a reflective air. The dinner was excellent and everyone was ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... equally fit into the Religious. But the religious poems impress us more by their beauty than by their number, if we limit it to those which are directly inspired by this particular emotion. Religious questions have occupied, as we have seen, some of Mr. Browning's most important reflective poems. Religious belief forms the undercurrent of many of the emotional poems. And it was natural therefore, that religious feeling should not often lay hold of him in a more exclusive form. It does so only in ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Lina. There are some prettier faces than yours here. You are not a model beauty like Harriet Sykes, for instance—beside her your person appears almost insignificant—but you look agreeable, you look reflective, you look ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... had been made for his capture, and the absence of any desire on her part to attract him gave first the feeling of security which soon led to a stronger one. If not pretty, she was graceful, especially so just now, he thought, in that unconscious, reflective attitude. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... legal aspect of the case, there is another aspect of it which must appeal with great force to every reflective mind. I mean the undeveloped possibilities stored up in every human soul. We may sink so low as to appear but as dull clods; but the glory of man is the potentiality within him, capable, it would seem, of ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... which are Caesar's and to God the things which are God's." The seriousness of the upturned face for a moment kept her silently reflective. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... he thought of it without bitterness. It might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor dad, and the whole story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of Costaguana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet calm and reflective. His personal feelings had not been outraged, and it is difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical or mental anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is one's own father. By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his turn, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... processes by which we render ourselves an intelligent account of what we feel and do, and so represent experience that we for the first time make it ours, they had only a loose and troubled possession. They beheld or took part in great events, but there was no answerable commotion in their reflective being; and they passed throughout turbulent epochs in a sort of ghostly quiet and abstraction. Feeling seems to have been strangely disproportioned to the occasion, and words were laughably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such as it was. Juvenal ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... don't understand why you should have "nothing to write about" because you have been in bed. Surely you must have accumulated all sorts of reflective and imaginative stories there. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... blind forces of Nature," says Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." [1.] Without a shadow of doubt, Greek Philosophy forms the firm background of progressive and reflective thought in all ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... a Crane once frequented the same marsh. The Stork was a quiet, dignified individual, with a philosophical countenance. One would never have thought, from his deeply reflective look, of the number of frogs and pollywogs, eels and small fish, that had disappeared in his meditative mouth. For the Stork was like many another philosopher, and in spite of his supernaturally wise external appearance, inside he was just as selfish, and just as voracious, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... well-marked point of distinction between these and actions that are done upon reflection. But from this it must again follow that some principle lies at the root of instinct other than that which underlies reflective action, and this can only be looked for in a determination of the will through a process that lies in the unconscious, {115a} to which this character of unhesitating infallibility will attach itself ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... distinctive work," Mr. Ruskin has justly said (Modern Painters, iii. 293), "was a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these, his love of nature would have been ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... forms are found in the verbal inflexions, e.g. d, it, and t, "I" or "me"; d-akus-t, "it see I" I see it; d-arrai-t, "it follows me." The demonstratives are used as articles: gazt-en-or, "this younger one"; andre-ori, "this lady at some distance." The reflective "self" is expressed by buru, "head." The relative does not exist, and in its place is used as a kind of verbal participle with the ending n: doa, "he goes"; doana, "he who is going"; in the modern Basque, however, by imitation of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... know." Webb's freckled face held a reflective look. "I kept puttin' it off from year to year, thinkin' I would jine, especially as everybody was constantly naggin me about it. Seems to me that I was the chief subject at every revival they held. It bothered me considerable, I tell you. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... with fond names; till master of the advantages; then exclaimed, "Leave, you thief!"—planted a vindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over-heels overboard, of course. A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in a reflective voice: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Harris. "That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom Scott would take all the trade; in two years Gorner stock would go to two hundred, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause, Harris added, "A little less than an inch a day; a little less than an INCH, mind you. Well, I'm losing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not wish to draw the ultimate conclusion from all this that it would be better for Americans were their periodical exodus to Europe to cease. Far from it. That cultivated Americans, and Americans particularly of a more reflective than active mind, should find the relative ease, culture and simplicity of European life more congenial to them than the restless, high-pressure life of America, is quite natural. And if there are no interests or ties to make their presence in their own country imperatively ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... provide all the nutrients the plant could possibly use. We can allocate only one plant to that space and make sure absolutely no competition develops in that space for light, water, or nutrients. We can keep the soil moist at all times. By locating the plant against a reflective white wall we can increase its light levels and perhaps the nighttime temperatures (plants make food during the day and use it to ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... born for everybody," Frank added in a reflective manner. "My teacher told me so on Sabbath,—so that all little children might be saved, and,—have ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... soliciting agent, the larynx is the vibrative agent, the mouth is the reflective agent. These must act in unison, or there is no result. The larynx might be called the mouth of the instrument, the inside of the mouth the pavilion, the lungs the artist. In a violin, the larynx would be the string, the lungs the bow, the mouth the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... have had a glorious and a refreshing season. I have felt, in the depths of my soul, that the eyes, of all Vermont were on me in a reflective way. As the moon is sometimes permitted to shine before the sun goes down, I have added the light of my little feminine luminary to the flood of public homage that surrounds the greatest and best man that our State ever gave ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs: and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law and luxury, commend us to the lovely Gertrude of Wyoming. His face and person were rather on a small scale; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... and the whole world seemed in summer time like a great garden. We lived deep in the country, just a little strip of ground brought in from the woods, and all round our little log house was the green trees," she said one day, the pleasant reflective look that I liked to see coming into her kind, strong face. I used to sit and listen to her homely, uncultivated speech, and wonder why I liked her so much better than my natural associates. She was so real, I could not imagine her trying to appear other than she was. Some way she seemed ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... together with just enough farming as kept his household in vegetables, milk, butter, and eggs. Living thus amongst insects, birds, cows, and the peace of trees, he had become queer. His was not a very reflective mind, it distilled but slowly certain large conclusions, and followed intently the minute happenings of his little world. To him a bee, a bird, a flower, a tree was well-nigh as interesting as a man; yet men, women, and especially children ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whether we expect to elevate and improve a nation's politics by absorbing such morbid collections and qualities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who will never get over it. Our answer is general, and is involved in the scope and letter of this essay. We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government, (having, of course, provided for the police, the safety ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... reliableness of history, and which, taking a place midway between the 'frescoed galleries' of Thierry, and the 'philosophic watch-tower of Guizot,' has all the pictorial brilliancy of the one, with much of the reflective ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... his voice an equine face, peculiarly reflective of trail wisdom, bony and large, particularly over the eyes, slowly turned toward its master. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... man, but he held holy things in reverence, and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air uttering sharp chirrups of terror,—and, leaning on ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... there are over seventy species that find their way into the United States. Many are named from the distribution of colour upon their plumage—the blue-winged yellow, the black-throated blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black poll. Perhaps the two most beautiful—most reflective of bright tropical skies and flowers—are the magnolia and the blackburnian. The first fairly dazzles us with its bluish crown, white and black face, black and olive-green back, white marked wings and tail, yellow throat and rump, and strongly streaked breast. The blackburnian is an exquisite ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Those of reflective habit may indeed find cause for thought in realising the power of small things over great, of rule over important events, of ordinary social observance over the most powerful emotion a man or woman may be torn ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... indeed, no!—I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Queen of Heav'n submiss His mandate heard; and from th' Idaean mount With rapid flight to high Olympus sped. Swift as the mind of man, who many a land Hath travell'd o'er, and with reflective thought Recalls, "here was I such a day, or here," And in a moment many a scene surveys; So Juno sped o'er intervening space; Olympus' heights she reach'd, and in the house Of Jove appear'd amid th' assembled Gods. They ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... excitements of the campaign, the prevailing tone of Lincoln's thought was deeply serious and reflective. Toward the close, when indications pointed to his defeat for the Senate, he seemed somewhat depressed, and occasionally his old habitual melancholy would steal over him and impart to his words a touching pathos. On such an occasion, in one of the smaller cities of Illinois, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to do his bidding. She saw that she had gone far enough. His mood had changed from a reflective to an angry one, and Victor Lamont was a man to fear when he was in ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... utility, economy, and fitness of the traditional arrangement in buildings or other products of art, re-enforces this formal expectation with a reflective approval. We are accustomed, for instance, to sloping roofs; the fact that they were necessary has made them familiar, and the fact that they are familiar has made them objects of study and of artistic enjoyment. If at any moment, however, the notion ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... think," said madame, with a reflective smile; "but you know two of them offered to work, for you ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... a quiet man with the air of one who knows it all and is rather sorry that he does. Sampson fondly believed himself a man of the world, and he had the pleasure of passing for one among those who knew nothing at all about the world. He was a reflective man, who had given much thought to that gravest problem of a young man's life—how to keep trousers from bagging at the knees, the failure to solve which is one of the most pathetic facts of human history. After he had made one or ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... to submit to a yoke she was not disposed to bear. This species of exile increased my attachment to her, by that natural inclination which excites me to approach the wretched, I found her mind metaphysical and reflective, although at times a little sophistical; her conversation, which was by no means that of a young woman coming from a convent, had for me the greatest attractions; yet she was not twenty years of age. Her complexion was seducingly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... unalterable faithfulness and affection. There is a certain spirit in expression that must stand inevitably associated with the collected mind. When it was wondered why Johnson cared for some unhappy mortal who had no charm or talent, Goldsmith said, in his quiet and reflective way: "The man is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough for Johnson." Concerning one who was undeserving, according to the manner of the world, who had no honour, and had forfeited all claim to character, yet still retained Johnson's compassion, Goldsmith rejoined: "This ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... the devil of thoughtlessness stood up, and in a harsh voice said: "I am the great prince of heedlessness whose duty it is to prevent a man taking reflective heed of his state; I am chief of the incessant hell-flies who utterly amaze men, ever dinning in their ears concerning their possessions or their pleasures, and never willingly allowing them a moment's leisure to think of their ways or of their end. No one of you must ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... of Pompilia, we find unusual skill. In disquisition, in the presentation of complicated and elusive intellectual processes, there is a quite unmatched agility and dexterity. Probably no two forms of poetry contain more of Browning's most noteworthy work than the lyric, especially the reflective love lyric, and that form which is distinctively his own, the dramatic monologue. In his best poems in this last form he has no competitor. It is in the presentation of character through the medium of dramatic monologue that he most fully reveals the unerring precision ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... springing from that correct insight into Nature, ran through the poems inspired by medieval legends. The very spirit of the old ballad writers, with their combinations of mysticism and objectivity, their freedom from any self-conscious attempt at reflective epithets or figures, runs through them all. We are never jarred in them, as we are in all the attempts at ballad-writing and ballad-restoring before Mr. Tennyson's time, by discordant touches of the reflective ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... this song appealed to him as the finest poetry. It meant all that was fine and hopeful and buoyant in American life, to him—but on my mother's sweet face a wistful expression deepened and in her fine eyes a reflective shadow lay. To her this song meant not so much the acquisition of a new home as the loss of all her friends and relatives. She sang it submissively, not exultantly, and I think the other women were of the same mood though their faces were less expressive to me. To all of the pioneer ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... first as part of the fairy-story into which Destiny had pitchforked us. He belonged to Hynds House, so to speak, and there one might meet him upon common ground. But sometimes when I happened to glance up I would find him watching us with those reflective eyes that were so full of light and at the same time so inscrutable. And then he would smile, his Dionysiac smile that made him all at once so far off and so foreign that I knew, with a sinking heart, that he didn't ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Balzac at forty-five or fifty, a man of world-wide celebrity. He never appears to have passed through those phases of belief and unbelief —those wild enthusiasms, to be rejected later in life—which generally fall to the lot of young men of talent. Perhaps his reasoning and reflective powers were developed unusually early, so that he sowed his mental wild oats in his boyhood. At any rate, in his garret in 1819 he was the same Balzac that we know in later life. Large-minded and far-seeing—except about his business concerns—he was ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... system is prosperous to metaphysics, because it attracts the mental attention to the organism through which thought is carried on. Numerous are the instances of men who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets, if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[A] If Tacitus had fared in any sort like his brother,—if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... after her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was aroused from a brown study—reflective mood, perhaps, would be a more select phrase—by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston. There was a sort of "Ah! have I caught you alone!" expression about this adventurer's eye, even while he was making his bow, that struck me. I looked for great events, nor ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... the development of the Negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, led me to furnish something to meet a felt need. If the Negro slave desired his native land before the Rebellion, will not the free, intelligent, and reflective American Negro turn to Africa with its problems of geography and missions, now that he can contribute something towards the improvement of the condition of humanity? Editors and writers everywhere throughout the world should spell the word ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and embarrassing, even putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself, which made it come abominably near a criminal offence. Like all men without much imagination, a faculty which helps the process of reflective thought, Lieut. D'Hubert became frightfully harassed by the obvious aspects of his predicament. He was certainly glad that he had not killed Lieut. Feraud outside all rules, and without the regular witnesses proper to such a transaction. Uncommonly glad. At the same time he felt as though he would ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... express the meaning in any other way than in paint and in this paint; so in a poem the true content and the true form neither exist nor can be imagined apart. When then you are asked whether the value of a poem lies in a substance got by decomposing the poem and present, as such, only in reflective analysis, or in a form arrived at and existing in the same way, you will answer, 'It lies neither in one, nor in the other, nor in any addition of them, but in the poem, where they are not.' And when you are told that you are talking a priori ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... there is not a purple vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veins by dexterous painting; and never a curious soul of them, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... refreshed, was pained by her rampant tone; and when Adela, who had fallen into one of her reflective 'long-shot' moods, chanced to say, "What a number of different beings there are in the world!" her reply was, "I was just then thinking we are all less unlike than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reserved to some future occasion. We must content ourselves with observing, that we have little confidence in novelties, and little wish to prompt the invention of our legislators in this direction. We are as little disposed to advocate the silent as the solitary system. Such a demeanour as any reflective man would naturally expect to find in a place of public correction, is all that we should require to be preserved. All boisterous mirth, all obstreperous laughter, all loud talking, would, by every efficient governor of such an institution, be systematically ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... translated a number of the later authors of antiquity, whose works had contributed most to the transmission of scientific culture; in the episodes which he interweaves in them he shows a desire for knowledge that reaches far beyond them; but especially we find in them a reflective and thoughtful mind, solid sense at peace with itself, a fresh way of viewing the world, a lively power of observation. This King introduced the German mind with its learning and reflection into the literature ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Literature, and Natural History, more and more exhibit the facts of humanity and of time under such new combinations, by so many parallel truths and principles, that it is difficult to conceive that History, as now understood by the educated and the reflective, is the same thing once crudely embodied in a ballad or mystically conserved by an inscription. To multiply relations is the destiny of our age, and to converge all that is discovered through the laws of Science upon the records and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the distinct consciousness of the individual and separate SELF arose. This second order of consciousness seems to have germinated at or about the same period as the discovery of the use of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption of picture-writing and the use of reflective words (like "I" and "Thou"); and it led on to the appreciation of gold and of iron with their ornamental and practical values, the accumulation of Property, the establishment of slavery of various kinds, the subjection ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... after the pre-Raphaelite pattern affected by the Nazarites. Fuhrich, one of the fraternity, describes his first impressions: on entering the studio he beheld a tall, spare figure, noble in head, the hair flowing over smooth temples to the shoulders, the forehead reflective, the calm eye "soul-full," the whole aspect that of "inner living." It is added, "at once I felt a soul fulfilment." Yet another artist-disciple, Edwin Speckter,[16] also leaves a graphic record penned ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... effort that I shook myself out of this morbidly reflective mood, on finding that we had crossed the common and were come to the abode of ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... universalism that makes The Twelve Words of the Gypsy his best expression and at the same time the most difficult to understand thoroughly. The poem is reflective both of the growth of the poet himself and of the development of the human spirit throughout the ages with the history and land of Hellas as its natural background. Consequently, its message is both subjective and objective. Although differently treated, the theme ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the old Duke family of Otterton in Devon. Edward, the wit of the family, went to Pembroke College, and is now a clergyman. George also went to Pembroke. He is in orders likewise, and now has the same School, a very flourishing one, which my Father had. He is a man of reflective mind and elegant talent. He possesses learning in a greater degree than any of the family, excepting myself. His manners are grave, and hued over with a tender sadness. In his moral character he approaches every way nearer to perfection than any man I ever yet knew. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... wistful, reflective or retiring about Lady Londonderry. She was keen and vivid, but ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... of which must be to erase his hated name from the earth. As Faith grew up, his anxieties on her account diminished, but that only left him the wider scope to dwell upon wild imaginations and make himself more the subject of his thoughts. Of a grave and reflective cast of mind, he had even from his early years respected the duties of religion, and now he turned to it for consolation. But the very sources whence he should have derived comfort and peace were fountains of disquiet. His diseased mind seemed incapable of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally avowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... well," added the captain, noticing the boy's reflective manner. "A sailor's life is by no means easy, yet a bright, active lad can rise. Many a captain ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... view to their effect on the public. He was anxious to be supposed to handle a large correspondence, and took pains to sort his mail in public, fingering a number of letters in his leather case with a reflective air, as if he were considering what replies they demanded, although their worn envelopes revealed them to the most casual observation as at least ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... material for a reflective mind. The dining-room was large and lofty, and the table must have dated back to the early days at the Cape, when every great family had its scores of retainers and slaves. It was composed of time-stained teak, and could have seated ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"—here his animation would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on his way to the door. Spencer was standing in a reflective attitude, with his hands behind his back, gently balancing himself ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knew a lot about life when I was twenty-two," he said, studiedly reflective. "I'd just come down ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... of his own tattered condition, and passed a reflective hand over the stubble on his chin. In a few days his face would resemble a scrubbing-brush. In that mournful moment he would have exchanged even his pipe and tobacco-box—worth untold gold—for shaving tackle. Who can say why his thoughts took such ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... reply. But again a look, half-chagrined, half-reflective, puckered his brow, which was smooth, white, and boyish under his straight, fair hair; whereas the rest of the face was subtly lined, and browned as though by travel and varied living. The nose and mouth, though not handsome, were small and delicately cut, while the long, pointed chin, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Coningsby? In Tremaine, so far as I remember, the didactic portion had sunk like a sort of sediment, and being collected into a dense mass in the third volume, could easily be avoided. As to Coningsby, I deny that it any where calls upon the reader for much exercise of his reflective powers. The novel has some sparkling scenes written in the vivacious manner of our neighbours, the French, and these we read. Some Eton boys talk politics, and as they talk just as boys should talk, their prattle is easily tolerated. Besides, I am ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... that evening she was seated on the corner of the sofa near the window. The moon was shining on the breathless park, and a moth whirled between the still flames of the candles which burned on the piano. He noticed that her mood was subdued and reflective. She liked him to sit by her, to take her hand and tell her he loved her. She liked to listen to him, but not to music; nor would she sing that evening, and his questions as to the cause remained unanswered. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... for mere fair play itself. What must the conflict be then for those who, with slight purses and few allies, find themselves pitted against the powerful of the earth? Discouragement, in weak natures, soon turns to envy, and the spectacle of human unkindness has driven many a reflective, delicate soul to say that the companionship of his fellow-men is unlovely, not to be admired, and difficult, at times, not to hate. In disgust of the world—where one has been wounded, or where one has wounded others—(wounded ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... turned to do his bidding. She saw that she had gone far enough. His mood had changed from a reflective to an angry one, and Victor Lamont was a man to fear when ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... would-be-tamer, not wishing to be unjust, refers to this heifer as having "a very intelligent face" and "a reflective cast of character." He certainly paid Margaret Fuller herself no such tribute, but thus early in his Brook Farm experience let appear his thinly veiled contempt for the high priestess of transcendentalism. Even earlier his antagonism toward this eminent woman was strong, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... signs and brands of these earth agonies have been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veins by dexterous painting; and never ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... is on the whole a case in point, to my mind. Turgenev was never shy of appearing in his pages as the reflective story-teller, imparting the fruits of his observation to the reader. He will watch a character, let us say, cross a field and enter a wood and sit down under a tree; good, it is an opportunity for gaining ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... looked only into darkness. "It is not a bad thing to be left out of Congress," he wrote Christopher Morgan, depressed by his defeat. "You will soon be wanted in the State, and that is a better field."[323] Seward had the faculty of slow, reflective brooding, and he often saw both deep and far. In the night of that blinding defeat only such a nature could find comfort in ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... assented Cephas. His pale face, with its venerable beard, was closely set about with his white nightcap. He lay staring straight before him with a solemnly reflective air. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... years ago, when you had satisfied your hunger and declined more, your German friends used to look offended or distressed, and say Sie geniren sich gewiss. This is a difficult phrase to translate, because the idea is one that has never taken root in the English mind, Sich geniren, however, is a reflective verb, a corruption of the French verb se gener, and what they meant was that you really wanted a third potato dumpling but did not like to say so. Whether your reluctance was supposed to proceed from your ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... habitual recollection of her children. They must not bear the weight of this great sorrow in the days of their tender youth, lest the hopefulness and energy they would certainly need in after life should be discouraged and disheartened out of them. Edward is naturally too reflective; he dwells too much on his loss, and evidently begins to ponder already how so many children are to be taken care of without a father. Sensitive Mary feels too deeply the shadow of the cloud which has come over her home; her face ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... desperate effort. And, too, he saw but little difference between the blood of Franconia and the blood of Clotilda; the same outline of person was there,—her delicate countenance, finely moulded bust, smoothly converging shoulders. There was the same Grecian cast of face, the same soft, reflective eyes,—filling a smile with sweetness, and again with deep-felt sorrow. The same sensitive nature, ready to yield forth love and tenderness, or to press onward the more impassioned affections, was visible in both. And yet, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... discrimination among black troops. Yet they wanted to retain segregation, albeit in units of smaller size, and they wanted to depend, for the most part, on white officers to command these black units. Concerned with performance, pragmatic rather than reflective in their habits, the commanders showed little interest in or understanding of the factors responsible for the conditions of which they complained. Many believed that ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... for his interference, and with the lad walked to our store—but after we were clear of the crowd the boy appeared to be in a reflective mood, and scarcely exchanged a dozen words with us; and even when we told him that he should live with us for the present, and share our hard beds, his gratitude did not appear to be overpowering, and he hung ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... and works of art have been produced by some Raphael or Milton at a comparatively early season of life, and have not given shame to the author at a later age; though this is the exception, not the rule. But the purely reflective essay belongs emphatically to maturer life. Your twenty-four years have evidently been worth more to you than the longest life to most men; but my judgment is that you should give your genius more time yet, and should wait upon it with ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... his boat, the Merry Maid, and hoisted his sail. In a few minutes he was skimming gaily down the bay. The wind was fair and piping and the Merry Maid went like a bird. Natty, at the rudder, steered for Blue Point Island, a reflective frown on his face. He was feeling in no mood for Victoria Day sports. In a very short time he and Ev and Prue must leave Blue Point lighthouse, where they had lived all their lives. To Natty it seemed as if the end of all ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... writing of nature he was apt to be commonplace, and there are not many such energetic lines in his purely reflective verse as these famous ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... a life of great retirement and seclusion. Her work, the fruit of long solitude, bears the impress of a strong, reflective mind. It ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the Honourable Mr. Sparkle had been carried home to his lodging, early in the fray, more overcome by hard drinking than hard fighting, and there safely put to bed by the indefatigable Mark Supple, to whose friendly zeal and more effective arm we were all much indebted. In this reflective mood, I had watched the retiring shadows of the night gradually disperse before the gray-eyed morn, and had just caught a glimpse of the golden streaks which illumine the face of day, when my ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... stanza it seems indeed to shake the head gently, to put forward the chin, so to speak, so as to affirm the insufficiency of the senses to explain the dogma of the real presence, the finished avatar of the Bread. It is then admiring and reflective; then that melody so attentive, so respectful, does not wait to affirm the weakness of the reason, and the power of faith, but in the second stanza it goes forward, adores the glory of the three Persons, exults with joy, only recovers itself at the end, where the music ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... workman's voice grew still more reflective. "It was the new process that made Adam rich. He was no better man at the bench than I. I never considered him as my superior. He happened to be born with a different kind of a brain, that is all. And he thought more of money, while I cared more for other things. But there is a good reason why ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... was so mortified at being refused, that he made an attempt to cut the balloon with his sword. The story has but a flimsy support, and indeed does not accord well with the character of the hero, which was deep and reflective, as well as bold and determined, and not likely to suffer its energies to escape ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... the race,—Africa, its inhabitants, and the development of the Negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, led me to furnish something to meet a felt need. If the Negro slave desired his native land before the Rebellion, will not the free, intelligent, and reflective American Negro turn to Africa with its problems of geography and missions, now that he can contribute something towards the improvement of the condition of humanity? Editors and writers everywhere throughout ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... made no reply, and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Abner was walking toward the boat; the minister and the Denby girl were standing together, comparing shells; the toll-gate woman was strolling by herself a little higher up the beach, still in a reflective mood. Sam gazed from his companions to the sky, the ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... plain common man, but he held holy things in reverence, and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air uttering sharp chirrups of terror,—and, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... first place, as to the form of composition,—which may be called, I think, the Rhapsodico-Reflective. In this the Sartor Resartus resembles some of the master-works of human invention, which have been acknowledged as such by many generations; and especially the works of Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne and Swift. There is nothing ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... perceptions and conceptions of the same persons as to the same object vary at different times. Nay, more, at the same time one sense conveys impressions which another sense may negative, and not infrequently the reflective faculty negatives all the impressions derived from the senses, and forms a conception entirely unlike that which would have taken shape through the organs of sense. The soul that seeks to know, is thus in constant agitation. But happiness consists in imperturbableness of spirit, that is, in ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... therein is perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand. It is a natural consequence of this structure, that, so long as the active powers predominate over the reflective, we resist with indignation any hint that nature is more short-lived or mutable than spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the toll-man, are much ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... need not in itself trouble the general consciousness; it is a well-established fact that in religion the most divergent elements are not incompatible. Nevertheless, among the Greeks, with their strong proclivity to reflective thought, criticism early arose against the traditional conceptions of the gods. The typical method of this criticism is that the higher conceptions of the gods are used against the lower. From the earliest times the Greek religious sense favoured ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... fireman were not upon it. He knew, however, that they could not be far off—probably looking after something connected with their train—and that they would be back immediately; he climbed up to the foot-plate and sat down on the rail. He there became reflective, and recalled, with some degree of amusement as well as satisfaction, some of the more recent incidents of his vocation. He smiled as he remembered how, not very far from where he sat, he had on a cloudy evening got into a horse-box, and boring a hole in it with a gimlet, applied his eye thereto,—his ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... was bitterly disappointed, as well she might have been, and her Indian brain must have been sadly puzzled. But she was treated little worse than thousands of the white pioneer women who have followed her; and standing: there to-day on the bank of her river, she still seems sorrowfully reflective over the strange ways of the nation she ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... a distinct advantage. This object, therefore, we must strive with every nerve to attain: to be superior in this respect to all our enemies. And this object can be attained. Personality can be developed, especially in the sphere of spiritual activity. The reflective and critical powers can be improved by continuous exercise; but the man who can estimate the conditions under which he has to act, who is master of the element in which he has to work, will certainly make up his mind more rapidly ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... about the land itself, but about the men who had been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was not for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power of any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad, reflective mood, considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we must break down a multitude of molehills and how desirable and unreplaceable was the life of ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the motion and color of living things. It was not the mere sensuous magnetism of powerful physical nature; but it excited the higher intellectual sympathies, which in turn awoke and captivated the reasoning and reflective organs, that found themselves delightfully conducted along a natural and logical course, that led them unconsciously to inevitable conclusions and convictions, ere the danger was perceived, or an ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... serve the expression of the sublime. "Wordsworth's distinctive work," Mr. Ruskin has justly said (Modern Painters, iii. 293), "was a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these, his love of nature ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... The Northern temperament, reflective, strong and positive, now began to assume mastery over the bewildered reveries of the Southern nature. Things are seen to change. Even the masters who continue the Sung tradition infuse a somewhat more robust quality into their works, ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... deliciously; the red curtains were drawn across the windows of the Man and Plough; a few white geese waddled slowly across the green; some brown speckled hens were feeding under the horse-trough; a goat browsing by the roadside looked up, quite startled, as I passed him, and butted slowly at me in a reflective manner. There was a scent of sweet-brier, of tall perfumy lilies and spicy carnations from the gardens. I looked at the windows of the houses I passed, but the blinds were drawn, and the bees and the flowers were the only waking things ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... application of a physical fact to the moral order; the association of an external material fact to one internal and intellectual. As this association is not reflective, but spontaneous, and is found pervading the infancy of languages; as it is intuitively and generally understood; it must take place in accordance with a mental law which establishes natural relations of analogy between the moral world and the physical. To become perceptible, thought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... villains; after this reply the young officer appeared to be less inclined for conversation, but before the party broke up requested to have the acquaintance of our two midshipmen. As soon as he was gone, Gascoigne observed in a reflective way, "I have seen that face before, but where I cannot exactly say; but you know, Jack, what a memory of people I have, and I have seen him before, I ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from any reflective or calculated intention, I conceived the desire, as soon as I had committed an act of declared hostility, of demonstrating what spirit of government was not foreign to my own views. Many sensible men inclined to think that from the ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... spiritual; both sought to bring into harmony the dissonance of flesh and the spirit. Both succeeded, each in his own way—though we need not couple their efforts on the technical side. Rembrandt was a prophet. There is more of the reflective poet in Carriere. He is a mystic. His mothers, his children, are dreams made real—the magic of which Dolent speaks is always there. To disengage the personality of his sitter was his first idea. Slowly he built up those volumes of colour, light, and shadow, the solidity of which caused Rodin ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... from the account they had heard of the strong position of the fort they were aware that it would give them severe work to capture. Still it was to be done, and no one doubted that it would be done, whatever might be the sacrifice. The more reflective had their minds fully occupied, and all were in a state of anxiety on account of their captain, and the persons he had risked his own safety to rescue from destruction. Adair, who heard what Ben had cried out, had little hopes that he would succeed, and was ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... times, James Robertson of Orange County, North Carolina, made an arduous journey to the pleasing valley of the Watauga. Robertson, who was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, June 28, 1742, of excellent Scotch-Irish ancestry, was a noteworthy figure of a certain type—quiet, reflective, conservative, wise, a firm believer in the basic principles of civil Liberty and the right of local self-government. Robertson spent some time with a man named Honeycut in the Watauga region, raised a crop of ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... were scattered about in various dusky corners, and Virgilia Jeffreys was no doubt among them. "I don't know just how all this is going to end," sighed Eudoxia dubiously. "I presume I'm as responsible as anybody else," she added, in a reflective, judicial tone. "More so," she tacked on. "Altogether so," she added further, as ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... period of the day when the spirit of man is calmly reflective. Speech seemed distasteful that morning, and as each knew what had to be done, it was needless. The silently conducted operations of the men appeared to arouse fellow-feeling in the monkey, for its careworn countenance became ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... touching, I confess, In the grave look of early thoughtfulness, Seen often in some little childish face Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace (Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!) The unnatural sufferings of the factory child, But a staid quietness, reflective, mild, Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes, Sense of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... to him, made an impression on his mind that stayed with him through life. It seemed to him that he had arrived at a kind of culmination, a starting point, and that all the vague shadowy uncertainties that had, in reflective moments, flitted through his mind, were to be brushed away by some act, some word, from the lips of this woman. With a rush he realised how consistently he had been thinking of her and how enormously he had been counting on her falling in with his plans, and the realisation ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... a gilt-paper match of Phoebe's making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... moment of his quarrel with his father and his college had, in fact, represented a moment of energy, of comparative success, which never recurred. It was as though this outburst of action and liberty had disappointed him, as if some deep-rooted instinct—cold, critical, reflective—had reasserted itself, condemning him and his censors equally. The uselessness of utterance, the futility of enthusiasm, the inaccessibility of the ideal, the practical absurdity of trying to realise any ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the development of man out of some lower type of animal, must have occurred before his intellect had raised him above the condition of the brutes, at a period when he was gregarious, but scarcely social, with a mind perceptive but not reflective, ere any sense of right or feelings of sympathy had been developed in him. He would be still subject, like the rest of the organic world, to the action of "natural selection," which would retain his physical form and constitution in harmony with the surrounding universe. He was probably ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... mechanical system of the human mind, as comprehensive, intelligible, and satisfactory as the Newtonian mechanism of the heavens," exclaims, "Fallen from their elevation, Art and Science and Virtue would no longer be to man the objects of a genuine and reflective adoration." We are led, in reflecting upon the far more probable success of the meteorologist, to similar forebodings upon the dulness and sameness to which social intercourse will be reduced when the weather philosophers shall succeed in subjecting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... technique the author was learning still. At the age of forty, approximately, and a year or two after Hamlet, Shakespeare produced Othello, the most perfect, although not necessarily the greatest, of all his great tragedies. It is less profoundly reflective than Hamlet and less passionately imaginative than King Lear or Macbeth; but no other of his masterpieces shows such perfect balance of taste and judgment, or is so free from any jarring note. Hence, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... her father, and his reflective deliberation had meaning. "There are a lot of us who don't plume ourselves particularly in these days. We are not as innocent as we were when this sort of thing began. We are not as innocent as we were when Rosy was married." And he sighed and rubbed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, and the light in the little room brightened slowly. Pilch's face was reflective. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... have seen a camera clear itself—blue sky, purple hills, russet and orange woods, a great elm green picked out with yellow, a mass of brown oaks, a scarlet maple, a beech grove, skirting a brilliant water meadow, with a most reflective stream running through it, and giving occasion for a single arched bridge, and a water mill, with a wheel draperied with white foam; two swans disporting on the water (I would not declare they were not geese), a few cottony flakes ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lifelike; but their actions are forced on them from without, and the external force is grotesquely inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard III, too, is delightful as the whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... way left," remarked the reflective Paul, "is to watch the faces of the suspects when we go to school in the morning, and maybe we can spot the ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, and the work short. His nature was not adapted either to lay an extensive plan, or co-operate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the barrister to whom he was talking had observed to what this change of demeanour was due, for he looked first at me in the dock and next at Sir John Bell as, recovering his pomposity, he made his way through the crowd. Then he grew reflective, and pushing his wig back from his forehead he stared at the ceiling and ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... feel sarcasm in his wish that his opponents' predictions of the return of the sacred vessels from Babylon might be fulfilled.(564) His brave calm words to the prophets and priests who sought his life in the Temple in 604(565) bear similar testimony. All these are the marks of an honest, patient and reflective mind which weighs opinions opposite ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... blue-gray eyes, their beautiful lids raised wide for once, looked out curiously upon the space of dew-powdered turf; while the corners of her mouth—a mouth a trifle thin lipped, yet soft and dangerously sweet for kissing—turned upward in a reflective smile. She, too, knew what it was to be angry, to the point of revenge; had indeed come to Brockhurst not without purpose of that last tucked away in some naughty convolution of her active brain. But Brockhurst and its inhabitants had proved altogether more interesting than she had anticipated. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... library at Munich. The first represents Albert V., Duke of Bavaria, the founder of the library, and a great patron of science. Of course, he is presented in middle-age costume; his head is bare, his face reflective, and his right hand supports his chin,—an image of repose, after a work is accomplished. The other statue is of King Louis (of Lola Montes memory), in royal robes, the left hand resting on his sword, and his right ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... was normal, reflective. Many a time the two had talked together of such things in this very room, and the naturalness of the scene, and of the judge's manner, made the brother-in-law for a second forget the tragedy in which they ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... aged twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic, contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to find himself, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... animated receipt book. Some of the information she communicated, indeed, was so valuable and important that she could not trust the air with it, but whispered the most important portions in a confidential tone. Among the crowd, Cerinthy Ann's theological admirer was observed in deeply reflective attitude; and that high-spirited young lady added further to his convictions of the total depravity of the species by vexing and discomposing him in those thousand ways in which a lively, ill-conditioned young woman will put to rout a serious, well-disposed ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... he watched the Count, and the keen eyes had a reflective look, as if they were handing that which they saw, back to the brain behind them for purpose ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... multitudes of beautiful and august human figures, in the modelling of their drapery, the study of their expression, and their grouping into balanced compositions, we may form some notion of the magnitude of Raphael's performance. It is, indeed, probable that all attempts at reflective analysis of this kind do injustice to the spontaneity of the painter's method. Yet, even supposing that the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" or the "School of Athens" were seen by him as in a vision, this presumption will increase our wonder at the imagination which ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... or whether, on the contrary, it is characterized by a windy inflation of sentiment, a showy superficiality of thought, and a ridiculous and petty egoism. These are the unhappy questions which beset the mature and reflective reader of Victor Hugo's works. To the young and enthusiastic one the case is different. For him it is easy to forget—or even not to observe—what there may be in that imposing figure that is unsatisfactory and second-rate. He may revel at will in the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the truth of Kate's narrative as may save all readers from my fair Westmoreland friend's disaster,—it remains to give such an answer, as without further research can be given, to a question pretty sure of arising in all reflective readers' thoughts— namely, does there anywhere survive a portrait of Kate? I answer—and it would be both mortifying and perplexing if I could not— Yes. One such portrait there is confessedly; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.—It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the opposition of her Roman Catholic subjects led Elizabeth's humour to assume a somewhat severe complexion. Her thoughts gradually became more earnest, and her jests cynical. Moreover, as seen in Shakespeare, the age in which she lived was reflective, and the budding activity of mind was directed towards great interests. There was not that impression of the vanity of all things, which grows up with the extension and maturity of society, and attracts the mind to more fanciful and less grave considerations. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... He coolly replied, "I don't know. God knows." The camels browse or crop herbage all the way along, daintily picking and choosing the herbage and shrubs which they like best. My chief occupation in riding is watching them browse, and observing the epicurean fancies of these reflective, sober-thinking brutes of The Desert. I observe also as a happy trait in the Arab, that nothing delights him more than watching his own faithful camel graze. The ordinary drivers sometimes allow them ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... person of your reflective turn of mind, the prudent management of the thoughts is one of the principal means towards the proper government of the temper. As some insects assume the colour of the plant they feed on, so do the thoughts on which the mind habitually nourishes ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... ourselves an intelligent account of what we feel and do, and so represent experience that we for the first time make it ours, they had only a loose and troubled possession. They beheld or took part in great events, but there was no answerable commotion in their reflective being; and they passed throughout turbulent epochs in a sort of ghostly quiet and abstraction. Feeling seems to have been strangely disproportioned to the occasion, and words were laughably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such as it was. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the thinking powers; as frequent occasions occur, in which the incidents of the narrative, and the conversations arising from them, are intended to awaken and engage the reasoning and reflective faculties of ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... trudged across the infield in the wake of the good horse Elisha. Another owner, on the day of an important race, might have been nervous or worried; the patriarch maintained his customary calm; his head was bent at a reflective angle, and he nibbled at a straw. Certain gentlemen, speculatively inclined, would have given much more than a penny for the old man's thoughts; having bought them at any price, they ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... the incapable, and the very low and poor. The eminent person just mention'd sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a nation's politics by absorbing such morbid collections and qualities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who will never get over it. Our answer is general, and is involved in the scope and letter of this essay. We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government, (having, of course, provided for the police, the safety of life, property, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... natural and of such simplicity, that though a biased judgment may, perhaps, exaggerate their character, and amplify their importance, they will furnish to an impartial and reflective mind a wealth of evidence far superior to the vain speculations of the imagination or the prejudiced ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... as a boy, and in his manhood was as "cool a hand" as one would meet with often, even in London. Then he had plenty of courage, which made the men respect him; and, above all, was very good-looking—an advantage which, doubtless, has a certain weight even with our far-sighted and reflective sex. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... shrubs which appear arbitrarily scattered. But our view at length extending and becoming more comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and arbours placed symmetrically, and that the whole is an assemblage of parts mutually reflective. It can scarcely be necessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to the origination of nature in some Power, of which man's mind is a faint and humble representation. The insects of the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... death with greater calmness than the Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we could find out also the way of escape for you. For there is a way of escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives say; it is a part of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
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