"Pensiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ocean. Darkness lurked in masses amid the trees. The air was so still that the lotus in the weed-covered pool bordering the road did not shed its seed; the dogs were sleeping by the wayside; nature was full of sweet pensiveness. Kunda, guessing the road, went with doubtful steps to the front of the Datta house; she had no design in going, except that she might by a happy chance see Nagendra. Her return to his house might come about; let it occur when it would, what harm was there ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... sunniness of mind all his own," Saint Gregory of Nazianzus was a fair humourist, and Saint Basil was a wit. "Pensive playfulness" is Newman's phrase for Basil, but there was a speed about his retorts which did not always savour of pensiveness. When the furious governor of Pontus threatened to tear out his liver, Basil, a confirmed invalid, replied suavely, "It is a kind intention. My liver, as at present located, has given me ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad, and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... were, the whole inventory of Miss Jemima's personal attractions. Now, Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a mild and pensive expression of countenance, and she would have been positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though Miss Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not de natura pensive; she had too much of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and viscid humor called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of pensiveness really spoilt her character ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... of Claudian, to the marriage toilet of Proserpine, the goddess of the fertility of the earth and of all creatures, but still of fertility as arisen out of death;* and therefore she is not without a certain pensiveness, having seen the seed fall into the ground and die, many times. Persephone is returned to her, and the hair [148] spreads, like a rich harvest, over her shoulders; but she is still veiled, and knows that the seed must fall into the ground again, and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight—feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene—withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mother. She has since married —— Hemans, Esq., then an Adjutant in the army. A great number of her pieces have appeared in the Monthly Magazine, as well as the New Monthly, and although a pleasing pensiveness and sombre cast of mind seem to pervade her beautifully mental pictures, she was, I may say, noted in her youth for the buoyancy and sprightliness of her conversation and manner, which made her the delight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... the same thing," reflected Captain Leezur aloud, with a pensiveness that still had nothing of unavailing regret in it, "ef I'd been a mind tew; and had a monniment put up over me like one o' these here No. 10 Mornin' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... with good-hearted pensiveness; 'it's not in the course of nature that she should.' She rose as she spoke, as if it behoved her to begin her new duties with alacrity, as there might not long be occasion for them. She put another question ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... then appear altogether worthy of his character and his deeds. He always emphasizes and expands passages which speak either of the responsibilities of rulers or of the nothingness of earthly power; and the reflections are pervaded by a pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. The political world had not much advanced when, six centuries after Alfred, it arrived ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... had happened; how here she was, no longer a girl, but a woman engaged to be married, sitting calmly by her lover's side, without any of the tremblingly delicious emotions which she had once believed would constitute the great mystery, Love—a strange pensiveness overtook her. She felt all the solemnity of her position, and, as yet, little of its sweetness. Perhaps that would come in time. She resolved to do her duty towards him whom she so tenderly honoured, and who so deeply ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... marry Jack you did not seem to mind," said Georgina, looking at me with that new pensiveness she had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... innocence, the sweet feminine timidity, and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but that was in her manners, scarcely ever in her features; and the exquisite fairness of her complexion, enriched by the very sweetest and most delicate bloom that ever I have beheld, should rather have allied it to a tone of cheerfulness. Looking ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... proceeded not from the pen of vainglory, but from the process of that pensiveness, which two summers since overtook me; whose obscured cause, best known to every name of curse, hath compelled my wit to wander abroad unregarded in this satirical disguise, and counselled my content to dislodge his delight ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... reconciling herself. Then, after an instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But you haven't found ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... voice, and the alluring fascination of her face. The face was not perfect; far from it, if by perfect is meant features accordant with one another and true to type. Her hair was flaming red; her eyes were brown, dark brown, a certain pensiveness in them most inaccordant with the hair; her nose was slender, with sensitive nostrils; her mouth was generous with lips a trifle full; her teeth were exquisitely white and symmetrical—and she showed them with due ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... then meeting with some equally delightful hero of an opposite nature, I changed from grave to gay. My mood during these periods of fascination was as variable as the different heroines I admired. Now I would imitate the pensiveness of Amanda, and go about with streaming tresses, and a softly modulated tone of voice—then I would read of some sprightly heroine who changed all by her vivacity and piquant sayings, and immediately commence springing down three stairs at a time, teazing all the children, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... Horatio, surrounded by their little ones—noble youths and graceful maidens, in whom the impetuosity of the fiery Romeo is tempered by the pensiveness of the fair Ophelia. I shall take it most unkindly of them, love," toying with Juliet's fingers, "if they do not name ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
