"Wistful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same as you would, or—or I hope I would, if I was young and—and," with a wistful smile, "different, and likely to be any good to Uncle Sam. Yes, Leander's been anxious to go to war, but his dad was so set against it all and kept hollerin' so about the boy's bein' needed in the store, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the winder, and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry's voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary's eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an obdurate loop ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... suggests itself as a possible solution of life; and whenever it comes to a man like this it is a source of weakness. It is not a desire to find the joys of heaven; it is a desire to escape the pains of earth. There is no vista, no wistful distance, no long, alluring prospect. The soul is hemmed in by its enemies, crushed down by its burdens, beset on all sides by the frets of the earthly lot; and there comes a vague desire to be out of it all. It is not aspiration, it is evasion. It is not response ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... the best of it." Sir Griffin spoke not another word, but left the church with his friend in the brougham that had brought them, and so he disappears from our story. Mr. Emilius looked after him with wistful eyes, regretful for his fee. Had the baronet been less coarse and violent in his language he would have asked for it; but he feared that he might be cursed in his own church, before his clerk, and abstained. Late in the afternoon Lord George, when he had administered ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... pretty little fellow, though there was something wan and wistful in his small face. His temper gave abundant promise of being imperious in after life; and he had as hopeful an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all other things and persons to it as heart could wish. He was childish and sportive ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... lose faith in your hands. Oil, coal, electricity, what are these but multiplied and more adaptable, super-serviceable hands? They may temporarily be unemployed, but the world can't go round without them." A man who feels poetry in petroleum suffers from no wistful "desire of the moth for the star." To his full sense of life the moth and the star are of one essential substance, parts of one glorious conquerable creation—and the moth just a fleck of star- ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... he wished them to be quiet they were silent, all leaning forward, their eyes shining, their lips apart, their fists clinched as tho they were holding their tongues in leash by that means, their dark, brown faces alight with wistful, almost palpitating eagerness. The regard they fixed on his face was ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her pallor there was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning look, and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his "Here, Helene, will you take it?" so persuasively spoken. The little girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red when ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... frost. Indeed, if need be, he was willing to lay down the dreary life which had of late grown valueless to him. Yet he was not without tenderness, and as he plodded on over the frozen snow, he thought of the lost outcast with wistful regret. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... miss the little wagging tail; I miss the plaintive, pleading wail; I miss the wistful, loving glance; I miss ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... A wistful child, in foul unwholesome shreds, Recalls some legend of a daisy chain That makes a pretty necklace. She would fain Make one, and wear it, if she had ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... possessed her; and the sky and air, and brown, desolate earth, just warming with the April sun, all glowed with hope. How near to her seemed Heaven and all holy, sweet influences; and the centre of it all was one radiant, beautiful face, looking with sad, wistful eyes to her for love and life which she so wanted to give. She felt and knew that to this one in some way, she would be fully revealed, and misconception and absence and doubt would vanish. She should meet him, but just how he would look, or what he would say, or how she should or ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the beginning of many words. Their skins are as swarthy as those of Bedaween, their foreheads comparatively low, their eyes far more deeply set their stature lower, their hair yet more abundant, the look of wistful melancholy more marked, and two, who were unclothed for hard work in fashioning a canoe, were almost entirely covered with short, black hair, specially thick on the shoulders and back, and so completely ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Allan's easel and strolled away after them. Was it the motoring, I wondered, which had prompted her half-wistful question, or had I been wise too late? Arthur had been very confident. So much that he had said had carried with it a certain ring of truth. Youth and the temperament of youth were surely irresistible. Like calls to like across the garden of spring flowers with a cry which no interloper ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gazed out at the water, and I saw in his face the peculiarly wistful expression that so often accompanies thoughts which are both elusive and far away. The index finger of his right hand was slightly raised, indicating a subconscious impulse to point upward. Slowly turning back to us, he said in a tone of solemnity ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... rising to his feet, bowed gravely, looking into the girl's face with a light in his eyes which ever afterwards haunted her when his name was mentioned—a light, half wistful, half kindly. For several minutes after they had left, he sat looking idly at the "bill of fare" with the same look on his face. There had been no such chance of salvation ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... with aroused energy, a little wistful smile softening the strain of his face. "You were wise to give me food, else I couldn't have solved this mystery. To the beginning, then: You, Prudence Corson, betrothed to me these three years and more; ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... leaving the two alone. Their hands lay clasped in one another, but they could not speak. His eyes were upon her, all the fierce light of delirium out of them, in spite of the fever that was burning in every limb, resting upon her face in a silly wistful way, as if he feared the vision was deceptive, or his prize might vanish at any moment. At last she asked: "Do you know me, Mr. Coristine?" and he murmured: "How could I help knowing you?" But, in a minute, he commanded himself, and said: "It is very kind of you ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Liberty, busy man, Here erect in the city square, I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning, Strangely wistful, And half tristful, Have turned her from foul ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... stayed to admire the classical busts and statues that lined the deserted corridors like exhibits in a museum. All the life-size ones I whacked with my cane. I took a wistful pleasure in giving the naked ones two good strokes each. As I drew near the class-room door I certainly felt uncomfortable, for I knew Fillet intended to sting. But my sense of martyrdom carried me through. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the formalism of the affair. For this dance in an earthen hovel on a plank floor was the degenerate but lineal descendant of the splendid and formal balls which the Dons had held in the old days, when New Spain belonged to its proud and wealthy conquerors; it was the wistful and grotesque remnant ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... was thus setting back in favour of the church did not yet, however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410, spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be agitated with ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... no dawdling and putting off of the day's work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper, he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a wistful glance, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... could git. Nebber knowed ob any plantashuns [TR: illegible, possibly "men"] be divided. D'ant member 'bout slave 'risings en niggers voting en wuz not ole er'nuff ter member de sta'rs fallin'. Songs we use'ter sing wuz, "On Jordan's Bank I Stand en Cast a Wistful Eye en Lak Drops ob Sweat, Lak Blood Run Down, I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... him with wistful eyes—almost jealous of the privilege which his kind deed was about to bring him—he felt that his own heart was in his ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... lightkeeper nodded solemnly. He clasped his knee with his hands and rocked back and forth in his chair. "I know," he went on, an absent, wistful look in his eye; "but you must have wondered, just the same. I bought that craft because—well, because she reminded me of old times, I cal'late. I used to command a schooner like her once; bigger and lots more able, of course, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... used to love to touch was concealed. Sometimes he dined with an ingenue in a poke bonnet; sometimes with a senorita in black turban and black lace veil, mysterious and provocative; sometimes with a demure miss in a wistful little turned-down brim. It was like living with a stranger who ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn upon gambling—not with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which implied no asking and brought no responsibility. If he had been in London or Paris at that time, it is probable that such thoughts, seconded by opportunity, would have taken him into a gambling-house, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... above them, But not their hearts that roam! We learned from our wistful mothers To call old England "home"; We read of the English skylark, Of the spring in the English lanes, But we screamed with the painted lories As we rode on the ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... a little embarrassed, as was natural in a lad of his years, but truly loving and tender all the same, and Margot's brown eyes searched his face with wistful questioning. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Cabanal, and from them Tona had bought her stock. Now that they were dead, the girl was left with a fortune almost, three or four thousand duros, to put it low. And how the poor thing loved Tonet! Whenever she met him on the streets of the Cabanal, she always had one of her placid wistful smiles for him; and she spent her afternoons with sina Tona on the beach, just because the old lady was the mother of that bantam who was forever turning the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... said in a deeply wistful tone, "I don't understand this. Why shouldn't Eileen have come today as she agreed? What is there about this that is not according to law and honor and the plain, simple rights ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Whereupon Tubby cast a wistful eye toward the border of the frogpond, where the big greenbacks could be seen, sitting partly in the water, and calling to one ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... upon the rocks of uncertainty and dim dissatisfaction. New thoughts, new questions, new desires had risen in her during that sad month of May, and she felt as one seeking vainly she knew not what. She looked beyond the trees of the Green Park to the far skies with wistful eyes, and asked herself deep questions concerning many things, born of the thoughts that arose in her mind when she stood amid a people mourning tenderly a dearly loved sovereign, and beheld how in hearts all over the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the other hand, for the weary toiler whose mind is untrained, the impression of the world is that of heavy clay. Each in his own way finds idealism difficult to retain. The spirituality of nature floats like a dream before the mind of poets, and is seen now and then in wistful glimpses by every one; but it needs some clearer and less elusive form, as well as some definite association with conscience, if it is to be defended against the pull of the green earth. It has been well said that, for the Greek, God was the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... head. They were pretty thick and stout, however, and had remarkably large heads and faces. I do not think the tallest of them was much, if any, over five feet. Donovan, who was about six feet, looked like a giant beside them. They stood huddled together, looking just a little wistful at being cut off from their fellows, and casting fearful glances at Guard, who stood barking excitedly at them from the companion-way. Though used to dogs, they had very likely never seen a jet-black Newfoundland before. Possibly ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... hitherto seriously devoted themselves to steak and coffee, speedily brightened up under her pleasantries. Indeed she kept them lingering so long that the Mayhews and Stanton passed out before them, the latter casting a wistful glance at the cheerful party, for he had ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to be waiting for Meade to finish, but Meade, who suddenly realized to what he was leading, did not finish; and Lavis turned his head so as to look squarely at Cadogan. Through the half-closed, wistful eyes Cadogan caught a gleam that he again felt was an answer to Meade's unfinished question, and yet was again meant, not for ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Jeremiah had other strains. I conclude this lecture with selections which deal with the same impending judgment, yet are wistful and tender, the poet taking as his own the sin and sufferings of the people with whose doom ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets. He eyed the houses on either hand with that melancholy and wistful interest with which, in middle life, men revisit scenes familiar to them in youth,—surprised to find either so little change or so much, and recalling, by fits and snatches, old associations and past emotions. The long High Street which ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... side to side, for she was such a little thing that the stool raised her entirely off the floor. There was a thoughtful look on her round, freckled face, and a wistful one in her great blue eyes as the full meaning of Uncle ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country unfolded from their airy height. Ah! there was much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her pleading, wistful eyes, spoke day after day of Julia, of her dutiful love toward her, and her growing love for me, I drifted, almost without an effort of my own volition, into an engagement with her. You see there was no counter-balance. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... last words; he was reflecting. Roundjacket watched him with a strange, wistful look, which had much ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... into a flood of tears, as if she had some forboding of what was to happen. The boy took me out in my box, about half an hours walk from the palace, towards the rocks on the sea-shore. I ordered him to set me down, and lifting up one of my sashes, cast many a wistful melancholy look towards the sea. I found myself not very well, and told the page that I had a mind to take a nap in my hammock, which I hoped would do me good. I got in, and the boy shut the window close down, to keep out the cold. I soon fell asleep, and all I can conjecture ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Nelly had been to Italy the year before and did nothing but boast of it all day. So the two girls arm in arm started for the moors. Nelly Reeves was a tall good looking girl, slightly pretty, but with none of the wistful beauty about her that was so clearly stamped on all Beatrice Langton's features. She had black hair and what she considered beautiful eyes, though they really were small and vacant ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... cup of coffee, I shall be most pleased. You must excuse me, for I never take anything before midday. I am a recluse, have been for many years and rarely stir abroad. I do not intend to return to the world unless I can bring something with me worth having." A wistful smile twisted a little the corners of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... him in amazement; the Cossacks gaped under their helmets. The girl watched him with wistful eyes. She understood. It was the artist-temperament in full command. The man had vanished, the musician was in possession. He was rocked by it, swayed, overpowered, a slave. His eyes saw nothing; his ears heard nothing; his mind was a whirl, a wonderful ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... lay my wistful hands in thine A little while before you seek the dark, Untraversed ways of War and its Reward, I cannot bear to lift my gaze and mark The gloried light of hopeful, high emprise That, like a bird already poised for flight, Has waked within your eyes. For me no proud illusions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... found herself disinclined for any further exertion, and just sat, reclining upon pale pink satin cushions, her slender hands folded upon her lap, her large, dark luminous eyes and delicate, refined features all set in a wistful sadness. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the good ancient customs of thy sires! The day will come, when thou, with burning tears, Wilt long for home, and for thy native hills, And that dear melody of tuneful herds, Which now, in proud disgust, thou dost despise! A day when wistful pangs shall shake thy heart, Hearing their music in a foreign land. Oh! potent is the spell that binds to home! No, no, the cold, false world is not for thee. At the proud court, with thy true ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... I lived in this little world; it was dull and humdrum. The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and the boys fretted and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was "town,"—a straggling, lay village of houses, churches, and shops, and an aristocracy of Toms, Dicks, and Captains. Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored folks, who lived in three- or four-room ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... be with us a part of every day?" returned Violet, with a wistful half-inquiring look ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... have a little money; I found it inside my vest. I suppose I must have put it there before——' and then he became silent, while the strange, wistful look ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest, who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at his father with wistful eyes. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... could have some," Sabrina went on, in a wistful eagerness, "I don't seem to have a thing ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... come and play with your brothers and sisters just now?" asked the Colonel, as a dreamy-eyed boy of about eight, with a mop of dark hair and a wistful expression, came slowly ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding it and all else good-night. He will be in bed, his candle out, and in darkness, in five minutes, and his shoes found next morning at his door, the little potentate all the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... hands that lay on the coverlet, and the face of the dying woman was not more ghastly than the one which bent over her. As Dr. Grey approached, the mistress of the house rose, and put out her hands towards him, with a wistful, pleading, childish ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in appearance a tall, dark-haired boy—he was really only a boy—with a singularly beautiful face, and a strange wistful expression of the eyes that I think will haunt me as long as I live. I made him, somewhat externally and feebly, I fear, one of the characters in a recently published novel. That he was a lonely spirit will be plain enough from his writings; he lived ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... devised many excuses for waylaying her. His machine being forbidden, he hung about until she appeared and trudged homeward with her. Often he came in a glow from the cabinetmaker's and submitted for her judgment the questions that had been debated that day at the shop. There was something sweet and wistful and charming in his boyishness; and she was surprised, as Harwood had been from the first, by the intelligence he evinced in political and social questions. He demanded absolute answers to problems that were perplexing wise men all over ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... that no one could enter the Professions who had no money. No need to write up 'None but the sons of gentlemen may apply.' Very many sons of gentlemen, in fact, had to turn away sorrowfully after gazing with wistful eyes upon that ladder which they knew that they, too, could climb, as well as a Denman or an Erskine. As for the sons of poor parents, they could not so much as think of the ladder: they hardly knew that it existed: ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Wonderful, wistful, to contemplate! Difficult, doubtful, to speak upon! Strange and great for tongue to relate, Mystical hearing for every one! Nor wotteth man this, what a marvel it is, When seeing, and saying, and hearing ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... with a wistful yet joyous emphasis, "I wish I could come to school to you. And I'd like to be ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... turbulent and nothing truculent; he has made no contribution to the literature of revolt. Yet many of his poems make an irresistible appeal to our more reflective moods; and once or twice, his fancy, always winsome and wistful, rises to a height of pure imagination, as in The Listeners—which I find myself returning to muse ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... She found something in the room which she certainly would never have expected. When she came in as usual she saw something small and dark in her chair,—an odd, tiny figure, which turned toward her a little, weird-looking, wistful face. ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... title, of a brilliant position, and at the same time she did not want to let me go. However one may dream of ambassadors one's heart is not a stone, and one has wistful feelings for one's youth. Ariadne tried to fall in love, made a show of being in love, and even swore that she loved me. But I am a highly strung and sensitive man; when I am loved I feel it even at a distance, without vows and assurances; at once I felt as it were a coldness ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... trouble, and the number of folks wearing mourning that one met in Hull and Yarmouth, and the other places, was enough to make the most light-hearted man feel miserable. Black everywhere—nothing but black at every turn; and then the women's faces looked so wistful, and the children seemed so quiet, that I couldn't bear to walk the streets. The women would question any stranger that came from the quays, and they scorned to think that there was not always a chance for their men; but the dead seamen were swinging about in the ooze far down ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... staring before him with manful eyes that winked rapidly but shed no tears. His lips were pursed up as if to whistle, yet made no sound. At the sight of him and the withered poppies in the place where never a flower of memory blossomed, hot tears surged to the girl's eyes. It was wistful to think of a child ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... what do you mean? Don't joke, please, because every true word you say is of value to me, you see," he said, in an almost beseeching tone, with a wistful expression ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... dressed, had come into the bazaar, and had made her way noiselessly up to where the Rectory children stood. She was a slight, delicate-looking child, taller than Bridget, though not seemingly much older. She had large, earnest, perhaps somewhat wistful, brown eyes, which made her face attractive and interesting when you looked at it closely, though at first sight it was too small and pale to catch one's attention. She stood there quietly and very ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... of the interest he took in the restoration of the lost female. The stout yeoman arose, and, moving to the entranced Narra-mattah, he took the infant into his large hands, and for a moment the honest borderer gazed at the boy with a wistful and softened eye. Then raising the diminutive face of the infant to his own expanded and bold features, he touched its cheek with his lips, and returned the babe to its mother, who witnessed the whole ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... into a merry laugh. The youth had captured her, with his wistful, Irish eyes, his brogue ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... do her good, I trust," casting wistful glances up the stairs and toward the door of the chamber, where girlish voices were heard, Nettie Hudson and Susie Granger chatting gayly and uttering exclamations of delight as they arranged and adjusted ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Charitable people gave him alms, but he never begged. He would enter a town, take his station near a church and wait until the bells rang for matins or vespers, then take up his staff and, sighing deeply, move off. People noting the wistful look in his eyes would ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... both her hands in his, but she took them away again. For one brief second her eyes had met his, and there was a sort of wistful and despairing kindliness in them: then she stood before him, with her face turned away from him, and her voice low and tremulous. "I did wish to see you—for once, for the last time," she said. "If you had gone away, you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terror of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which like a sheeted spectre beset his very path! ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, eyed curiously the wan, wistful face of Judge Hyde's wife pressed up to the pane of the south window, its great restless eyes and shadowy hair bringing to mind some captive bird that pines and beats against the cage. Her husband absent from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... its lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,—NOT FOR HER; and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes did not turn first to HER,—wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... about thirty years old, blonde, a little effeminate, wistful. A curious appurtenance in the military household of so vigorous a general). "Natacha, there is not an hour that I can call truly good if I spend it away from you, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... had begged Janith to let him rent a super mech. And she had scoffed at his wastefulness. Yet, now that he remembered it again, there had been a wistful note of hope ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... him farewell. He had lost courage, poor David; perhaps he had not very much to start with, and things had gone hard with him for a long time. He knew he should never see these faces again, this homely, friendly place. He gazed about with wistful eyes, noting every spot in the bare little station. He had known it all by heart, ever since he was a child, for his father had been station-master. He could have built the whole thing over, with his eyes shut, he thought, and ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... you look like some one in a dream. I really might imagine you a piece of rare statuary—one of the Niobe group strayed from the Florentine gallery to meet the wistful gaze of the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... was shaking down a fortune from the green ivy-bushes that hung at the vintners' doors, the western continent, at which he had already cast wistful glances, remained the treasure-house of Spain. His unfortunate but indomitable half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, recalled it to his memory. The name of Gilbert deserves to be better remembered than it is; and America, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... glad lips have breathed the trembling prayer, "O Lord, remember me!" The hosts of God With wistful angel-faces, bending low Above their dying King, were surely stirred To wonder at the cry. Not one of all The shining host had dared to speak to Him In that dread hour of woe, when Heaven and Earth Stood trembling and amazed. Yet, lo! the voice Of one who ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... some new note in that expressive voice of hers. Was it merely wistful, was it really jealous, or was either element the product of my own imagination? I made answer while ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... planned; but plans, as immemorial experience has taught us, but never quite convinced us, "gang aft a-gley," and Robert's were no exception to the rule. Between him and the open page before him, he saw continually the face of Marcia Oldham. The sweet, wistful, violet eyes gazed earnestly at him, the delicately cut mouth with the dimple in one corner smiled at him and his book presently dropped from his fingers and lay unheeded on the rug while he dreamed dreams and saw visions. Gradually, his thoughts wandered from the future and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the gate of iron Pressed his wan and wistful face, Gazing with an awe-struck pleasure At the glories of the place; Never had his brightest day-dream Shone ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... not endure that which beset him; it was unbearable, because her eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why did she let her loveliness so call to him. She was not a trifler who could play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was. Sometimes he could believe that beautiful women ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... children crowded together under my window, and looked wistfully up. What did they expect? That something would be thrown down? Withered flowers, bones, cigar ends, or one thing or another, that they could amuse themselves with? They looked up with their frost-pinched faces and unspeakably wistful eyes. In the meantime, the two small foes continued to ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... raised her head, and, turning, looked full upon me. It was a wild, eager, wistful, questioning look—her large, lustrous eyes thrilled me through with their old power; I saw in her face something that set my heart throbbing with feverish madness. It was a mute appeal—a face turned toward me as though to find out by that one eager, piercing, penetrating glance, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... moment the girl was on the point of laughing at him, but the wistful seriousness of his face checked the outburst of merriment on her lips, and instead she ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... She spoke with such wistful regret that the older woman felt its note through her own deep gloom. She groped out, tears blinding her, until her hand found her young friend's, and then she clasped it, and stood holding it, no ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... other hand, who threw Jehovah's thunderbolts across the world as if he liked them, and approved of them, and was ready for any further number of these celestial missiles, of an even vaster displacement, was in his heart of hearts a wistful believer in everlasting mercy. Few men have been born with a softer heart. He sometimes wondered whether in framing the Regulations of the Salvation Army he had not pressed too hard on human nature. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... his dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a wistful, changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is bright and clouds run swiftly. She turned on ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... had dogged her into town, and now worried her more than dust, or heat, or the ceaseless clatter of tongues. Tom, Dick, and Harry's unmended hose persisted in dancing a spectral jig before her mental eye, mother's querulous complaints spoilt the song she hummed to cheer herself, and little May's wistful face put the goddess of beauty ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the wilderness, and encumbered with the stumps of the great trees which had been felled, some to be used as logs, others to be cut up into planks; but the place had a rough beauty of its own, while the wistful glances that fell upon him from the occupants of the porch sent a thrill through his breast, and raised a hope that if ever he came that way he ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... affairs, she presented an unblemished complexion, as if her hard rosy surface were protected by some indestructible glaze. Beside her opulent attractions the frail prettiness of Alice Rokeby, who was dining out for the first time this winter, looked wistful and pathetic. Every one, except Corinna, who had been abroad at the time, knew of the old affair between Alice Rokeby and John Benham; and every one who knew of it had thought that they would be married as soon as she got her divorce. But time ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun;[10] and, after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden.[11] The scholar must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.[12] Therein it resembles his ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... answered by a slim, appealing girl of perhaps twenty-two. Hers was a wistful, oval face, with a small, upturned nose; and her clear hazel eyes were the sort that always seem to be enjoying some amusing secret of their own. Her hair was a soft brown, worn loose to the shoulders, after ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... advent of MR. COADE and MR. PURDIE presently adds to their misgivings. MR. COADE is old, a sweet pippin of a man with a gentle smile for all; he must have suffered much, you conclude incorrectly, to acquire that tolerant smile. Sometimes, as when he sees other people at work, a wistful look takes the place of the smile, and MR. COADE fidgets like one who would be elsewhere. Then there rises before his eyes the room called the study in his house, whose walls are lined with boxes marked A. B. C. to Z. and A2. B2. C2. to K2. These contain dusty ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... first call on the domestic group of which he was the nub. Still in the future was the day when he was to move into town, and to have also a summer home on the North Shore, and to make some of his father-in-law's spare funds yield profitable results, and to arouse among wistful clerks and unsuccessful "operators" an admiring wonder as the ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... you gullible," she denied, suddenly wistful. "I thought you very generous and very ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... set fire to the hotel, and, as I recall it, shot him. How true such stories are I cannot say, but there was no doubt that Senlis had been punished. At least half of the old city on the banks of the wistful Nonette—it is a much larger place than Crepy, with a cathedral of some consequence— was smashed as utterly as it might have been by a cyclone or an earthquake. The systematic manner in which this was done was suggested by the fact that, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Beauty one could make a choice. There was always one lady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than the others. But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to be more perplexed. The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing. I have been through the work a score of times ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... captain's nomination. Then Mr. Simpson stepped to the front and, after a wistful glance at the ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... inclined to reproach himself because he was not. Of course there was a sadness about it, a regret that the wonder of those days of love and youth had passed. But the sorrow was not bitter, the regret was but a wistful longing, the sweet, lingering fragrance of a memory, that was all. Toward her, Madeline, he felt—and it surprised him, too, to find that he felt—not the slightest trace of resentment. And more surprising still he felt none toward Blanchard. He had meant what he said in his letter, he wished ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... talking earnestly. He heard the little iron gate open and close. He watched them disappear behind the hedge of laurels. A puff of breeze brought the faint odour of roses to him, and with it a sudden host of memories. His eyes grew wistful. He felt something tugging at his heartstrings. Only a few years ago life here had seemed so wonderful a thing—only a few years, but with all the passions and struggles of a lifetime crowded into them. The maelstrom ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... time, he chopped wood for her; once he came with a board on his shoulder, and quickly and skillfully replaced the rotten step on the porch. Another time he repaired the tottering fence with just as little ado. He whistled as he worked. It was a beautifully sad and wistful whistle. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... grave, but perfectly composed. There was a wistful look in his eyes indeed, as if he were thinking of something or some one far away—Kit's face on the sunny hills of Quercy where he had ridden with her, perhaps; a look which seemed to say that the doings here ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... saddled and bridled before the principal entrance to the mansion, and Mr. Horace Dinsmore was pacing the veranda to and fro with slow, meditative step, while Bruno, crouching beside the door, followed his movements with wistful, questioning eyes, doubtless wondering what had become of his ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... Thenceforth one path My footsteps wooed; the fickle train was still Of young desires—new felt my being's aim, My soul revealed! and as the pilgrim turns His wistful gaze, where, from the orient sky, With gracious lustre beams Redemption's star;— So to that brightest point of heaven, her presence, My hopes and longings centred all. No sun Sank in the western waves, but smiled farewell To two united lovers:—thus in stillness Our hearts were ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... far clouds and the heaving and noisy sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the King's road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men putting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... unlike as possible to my dear brave Irma, with her curls like shining jet, and the clean-cut, decisive profile. But I saw at once from whom Baby Louis had gotten his fair soft curls, his blue eyes, and the wistful appeal of his smile. They were always before me as I sat with my elbows on the ink-splattered table, and I did all my work conscious of the rebellious twist of raven curl that was on the other side. I did not open this often, only when by myself, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... indeed to her, but because of some great grief. What this grief was he could not guess, for the children had been told nothing about the beautiful lady, except that her name was Lady Clarice. She never complained, but the boy's wistful eyes would follow her as she moved among the trees, and his heart would swell with pity; and how he would long to do something to prove to ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... from the table and his emptied dishes and fragmentary beef-bone, Rufus sat before the little fireplace, gazing into it at the red coals, and taking casual and then wistful note of various things about his brother's apartment that told of the man that ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a little wistful, but he answered chafingly, "Wouldn't that be a great thing to do just now in the middle of one of the greatest ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... facts of its local history. To the great Roman conqueror the inhabitants of this part of Britain opposed a resistance, which taught him, as he indirectly confesses, to look back with many a wistful glance toward the coast where he had left his transports, but ill-assured against the ocean or the enemy. Against the Norman conqueror, likewise, when all the rest of the island had yielded implicitly to his sway and to the substitution of feudal for ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Friendship; there are amatory explanations of all kinds. When he fails to keep an appointment with a lady on account of the rain—for there were no umbrellas in those days—he likens himself to Leander, wistful on the Sestian shore. He is not always very discreet; Damon's thoughts when "Night's black Curtain o'er the World was spread" were very innocent, but such as we have decided nowadays to say nothing about. It was the fashion of the time ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... necessary to romantic beauty. Sheila had a strange, arresting sort of jaw, a trifle over-accentuated and out of drawing. Her eyes were long, flattened, narrow, the color of bubbles filled with smoke, of a surface brilliance and an inner mistiness—indescribable eyes, clear, very melting, wistful and beautiful under sooty lashes and slender, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... sun went in, and the river grew darker, while the town stood out more clearly. Ceaselessly, the younger men gazed towards the town with wistful, gloomy eyes, though silently they remained ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly delicious glow responded in her heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... [SN: Heb. xiii. 20.] who in this also "left us an example, that we should follow His steps." [1 Pet. ii. 22.] Never did man walk more genuinely with men than the Son of Man, whether it was among the needy and wistful crowds in streets or on hill-sides, or at the dinner-table of the Pharisee, or in the homes of Nazareth, Cana, and Bethany. No Christian was ever so "practical" as Jesus Christ. No disciple ever so directly and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... rapid, full of fun, and takes the reader not only to many interesting places in Central America, but in the country as well, where Peggy attends a school for girls. The incidents are cleverly brought out, and Peggy in her wistful way, proves in her many adventures to be a brave girl and an endearing heroine to her ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... with memories, like twilight, and the song of the thrush; even at its least, it had been the glow that lives behind the northern horizon in midsummer, witnessing to the hidden glory, during darkness, or the wistful glimmer of stars. Now, while the sun went higher, and all the hum of life rose, and the cries of the water-birds, the buzz of insects over the bright lake, became more insistent, and the blue and lovely morning spread and strengthened round her, criticism and analysis failed. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Caroline turned a wild, wistful look on the woman as she said this; then she moved a step toward her, and the tones of her voice, as they came through her white lips, were mournful and stormy, like wind ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... the field, the wistful lamb Saw them approach, and ran from side to side The gate, pushing its eager face between The lowest bars, and bleating for pure joy. And Jesus, kneeling by it, fondled with The little creature, that could scarce find how To show its love enough; licking his hands, Then, starting ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Hartmann's retreating figure. Then a slight sound attracted his attention, and he looked up in time to see Kathrien coming downstairs. Her simple white dress held no touch of mourning, yet she was a wistful, pathetic little ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... all this sybaritic store the intruder had to set the figure mirrored by a great cheval-glass—the counterfeit of a jaded shop-girl in shabby, shapeless, sodden garments, her damp, dark hair framing stringily a pinched and haggard face with wistful, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance |
