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More "Meditation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reached, that the act now before him would have a determining effect on his whole future. The circumstances of her past had raised to clairvoyance her natural insight into human motive, had made of her a moral barometer responding to the faintest fluctuations of atmosphere, and years of anxious meditation had familiarized her with the form which her son's temptations were likely to take. The peculiar misery of her situation was that she could not, except indirectly, put this intuition, this foresight, at his service. It was a part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counsellor, ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... strictures. Without going so far as the old King Louis-Philippe, who used to say in his exile, "The people are never in fault"—one may admit that there must be some righteousness in the assent of a whole village. Mad! Mad! He who kept in pious meditation the ritual vigil-of-arms by the well of an inn and knelt reverently to be knighted at daybreak by the fat, sly rogue of a landlord has come very near perfection. He rides forth, his head encircled by a halo—the patron ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... were silent, Jack toying with the small pebbles at his feet, Bryda gazing out at the hills where her home lay hid, and forgetting poor Jack's presence in her own meditation. Jack was the first to break the silence. There had sprung up between him and Bryda, since Christmas, a certain reserve which seemed to raise a barrier between him and ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... George actually did pay to Macclesfield one instalment of a thousand pounds, but fate interposed and prevented any further payment. Macclesfield retired from the world, and spent his remaining years in the study of science and in religious meditation. He died in 1732. His was a strange story. He had many of the noblest qualities; he had had, on the whole, a great career. It is not easy, if we may borrow the words which Burke applied to a more picturesque and interesting sufferer, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... closely connected by public and private ties. Two of them were politicians who had never, in the midst of official and parliamentary business, ceased to love and honour philosophy; and two were philosophers, in whom habits of abstruse meditation had not impaired the homely good sense without which even genius is mischievous in politics. Never had there been an occasion which more urgently required both practical and speculative abilities; and never had the world seen the highest practical and the highest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... many a man do mean, wrong, dishonest deeds, in order to be thought generous, and a "royal good fellow," by his own particular friends; and Roxy would a thousand times rather have "stolen" than to have faced her mates empty-handed this morning. She walked on in sorrowful meditation. She thought once of going back, to see if there were eggs at the barn—she might take them down to the store, and get candy. But she remembered they were all brought in last night, and it was too early for the hens to have ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... of my greatest weaknesses, because it leads me to so much sin, is my social disposition. It draws me so often into perilous conversations, and away from silence and meditation with the Spirit. Lately I have felt almost ready to say that good works are a hindrance to the gate of heaven. Pride and self-approbation are so often mixed with them. I feel that nothing has been spoken against the vain attempt to trust in good works ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the lusts of the body and the flesh, and must live spiritually. They take this to mean that they must cast away worldly things, which are especially riches and honors; that they must go continually in pious meditation on God, salvation, and eternal life; and must spend their life in prayers and in reading the Word and pious books. But those who renounce the world and live in the spirit in this manner acquire a melancholy life, unreceptive of heavenly joy. To receive the life of heaven ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... different when together. What made their Enmity the more entertaining to all the rest of their Sex was, that in Detraction from each other neither could fall upon Terms which did not hit herself as much as her Adversary. Their Nights grew restless with Meditation of new Dresses to outvie each other, and inventing new Devices to recal Admirers, who observed the Charms of the one rather than those of the other on the last Meeting. Their Colours failed at each other's Appearance, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fatigue," that he cannot fall into an easy and agreeable tone, nor succeed otherwise than "in works which demand application."[4135] As an offset to this, style, in this ardent brain, under the influence of intense, prolonged meditation, incessantly hammered and rehammered, becomes more concise and of higher temper than is elsewhere found. Since La Bruyere we have seen no more ample, virile phrases, in which anger, admiration, indignation, studied and concentrated passion, appear with more rigorous ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... food for meditation, and, if not used at once, was treasured up for future need. Marivaux came at last to surmise that here lay the secret of his inspiration, but it was not for some years yet that he expressed himself, as he did in the Spectateur francais: "Ainsi je ne suis point auteur, et j'aurais ete, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... two of the generals ventured to consult him respecting arrangements which it seemed necessary to make for the following day. Napoleon shook his head and replied, "Ask me nothing till to-morrow," and again covering his eyes with his hand, he resumed his attitude of meditation. Night came. One by one the stars came out. The moon rose brilliantly in the cloudless sky. The soldiers moved with noiseless footsteps, and spoke in subdued tones. The rumbling of wagons and the occasional boom of a distant gun alone disturbed the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Catena; treading the constant round of certain common doctrinal heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks, and means, out of which, as out of an alphabet, or sol-fa, by forming and transforming, joining and disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and two hours' meditation, might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of more than a weekly charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the infinite helps of interlinearies, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear. But as for the multitude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on every text that ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... while the two stand motionless and silent. When he is on top of the wall, GUIDO, who now remembers that omnipotence perches there, makes haste to serve it, and obsequiously assists the DUKE to descend. The DUKE then comes well forward, in smiling meditation, and hands first his gloves, then his scarlet cloak (which you now perceive to be lined with ermine and sable in four stripes) to GUIDO, who takes them as a servant would ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... to his taste: some men prefer to play At mystery, as others at piquet. Some sit in mystic meditation; some Parade the street with tambourine and drum. One studies to decipher ancient lore Which, proving stuff, he studies all the more; Another swears that learning is but good To darken things already understood, Then writes upon Simplicity so well ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... day in the summer of the year 1259, Martin strolled down the river's banks, to indulge in meditation and prayer. But the banks were too crowded for him that day. He marked the boats as they came up from Abingdon, drawn by horses, laden with commodities; or shot down the swift stream without such adventitious aid. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... threshold by a common difficulty. In this world, in spite of its many agreeable features, even the most sensitive must undergo some drudgery to live. It is not possible to devote your time to study and meditation without what are quaintly but happily denominated private means; these absent, a man must contrive to earn his bread by some service to the public such as the public cares to pay him for; or, as Thoreau loved to put it, Apollo must serve Admetus. This was to Thoreau even a sourer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Gospel of Christ, where everything is subordinated to the idea of a higher righteousness and the union of the individual with God, that the general judgment and the final condition after it are the clear, firmly grasped goal of all meditation. No doctrine has been more surely preserved in the convictions and preaching of believers in Christ than this. Fancy might roam ever so much and, under the direction of the tradition, thrust bright and precious images between the present condition ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Hertford! fitted, or to shine in courts With unaffected grace, or walk the plains, With innocence and meditation joined, In soft assemblage; listen to the song, Which thy own season paints; while nature all Is blooming, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... flying form in speechless grief and amazement. Then flinging himself into a chair, he bowed his head upon his hands in sorrowful meditation. Sitting thus he did not perceive the approach of some one, who laid a hand lightly upon his bowed head, murmuring: "Blind! ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... her visitors, he went out of the house, and, lost in meditation, walked by the flower-beds. The sun was already setting. The flowers, having just been watered, gave forth a damp, irritating fragrance. Indoors they began singing again, and in the distance the ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Now you know what she was, and what you are and are like to be. I tell you again, take off that gown as you would tear off a poisoned toad from your flesh; then go down to your own room and spend the rest of the day in prayer and meditation." ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he assisted with a highly tragical countenance, John sought his father where he sat, presumably in religious meditation, on the Sabbath mornings. The old gentleman looked up with that sour, inquisitive expression that came so near to smiling and ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly he had felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped together as to merge and be one and the same ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... cunningly: away, boyes, [Ex. all but Schoolemaster.] I heare the hornes: give me some meditation, And marke your Cue.—Pallas ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... sometimes meet in the street, but give no signs of recognition. The old man is still living, seldom going beyond the portals of his son's house and passing most of his time in moody meditation on the past. Let us hope that a heartfelt repentance may in some measure ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Heath on the very night, and about the very time, when the man had been shot; so, with all these materials, Mr Cargrim hoped sooner or later to build up a very pretty case against the bishop. If Miss Whichello was mixed up with the matter, so much the better. At this moment Mr Cargrim's meditation was broken in upon by the voice of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Santideva, which in its humility, sweetness and fervent piety has been rightly compared with the De Imitatione Christi. In many respects the virtues of the Bodhisattva are those of the Arhat. His will must be strenuous and concentrated; he must cultivate the strictest morality, patience, energy, meditation and knowledge. But he is also a devotee, a bhakta: he adores all the Buddhas of the past, present and future as well as sundry superhuman Bodhisattvas, and he confesses his sins, not after the fashion of the Patimokkha, but by accusing himself before these heavenly ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... intimates, that I may see them even with my bodily eyes.' So she smiled, and waved her fair hand: and at once, a few, a very few, not all worthiest, not all best, came nearer to me with looks of love; and I knew them each one, for I had met and somewhile walked with each of them in the paths of meditation; and some appeared less beatified than others, and some even meanly clad as in garments all of earth, yet I loved them more than the remainder of that crowded world, though not equally, nor yet all for merit, but in that I had sympathy with these ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was not the thing to be the only one who was irreverently looking around, and my good-fortune soon supplied ample motive for looking steadily in one direction. The reader may justly think that I should have composed my mind to meditation on my many sins, but I might as well have tried to gather in my hands the reins of all the wild horses of Arabia as to curb and manage my errant thoughts. My only chance was for some one or something to catch and hold them for ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... having their own affairs to attend to, left them alone. Exhausted with the loss of blood, the poor woman slumbered for many hours, during which she never let go the hand of Philip, who watched her breathing in mournful meditation. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... be warned not to look to the newspapers for information concerning facts and concerning the spirit of the people. The Tribune's senile clamor for peace, for arbitration, for meditation, its Jewitt, Mercier, Napoleon, and Switzerland combinations, fell dead and in ridicule before the sound judgment of ninety-nine hundredths of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... of trees, a smell of the earth at morning, hung in the air. Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed myself in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was, to give myself to the reading of the word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... resolved to kindle a fire; and having heaped dry sticks upon my hearth, and added a billet or two, I struck a light, and soon produced a blaze. Sitting down, I fixed my eyes upon the blaze, and soon fell into a deep meditation. I thought of the events of the day, the scene at church, and what I had heard at church, the danger of losing one's soul, the doubts of Jasper Petulengro as to whether one had a soul. I thought over the various arguments which I had either heard, or which had come spontaneously ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Hamlet compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, a miniature must be lugged out. "The truth is," he adds, "the characters of Shakspeare are more the objects of meditation than of interest or curiosity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... meant to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of the romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas is the oldest thing in the world, which is true; yet it is also new every ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... it's "coompany, coompany, coompany," an' they think a man's no better than theirsels. A'd have yo' to know a've a vast o' thoughts in myself', as I'm noane willing to lay out for t' benefit o' every man. A've niver gotten time for meditation sin' a were married; leastways, sin' a left t' sea. Aboard ship, wi' niver a woman wi'n leagues o' hail, and upo' t' masthead, in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... credited you with sufficient manhood to dare it. It only goes to show how shortsighted we humans are, how incomprehensive of the workings of the human heart and soul; we think we know—and find ourselves utterly confounded, as I am now." He was silent for a few minutes, apparently deep in meditation. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... ran upstairs, and Mr. Prohack sat solitary in delightful meditation. After a few minutes the lad re-appeared in hat and coat. Mr. Prohack thought that he had heard a bag dumped in ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... unconsciously stopped still in deep thought as he asked himself this question, and was leaning in meditation against a great oak tree, when he suddenly became aware of a rapid tread approaching along the narrow track. It seemed as if some youth were advancing toward him, for he heard the clear whistle as of a boyish voice, and the springy tread seemed ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... He lapsed into meditation evidently not unpleasing; then he continued: "When you've got a mother and two sisters that you haven't seen for over fifteen years, naturally you're not in such a particular durned hurry to ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Lordship; for even those most blind and obstinate in their prejudices were obliged to confess that the archbishop was a saintly man—as was said by the auditor who went to arrest him, as has been previously stated. The holy archbishop was much given to prayer and meditation, and inclined to silence; he was modest and sedate in his actions; and he was very watchful in whatever he did that all should be ordered by the divine law—continually keeping in mind the account that he must render ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... world. A famous preacher pronounced the funeral sermon. In simple and touching words he described the peaceful passing away of the righteous, who had passed long years in calm preparation for a Christian end. "The angel of death found her," said the orator, "engaged in pious meditation and waiting for ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... He gazed at the plants, and his glance wandered from one to the other, as though he did not see them, being lost in meditation. The voice had been calm and clear as ever, but it was the first time he had ever said so much, and Unorna's heart stood still, half fire and half ice. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... and manner, as he said these words, which puzzled me all the morning. After dinner, finding myself alone with him, I told him I was glad he was not obliged to go away. He looked at me with the mysterious smile I have mentioned, thanked me, and fell into meditation. As this bescribbled chronicle is the record of my follies as well of my hauts faits, I needn't hesitate to say that for a moment I was a good deal vexed. What business has this angel of candor to deal in signs and portents, to look unutterable things? What right has he to do so with me especially, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... money and only the remainder in good, we can see with half an eye that this man is a thief. But if the other spends a certain proportion of the hours in smoking a pipe of tobacco, and a certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or the clock, or trying to recall an air, or in meditation on his own past adventures, and only the remainder in downright work such as he is paid to do, is he, because the theft is one of time and not of money,—is he any the less a thief? The one gave a bad shilling, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like one distraught, and sometimes throwing herself upon the bed, wailing and moaning all the while as if her heart would break indeed. And, truly, she had some reason for the violence of her grief. Not being a thoughtful person, nor given to meditation, she had never before duly considered that her maintenance was a matter of cost and calculation to those who provided it, nor reflected that she had no rightful claim upon those who gave her shelter, food, and clothing. She had been thankful to her protectors for their kindness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and her voice dropped lower with each statement. "One always sees the same thing. Always hears the same thing. Always the same thing." These last almost inaudible words sank away into the silent pool of Hortense's meditation. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... this extreme intellectual indulgence, in a life the primary purpose of which is not meditation, but action, impair the individual as to his normal usefulness, and thus diffuse by example a deteriorating influence upon the young, and misleading influence upon all, but it actually leads to false views of life, and an unsound philosophy such as transcendental idealism, pessimism, indolence, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... by habitual fasting and general meagreness of diet to the condition of living skeletons; yet they seem to enjoy splendid health, and live to a shrivelled old age. The Brahman shop-keeper squats contentedly among his wares, passing the hours in dreamy meditation and in consoling pipes of goodakoo. Nothing seems to disturb his calm serenity, any more than the reposeful expression on the countenance of a marble Buddha could be affected—nothing but the approach of a Sahib toward his shop. It is interesting to observe the mingled ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... space of three centuries they should have treated as simply contemptible an agency which all men must now admit to have been, for good or evil, the most powerful moral lever that has ever been applied to the affairs of men, are facts well worthy of meditation in ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... letter was finished, and Reggie gave way to meditation. Everything was so utterly different to what he had anticipated that he could hardly believe he was actually in that mystic place the trenches. To his left a crumbling wall ran along until it bent ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... in meditation which was entirely abstracted from terrestrial objects. The thousands of spectators waited in silent and gloomy suspense for the final catastrophe. The sheriff stood forth and addressed to the condemned man a few ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... and children hailed him with joy, but nothing they could say seemed worth his notice; he seemed to be wrapped in deep meditation—not a smile was seen to light up his sunburnt countenance. No one could read the secret ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned— Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround— Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;— To me that cup has been dealt in ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... objections with abundant controversial ability, the strength of his position is due not so much to his negative arguments as to his affirmative statements; for his statements have in them the peculiar vitality of that mood of meditation in which spiritual things are directly beheld rather than logically inferred, and, being thus the expression of spiritual perceptions, they feel their way at once to the spiritual perceptions of the reader, to be judged by the common sense of the soul ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... manifesto is that which is proclaimed in the conjugal bed, the principal theatre of war. This subject will be treated in detail in the Meditation entitled: Of Various Weapons, in the paragraph, Of Modesty in its ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... he sat in meditation, still glancing at her furtively under his shaggy brows, while she waited for ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... candles there, for, lost in meditation, she had been sitting in the dark, and with reckless hospitality poked the ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the Unity of Life—the Oneness of All Life. The Western thinkers, and many of the Eastern philosophers arrived at this conclusion by means of their Intellectual powers, greatly heightened and stimulated by concentration and meditation, which latter process liberated the faculties of the Spiritual Mind so that it passed down knowledge to the Intellect, which then seized upon the higher knowledge which it found within itself, and amplified and theorized ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... me and almost doubting that anything out of the ordinary had passed in the last five minutes. I glanced narrowly at him, but there was nothing in his manner to betray that he had not been sitting there for the past hour in peaceful meditation. Was he thinking of the other nights when the room was bright with ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... and odd thousand, it has grown to six millions. It has increased no less than twelve-fold. This is the state of the colony trade, as compared with itself at these two periods, within this century;—and this is matter for meditation. But this is not all. Examine my second account. See how the export trade to the colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other point of view, that is, as compared to the whole trade of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... observe the ancient practice of the Jews, of dedicating the sabbath day, not to idleness, but to the learning their sacred rites and religious customs, and to the meditation on the law of Moses; the like to which we meet with elsewhere in Josephus also against Apion, B. I. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Practice 1. Inhibition of States of Mind 2. Meditation with and without Seed 3. The Use of Mantras 4. Attention 5. Obstacles to Yoga 6. Capacities for Yoga 7. Forthgoing and Returning 8. Purification of Bodies 9. Dwellers on the Threshold 10. Preparation for Yoga 11. ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... now methought, I began to look into the Bible with new eyes, and read as I never did before, and especially the epistles of the apostle St Paul were sweet and pleasant to me; and indeed I was then never out of the Bible, either by reading or meditation; still crying out to God, that I might know the truth, and way to heaven ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... his hands, and remained for some moments silent, apparently in deep meditation. From his manner I could not help believing that he really sympathised with me, and that he was thinking of some plan ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... am; I was plunged in profound meditation." He feared not to reply, for the members had been counted, and therefore the absence of a member would have provoked an examination. Therefore, without hesitation, he ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... these extremes, whilest some laboured for defence of the ships, and sought to saue their bodies, other some of more milder spirit sought to saue the soule by deuout prayer and meditation to the Almightie, thinking indeede by no other meanes possible then by a diuine Miracle to haue their deliuerance: so that there was none that were either idle, or not well occupied, and he that helde himselfe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... sulky meditation, sent a harsh laugh out of his hot throat, and said, "Oh, you can make your mind easy about him, if your other man fights for you like that you'll do. Thought you'd have three of them, did you? Or perhaps you only wanted ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... last long. The Raja's daughter — for the principal maiden was a princess — soon left her companions, who were scooping up water with their palms and dashing it over one another's heads, and proceeded to perform the rites of purification, meditation, and worship. Then she began strolling with a friend under the shade ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... twelve her summons came—a knock at the door, the turning of the handle, the push to open, and Ingram's voice. "Come along, Sancie," he said, and went away without any more ceremony. She got up from her chair, put her book down, having marked her place, and followed him after a few minutes' meditation. Ingram's quarters were on the ground floor of the house, as hers were, but in the opposite wing. She had two rooms in the western arm of the E; the whole ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... parochial system with the alienation of the parish teinds to the use of the monastery. But the idea of a church in the centre of a residence, is one not without suggestiveness to the life of to-day, with its many activities, as a training home for workers; as a temporary retreat for rest, meditation, and prayer to the hard-wrought ministers in the city parishes; as a place for conference on the religious problems; as a theological hall and settlement for divinity students, like that at Loccum near Hanover, where a reformed mediaeval monastery, ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... expansion of his sensibilities, Nature had given him notice of what she destined him for, long before he understood the call; and those materials of poetry with which his own fervid temperament abounded were but by slow degrees, and after much self-meditation, revealed to him. In his Satire, though vigorous, there is but little foretaste of the wonders that followed it. His spirit was stirred, but he had not yet looked down into its depths, nor does even his bitterness taste of the bottom of the heart, like those sarcasms which he afterwards flung ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... had been great fun, principally on account of Ellen's figure, which Ned admired greatly, and now he admired her profile, its gravity appealed to him, and her attitude full of meditation. He watched her touching the gasping trout with the point of her parasol. She had drawn one leg under her. Her eyes were small and grey and gem-like, and there was a sweet look of interrogation in them ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... recollection, her assurance of prophetic anticipation, faded from her, and of the recollection itself remained nothing but a ruin! And all the time it took to dawn into brilliance and fade out into darkness, had measured but a few weary steps by the side of her companion, lost in the meditation of a glad sermon for the next Sunday about the lost sheep carried home with jubilance, and forgetting how unfit was the poor sheep beside him for such a fatiguing tramp up hill and down, along what was nothing better than the stony ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... and colour, when, stirred by outward realities; and contrariwise, how slow and inadequate is the effort to reverse this process, and to clothe with memories, monuments and sites over which the spirit has not sent a halo of previous meditation. So he settled down quietly at Lausanne for the space of nearly a year, and commenced a most austere and systematic course of reading on the antiquities of Italy. The list of learned works which ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought, which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, "A handsome man." Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, "A thoughtful man." But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated his ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... school, may we learn to say, To-day is the Sabbath day, ever blessed and beautiful; welcome to its holy and happy influence! Welcome, thrice welcome, the day of sweet repose, and sweeter meditation. Spring is sometimes compared to childhood. In spring, when the brooks fall gurgling down the mountain side, when the earth begins to be covered with its verdant robes, when the birds are joyfully singing around, the trees gently waving in the breeze, and all is ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... late war. The Chevalier's Guard, he declared, had all white satin slashed breeches, and red boots—"only they left them at home, my dear," adds this wag. Not one pennyworth of sublimity would he or George allow henceforth to Mr. Home's performance. As for Harry, he sate in very deep meditation over the scene; and when Mrs. Lambert offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said, "That he thought, Young Norval, Douglas, What-d'ye-call-'em, the fellow in white satin—who looked as old as his mother—was very lucky to be able to distinguish himself so soon. I wish I could get a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... person. No sooner had he grown to years of maturity than he began to reflect deeply on the depravity and misery of mankind, and he conceived the idea of retiring from society and devoting himself to meditation. His father in vain opposed this design. Buddha escaped the vigilance of his guards, and having found a secure retreat, lived for six years undisturbed in his devout contemplations. At the expiration of that ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... a heavy silence fell over the chamber of suffering. The night before, on his return from a party given by the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her lover. After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a longing which prompted him to kill his wife. Outside, under a sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the thread of his thoughts and had come ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... man of pronounced and positive spirituality—a man who loves the Word of God, who finds meditation in it sweet, and who finds relief, strength and joy in frequent daily prayer. The depressing influences which beset his spiritual life are many. The all-pervasive, chilling influence of heathenism, and its dead and deadening ceremonialism ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... as he walked aft, and walking forward with the same regular motion, turning when his master turned, and moreover, turning in the same direction; and, like his master, he appeared to be not a little nipped with the cold, and, as well as he, in a state of profound meditation. The name of this uncouth animal was very appropriate to his appearance, and to his temper. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... by turns luminous and dark, which checkered the ground of this path according as the trees were more or less in leaf, the young prince perceived a gentleman walking with his arms behind him, apparently plunged in a deep meditation. Without doubt, he had often had this gentleman described to him, for, without hesitating, Charles II. walked straight up to him. At the sound of his footsteps, the Comte de la Fere raised his head, and seeing an unknown man of noble and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the subject of Lucian's meditation as he sat amongst the cushions on the marble seat. The rich sound of the voices impressed him above all things, and he saw that words have a far higher reason than the utilitarian office of imparting a man's thought. ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... on his plow-handles. The sultry August day was drawing to a close. The sun was just ready to roll its bright red disk behind the western horizon. The Deacon seemed to be in a deep meditation. He cast a glance at his beautiful farm as it stretched itself out for a mile toward the river on the one side and nestled snugly against the foot of the limestone hill on the other side. The large white farmhouse with green trimming cozily ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... purposes, and set the means against the end. All, therefore, who sincerely love God, are students of His Word; they here, also accord in soul with the psalmist, and like him, can say, "O how I love thy word! in it is my meditation all the day:" they eat it as food for their souls, and find it sweeter than honey. They go to it as to an inexhaustible fountain, and drink from it streams of sacred light and joy. A neglected Bible is too unambiguous a sign of an unsanctified ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... a deserted corner of a drawing-room at his club, and there Seated himself for half an hour's meditation. How should he extricate himself from this dilemma? In what language should he address a young and beautiful woman devoted to him, but whose devotion he was bound to repudiate? He was not voluble in conversation, and he was himself aware of his own slowness. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the prophets, or as they were called, the Seers: Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel. Usually they came from the desert where they had fasted, prayed, and given themselves to meditation. They came in the name of Jehovah, not as warriors in judgment, but as preachers. They called the Israelites to repent, to overthrow their idols, to return to Jehovah; they foretold all the woes that would come upon them if they did not reconcile themselves to him. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... startled to be hurt. The idea of himself as a Roland Bean was too new to be assimilated immediately. It called for meditation. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... jest of my scruples, my lords," he continued, "and think I hold them lightly; but my treatise on the subject, which has cost me much labour and meditation, will avouch to the contrary. What would befall this realm if my marriage were called in question after my decease? The same trouble and confusion would ensue that followed on the death of my noble grandfather, King Edward the Fourth. To prevent such mischance I have resolved, most reluctantly, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... minute letters, the young Shawanoe read for several minutes to himself. The others held their peace, impressed with the singular sight. Neither could doubt that he clearly comprehended every word of the sublime volume, and they felt that it was wrong to break in upon his meditation. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... teacher of Music; and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff, arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at another dog: and whose yelps and howls resounded through the church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of meditation—keeping his eye upon the dog, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Here, meditation may indulge her reveries in the midst of the surges, and walk in cloisters, alone vocal with the whispers of the pine. I passed this consecrated spot soon after sunset, when daylight was expiring in the west, and when the distant ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... anecdote, the mere statement I might say, that such a thing had happened on the high seas, appeared to me a sufficient subject for meditation. Yet it was but a bit of a sea yarn after all. I felt that to bring out its deeper significance which was quite apparent to me, something other, something more was required; a leading motive that would harmonize all these violent noises, and a point of view that would put all that elemental ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... would spend four or five hours daily in Bible reading, meditation and prayer, so that whereas he had written a few months earlier: "Oh! dear mother, I wish I felt more what I write!" he was now daily becoming more earnest, patient and watchful, and was gradually putting on the whole armour ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... worthy of his exalted place in history. What shall it be? A temple such as Athens might have been proud to rear upon her Acropolis? An obelisk such as Thebes might have pointed out with pride to the strangers who found admission through her hundred gates? After long meditation and the rejection of the hybrid monstrosities with which the nation was menaced, an obelisk is at last decided upon. How can it be made grand and dignified enough to be equal to the office assigned it? We dare not attempt to carve a single stone from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to understand you, then, that intercourse with one's neighbours ought to take the place of meditation?" ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... easy to see why Catherine's plain speaking was not resented. She rarely begins with rebuke. The note of humility is first struck; she is always "servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ." Thence she frequently passes into fervent meditation on some special theme: the exceeding wonder of the Divine Love, the duty of prayer, the nature of obedience. We are lifted above the world into a region of heavenly light and sweetness, when suddenly—a blow from the shoulder!—a startling sense of return to earth. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised; we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... I can remember, either in mouth or nose. She had a great gold-headed stick by her chair; but I think it was more as a mark of state and dignity than for use; for she had as light and brisk a step when she chose as any girl of fifteen, and, in her private early walk of meditation in the mornings, would go as swiftly from garden alley to garden alley as any one ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... deserted; the generals remained all day in the audience-room, and gazed with sullen faces upon the door of the imperial cabinet. But this door did not open. In the cabinet the emperor was still on his sofa, now leaning back in meditation, and now bending over the map-table, and writing slowly. Opposite him sat the two topographers, mournfully waiting for him to speak to them. [Footnote: Odeleben, "The Campaign in Saxony in 1813."] But Napoleon wrote, gazed into the air, sank back on the sofa, groaned, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... all but tragic page, from the poet's own life. "Man was made to Mourn'" takes the part of the humble and the homeless, against the coldness and selfishness of the wealthy and the powerful, a favourite topic of meditation with Burns. He refrained, for awhile, from making "Death and Doctor Hernbook" public; a poem which deviates from the offensiveness of personal satire, into a strain of humour, at ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they lavished their strength, when investigating a favourite science, they have wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour; or, when, lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution, by the passions that meditation had raised; whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron frames. Shakespeare never grasped the airy dagger with a nerveless hand, nor did Milton tremble when ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... in the monastery at Bologna for six years, scarcely passing beyond its walls. These were years of ceaseless study, writing, meditation—work. He sought the most menial occupations—doing tasks that others cautiously evaded. His simplicity, earnestness and austerity won the love and admiration of the monks, and they sought to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... was sitting near the open door. Thomas Chadwick gazed absently at the Town Park, with its terra-cotta fountains and terraces, and beyond the Park, at the smoke rising from the distant furnaces of Red Cow. He might have been lost in deep meditation upon the meanings of life; he might have been prevented from hearing Paul Ford's question by the tremendous noise of the car. He made no sign. Then all of a sudden he turned almost fiercely on Paul Ford ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... two months in Paris, where S. G. Goodrich met him. "A slender form, with a black coat, black small-clothes, black silk stockings, moving back and forth, with its hands behind it, and evidently in a state of meditation. It was a curious, quaint, Connecticut-looking apparition, strangely in contrast to the prevailing forms and aspects in this gay metropolis. I said to myself, 'If it were possible, I should say that was Noah Webster!' I went up to him and found ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... reflection, cogitation, revery, musing, meditation, consideration, abstraction, imagination, brown study, contemplation, deliberation, introspection, retrospection, lucubration, rumination, preoccupation, excogitation; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... He had made a good shot, and he hated to relinquish his game. While he gazed in dismayed meditation, an idea began to kindle in his brain. Why could he not let himself down to the ledge by those long, strong vines that hung over ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... great strangers to Scripture, that except in their publike Ministerie, though they read many things, yet they are little conversant in the Scripture, and in meditation thereof. A dutie incumbent to ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... throne. He had left him dissatisfied; he had even betrayed his dissatisfaction by angry phrases. Mirabeau required a conspirator; he had only found a patriot. What he despised in the Duc d'Orleans was not the meditation of a crime, but the refusal to be his accomplice. He had not anticipated such scruples; he revenged himself by terming this carelessness about the throne the cowardice of an ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... mythology—created the world. But when he wished to create a woman, he found that he had employed all his materials in the creation of man. There did not remain one solid element. Then Twashtri, perplexed, fell into a profound meditation from which he aroused himself ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... it. When Malesherbes came in tears to announce the sentence, he found him sitting in the dark, his elbows resting on a table, his face hid in his hands, and in profound meditation. At the noise of his entrance, Louis rose and said: "For two hours I have been trying to discover if, during my reign, I have deserved the slightest reproach from my subjects. Well, M. de Malesherbes, I swear to you, in the truth of my heart, as a man about ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... the insecurity of landed property in Ireland than all the long list of outrages scheduled at assizes, or all the burning haggards that ever flared in a wintry sky. Her notion was to retire into some religious sisterhood, and away from life and its cares, to pass her remaining years in holy meditation and piety. She would have liked to have sold her estate and endowed some house or convent with the proceeds, but there were certain legal difficulties that stood in the way, and her law-agent, McKeown, must be seen and conferred with ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... For thou hast gathered (as a mother will The sayings of her children in her heart) The harvest-thoughts of reapers on the hill, When the cool rose and honeysuckle fill The air, and fruit is laden on the cart. Thou breathest the delight Of summer evening at the deep-roofed farm, And meditation of the summer night, When the enravished earth is lying warm From recent kisses of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... some time in profound meditation, the young man suddenly exclaimed, "I have found what you were ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with much emphasis. "Of course he came—the moment he knew." And after a moment of half-smiling meditation he pursued: ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... so lost in meditation that she was unconscious of an approaching footstep in the stillness of the deserted house, till it drew near to the threshold of the sick-room. The night was close and sultry, so she had left the door open, and that slow tread had crossed the threshold ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... painters of his time, and particularly Domenico Ghirlandajo, who had made a S. Jerome on the other side; and this work won very great praise, for in the head of that Saint he depicted the profound meditation and acute subtlety that are found in men of wisdom who are ever concentrated on the investigation of the highest and most difficult matters. This picture, as was said in the Life of Ghirlandajo, has this year (1564) been removed safe and sound from ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... Ann was preparing so many things that it seemed as if somebody must surely keep her company; but when dinner-time struck, and she was still alone, there came no lull in her anticipation. Peace abode with her, and wrought its own fair work. She ate her dinner slowly, with meditation and a thankful heart. She did not need to hear the minister's careful catalogue of mercies received. She was at home; that ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... instincts; a general realizing that wisdom can come only from experience, and not from the Book. It means psychologically calculated childhood opportunity, in which the now stifled instincts of leadership, workmanship, hero-worship, hunting, migration, meditation, sex, could grow and take their foundation place in the psychic equipment of a biologically promising human being. To illustrate in trivialities, no father, with knowledge of the meaning of the universal bent towards workmanship, would give his son a puzzle if he knew of the Mecano ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... anticipation from poverty and wretchedness! Once, "so was Franklin" and the world may one day witness in our little "'prentice" as great a philosopher as they have already seen in his noble pattern! And we passed on, buried in meditation. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... He felt absently for his pipe, filled and lighted it and went out to sit on the doorstep in gloomy meditation while he smoked. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... a moment, as if reflecting whether this anecdote was to be regarded as a general judgment of the arbiter that a gentleman will never smoke in the presence of a lady. But the Easy Chair broke in upon his meditation with a question, "If you had a son, should you wish to meet him smoking as he accompanied a lady upon the avenue? or, were you the father of a daughter, should you wish to see her cavalier smoking as he walked by her side? Upon ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... woman might love you," she said, critically, after a moment's meditation. "You are ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... have few visiters. Perhaps it is best that it should be so; for I have the spectres of no hard feelings nor bitter thoughts, nor painful recollections to haunt me, requiring excitement and bustle to drive them off; and old age demands time for solemn thought and serious meditation, to enable it to wean itself from the past, and look cheerfully ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... to the one whose kindly heart Was moved to send This gift, when we were far apart, To cheer a friend. Sweet meditation now my mind employs; A pleasure pure, and one which ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... the consequence, when it got into such rapacious hands, and was taken out of the hands of its natural proprietors: that the public revenue had sunk and lost by it, and that the country was wasted and destroyed. I leave it to your Lordships' own meditation and reflection; and I shall not press it one step further than just to remind you of what has been so well opened and pressed by my fellow Managers. He, Mr. Hastings, confesses that he let the lands to his own banians; he took his own domestic servants and put them in the houses of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... God is unchanging alienation from the body and its passions. This is the really true piety. And is not philosophy, therefore, rightly called by Socrates the meditation on death? For he who neither employs his eyes in the exercise of thought nor draws from his other senses, but with pure mind applies himself to objects, practises ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised—we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him. This is as true ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the "nymphs" or "genii" of mountain streams worshipped by an ancient bardic race (resembling our own sweet-singing Welsh folk), the Thracians. At first the number of the Muses was indefinite, and they had no names. Then three were named—one of Meditation (Melete), one of Memory (Mneme), and one of Song (Aoeide)—a much prettier embodiment of the impression made on a poetical mind by rock-pools and cascades and leafy gorges than the formal and redundant nine of later times. One can associate the primitive three with a museum of natural ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... me always equitable; self-love must accustom itself to do credit to praise; for in due time, we obtain as much of that as we deserve. Finally, if we should have even to complain long of injustice, I conceive no better asylum against it than philosophical meditation, and the emotion of eloquence. These faculties place at our disposal a whole world of truths and sentiments, in which we can breathe ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... Providences or Experiences cannot be assum'd by us as parallel to our own, nor spoken in our own Names; yet still there ought to be some Turns of Expression that may make it look at least like our own present Meditation, and that may represent it as a History which we our selves are at that time recollecting. I know not one Instance in Scripture, of any later Saint singing any part of a Composure of former Ages, that is not proper for his own Time, without force Expressions that tend to accommodate ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... time to action, but reserve a certain portion of it for meditation upon eternity. We see Jesus Christ inviting His disciples to go apart, in a desert place, and rest awhile, after their return from the cities, where they had been to announce His religion. How much more necessary is it for us to approach ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... the sides of the feet turned upwards. The right hand is rested with its back upon the thigh, with the thumb bent across the palm. The left arm is bent and held close to the body, the hand being open and the thumb touching the point of the shoulder. This is the attitude of abstracted meditation. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... thrush, on the contrary, is patience itself. A youngster of this lovely family sits a half hour at a time motionless and silent on a branch, head drawn down upon his shoulders, apparently in the deepest meditation. When he sees food coming he is gently agitated, rises upon his weak legs, softly flutters his wings and opens his mouth, but never—never cries. Should one put a hand down to take him, as seemingly could be done easily, he will slip out from under it, drop to the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... where he had gone to buy seed, stock and so on for their farm. While there he had stayed in a Franciscan convent during the season of Lent, and had given much time to prayer and meditation. For a long time he had been troubled about holding the Indians as slaves, but he had thought that if he and his partner were to give up the savages, they would only be worse off. Now, however, as he thought and prayed, a plan occurred to him: He would go to Spain ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... not think about anything but what you can do to make your plan come true," he said at the conclusion of his meditation. "If there are two of us who are so set on finding a way we are sure ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... figure, a single posy where they needed a bouquet. Bud went down the rickety outside stairs, and sat on the lowest step, whistling "Wait till the Clouds Roll by, Jenny"; Ross Schofield descended to set up the quatrain, and Fisbee and Parker were left to silence and troubled meditation. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... not your eyes? When I saw you from my window in the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day during my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me to prayer, I have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have ended by thinking him my husband—oh! heavens, I speak to you as though you were myself. I must seem ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... wrapped up. She had many grounds for self-reproach in her treatment of her aunt, whom in her childish selfishness she had often neglected, while now she called to her in vain. She idealized her image: and the great example which Marthe had left upon her mind of a profound life of meditation helped to fill her with distaste for the life of the world, in which there was no truth or serious purpose. She saw nothing but its hypocrisy, and those amiable compromises, which at any other time would have amused her, now ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... taught to sew and work miracles with the needle; they made lace, illumined missals, wove tapestries, tended the flowers, read from books, listened to lectures, and spent certain hours in silence and meditation. To a great degree the convents were founded on science and a just knowledge of human needs. There were "orders" and degrees that fitted every ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... entered the shop, I observed a young man in deep mourning leaning against the wall, with his arms folded, and his eyes fixed on the ground, apparently in profound and melancholy meditation; but the moment he perceived us, he started, and, making a passing bow, very abruptly retired. As I found he was permitted to go quite unnoticed, I could not forbear enquiring ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... were men of markedly contrasted types—the one all fire, restlessness, energy; the other calm, contemplative, intensely spiritual. Both were alike filled with a deep faith, a deep zeal; one the man of action, the other the man of meditation and devotion—yet deeply attached one to the other, as could be seen by the ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... gleanings from the Promise Treasury,—a few crumbs from "the Master's Table," which may serve to help the thoughts in the hour of closet meditation, or the season ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... the nun, unhappy over the treatment intended for her client, "preparing her meditation for the morning. She has a great love for meditation on the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Aroused from criminal meditation by the return of Professor Lesard, I jumped up and peered into his perplexed eyes. "They've elected a president," he said, "but they won't tell us who the president is ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... and the biscuits are mere accessories. What I really mean to devote my morning to is meditation. One of the greatest mistakes we make nowadays is not giving sufficient time to quiet thought. We go hustling along through life doing things which ought not to be done in a hurry, and when physical exhaustion forces us to pause for a moment, we run our eyes ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... He walked on in meditation, his hands behind his back. Even in this May London the little Dean was capable of an abstracted spirit, and he had still much to think over. He had his appointment with Ashe. But Ashe had written—evidently in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had a spite against us, persisted in flinging his shrapnel around, thereby keeping me well on the run. He did not give me the slightest chance to get pictures, nor to meditate on the surroundings; in fact the only meditation I indulged in was to wonder whether the next shrapnel bullet would strike my helmet plumb on the top or glance off the rim. Then thinking of George Grave's remark, I called Fritz a "nasty person," with a few extra additions culled ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... glowing language, and by thought which, if seldom profound, is never commonplace, and seems always the spontaneous and easy outcome of the author's mind. In no form of composition does excellence depend more on spontaneity than in the meditation. The ruin of such writers as Hervey, and, to some extent, Boyle, has been, that they seem to have set themselves elaborately and convulsively to extract sentiment out of every object which met their eye. They seem ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in the kitchen and the servants' offices," said M. Formery. He stood silent, buried in profound meditation, for a couple of minutes. Then he turned to the Duke and said, "What was that you said about a theft of ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... some minutes he remained plunged in sad meditation; then, picking up the telephone from the table at his side, he asked ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... surprising that Vivian Grey, with a mind teeming with such feelings, should view the approach of the season for his departure to Oxford with sentiments of disgust? After hours of bitter meditation, he sought his father; he made him acquainted with his feelings, but concealed from him his actual views, and dwelt on the misery of being thrown back in life, at a period when society seemed instinct with a spirit peculiarly active, and when so many ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... sitting at a table on which are preparations for a meal. She receives the visitor and the visitor's remarks with an air—quite unconscious—of tragic meditation; and her honest labour-stained hand sweeps over ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had been pacing up and down the long room which had once been the library, with the windows open, and a loose white linen robe on instead of her usual black garment. She was glad of that change after the long hours of heat and motionless meditation; but the coolness and exercise made her more intensely wakeful, and as she went with the lamp in her hand to open the door for Tito, he might well have been startled by the vividness of her eyes and the expression of painful resolution, which was in contrast ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... silhouette against the sky, and down in the shadowy Square the night lamps began to come out, or the asphalt, drenched by a shower, shone as if molten copper had been rained upon it! In how many deep, starlit nights have I thrown open my window for a fresher breath and a moment of meditation, to see the deserted Square below me, its white arch faintly gleaming in the radiation of the arc lamps, the long stretch of city roofs beyond, the twinkling lamps on the far heights of Hoboken, and there in the centre of the picture the dark, silent ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... ball, the terminus a quo indeed from which the meditation in which he had been plunged since entering the park had started. Between six and seven weeks ago, was it? It might have been a century. He thought of Kitty as she was that night—Kitty pirouetting in her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding her face to his as he kissed her on ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no; of course not; we are not at home yet,' Mr. Swancourt said very hastily, endeavouring to dodge back to his original position with the air of a man who had not moved at all. 'The fact is I was so lost in deep meditation that I forgot whereabouts we were.' And in a minute the vicar was ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... slowly, like one lost in meditation: and these amateur policemen's hearts beat louder and louder, as he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Caro (1817-1853), a philosopher and statesman, a man of moral greatness and a devout Christian. In the bloody political struggles of his day he sacrificed his estate and his life to his conception of right. He sang of God, love, liberty and nature with exaltation; but all his writings evince long meditation. Like many Spanish-American poets of his day Caro was influenced by Byron. In his earlier verses he had imitated the style of Quintana (cf. El cipres); but later, under the influence of romantic poets, he attempted to introduce into Spanish prosody new metrical forms. Probably as a ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... to the reader that, among other things, Anton Prokofievitch was the owner of a pair of trousers of such singular properties that whenever he put them on the dogs always bit his calves. Unfortunately, he had donned this particular pair of trousers; and he had hardly given himself up to meditation before a fearful barking on all sides saluted his ears. Anton Prokofievitch raised such a yell, no one could scream louder than he, that not only did the well-known woman and the occupant of the endless coat rush out to meet him, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... door, he hurried off with rapid steps. On reaching a wood that lay at some distance off, Mark sought a retired spot, near where a quiet stream went stealing noiselessly along amid its alder and willow-fringed banks, and sitting down upon a grassy spot, gave himself up to meditation. Little inclined was he now for sport. The birds sung in the trees above him, fluttered from branch to branch, and even dipped their wings in the calm waters of the stream, but he heeded them not. He had other thoughts. Greatly had ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... the day is the evil thereof,"' cried Wentworth jauntily; 'besides, half an hour's thinking by a solid-brained fellow like you is worth a whole voyage of my deepest meditation.' ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... ventured upon by restless lodgers. The same process was gone through in the room where the mistress was lying. The locks and hinges of the doors were carefully oiled, and then the agitated woman sat down to meditate and be thankful. The meditation proved to be of the perambulatory sort, for she peeped into one room and then into the other, noiselessly appearing and retiring. She listened to see if her patients were alive. The schoolmistress lay pale and still; her hands, loosely spread out, dropped on the sheet almost ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... gardens and offices—most of these tenements being larger—all more pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent than my father's, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must here become of children resembling my poor little dreamy quondam self in temper, and thus brought up at the same distance from London, and in the same or better circumstances of worldly fortune; but with only Croxsted Lane in its present condition for their country walk. The trimly ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 'Let no anxiety, O king, in respect of our maintenance, find a place in thy heart! Ourselves providing our own food, we shall follow thee, and by meditation and saying our prayers we shall compass thy welfare while by pleasant converse we shall entertain ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... had occurred during their passage from Europe, and is a full demonstration that the nature of civil government, abstracted from the political institutions of their native country, had been an object of their serious meditation. The settlers of all the former European colonies had contented themselves with the powers conferred upon them by their respective charters, without looking beyond the seal of the royal parchment for the measure of their ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... the land. I pointed it out to Nina; and it struck me afterwards that she grew pale as I spoke, and placed her hand on her heart, as if to stop its throbbing. Yet at the time I thought nothing of it. For a few minutes she was silent, and lost in meditation, but at length recovered herself, and continued singing. I remarked this, and I remember rallying her on the subject, saying that her songs were all those she knew of a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... "shut up" promptly, and contented himself with glowering at Mr. Gibney. The mate sat down on the hatch coaming, lit his pipe, and gave himself up to meditation for fully five minutes, at the end of which time McGuffey was aware that his imagination was about to come to the front ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... that the one is created for the other, that blood is needed to hasten and cement the union of the nations. Natural science has ratified in our day the mysterious law revealed to Joseph de Maistre by the intuition of his genius and by meditation on fundamental truths; he saw the world redeeming itself from hereditary degenerations by sacrifice; science shows it advancing to perfection through struggle and violent selection; there is the statement of the same law in both, expressed in different ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... strength, when investigating a favourite science, they have wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour; or, when, lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution, by the passions that meditation had raised; whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron frames. Shakespeare never grasped the airy dagger with a nerveless hand, nor did Milton tremble when he led Satan far from ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation leaps upon us like a strong man armed. You must have them familiar to you by devout meditation, by frequent reflection, prayer, study of God's Word, if they are to be of any use to you at all. And I am afraid that about the last book in the world that loads of young men and women think of sitting down ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the remedy is to be found in a meditation of these words of the "Our Father:" "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." The Almighty will take us ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... acknowledged, "has often occurred to me. I—we—that is," he resumed after a moment of amused meditation, "Mr. Weatherby believes in giving a man a chance. If you have any convict friends, who are looking for a job, this is the place to send them. We used to have a cattle thief taking care of the cows, and a murderer ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... was sunk in unhappy meditation as his weary little mount plodded slowly along the dusty road. For hours the man had not been able to urge the beast out of a walk. The loss of time consequent upon his having followed wrong roads during ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Sagittarius lay back in her chair, settled her bonnet-strings, flicked a crumb from the football of violets that decorated her left side, and, extending her kid boots towards the cheerful blaze that came from the fire, fell with a sigh into a comfortable meditation. Mr. Sagittarius, on the other hand, assumed a look of rather hectoring authority, and was about to utter what the Prophet had very little doubt was a command when there came a gentle tap ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... him. What more was there that could be said between them? They could not be of one accord; but even yet it might not be necessary that they should quarrel. He went out, and roamed by himself through the grounds, rather more in meditation than was ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Kuang Wu Ti of the Han dynasty. His birthplace is variously given as the T'ien-mu Shan, 'Eye of Heaven Mountain,' in Lin-an Hsien, in Chekiang, and Feng-yang Fu, in Anhui. He devoted himself wholly to study and meditation, declining all offers to enter the service of the State. He preferred to take up his abode in the mountains of Western China, where he persevered in the study of alchemy and in cultivating the virtues of purity and mental abstraction. From the hands of Lao Tzu ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Hadassah, "have been my study by day, and my meditation by night; and most earnestly have I sought, with fasting and prayer, to penetrate some of their deep meaning in regard to Him that shall come. I am yet as a child in knowledge, but the All-wise may be pleased to reveal something even to a child. It has seemed ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... what next?"—I remember all, even to my want of breath, suddenly cooled passion, perplexity and flight. It is a moot point whether that last was the act of a coward, but I can never allow it to be said that in what followed I showed a want of courage. I devoted a day and night to solitary meditation; no knight errant of old, watching his arms under the moon, prayed more earnestly than I; and when I had fully made up my mind to embrace what honour demanded of me, I sought out the girl, who was again ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... grief became more calm, he sat in deep and melancholy meditation, calling to mind when and where he saw his brother last. The recollection gave him fresh cause of regret. He remembered they had parted on his refusing to suffer Lady Clementina to admit the acquaintance of Henry's wife. Both Henry and his wife he now contemplated ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... sounds upon the tide, The shallop reached the mainland side, And ere his onward way he took, The stranger cast a lingering look, Where easily his eye might reach The Harper on the islet beach, Reclined against a blighted tree, As wasted, gray, and worn as he. To minstrel meditation given, His reverend brow was raised to heaven, As from the rising sun to claim A sparkle of inspiring flame. His hand, reclined upon the wire, Seemed watching the awakening fire; So still he sat as those who wait Till judgment speak the doom of fate; So still, as if no breeze might dare ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... softened to a charming, half-melancholy smile. Louie took no notice; she was absorbed in meditation; and at the end of it, she said with ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 20th Mr. Muller left for Bristol. On the journey he was dumb, having no liberty in speaking for Christ or even in giving away tracts, and this led him to reflect. He saw that the so-called 'work of the Lord' had tempted him to substitute action for meditation and communion. He had neglected that still hour' with God which supplies to spiritual life alike its breath and its bread. No lesson is more important for us to learn, yet how slow are we to learn it: that for the lack of habitual seasons set ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Wellington called frequently to see the little General at his public levees. The first time he called, the General was personating Napoleon Bonaparte, marching up and down the platform, and apparently taking snuff in deep meditation. He was dressed in the well-known uniform of the Emperor. Barnum introduced him to the "Iron Duke," who inquired the subject of his meditations. "I was thinking of the loss of the battle of Waterloo," was the little General's immediate reply. This ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... you what," broke in Mr Cripps, in the midst of this meditation, "I don't want to do nothing unpleasant to you, or the governor, or anybody. What I say is, you'd better see this little bill put square among you, and then the thing can be kept quiet, do you see? It would ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Church. It was for him to enforce those doctrines; and to this end he turned all the faculties of his potent intellect, and all his deep knowledge of mankind. He did not aim to build up barren communities of secluded monks, aspiring to heaven through prayer, penance, and meditation, but to subdue the world to the dominion of the dogmas which had subdued him; to organize and discipline a mighty host, controlled by one purpose and one mind, fired by a quenchless zeal or nerved by a fixed resolve, yet impelled, restrained, and directed ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... above her more splendid—once upon a time—like the first phrase of a tale that is told. And if she were at times listless, absent-eyed, subdued—a trifle graver, or unusually silent, seeking the still paths of the garden as though in need of youthful meditation and the quiet of the sunset hour, she never doubted that that tale would be retold for her again. Only—alas!—the fair days were passing, and the russet rustle of October sounded already among the curling leaves in the garden; and he had been away a long time—a very long time. And ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... "As for my particular meditation, it concerns the question, whether the wine at the marriage of Cana was red or white. Sometimes I incline to one side, sometimes to the other—and sometimes to both ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... little, yet evincing such small emotion as did credit to his English reserve; then uttering a low exclamation,—cautiously low, indeed,—he stood looking at the corpse a moment or two, apparently in deep meditation. He then drew near, bent down, and without evincing any horror at the touch of death in this horrid shape, he opened the dead man's vest, inspected the wound, satisfied himself that life was extinct, and then nodded his head and smiled gravely. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not how long in my meditation, till I was roused by a gentle touch upon my shoulder; I looked up, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gnawing his nails in bitter meditation and forgot the mourner at his door whose slow wits began to remember—remember; and who, as he remembered, began to shake in his poor broken shoes and feel nailed to the ground. At last he ambled away, thankful that his master did not recur to the questioning of that ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... hundred and a thousand years ago, O Madame my Mistress, the great Dharma came to China to teach the people. He ate only fruits, and he slept but little; he gave his time almost entirely to meditation. ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... extent enlightened now, but he was even more astonished, more disconcerted: he took a moment to compare my story with his quickened memories. The result of his meditation was his presently saying with a good deal of rather feeble form: "This is the first I hear of what you allude to. I think you must be mistaken as to Mrs. Drayton Deane's having had any unmentioned, ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... these things in particular were his matter of meditation now; he had wanted, at the end of his walk, to sit apart a little and think—and had been doing that for twenty minutes, even though as yet to no break in the charm of procrastination. But he had looked ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... on the contrary," said Mr Foster, "that animal food acts on the mind as manure does on flowers, forcing them into a degree of expansion they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical meditation on its original and natural nutriment, till it should work itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood, sugar-baker's scum, and other unnatural ingredients of that rich composition of soil which had brought it to perfection[2.1], and insist on being planted in common earth, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... coompany," an' they think a man's no better than theirsels. A'd have yo' to know a've a vast o' thoughts in myself', as I'm noane willing to lay out for t' benefit o' every man. A've niver gotten time for meditation sin' a were married; leastways, sin' a left t' sea. Aboard ship, wi' niver a woman wi'n leagues o' hail, and upo' t' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... accusing conscience by telling herself that this impersonation would do no harm to Princess von Steinheimer, or to anyone else for that matter, while it would be of inestimable assistance to her own journalistic career. From that she drifted to meditation on the inequalities of this life—the superabundance which some possess, while others, no less deserving, have difficulty in obtaining the scant necessities. And this consoling train of thought having fixed her resolve to take the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Bridge they rested for two hours, and drank coffee, and broke bread, and Cumner's Son slept by the side of Tang-a-Dahit, as brothers sleep by their mother's bed. And Pango Dooni sat on the ground near them and pondered, and no man broke his meditation. When the two hours were gone, they mounted again and rode on through the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seclusion of the girl lay the seclusion of the father. If her social condition was twilight, his was darkness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight oppressed her. Dr. Grove had been a professional man whose taste for lonely meditation over metaphysical questions had diminished his practice till it no longer paid him to keep it going; after which he had relinquished it and hired at a nominal rent the small, dilapidated, half farm half manor-house of this obscure inland nook, to make ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Him, may, in some unrecorded hour of intimate communion during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, have heard from the Master the exposition of His motives. But more probably, I think, the long years of growing likeness to his Lord, and of meditation upon the depth of meaning in the smallest events that his faithful memory recalled, taught him to understand Christ's purpose and motives. 'The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him,' and the liker we get to our Master and the more we are filled with His Spirit, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... who owed his success as a tobacco merchant to energy and strict attention to business. If there were dreams in the bowl of the pipe, there was no room for them in the counting-house of a thrifty dealer in the weed. Meditation had no part in his life—was left out of his composition. He believed in doing. Day-dreaming was in his opinion but another name for idling, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... stand ye thus amazed? me thinks your eyes Are fixed in meditation; and all here Seem like so many senseless statues, As if your souls had suffered an eclipse Betwixt your ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... was dark and mysterious; conjecture was baffled, and meditation was useless. Her opinions were unfixed, and her heart was miserable; she could only be steady in believing Delvile as unhappy as herself, and only find consolation in believing him, also, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... breathe, but a long way and a great snowy wind were betwixt him and rest. He fell into a reverie, and seemed to get on better for not thinking about the exertion he had to make. The monotony of it at the same time favoured the gradual absorption of his thoughts in a dreamy meditation. Alternately sunk in himself for minutes, and waking for a moment to the consciousness of what was around him, he had walked, as it seemed, for hours, and at length, all notion of time and distance gone, began to wonder whether he ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... little that was morbid or unhealthy. One might see that, with her, action would always willingly take the place of reflection; that her impulses would have the strength of inspirations; that she would be more ready to receive impressions than to reason upon them. Meditation, comparison, introspection, were wholly foreign to this little, eager, impetuous nature, however they might be forced upon it in the course of years and events; and with her keen sense of enjoyment in all glad outward influences, one might have feared that the realities of life present ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... but listened with the air of one who approved the advice, but despaired of ever profiting by it. After an interval of meditation, Father Omehr arose and spread some soft fleeces in the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... of still more unique interest. A large bay window, composed of three separate panels, is designed to be wholly typical of the work of Mrs. Eddy. The central panel represents her in solitude and meditation, searching the Scriptures by the light of a single candle, while the star of Bethlehem shines down from above. Above this is a panel containing the Christian Science seal, and other panels are decorated with emblematic designs, with the legends, ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... I reached home, and I went immediately to bed. My mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation. Arising early in the morning, and contriving again to escape the vigilance of my creditors, I repaired eagerly to the bookseller's stall, and laid out what little ready money I possessed, in the purchase of some volumes of Mechanics and Practical Astronomy. Having arrived ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wonder, meditation, thoughtfulness filled her eyes and covered her finely cut face with a freshness like that of a wild rose. With a movement of wonder she opened her arms, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... way to Crow Roost. They wouldn't like to have me, and you wouldn't. Bob Trotter ran over a good many grubs and way-side stumps, and at every jolt Constance screamed, and Dick scolded and then laughed. Mat Snead spoke three words. She and Valentine had been sitting as though in profound meditation for some forty minutes, when ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... allowed me to sleep. Our journey was continued below the surface at a rate of more than twelve hundred miles in the day, a speed which made observation through the thick but perfectly transparent side windows of our cabin impossible. I was indisposed for meditation, which could have been directed to no other subject than the mysterious purpose of our journey, and had not provided myself with books. But in Eveena's company it was impossible that the time ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... women who withdrew from the desperate turmoil without to the sheltering walls of the monastery or the convent, invested with a sacrosanct character which was at least in part respected, found therein the opportunity for prayer, meditation and study which was denied them elsewhere. They could maintain a standard of piety, and keep a rudimentary education from altogether dying out. For centuries they were the only source of alms and succour to which the afflicted and needy could turn; and so long as the rules of the Orders were ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... further meditation on the efficacy of brown paper and vinegar at the crucial moment, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Wendell Holmes, "have not commonly been great scholars, nor its scholars great men." To know what other men have said about things is not always the most important part of knowledge. There is nothing that can dispense us from the independent use of our own faculties. Meditation and observation are more valuable than mere absorption; and knowledge itself is not wisdom. The true way to use books is to make them our servants—not our masters. Very helpful, cheering, and profitable will they become, when they fall naturally into our daily life and growth—when ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Great Britain on a charge for murder. I am not so ignorant of the laws and constitution of my country. I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime. What led me into that error? Nine years' meditation upon that subject. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... could have conceived. All the surprise and suspense, and every other painful part of the morning dissipated by this conversation, she re-entered the house so happy as to be obliged to find an alloy in some momentary apprehensions of its being impossible to last. An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and abundant. Now and then she paused in her walk to look towards the prison, glimpses of whose strong walls were to be had through the trees. At length the sound of her father's horn came loud and clear from the cliffs beyond the wood. It fell upon her sombre meditation and slightly changed the current. She hurried forward to join him, and, as she went, a gracious purpose was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... "you take an excellent way of meditation in visiting this museum of old sovereignties. Here you have the relics of any government you please—a dozen republics, tyrannies, theocracies, merchant confederations, kingdoms, and more than one empire. You have your choice. I am tolerably ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned— Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround— Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;— To me that cup has been ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... went down, when the fog came up and the waters took on a steely color under their blanket of gray, rolling on, in that monotonous meditation that holds the mystery of ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... traditional stamping-ground for the heartbroken, may be well enough in their way; but a lover has to be cast in a pretty stem mould to be able to be introspective when at any moment he may meet an annoyed cinnamon bear. In the English village there are no such obstacles to meditation. It combines the comforts of civilization with the restfulness of solitude in a manner equalled by no other spot except the New York Public Library. Here your lover may wander to and fro unmolested, speaking to nobody, by nobody addressed, and have the satisfaction at the end of the day ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... till that moment I had not dared to fire, fearing lest I should kill one of my companions. Now for an instant it was clear of them all, and steadying myself, I aimed at the huge head and let drive. The smoke thinned, and through it I saw the gigantic ape standing quite still, like a creature lost in meditation. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... sofa, received with meditation a light. "Will she understand? She has everything in the world but one," he added. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... separate schools; but Athens itself, the whole city, was the scene of the studies, the conversations, and the labors of Socrates. He wandered through the streets absorbed in thought. Sometimes he stood still for hours lost in profoundest meditation; at other times he might be seen in the market-place, surrounded by a crowd of Athenians, eagerly discussing the great ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... na chapare is explained by Nilakantha thus. Literally, this means that it is not that others do not (praise) ekam or contemplation, i.e., some there are that praise contemplation or meditation. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... death of the Besht, had in fact been heard before. The saintly and retiring Abraham Malak (d. 1780) had denounced, in no uncertain terms, the gross conception held by the Hasidim of the sublime teachings of their own sect. He drew a beautiful picture of the ideal zaddik, who is "so absorbed in meditation on the Divine wisdom that he cannot descend to the lower steps upon which ordinary people stand."[16] But the more active Rabbi Shneor, or Zalman Ladier, as he was usually called, insisted on putting the zaddik ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... from his home and family was her son. When my son read the news to her, she said no word, there was no sign of distress in her face, but I could see that her heart was deeply moved. She arose after a few minutes' silent meditation, then went on with her work. That evening I stole up to her room to speak a comforting word to her. I found her reading her Bible. She took off her glasses and wiped the water from her eyes as I entered." ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... After his meditation he had come to much the same obvious conclusion that Miss M'Gann had formed previously. The woman ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... stroll? Exactly—er—yes! Pardon me, Princess, my mind often wanders, and I am afraid I am getting a little deaf as well. Yes, I find the night singularly conducive to meditation; one cannot be in a land like this under a sky like this"—and he pointed to the shining heaven—"without recalling the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... servants, and it contains that which I ought to know, and the knowledge of which will lead me to true happiness; therefore I ought to read again and again this most precious book, this book of books, most earnestly, most prayerfully, and with much meditation; and in this practice I ought to continue all the days of my life. For I was aware, though I read it but little, that I knew scarcely anything of it. But instead of acting thus, and being led by my ignorance of the word of God to study it more, my difficulty in understanding ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... father in a miserable mood—Mr. Beresford had become suddenly and decidedly worse. The doctors said positively that he was dying, and that a few days at the utmost would bring the end. Maurice had stolen away while he slept, but his angry meditation on Mrs. Costello's desertion had taken up so much of his time, that Mr. Leigh's note was short and hurried. Ill-humour prevailed also to the point of the note being finished without any message (he had no time to write separately) ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... twisted columns of the bed rose, burdened with great weight of fringes and curtains, the python devoured a guinea pig, the last I gave him; the great white cat came to me. I said all this must go, must henceforth be to me an abandoned dream, a something, not more real than a summer meditation. So be it, and, as was characteristic of me, I broke with Paris suddenly, without warning anyone. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should never return, but no word was spoken, and I continued a pleasant delusion with myself; I told my concierge ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... success; it brought him the round sum of two hundred louis from the court, and some five and twenty more from the bookseller, and so, he says, "the interlude, which cost me five or six weeks of work, produced nearly as much money as Emilius afterwards did, which had cost me twenty years of meditation and three years of composition."[206] Before the arrival of this windfall, M. Francueil, who was receiver-general, offered him the post of cashier in that important department, and Rousseau attended ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... but by meetings of their own without their men? But, Building up YOURSELVES, I suppose is the thing he holds by. But cannot the church, and every woman in it, build up themselves without their woman's meetings? wherefore have they the word, their closet, and the grace of meditation, but to build up themselves withal? He saith not, "Build up one another," but if he had, it might well have been done without a woman's meeting. But anything to save a drowning man. This text then is written to the church of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... And so, resolved that Miss Crawley should have the news, the young person debated in her mind as to the best means of conveying it to her; and whether she should face the storm that must come, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown over. In this state of meditation she ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... says Boswell himself, 'and Sir Allan at breakfast in our barn, and stole back again to the cathedral, to indulge in solitude and devout meditation. When contemplating the venerable ruins, I reflected with much satisfaction, that the solemn scenes of piety never lose their sanctity and influence, though the cares and follies of life may prevent us from visiting them.... I hoped that, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of rage and that of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search of angry or jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy their words? Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding upon the all in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by observation? And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As eyes, for which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and to which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... his flannel blouse, dragged a Mexican serape from the corner, and putting it over his shoulders, opened the cabin door, sat down on the doorstep, and leaning back against the door-post, composed himself to meditation. The moon lifted herself slowly over the crest of Deadwood Hill, and looked down, not unkindly, on his broad, white, shaven face, round and smooth as her own disc, encircled with a thin fringe of white hair and whiskers. Indeed, he looked so like the prevailing caricatures in ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... proceed, let us advert for a moment to the plan of ancient discipline. The unwearied diligence of the ancient orators, their habits of meditation, and their daily exercise in the whole circle of arts and sciences, are amply displayed in the books which they have transmitted to us. The treatise of Cicero, entitled Brutus [a], is in all our hands. In that work, after commemorating the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... impartial and eloquent "History of Fifty Years of Misrule." That work was never published—the reader will discover why—and I am in fact the only person in the world possessed of its contents. I have mastered them in not a few hours of earnest meditation, and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice to myself, and to allay the fears of prospective readers, I beg to point out that the few historical allusions are never dragged in for ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... coffee from the tray, and with what an incorrigible air he jerked his thumb towards the staircase. I can still hear him call up the staircase in a magisterial voice, "The ladies are in the study, Parker." When we were alone he fell into meditation. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Door opening into a common Thoroughfare through the Stadt House. I never passed by this door without seeing numbers of the Lower Orders of people gazing wistfully through the Rails upon the emblematic objects within, apparently in Melancholy Meditation, and reflecting upon the Ignominious Effects of deviating from the Paths ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... happiness of spring. And as the bishop drove through the afternoon in a hired fly along a rutted road of slag between fields that were bitterly wired against the Sunday trespasser, he fell into a despondent meditation upon the political ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... modest and pleasant; but it is pleasanter than all to have an early copy of your book placed on the breakfast-table, unexpectedly, some sunshiny morning—to behold, for the first time, the darling of your meditation in a suit of embossed muslin. How your heart turns over—if you are not used to the thing. How you make pauses between your coffee and muffins, to admire the clear typography, the luxurious paper, the gold ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... did not feel sufficiently courageous or hungry to mingle in the gathering. Noli turbare circulos meos, these people, too, seemed to be saying. All were thinking strenuously, absorbed in the profoundest meditation—they had plenty of time for profound ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... curiously watched these two enemies, with the indifference and coolness of a philosopher, who, in the most violent outbursts of human passion, merely sees subjects for meditation and study. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... pleasant one, and gave the boy a wide field for meditation and hope. He determined not only to take a "run up," as he had said, but also, when the opportunity offered, to make a thorough canvass of the locality and get ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... grasshopper refused to pipe upon the dusty road, and the too distant bullfrog was no longer heard gurgling to its mates, but all was silent, lying as in a trance, both heaven and earth. And then he paused, and lapsing into meditation, stood unconscious of surrounding things, till the tolling of the clock in the distant tower of the cathedral of Notre Dame awoke him, and, starting from his reverie and listening, he counted the hours to the full score of midnight. Struck, then, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... of what was plainly not displeasure, the young woman "filed" this "writ of pre-emption," as Jack afterward called it, in careful hiding, and resumed meditation of the writer. It could not now be answered, for letters between the lines were subject to censorship, and Olympia perhaps shrank from adding to her lover's misery by exposing his rejection to the unfeeling eyes of the postal agents. There was pity in the resolve as well as ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... themselves to the study, I should have here shortly explained wherein consists all the science we now possess, and what are the degrees of wisdom at which we have arrived. The first degree contains only notions so clear of themselves that they can be acquired without meditation; the second comprehends all that the experience of the senses dictates; the third, that which the conversation of other men teaches us; to which may be added as the fourth, the reading, not of all books, but especially of such as have been written by persons capable of conveying ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... connotation of terms, that terms are assumed by Logicians to be capable of definite meaning, and of being used univocally in the same context; if, or in so far as, this is not the case, we cannot understand one another's reasons nor even pursue in solitary meditation any coherent train of argument. We saw, too, that the meanings of terms were related to one another: some being full correlatives; others partially inclusive one of another, as species of genus; others mutually incompatible, as contraries; or alternatively predicable, as contradictories. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... painted a moonlight sketch of it, and Seton, who came by one day, helped me dedicate its firehole. In the light of its embers, he and I renewed our youth while smoking the beautiful Pipe of Meditation, which a young Cheyenne chief had given me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to be religious, more inclined to take life seriously, more inclined to look forward and upward to the spiritual and the supernatural, and are also more studious, more capable of deep research and profound meditation, they do not, as a rule, have the social qualities, the aggressiveness, the cheerfulness, and the adaptability of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to this thought that the Christ who was for us is also the Christ in us, and that He is not the Christ for us unless He is the Christ in us; and His death will never wash away our sins unless we feed upon Him, here and now, by faith and meditation, then the retrospect becomes blessedness. The Christian life is not merely the remembrance of a historical Christ in the past, but it is the present participation in a living Christ, with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... permanently within our country and offering asylum and arms to the oppressed [Negro], is a leaf in our history not yet turned over." These words, written to Edward Coles, in August, 1814, were still ample food for the profound meditation of the slave-holders. In his "Notes on Virginia" Mr. Jefferson had written the following words: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. That, considering numbers, nature, and natural means, only ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... activity and receptivity succeeding one another, the rhythm of life. The steady strain, the continuous uniformity of life, is what kills. Work unrelieved by play, and play unrefreshed by work, grow equally stale and dull. Activity without reflection loses its grasp; meditation {19} without action sinks into a dream. Jesus in this passage had been absorbed in the most active and outward-going ministry; and then, as the evening comes, he turns away and goes up into the mountain and is there alone ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... Thoughtfully, with steps of meditation, he crossed the fields and came within sight of the twinkling lights at Arden; then for a long while leaned his elbows on a fence and pondered over many things. When he started on there was a ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to shine in courts With unaffected grace, or walk the plain With Innocence and Meditation joined In soft assemblage, listen to my song, Which thy own season paints, when nature all Is blooming and benevolent, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... their entire number, and not in the proportion of three-fifths. If as property, the word wealth was right; and striking it out would produce the very inconsistency which it was meant to get rid of. The train of business, and the late turn which it had taken, had led him, he said, into deep meditation on it, and he would candidly state the result. A distinction has been set up, and urged, between the Northern and Southern States. He had hitherto considered this doctrine as heretical. He still thought the distinction groundless. He sees, however, that it is persisted in; and the Southern ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... reassured. The only difficulty was that the question didn't stay settled. It came up again and yet again and the whole argument had to be redebated. And finally she came to the conclusion that her wisest plan was to ward it off. Like the other Elsie, she decided to avoid meditation and plunge into action. And though the sort and amount of action to which she was limited wouldn't have seemed action at all to the other girl, it answered her purpose, nevertheless. Elsie Marley ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerfull haunt of men, and herds, And sits as safe as in a Senat house, For who would rob a Hermit of his Weeds, 390 His few Books, or his Beads, or Maple ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... His meditation was interrupted by Mrs. Hampton's return. She carried a tray containing a glass of home-made wine, and a plate of frosted doughnuts. Grimsby was all ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... showed an unexpected trait; they were lying becalmed in southern latitudes, and, time hanging heavily, each wiled it how he might: one fiddled, another wrote to his Polly, another fished for sharks, another whistled for a wind, scores fell into the form of meditation without the reality, and one got a piece of yarn and amused himself killing flies on the bulwark. Now this shocked poor Billy: he put out his long arm and intercepted a stroke. "What is the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... up for prayer, meditation, and solitary walks, and often went in to service in the cathedral. He says that he was in a state of tense excitement, and the solitude and introspection had an alarmingly depressing effect upon him. He says ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... (Works, viii. 320) says of Pope that 'he had before him not only what his own meditation suggested, but what he had found in other writers that might be accomodated to his present purpose.' Boswell's use of the word is perhaps derived, as Mr. Croker suggests, from accommoder, in the sense of dressing up or cooking meats. This word occurs in an amusing story that Boswell ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... meditation, and pondered over the downfall of Serbia. Why had the Serbian Government so resolutely refused to make any territorial concessions to Bulgaria, when it was obvious that the entry of Bulgaria into the conflict meant the ruin of Serbia? Why had they permitted the Austrians to build their big gun ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... to earth find a new astral body composed of the same elements, though then in a dormant state. He who, by the cultivation of a lofty intellect, has built up a refined mental body, will return to incarnation with a like mental body, whilst the one who, by meditation and the practice of devotion which bring into being the noblest qualities of the heart, has set vibrating the purest portions of the causal body and of the divine essence (Atma-Buddhi, as it is ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... referred to, but did not (in the Tao Teh King) define. 'More systematic,'—and yet by no means are the lines laid down and the plan marked out; there is no cartography of cosmogenesis; . . . but seeds of meditation are sown. Of course, it is meaningless nonsense for the mind to which all metaphysics and abstract thought are meaningless nonsense. Mystics, however, will see in it an attempt to put the Unutterable into words. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of the human soul after death exercises on the life and conduct of the Central Melanesian savage. To him the belief is no mere abstract theological dogma or speculative tenet, the occasional theme of edifying homilies and pious meditation; it is an inbred, unquestioning, omnipresent conviction which affects his thoughts and actions daily and at every turn; it guides his fortunes as an individual and controls his behaviour as a member of a community, by inculcating a respect for the rights of others and enforcing a submission ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... after a moment of meditation, "there was certain a good many curiosities of human natur' in this neighborhood years ago. There was more energy then, and in some the energy took a singular turn. In these days the young folks is all copy-cats, 'fraid to death they won't be all just alike; as for the old folks, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... master sat motionless for some time, gazing at the floor as if in meditation. Then he rose, went to his book-case and took down a large thick volume, which he ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... natural knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in precision and in trustworthiness, so has the former shrunk, grown vague and questionable; as the one has more and more filled the sphere of action, so has the other retreated into the region of meditation, or vanished behind the screen ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... to meditation, he might have reflected on the future of the offspring of two such divergent countries as the West Riding of Yorkshire and Pegu. At one moment the prim, well-mannered English girl; the next, an impulsive, emotional daughter ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... from side to side on my hard bed, to which I had gone with all my clothes on. It seemed the beginning of another chapter in my pioneer life and a rather tough experience. I arose, kindled a big fire and sat looking at the glowing coals in still further meditation. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Jerome, "I am right glad that this young nut-cracker is going to leave me to my own meditation. I hate when a young person pretends to understand whatever passes, while his betters are obliged to confess that it is all a mystery to them. Such an assumption is like that of the conceited fool, sister Ursula, who pretended to read with a single eye a manuscript ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a sentimentalist when duty calls him to face the realities of life. An order to shorten sail transforms him at once into another being. He usually swears with refined eloquence on unexpected occasions, when a sudden order draws him from visionary meditation. Dreams, which may be the creation of indigestible junk—that is, salt beef which may have been round the Horn a few times—are realities: privileged communications from a mystic source. There is great vying ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... piece of literature, and the view of the writer is itself a fact more important because less disputable than the others. Now this spirit in which a subject is regarded, important in all kinds of literary work, becomes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or rhapsody; for there it not only colours but itself chooses the facts; not only modifies but shapes the work. And hence, over the far larger proportion of the field of literature, the health or disease of the writer's mind or momentary humour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me mentally, I find is quite sufficient to refresh me. In addition to this I gave up the sleeping after dinner. The result has been that I have thus been able to procure long and precious seasons for prayer and meditation before breakfast; and, as to my body, and the state of the nervous system in particular, I have been much better since. Indeed I believe that the very worst thing I could have done for my weak nerves ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... appeared to me to be on the watch in expectation of some threatened danger. At last I gave up the attempt to sleep as hopeless. There was something in the air of the place, I believe, which affected me. My young companion had been sitting for some minutes lost in meditation. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... about the future state as Goethe did—"To the able man this world is not dumb: why should he ramble off into eternity? Such incomprehensible subjects lie too far off, and only disturb our thoughts, if made the subject of daily meditation." That there was a future state he had no doubt. Our having been born once, he used to say, is the strongest possible presumption in favour of our being born again; and probably, as nature always ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
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