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Dreamy   Listen
adjective
dreamy  adj.  (compar. dreamier; superl. dreamiest)  
1.
Abounding in dreams or given to dreaming; appropriate to, or like, dreams; visionary. "The dreamy dells."
2.
Soothing; restful; as, dreamy music.
3.
Like what one dreams of; wonderful; delightful; marvelous; ideal; as, a dreamy house and garden. (informal)
4.
Prone to indulge in fantasy or daydreaming; as, a dreamy young girl.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dreamy" Quotes from Famous Books



... conforms to the type of civilization in existence. A strong, vigorous industrial nation would through a period of years develop a tendency for a vigorous language which would express the spirit and life of the people, while a dreamy, conservative nation would find little change in the language. Likewise, periods of romance or of war have a tendency to make changes in the form of speech in conformity to ideals of life. On the other hand, social and intellectual progress is frequently dependent ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... shape of his hands and feet, these proclaimed the aristocrat. It was only in the eyes and the broad shoulders that you recognized the iron-monger's breed. His eyes were as blue as his own hammered steel; but, like the eyes of the eagle at peace, they were mild and dreamy and deceptive to casual inspection. In the shops the men knew all about those eyes and shoulders. They had been fooled once, but only once. They had felt the ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... as a "reserved, isolated, dreamy man, of high-strung nerves, proud spirit, and fantastic moods," with a haunting sense of impending evil. His home was poor and simple, but impressed every visitor by its neatness and quiet refinement; Virginia, accomplished in music and languages, was as devoted to her husband as he was ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?" and sometimes, "Do bats eat cats?" for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and had just begun ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... height in stature and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness. He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop's ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... wherever the spirit of the words took it. He was also in the habit of affixing to his published works mottoes, indicative of their poetic intention. With this general characterization his music well agrees, for in dreamy moods it has a mystical beauty till then unknown in music. He is also entitled to lasting memory on account of his having first discovered the phenomenon of "combination tones," the under resultant which ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... loving. Looking at her critically, it was almost impossible to find a finer woman—her head was beautifully shaped, her hair raven black and smooth as satin, little ears like pretty pink shells, a beautiful face with dark, dreamy eyes, thick dark lashes, straight, dark brows, and a mouth that was, perhaps, the loveliest feature in her face. It was not tragical beauty, either, but comfortable and comfort loving; there was a beautiful dimple in her ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... your constant traveling companion," she said. "You have spoken far too gratefully of my services here as your nurse. Reward me beyond my deserts. Make allowances, Mr. Germaine, for the superstitious fancies of a lonely, dreamy woman. Promise me that the green flag shall take its place among the other little treasures ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... An admirable author has remarked, "there are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees." And, although Clemence's lips syllabled no words, her thoughts were those of the most exalted devotion. She seemed wrapped about in a spell of dreamy silence, and the words of the sermon came faintly to an ear that was all unheeding. When it was over, and they rose to sing the last hymn, she sat abstractedly, "among them, but not of them." It needed the pressure of Ruth's light hand to rouse her, and she stood up for the benediction. After ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... in the Danish language with a tall man, of robust build. This fine fellow must have been possessed of great strength. His eyes, set in a large and ingenuous face, seemed to me very intelligent; they were of a dreamy sea-blue. Long hair, which would have been called red even in England, fell in long meshes upon his broad shoulders. The movements of this native were lithe and supple; but he made little use of his arms in speaking, like a man who knew nothing or cared nothing about ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... dreamy, tranquil life, How can you fathom the rage and strife, The blinding envy, the burning smart, That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart When he sees another snatch the prize Out from under his very eyes, For which he would barter his soul? You ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... mistake, my dear? You know you made one only yesterday, and you can work so beautifully when you give your mind to it. It is a bad plan to have such a dreamy way with one. For my part, I should think you would have had enough of doing things in dreams and never knowing what they will end in. You would better wake up for the rest of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... phenomenon connected with Ontario, unaccounted for by scientific speculation; each seventh year, from some inscrutable cause, the waters reach to an unusual height, and again subside, mysteriously as they arose. The beautiful illusion of the mirage spreads its dreamy enchantment over the surface of Ontario in the summer calms, mixing islands, clouds, and waters ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... the parish—scarcely excepting Mount Pleasant itself—all round and about which our heart could in some dreamy hour raise to life a greater multitude of dear old remembrances, all touching ourselves, than LOGAN BRAES. The old people, when we first knew them, we used to think somewhat apt to be surly—for they were Seceders—and owing to some unavoidable prejudices, which we were at no great pains ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... blown" was Sir William's son Godfrey, who faded at seven years old. When his mind was wandering, one of his dreamy utterances was, "I should like to fly softly." And therefore Mr. Keble suggested that the words on his little grave (outside the mausoleum) should be "Who are these that fly ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... Vivia of June that it had in it something infinitely touching. She would have been glad to assist little Jane in her crowded duties, yet succeeded only in being a hindrance; and learning a little of broths and diet-drinks every day, she contented herself with sitting silent and dreamy, and transforming old linen garments into bandages. Mrs. Vennard, meanwhile, waited on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... seemed made for lazy listening under, till one fell asleep! The very going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, as the head jogged to and fro upon the pillow, of moving onward with no trouble or fatigue, and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music, lulling to the senses—and the slow waking up, and finding one's self staring out through the breezy curtain half-opened in the front, far up into the cold bright sky with its countless stars, and downward at the driver's lantern dancing ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... remember, a brownish-black mole with three hairs in it. She wore an apron, too, that was kind of checkered, and three buttons were open at the neck of her dress. I recall a lot more of little things about her, though the rest of what happened is rather dreamy. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... the wondering cattle Stared wistfully, and from their mellow bells Shook out a welcoming whose dreamy rattle Fell ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... whom my mother spoke more and more frequently as she advanced in years. To compose such hymns in quiet hours, wait for visions revealing God's grandeur and splendor, or beautiful angels and horrible demons, became my favorite occupation. The merry child had grown a dreamy maiden, who let household affairs go as they would. And there was no one who could have warned me, for my mother had followed my father to the grave; and I now lived alone with my old aunt Rachel, unhappy myself, and a source of joy to no one. Aaron, the oldest of our family, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... then Iskender had passed through the cactus hedge, and was running down into the sandy hollow. The clear, cool air at once restored his exultation, and his mother's words became a buzz of flies which he had left behind. The sky was dreamy blue; the sandhills rose against it shapely like the backs and flanks of couchant lions. The red roof of the Mission on its ridge seemed placed there by some childish whim—a thing incongruous. As Iskender fixed his gaze on it, he saw a figure coming thence with speed—a figure in dark Frankish ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... in dreamy quiet within the shade of the embroidered curtains, was even as the Hart pasturing in temporary security before the quaint pavilion. The mark of her bereavement was upon her sensibly still—would be so until ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... our marriage—he laid his commands upon me to cease calling him Mr. Travilla and say Edward," Elsie said, with a dreamy smile and a far-away look in ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... of the direction which his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. Yet he did not remove it. On the contrary, he could by no means account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling like a pall upon his senses. It was with difficulty that he reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of being awake. The longer he gazed the more absorbing became the spell—the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his glance from the fascination of that tapestry. But the tumult without ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the proceedings, and submitted to having the speed of my mount regulated by the stick from behind. When pursued, Mrs. Langtry would go off with a rush, pausing at intervals to listen for footsteps behind, and assure herself that the stick man was well out of reach. Once she relapsed into a dreamy reverie, and so far forgot herself as to allow her owner to wake her up with a tremendous whack, which sent her flying with such force that I was nearly jerked out of the saddle. Our destination was the First Castle, and I was glad ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... of this startling unfolding of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... chariot was in mid-career, The fishers girt them for their customed toil, And banished slumber from unwilling eyes, And roused their dreamy ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... sequestered vale Gives first her paling-blue Miamimist, Where blithely pours the cuckoo's annual tale Of Summer promises and tender green, Of a new life and beauty yet unseen. The forest trees have yet a sighing mouth, Where dying winds of March their branches swing, While upward from the dreamy, sunny South, A hand invisible ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... she then said, in a husky dreamy voice, "how good and kind you have been. I know there was something that would make ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Tayoga that he did close his eyes for a while, although his ears and all the nerves of his body watched. But it was very peaceful and restful, and, while he lay in a half-dreamy state, he accumulated new strength for ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... upon the beach, muttering many maledictions as they rushed up, and whispering cruel portents as they drew back, hissing and gurgling, through the million narrow ways of the pebbly ramparts; and I knew that a maiden in white was standing in the cold wind, by the angry sea, singing. I had a kind of dreamy belief in my dream; but, overpowered by the spell of the music, I still lay and listened. Keener and stronger, under the impulses of my will, grew the power of my hearing. At last I could distinguish the words. The ballad was Annie of Lochroyan; and Lady Alice ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... the breaking in of the divine judgments; for, otherwise, the hope of the Messiah would have been extinguished by them, because it was but too natural to consider the former as, in fact, an annihilation of these dreamy hopes. But now there was offered to the elect a staff on which they might support themselves, and walk with confidence through the dark valley ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... Goethe, poetry has turned from Hellenic to Hindoo sources. Cultured Europe seizes with a strange eagerness on the sublime, dreamy conceptions that underlie Hindoo pantheism—Sansara, the unabiding pain-world; Nirvana world of rest and re-absorption; the deceptive veil of Maya, the wheel of life, the melting bubbles poured from the bowl of Saki, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... the request of friends;' the excuse I gave for publishing my sonnets." And then, advancing, he delivered his charge to her chaperon, who looked dreamy, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... good in its way Is the Verzenay, Or the Sillery, soft and creamy, But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy." ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... It was dreamy weather, even for late spring: the scent of lilacs and mock-orange hung heavy as incense along the woods. Their voices unconsciously found the key to harmonize ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... said that she did, and then let herself subside into a dreamy state, principally taken up by thoughts of the change, the preparations for that change, and visions of the glorious country—all sunshine, languor, and delights—which Barron never seemed to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... figures with dreamy eyes. Then, yielding to an unconquerable desire to be alone, to give herself up to undisturbed thought, she was about to withdraw; but the Princess Ulrica, who thought it necessary that the Swedish ambassador should have another opportunity of observing the proud and sullen ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... slipped into her place, an absent-minded, dreamy, detached damsel, asserting nothing, claiming nothing, bending like a flower in the high winds of ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... yielded no further information. Rose-red lips and coils of raven hair no longer made on the maitre d'hotel the same impression as in the golden days when the band played dreamy waltzes and dashing gentlemen ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... forces to encounter the coming severity, as well as of storing up the produce of harvest for the needs of winter. Old people turn out and sun themselves in that calm St. Martin's summer, without fear of 'the heat o' th' sun, or the coming winter's rages,' and we may read in their pensive, dreamy eyes that they are weaning themselves away from the earth, which probably many may never see dressed in her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... IF THERE BE higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so MIGHT BE our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy Subliminal ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... being's who has an 'open sesame' to all hearts. Mr Asplin assures me that he is as good at work as at play; I have not seen that side of his character, but he has always left a most pleasing impression on my mind, most pleasing." The old lord smiled to himself, and his eyes took a dreamy expression, as if he were recalling to memory the handsome face and strong manly presence of the young fellow of whom he was speaking. "He has been a favourite at our house for some years now, and I shall be glad to do him ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... the wind rises and the swells begin to move the vessel up and down and the sails begin to strain that good progress begins. You may feel very comfortable in your satisfaction. It may be very delightful and dreamy, but it may be dangerous also. Those who are fully satisfied for very long may be sure that there is need for an investigation. It is only when we become dissatisfied with present conditions and attainments that we are spurred to effectual ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... But the rapt sense, by such enchantment bound, And the strong will, thus listening to possess Heaven's joys on earth, my spirit's flight delay. And thus I live; and thus drawn out and wound Is my life's thread, in dreamy blessedness, By this sole syren from ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... complexion, and the features of a Sioux. A long black cigar protruded aggressively from the left corner of his mouth. His hands were locked behind him and his large and quite expressionless blue eyes stared straight across the room at the closed door with a dreamy and vacant regard. His dinner jacket fitted him so tightly that it might have been expected at any moment to split at the seams. As if to precipitate the catastrophe, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... fascination there is in wandering up and down in a deserted old tenement in some warm, dreamy country; where the vacant halls seem echoing of silence, and the doors creak open like the footsteps of strangers; and into every window the old garden trees thrust their dark boughs, like the arms ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... looks like a transcript from a dictionary of Nosology. More interesting is the sketch which he makes of his mental state during these early years. Boys brought up in company of their elders often show a tendency to introspection, and fall into a dreamy whimsical mood, and his case is a striking example. "By the command of my father I used to lie abed until nine o'clock,[31] and, if perchance I lay awake any time before the wonted hour of rising, it was my habit to spend the same by conjuring up ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... hurriedly mis-expressed myself in writing to him, as he seems to think I wished to dissuade him from following narrative poetry. Not in the least—I only wished him to try his hand at clearer dramatic life. The dreamy romantic really hardly needs more than one vast Morris in a literature—at any rate in a century. Not that I think him derivable from Morris—he goes straight back to Keats with a little modification. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... Madame Cassandra was darkened except for the electric lights glowing in amber and rose-colored shades. There were several women there already. As they entered Constance had noticed a peculiar, dreamy odor. There did not seem to be any hurry, any such thing as time here, so skilfully was the place run. There was no noise; the feet sank in half-inch piles of rugs, and easy-chairs and divans were ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... came to see him without bringing him a bouquet, charmed the poet. He remembered Beranger's charming verses, "I am of the people as well, my love!" felt that he loved, and was softened. In reality, he had turned this naive head. Louison became dreamy, asked for a lock of his hair, which she always carried with her in her 'porte-monnaie', went to get her fortune told to know whether the dark-complexioned young man, the knave of clubs, would be faithful to her for a long time. Amedee trusted this simple ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... was viewing herself with considerable pleasure in a large Venetian glass. She had reason to be pleased. The costume of an odalisque became her wonderfully; suited her luxuriant beauty, her large, dreamy blue eyes, her full red lips, her slender, swaying form. At twenty-eight, Louise von Kleist was still a sparkling beauty; the many trials and sorrows she had passed through had not scattered the roses from her cheek, nor ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... class,—the poetical, dreamy adventurer, to whom the sea beckons in every white Undine that rises along the beaches of a moonlight night, to whom it calls in that mournful and magic undertone heard only by those who love and listen. These do not often run away to go to sea; they prefer to voyage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... view is had of the body; the head thrown back, eyes cast upward, hands clasped and raised in front of the face. The boy is dressed in a dark suit, and reclines on the snow by the side of the mother; his head rests on her dress, arms stretched out towards her waist; his eyes closed in that cold and dreamy sleep which ends in death. The light for this piece must be quite dim, and come from the side of the stage that will reflect on the mother's face. Music, of a low and mournful style, representing the moaning ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... sat on the sofa closely pressed together, and the mother resting in the quiet again began to speak about Sasha's going to Pavel. Thoughtfully raising her thick eyebrows, the girl looked into the distance with her large, dreamy eyes. A contemplative expression rested ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... was of the soft dreamy May sort. I was walking slowly across the Austernheim-hellmsberger Platz—local color, you observe!—when my eyes suddenly collided with a queer apparition. At first blush it looked like a little old woman, in visage a veritable witch; but horrors! a witch with whiskers. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... physical sign of kinship between the two, half-brothers though they were. The tall one was dark; the boy, a foundling, had flaxen hair, and was stunted and slender. He was a dreamy-looking little fellow, and one may easily find his like throughout the Cumberland-paler than his fellows, from staying much indoors, with half-haunted face, and eyes that are deeply pathetic when not cunning; ignorantly ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.

... under the subterranean stars, pursuing rumors of his presence. Clearly the boss tickler (which was how they thought of Pooh-bah) led an energetic life. Gusterson continued to deliver his message to all and sundry at 30-second intervals. Toward the end he found himself doing it in a dreamy and forgetful way. His mind, he decided, was becoming assimilated to the communal telepathic mind of the ticklers. It did not seem to ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... were many for flour and meat and clothing. Or fuel to feed the big stove they had always enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and hapless, dreamy ways. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... blank; void &c (absence) 187. inanity, fool's paradise. V. vanish, evaporate, fade, dissolve, melt away; disappear &c 449. Adj. unsubstantial; baseless, groundless; ungrounded; without foundation, having no foundation. visionary &c (imaginary) 515; immaterial &c 137; spectral &c 980; dreamy; shadowy; ethereal, airy; cloud built, cloud formed; gossamery, illusory, insubstantial, unreal. vacant, vacuous; empty &c 187; eviscerated; blank, hollow; nominal; null; inane. Phr. there's nothing in it; an ocean of dreams ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... M. de Nueil's mind like lightning, left him very humble in the presence of the greatest charm with which woman can be invested. The triple aureole of beauty, nobleness, and misfortune dazzled him; he stood in dreamy, almost open-mouthed admiration of the Vicomtesse. But he found nothing to ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... took up the steaming hot proof that had just been brought him, and glanced down it carelessly with a rapid scrutiny. Then he turned to Ernest, and said in a dreamy fashion, 'This will do. We'll print this to-morrow. You may send us a middle very occasionally. Come here at four o'clock, when a subject suggests itself to you, and speak to me about it. My time's very fully occupied. Good morning, Mr. Le Breton. Berkeley, stop a minute, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the fisher's trail into the woods and found him curled up in a hollow stump. He made slight resistance as I pulled him out. All his ferocity was already lulled to sleep in the vague, dreamy numbness which Nature always sends to her stricken creatures. He suffered nothing, apparently, though he was fearfully wounded; he just wanted to be let alone. Both eyes were gone, and there was nothing ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... "miserable sinner", asking "pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ". The sense of sin, the contrition for man's fallen state, which are required by Evangelicalism, can never be truly felt by any child; but whenever a sensitive, dreamy, and enthusiastic child comes under strong Evangelistic influence, it is sure to manifest "signs of saving grace". As far as I can judge now, the total effect of the Calvinistic training was to make me somewhat morbid, but this tendency was counteracted by the healthier tone of my mother's ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... moment of the coming on of twilight, this historic representation came out from the shade, lighted up as if it were an apparition, and that was why Angelique was fascinated, and loved this particular point, as she gazed at it with her dreamy eyes. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... ambition. Since daily bread—and, luckily, rather more than daily bread, for he was no ascetic—was secured to him, since books were many and the world was wide, he asked nothing better than to study them. He grew up grave, dreamy and somewhat solitary in his ways. He seemed to have inherited something of the rector's self-possessed and rather formal courtesy, and at twenty he looked older than his age, though his face was as smooth as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... e'er fat Falstaff, wreathing 'neath his cup Of glorious sack, unable to reel home, Sit on thy breast, and give his fancy up, The all that wine had given pow'r to roam, And left the mind in gay, but dreamy talk, Wakeful in wit when legs denied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various

... taunted, Brown was true. Guarded at friendship's shrine the fame of the unpublished story grew and grew. It's a long, long lane that has no end, but some lanes end in the Potter's field; Smith to Brown had been more than friend: patron, protector, spur and shield. Poor, loving-wistful, dreamy Brown, long and lean, with a smile askew, Friendless he wandered up and down, gaunt as a wolf, as hungry too. Brown with his lilt of saucy rhyme, Brown with his tilt of tender mirth Garretless in the gloom and grime, singing his ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... I confess that he has an accomplice greater than himself. The girl, coming upon the full consciousness of womanhood, comes also upon that of its opposite. The primal divine unity of the race makes itself felt in her dreamy bosom. She is but half of the ideal—the perfect human being—the other half is not yet hers; she must seek diligently till she find it. Do not laugh. The pilgrimage of Psyche is performed by every maiden soul; but love, the supreme god, in the little child is not ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... blowing free over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had grown dreamy and abstracted. The hand that had pushed back her heavy hair fell on her lap. She looked at it and its shining rings, and Mrs Jefferson's sharp glance followed hers. Was there a plain gold circlet among that glittering array?—was the beautiful ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... hollow-chested: a mother's-boy, Palmer saw, with fair hair and dreamy eyes. He held out his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... you come and play with your brothers and sisters just now?" asked the Colonel, as a dreamy-eyed boy of about eight, with a mop of dark hair and a wistful expression, came slowly forward into ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... while, till sterner matters occupying men's attention, they were one after the other abandoned, both by pupils and professors. The system, thus driven from the first two nations of Europe, took refuge among the dreamy philosophers of Germany. There the wonders of the magnetic sleep grew more and more wonderful every day; the patients acquired the gift of prophecy; their vision extended over all the surface of the globe; they could hear and see with their toes and fingers, and read unknown languages, and understand ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... courted them—they were pleasurable. I now can well understand the enthusiasm and the raptures of that ridiculous class of exploded visionaries, called flagellants. I certainly was in a state of complete oblivion to everything but a dreamy fanaticism, and yet that term is too harsh, and it would be impiety to call it holiness, seeing that it was in a state of inutility,—and yet, many well-meaning persons will think, no doubt, that my infant and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own, few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music, her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... symmetry, and her full rich lips disclosed teeth that might have shamed the pearl. But the chief charm of that exquisite countenance was in an expression of softness and purity, and intellectual sentiment, that seldom accompanies that cast of loveliness, and was wholly foreign to the voluptuous and dreamy languor of Moorish maidens; Leila had been educated, and the statue had received ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... face. His knees were astride my body, and gradually I felt them pushing my arms up toward my neck. I felt a slight blow on the back of my head, as though by the edge of the hand—light, delicate, gentle, but dreamy in its results. Then I was half conscious of a hand pushing down my head, of another hand reaching for my right wrist. It occurred to me in a distant way that I was about to be ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... tall, shapely, and extremely pretty, with as sweet and even a temper as one could possibly imagine, which eminently fitted her for dreamy, contemplative love-making, such as one reads of in idyls and romances. She would willingly have spent her life in. contemplating the King,—in loving and adoring him without ever opening her mouth; and to her, the sweet ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... had touched with the blue of its beauty, lay looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty lullabies over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired Una was the living and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old Manse. Perhaps, that being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our author was not surprised or displeased when the hints came, 'growing more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... was the brilliant and picturesque hall I have before described to you. It looked more picture-like and dreamy than ever. The piano was on the flat stairway just below the broad central landing. It was a grand piano, standing end outward, and perfectly banked up among hothouse flowers, so that only its gilded top was visible. Sir George Smart presided. The choicest of the elite were there. Ladies ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... European nations breathed more freely, and it was the general expectation and desire that there would be no more wars. The civilized world was weary of strife and battlefields, and in the reaction which followed the general peace of 1815, the various States settled down into a state of dreamy repose. Not only were they weary of war, but they hated the agitation of those ideas which led to discontent and revolution. The policy of the governments of England, France, Germany, and Russia was pacific and conservative. There was a universal desire ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... worshippers as citizens of Athens and as members of the privileged Hellenic race. It would be easy to trace a similar character in almost all the great statues of gods that are recorded as belonging to this period. Thus the Dionysus of Alcamenes is not the dreamy god of wine and pleasure that we find at a later age, but an august figure, bearded and enthroned, the giver of the riches of the earth and the wine, the god in whose honour all the great Dionysian festivals were held; the same sculptor's Hermes is the guardian of ways and gates, the giver ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner

... the next Scene too quickly. Alice has gone back to her little chair, and there she sits silent, her chin cupped in her hand, her eyes dreamy. Uncle Edward clears his throat noisily several times. Then he puts on his spectacles ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... fell a little forward, his shoulders drooped slightly and, for a moment, his buoyancy was gone. The corners of the mouth showed a settled melancholy where before was sunny humour. The eyes, which were dreamy, kindly, gray, looked backward in a morbid glow of concentration; and over the rather reckless cast of his features, lay at once the shadow of suffering and the light of a great tenderness. Slowly, a little hardness ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... necessary to spoil a good picture ... on my account," said Flora, closing the lorgnette with a snap. Her great dark eyes were dreamy and contemplative like a cat's, and, as every one knows, a cat's eye is the most observing of all eyes. It is quite in the order of things, since a cat's attitude toward the world is by need ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... second and turned to look at Rupert's dreamy face with a smile not all humorous. "I'm a sentimental chap for my size," he added. "That's what I wanted for Sheba and you—that's what I want. That sort of thing was left out of my life; but I should like to see it before I'm done with. Good God! why can't people be ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in a whisper, very deliberately as before, and looked strangely thoughtful and dreamy. Even while he told the story of how he had peeped through the blind, he gave the impression of wishing to say something else. They entered the study. In this room some changes had taken place since ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... dreamy soul and the most frank, straightforward character of any member of our illustrious company. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... Herbert? The spirit passed out, carrying every faculty, every sense and emotion, to that land where many dream that we lose all consciousness of life, below, and remain in some blest state of dreamy ease. Not so. Our lives at death, so called, are made more sensitive to all we owe our friends on earth, and death is but the clasp that binds ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... late the next morning. As he lay with eyes closed, half asleep, half awake, the image of his partner of the evening sweetly drifted into his dreamy brain, and called up a wealth of associations on which he continued to dwell with rare pleasure. But the ominous suggestion that her heart could not possibly be free, that perhaps some gay officer, or brilliant member of Howe's staff, or a gallant French official, many of whom ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... of that. It's very interesting!" said Tom in a dreamy voice, which brought a flush of indignation ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the rarely printed poem "Colin's Mistakes," where "Bright Ca'ndish Holles Harley" is seen in the glades of Wimpole by the dreamy youth, and mistaken for Gloriana, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... courtyard no one is stirring. The dreamy silence is only broken by the voices that rise from the river below, by the clacking of the sarong weaver's shuttle or the dull boom ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... utter goes ringing through the universe forever; that every thought of the heart becomes a creation, a thing of vitality in some shape, starting forward among the things of some sort of life, never to die! I have sometimes, in my dreamy hours, speculated upon the truth of such a theory, and reasoned with myself in favor of its reality. All I can say in its favor, however, is that I cannot disprove it. It may be true, or it may not. There are other mysteries quite as incomprehensible, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... to realise that those few moments passed on the pierhead at Genoa did not form part of my illness and the dreamy memories of that time. But having always been of a matter of fact mind I allowed myself no illusions in this respect, and this strange detail of an incomprehensible life forced itself upon my understanding at length when the inexplicable ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... dreaded led into a square. A square, she reflected, always means a certain measure of respectability. And the faded, old-fashioned neighbourhood pleased her. Some of the houses seemed as if they had known more fashionable days; and the square exhaled a tender melancholy; it suggested a vision of dreamy lives—lives lived in ideas, lives of students who lived in books unaware of the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... no poet could be accepted unless he left outside the demesnes of poetry that very useful animal, the body, and lost all concern about its habits. He could not enter unless he moved with the light and dreamy foot-fall of spirit. Mr. Yeats was the chief of this eclectic school, and his poetry at its best is the most beautiful in Irish literature. But there crowded after him a whole horde of verse-writers, who seized the most obvious symbols he used ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... and of the sun. This sunlight linked me through the ages to that past consciousness. From all the ages my soul desired to take that soul-life which had flowed through them as the sunbeams had continually poured on earth. As the hot sands take up the heat, so would I take up that soul-energy. Dreamy in appearance, I was breathing full of existence; I was aware of the grass blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawth orn and tree. I seemed to live more largely through them, as if each were a pore through which I drank. The grasshoppers called and leaped, the greenfinches sang, the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... over and over, as she followed with dreamy eyes the vain endeavors of a chameleon to change his color, as the shadows painted the sand beneath him first green and then white, that her own hopes and strivings were just as futile; and yet when Noa would sit beside her and try to take her hand, she ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... down from Thurnall's shelves; yet he was looking not at it, but at the landscape. Nevertheless, as he looked, one might have seen that he was thinking not so much of it as of his own thoughts about it. His eye, which was very large, dark, and beautiful, with heavy lids and long lashes, had that dreamy look so common among men of the poetic temperament; conscious of thought, if not conscious of self; and as his face kindled, and his lips moved more and more earnestly, he began muttering to himself half-aloud, till Tom Thurnall burst into ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts against his father's plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb's life ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... put away, in a sort; for the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the evergreens was wafted about her; and then came a touch, a most gentle touch, of the south river-breeze upon her face; and then the long dreamy cry of the locust; and the soft plashing sound of the water at her feet. All Elizabeth's faculties were crying for sleep; and sleep came, handed in by the locust and the summer air, and laid its kind touch of forgetfulness upon ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... the evening is unwelcome; Have no pleasure in the future, All my pleasures gone forever, With my faithful life-companion Slaughtered by the hand of witchcraft! Often will my heart-strings quiver When I rest within my chamber, When I wake at dreamy midnight, Half-unconscious, vainly searching For my noble wife departed." Wifeless lived the mourning blacksmith, Altered in his form and features; Wept one month and then another, Wept three months in full succession. Then the magic metal-worker ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... crowing of some chanticleer aroused too soon. From the huge wood near by came long breaths, which passed over the roofs like caresses. The meadows, with their dark shadows, assumed a mysterious and dreamy majesty, while all the springs, all the flowing waters which gurgled in the darkness, seemed to be the cool and rhythmical respiration of the sleeping country. Occasionally the ancient mill wheel, lost in a doze, appeared to dream like those old watchdogs that bark while snoring; ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... altogether wrong? Last year, when he observed Sidwell in the Cathedral and subsequently at home, his impression had been that her face was of rather pallid and dreamy cast; he recollected that distinctly. Had she changed, or did familiarity make him less sensible of her finer traits? Possibly she enjoyed better health nowadays, and, if so, it might result from influences other than physical. Her air ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... dreamy feeling of helplessness had left us both now; and, taking hold of our companion's hands, we set our feet against the rock and dragged with all our might, while poor Bigley struggled and strained, but all in vain. He had by his unaided efforts got to a certain distance ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... individual who exercised so singular a control over his followers, and over the district in which he lived, had changed since his early, dreamy days, or since the period of his honest exertions as a drover. Rob Roy had become in repute with Robin Hood of the Lowlands. His personal appearance added greatly to the impression of his singular qualities. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... dressed in dark clothes, with a large limp straw hat; with something almost military in his moustache and whiskers, but with a quite unmilitary stoop and very dreamy eyes. He was gazing with a rather gloomy interest at the cluster, one might almost say the tangle, of small shipping which grew thicker as our little pleasure boat crawled up into Yarmouth Harbour. A boat entering this harbour, ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... field beguiled me on. I came out in the vegetable-garden of a rustic cottage, one of some dozen thatched-roofed dwellings, which, with the church and simple parsonage, constituted sweet Honeybourne. "Oh that it were the bourne from which no traveller returns!" was the thought of my heart, as, with a dreamy sense of longings fulfilled, I wandered through the miniature village, across it, around it, beyond it, and back to it again, as a bee saturated with sweets ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... loveliness that you may find even yet in the air about Perugia and Siena, in the delicate flowers there, the honeysuckle which the country people call le manine della Madonnina—the little hands of the Virgin, and even in the people sometimes, in their soft gestures and dreamy looks. And for these I pass by the pictures by Benozzo Gozzoli, by Sodoma, and the rest, for ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... My dreamy look of inattention showed him again that he had failed; and I could see in the increased pallor of his face, the quivering motion of his lip, the agitation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... few who saw Jonathan Zane in the village, it seemed as if he was in his usual quiet and dreamy state. The people were accustomed to his silence, and long since learned that what little time he spent in the settlement was not given to sociability. In the morning he sometimes lay with Colonel Zane's dog, Chief, by the side of a spring under an elm ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... are very numerous in the parts of the river where they are never hunted. The males appear of a dark color, the females of yellowish brown. There is not such a complete separation of the sexes among them as among elephants. They spend most of their time in the water, lolling about in a listless, dreamy manner. When they come out of the river by night, they crop off the soft succulent grasses very neatly. When they blow, they puff up the water about three ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... either dreamy or warlike, could easily be multiplied. We have the lamentations of the man without a country, of the friendless wanderer, of the forlorn wife, of the patronless singer, of the wave-tossed mariner; and these laments are always associated with the grand ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... our memorial services for the Dead that last night, and this same morning. It was the week of All Hallows and All Souls, a time that often tempts me to homesickness. One is apt to think of hazy, yellow-leaved, dreamy times in old England just about then not to speak of old familiar faces. That night of the first Service was very starry, and the morning of the second Service was brilliantly clear, the rain seemed to be very far away for the time being. People had come at ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... preface to a volume published in 1800, Coleridge rejected and criticised it as wholly untenable. All three, however, may be considered as comrades in a revolt against the conventional diction of eighteenth century poetry, from which Coleridge's "dreamy tenderness" and mystical flights of fancy were as remote as Wordsworth's rusticity and almost prosaic studies of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... dreamy with waiting—his thoughts seemed to melt into the softness of the day, to be part of the still air and misty sunshine, just as the triple-barned church with its grotesque tower was part.... He could ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... one of the wealthiest, most elegant cities in France! Hither flocked rich Alsatian families after the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and perhaps its proximity to the lost provinces in part accounts for the subdued, dreamy aspect of the place as a whole. A strikingly beautiful city it is, with its splendid monuments of the house of Lorraine, and handsome modern streets bearing evidence of much prosperity in these days. In half-an-hour you may get an unforgettable glimpse of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... babyish brain there ran misty, dreamy ideas of something she would do to make "them" all sorry—she would go away somewhere "far, far," and never come back again. But where? This she could not yet settle about, but fortunately for the peace of the rest of the walk her cogitations ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... with what a happy instinct all that is of a nature to feed the sentimental mind is gathered together in Werther: a dreamy and unhappy love, a very vivid feeling for nature, the religious sense coupled with the spirit of philosophic contemplation, and lastly, to omit nothing, the world of Ossian, dark, formless, melancholy. Add to this the aspect under which reality is presented, all is depicted which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... day was perfect of its kind, a dreamy, drowsy day, a day when genial suns and hazy cool airs mingle in excellent harmony, and the tired worker, freed from his week's toil, basks and stretches, yawns and revels in rest under the orchard trees; ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... the rear of the cottage was a bit of ground, perhaps forty feet square, with an old elm in the centre, under which Dutton liked to take his nooning. It was here he used to play years ago, a quiet, dreamy lad, with no companions except the squirrels. A family of them still inhabited the ancient boughs, and it amused him to remember how he once believed that the nimble brown creatures belonged to a tribe of dwarf Indians who might attempt ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... to become weary of their plaything, had tossed it contemptuously on the shore, and a pitying stone had rolled down and covered and preserved a tiny corner. Dr. Douglass eyed it curiously, trying to decipher the mud-stained lines, and being in a dreamy mood wondered meanwhile what young, fair hand had penned the words, and what of joy or sadness filled them. Scarcely a word was readable, at least nothing that would gratify his curiosity, until he turned the bit of leaf, and the first line, which the stone had ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... and as they had no money to spare for cabs or omnibuses, they must walk to the distant terminus from which they must start for the south. How strange they felt as they walked through the gayly-lighted streets! How tired was Maurice! how delighted Joe! how dreamy and yet calm and trustful, was Cecile. Since the vision about her purse, her absolute belief in her ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... them that sail the deep, When winds have sunk to sleep, The dreamy murmurs of the night steal on; Say, does their mystic hum, So vague and varied, come From distant ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... returned. Robin opened his eyes with a stare of dreamy astonishment. The monkey replied with a stare of indignant surprise. Robin's eyebrows rose still higher. So did those of the monkey as it leaped back a foot, and formed its mouth into a little O of remonstrance. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... a counterfeit presentment of the spiritual man, in the world of dreams, a shadow lord of shadows, who has his own dreamy powers of vision, of hearing, of movement; he has left the natural without reaching the spiritual. He has set forth from the shore, but has not gained the further verge of the river. He is borne along by the stream, with no foothold on either shore. Leaving the actual, he has ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... through Duncan's eyes, we see that Della was the taller and more graceful of the two. Her hair and complexion were rather dark than fair; long, dark eyelashes shaded eyes deep blue, dreamy and wondrous in expression. We never mind much a nose, unless it be ugly to a deformity, or a model for the sculptor. An Angelo would have thrilled at sight of Della's nose, and straightway wrought it into immortality, alto relievo. Her mouth and chin were as lovely and divinely rounded as ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee



Words linked to "Dreamy" :   dream, languorous, unenrgetic, lethargic, moony, inattentive, lackadaisical



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