Definition of "pensiveness" [pen•sive•ness]

• A thoughtful or reflective state, especially if sad or melancholic. (noun)

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• "The travellers remained, for some time, in a state of tranquil pensiveness, which is not unpleasing."
• "His feeling is so deep, and so unexaggerated, that it is a profoundly subtle interpreter of life to him, and the pensiveness which throws such a mellow sombreness upon his imagination is only the pensiveness which is the shadow of extreme beauty."
• ""Probably," he mused, with that idle pensiveness which is the lazy man's apology to himself for not thinking, "the thing which would surprise them most would be to see how much they held in common."