"Reticence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no less human on our street, but it takes a bit more study to get at the secret. There is a certain reticence about us. It would take an earthquake to cause much fraternization along Pine Street. Perhaps it is because three houses out of every four bear the tablets of doctors. The average layman fears to stop and speak to his neighbour for fear it will develop ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... "that you are rather overdoing your diplomatic reticence, Captain Granet. You haven't told me a single thing. Why, some of the Tommies I have been to see in the hospitals have been ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mother that my sister Fanny inherited her vivid dark beauty, her reticence, her fortitude in suffering, her fearlessness in the presence of ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... half through his first cigar, that he thought he should walk up to the hotel in the new town, because he fancied there was a man there he knew. As to his name, he thought it was Pilkington, but wasn't sure. Taunted with reticence, he said it was nothing but business. As Rosalind could easily conceive that Gerry might not want to introduce all the Pilkingtons he chanced across to his family, she didn't press for explanation. "He'll very likely ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... drawing-room, that the grown-up daughters had made very fine during their periods of courtship. Its walls were hung with fine grey canvas, it had a large, silvery grey, silky carpet, and the furniture was covered with dark green silky material. Into this reticence pieces of futurism, Omega cushions and Van-Gogh-like pictures exploded their colours. Such chic would certainly not have been looked ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... badly?" And when Elizabeth only nodded and looked as if she hoped her hostess had not heard, John Hunter was filled with joy. The mutuality of the reticence put them on the footing of good fellowship. There was no further opportunity for conversation, as they heard Silas and Carter on the step and a third party ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Dignified reticence is not a leading characteristic of the bridge-player's manner at the Senior Conservative Club on occasions like this. Mr Bickersdyke's partner did not bear his calamity with manly resignation. He gave tongue on the instant. 'What on earth's', and 'Why on earth's' flowed from his mouth like molten ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... we know of no work where there is the same true appreciation shown of the real value, and proper use, of legendary traditions. Certainly amongst the great scholars of Germany, whatever their undoubted merits in other respects, there is very little of this wise reticence, this philosophical forbearance; and if the two English historians, whom we have named together, be surpassed in critical knowledge by the learned men of Germany, or in brilliant narrative by the writers of France, they are superior to their contemporaries in both countries in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... I could tell except the bare facts, but I thought that Miss Kendall seemed especially interested in the broker's reticence about his stenographer. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... had the perfect gift of the charlatan, and he had discovered his metier. Inclined to the picturesque by nature, melodramatic and empirical, his earlier career had been the due fruit of habit and education. As a dabbler in mines he had been out of his element. He lacked the necessary reticence, and arsenic had not availed him, though it had tempted Billy Wantage to forgery; and because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele. Since Charley's death John Brown had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... your position," he assured her. "I take that for granted. No one with a spark of kindly feeling could look at this matter except in one way. Now, you must admit that I have behaved beautifully. I have made no attempt to surprise your reticence, or even to discover your name. Truly, I haven't made the faintest effort to entrap you into any revelations, have I? Now, I am sure that we must know quantities of the same people, and all I ask is that you mention some of your engagements to me for the coming fortnight. Suppose, for ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... system of passports over all our roads, and refuse to let any man pass who could not give a good account of himself, come well vouched for, and make it fully appear that he is not an enemy, and that he is on legitimate business. This would keep information from the enemy far more effectually than any reticence of the press, which ought to lay before our people the full facts in ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... powerful of physique, dominant, fiery-tempered, fearless of any living thing, but with these hot qualities checked into a surface appearance of unruffled equanimity by his self-control and his habitual reticence. And now to see him thin, white-haired, bent, his old fire seemingly burned to gray ashes—the Duchess, who had seen much in her generations, was almost ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... upon the eve of their intended marriage was emphatically denied by Mrs. Whitman. She pronounced the whole story a "calumny." In a letter before me she says: "I do not think it possible to overstate the gentlemanly reticence and amenity of his habitual manner. It was stamped through and through with the impress of nobility and gentleness. I have seen him in many moods and phases in those 'lonesome, latter years' which were rapidly merging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... see that sad and humbled throng, working close to the roadway, no head daring to uplift, no eye to enquiringly gaze. During all those miles of drive that bordered on plantations, as machines they acted, as machines they looked. My curiosity and youthful impulse ignoring that reticence becoming a servant, I said: "Mr. Fisher, who are these people?" He said, "They are slaves." I was startled but made no reply. I had not associated the exhilaration of the drive with a depressing view of slavery, but his reply caused a tumult of feeling in my youthful breast. The Turner episode ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... reference has been made to it. From Laura she has heard all the family dissatisfactions and numberless descriptions of Violet. From Eugene she has learned that Miss Violet was offered to him, and there is no doubt in her mind but that she was forced upon Floyd. She cannot forgive him for his reticence those last few days, but her patience is infinite. The wheel of fate revolves, happily; it can never remain at one event, but must go on to the next. The Ascotts' house is a perfect godsend to her, and her intimacy with Mrs. Latimer a wise dispensation. They are all charmed with her; it ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... avoided all allusion to her, and been thankful that the boy's reticence made it easy, so now they grew almost feverishly anxious to discover how he felt towards his mother's memory. They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed. They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said tremulously, "if I have in any way misled you by my reticence, I beg you to believe it was unintentionally. The memory of the pleasant quarters of an hour we ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... again the old man paused in his work to catch his breath or to wipe the perspiration from his brow. His communicativeness at such moments of intermission would have been almost equal to his reticence at an earlier stage, but Ralph was in no humor to encourage his garrulity, and Sim stood speechless, with something like terror in his eyes. "Yes, we've had no minister since Michaelmas; that, you know, was when the new Act came In," ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... ask a few, but the answers he received were unsatisfactory. Mrs. Armstrong evidently did not care to talk on the subject. The captain thought her attitude a little odd, but decided that the tragedy of her husband's death must be the cause of her reticence. Her parting remarks on this ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a good many victims to the wolves, and had assumed that Mr. Newell had been among the number. That he had been dropped overboard at an early stage in the lady's career seemed probable from the fact that neither his wife nor his daughter ever mentioned him. Mrs. Newell was incapable of reticence, and if her husband had still been an active element in her life he would certainly have figured in her conversation. Garnett, if he thought of the matter at all, had concluded that divorce must long since have eliminated Mr. Newell; but he now ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of a child; 'I never saw another young person just like her. She's so deep and hidden in her nature, one cannot easily read her thoughts. I wish sometimes she was more open and confiding; but she is a darling, for all her reticence.' ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... little troubled as she was by sensitiveness, guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully avoiding Mary in order that she might not be disturbed by the invisible ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... comedy, Il Candelajo. The Scotch puritan actually scents something obscene in the very title; to which we can only reply by parodying Carlyle—"The nose smells what it brings." As for the comedy itself, it must be judged by the standard of its age. Books were then all written for men, and reticence was unknown. Yet, free as Il Candelajo is sometimes in its portrayal of contemporary manners, it does not approach scores of works which are found "in every gentleman's library." It certainly is not freer than Shakespeare; it is less free than the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... it, soon after the brief run of the play was over. For no man was more shy of autobiographical revelations. His biographers are continually reduced to gleaning stray hints, here and there, concerning his private life. [5] And therefore we can measure by this emergence from a habitual personal reticence the soreness with which he now published work unworthy of his genius. "Mr Garrick," Fielding tells us, speaking of this distressed winter of 1742-3 "... asked me one Evening, if I had any play by me; telling me he was desirous of appearing in a new Part [and] ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... believe the mission (Catholic) has been allowed some form of communication. On the same occasion I sent down letters and presents. They were refused; and the officer of the deck on the German war-ship had so little reticence as to pass the remark, "O, you see, you like Mataafa; we don't." In short, communication is so completely sundered that for anything we can hear in Samoa, they may all have been hanged at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... near enough to hear, and colour. She had imagined the last night's conversation unknown to all; but Underwood reticence was so incapable of guessing at Harewood communicativeness, that it never entered her brain to suspect the topic of conversation between the three juniors as they walked ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about her glowing face. She radiated vitality, the richness and abundance of high summer; she suggested a darkly gorgeous peacock-butterfly, and in the delicate radiance of the spring woods, she seemed out of key with their slender elegance of leaf and spray the soft reticence of their faint greens ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... been and still is in most Protestant churches too much reticence about the meaning of God for the individual life and maybe too great hesitation in really using to the full the proffer of divine power. The accepted understandings of the place of pain and suffering in life have been, as it were, a barrier ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Antoinette. She loves to parade Carlotta before her friends. I came upon her once entertaining an admiring audience in Carlotta's presence with a detailed description of that young woman's physical perfections—a description which was marked by a singular lack of reticence. The time of her glory is the bathing hour, when she accompanies Carlotta from her cabin to the water's edge, divests her of peignoir and espadrilles, but before revealing her to fashionable Etretat, casts a preliminary glance around, as who should say: "Prepare all men and women for ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Monseigneur Czaski, came too sometimes at tea-time. He was a charming talker, but I always felt as if he were saying exactly what he meant to and what he wanted me to repeat to W. I am never quite sure with Italians. There is always a certain reticence under their extremely natural, rather exuberant manner. Monseigneur Czaski was not an Italian by birth—a Pole, but I don't know that they inspire ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... with something of evasiveness or reticence in the old fellow's manner, greatly troubled Dale. Not at all from selfish motives; but because it confirmed a suspicion that he had long entertained. Although invisible locally, disgraced and hiding somewhere at a distance, that blackguardly ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... her little brood sometimes would sit silently watching the children, and look at Laura as if about to speak, but she always went away with her mind unrelieved. Violet Hogan, who brought her beruffled and bedizened eldest, made up for Mrs. Bowman's reticence. Moreover Violet brought other mothers and there was much talk on the topics of the day—talk that revealed to Laura Nesbit a whole philosophy that was new to her—the helpfulness of the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to know what Sam had come for. The last time they had heard of him he was a freighter. His reticence stimulated ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... criticized this attitude of the Hermetists, and who have claimed that they did not manifest the proper spirit in their policy of seclusion and reticence. But a moment's glance back over the pages of history will show the wisdom of the Masters, who knew the folly of attempting to teach to the world that which it was neither ready or willing to receive. The Hermetists have never sought to be martyrs, and have, instead, ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... spite of these discomforts, Enoch managed to ride many miles, during the day, with his horse beside Diana's. And he talked to her as though he must in the short five days make up for a life time of reticence. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... arrogance and self-confidence were gone or lay buried under the most appealing of coquetry, a shy tenderness apparently born of irresistible impulse showing itself in little wilful sallies, a glance or touch, seemingly instantly regretted, and followed by alternations of reticence. He admitted her bewitching but had no idea that he was himself bewitched. His was a literary passion. He was a student of life as well as of books, and he had never before had the opportunity of studying such glorious examples of both ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... however, has other moods, and, perhaps, he is at his best when he is writing about flowers. Occasionally he wearies the reader by tedious enumerations of plants, lacking indeed reticence and tact and selection in many of his descriptions, but, as a rule, he is very pleasant when he is babbling of green fields. How pretty these stanzas ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... many years of experience, suggest that Your Honour should seem—for the present, at any rate—not to know any of these things which I have reported, as you wished me to do. Be sure that the Voivodin will tell you her gracious self aught that she would wish you to know. And such reticence on your part must make for her happiness, even if it ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... that it was an unselfish desire to spare my companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness. Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a certain note of querulousness to ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... for this reticence? What was your motive for making such a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at last your secret, in your words, so 'disgraceful,' though in reality—that is, of course, comparatively speaking—this action, that is, the appropriation ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Statesman, the trusted counsellor of an Ex-Premier, and believed in family circles to be the real author of some of his supreme measures. The naturally retiring disposition of the Statesman in question, and his inviolable reticence in respect of any matter concerning himself, made it difficult to arrive at the truth. Doubtless the stupendous event—the possible consequences of which on European affairs Time will work out—would have ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... war, and may as well be accepted for an indefinite period. When social relations were resumed between the North and the South,—they followed slowly the resumption of business relations,—what we should call the color-blindness of the other side often manifested itself in a delicate reticence on the part of our Northern friends; and as the war had by no means constituted their lives as it had constituted ours for four long years, the success in avoiding the disagreeable topic would have been considerable, if it had not been for ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... of the reticence of speaking of her own ideals and longings for experience, she almost volleyed forth her words, so that every one ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... plantation, where she found more than enough to occupy her mind; and Eric often wondered at the admirable system and punctuality she displayed—at the grave composure with which she discharged her daily duties, and the invariable reticence she observed with regard to her ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the veil of reticence over the remainder of this harrowing narrative. The procession back to Brigade Head-quarters has become historic. The attempt to remove the soup tureen on the spot caused its unhappy possessor such ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Albany, at Ithaca, and on various journeys undertaken for the university; and, the more I saw of him, the deeper became my respect for him. There were, indeed, toward the end of his life, some things trying to one of my temperament, and among these things I may mention his exceeding reticence, and his willingness not only to labor but to wait; but these stood not at all in the way of my respect and ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... right. You're a husker. But there ain't no reason for this reticence with a brother professional. I was the bearded woman with Kitts and Kiljammer's show for over two years, I was Shake, mate." The visitor thrust ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... it may approach to wholeness, remains, nevertheless, very largely a construction, a work of literary fiction. The autobiography comes still closer; yet, since it is designed for a public which cannot be expected to view it in a solidly detached fashion, it suffers from the reticence which inevitably intrudes to suppress. In fiction alone, none except artistic motives ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... for reticence, and she told the hostess of the suit of the Broom-Squire, and of the manner in which he made his proposal. Mrs. Verstage said nothing at the time. She was occupied—too occupied for comments. But when ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... incomplete explanation. He had inherited the Englishman's reticence, which forbade him to point out that his father sprang from an old family of standing and had, for some reason which his son had never learned, quarreled bitterly with his English relatives. Coming to Canada, he had married and taken up the bush ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... taking large risks to assure success in spite of any change of times. Now, moved by some strange reasons which he himself perhaps did not recognize, he began for the first time, contrary to his usual reticence, to explain to my mother and me something of these matters. He told us that in connection with his friend, Colonel William Meriwether, of Albemarle, he had invested heavily in coal lands in the western part of the State, in what is now West Virginia. This requiring very large ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... willing enough to talk. There was indeed, no particular reason for reticence; I could not, she naturally felt, turn ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... so obviously out of his element under this cross-examination that I could not suppress a smile even while I experienced a very lively indignation at his reticence. He may have seen me smile and he may not, for his eyes, as I have intimated, were always busy with some object entirely removed from the person he addressed; but at all events he rose, leaving me no alternative ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... that was bothering and the possibility of trapping him. There was no dearth of topics of mutual interest. Nevertheless, Mormon Joe knew that she was holding something in reserve and wondered at this reticence. It came finally when they had finished and ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... within careful lines so as not to offend. Hauptmann said afterwards that he had noticed such cautiousness in all weavers. No doubt it had grown out of the great poverty that often brought out diffidence and reticence ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... notice of Sir Alan Cameron's services, save that in a couple of pages of the Gentleman's Magazine at his death (1828) may be ascribed much to his own reticence in supplying information respecting them. Sir John Philliphart and Colonel David Stewart, when collecting materials for their respective "Military Annals," expressed their regret that Sir Alan's reply to their applications for particulars of his life and career was ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... fellow-passengers of his own nationality had tried to engage him in conversation, but without avail. His replies to their questions had been brief, though gravely courteous, and in the Latin tongue. The purity of his speech, his cultivated manners, his reticence, served to stimulate their curiosity the more. Such as observed him closely were struck by an incongruity between his demeanor, which had the ease and grace of a patrician, and certain points of his person. Thus his arms were disproportionately ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... music at once naive and complex, innocent and impassioned, fragile and sonorous. It spoke with an accent unmistakably grave and sincere; yet it spoke without emphasis: indirectly, flexibly, with fluid and unpredictable expression. It was eloquent beyond denial, yet its reticence, its economy of gesture, were extreme—were, indeed, the very negation of emphasis. Is it strange that such music—hesitant, evasive, dream-filled, strangely ecstatic, with its wistful and twilight loveliness, its blended subtlety and simplicity—should have been as ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... of others, and it was only in days of storm that one felt the pressure of the tides. This inscrutable composure was perhaps her chief grace in Glennard's eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies merely the locking of empty rooms or the dissimulation of awkward encumbrances; but Miss Trent's reticence was to Glennard like the closed door to the sanctuary, and his certainty of divining the hidden treasure made him content to remain outside in the ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... then possible to describe oneself at once faithfully and fully? In all autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may have the effect of falsity. We are each of us bound to reticence by the piety we owe to those who have been nearest to us and have had a mingled influence over our lives; by the fellow-feeling which should restrain us from turning our volunteered and picked confessions into an act of accusation against others, who ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... external contact, involve an assumption of spiritual eminence not to be found in consensus and sympathy. As protection against the penetration of the inner precincts of personality and the group individuality, there are the defenses of suspicion and aversion, of reticence and reserve, designed to insure the proper ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when we now celebrate the birthday of the Lord; and the very night which is now so holy to us, they called in their tongue modranecht (modra niht), that is, the mothers' night, by reason we suspect of the ceremonies which in that night-long vigil they performed." With his usual reticence about matters pagan or not orthodox, Bede abstains from recording who the mothers were and what the ceremonies. In 1644 the English puritans forbad any merriment or religious services by act of Parliament, on the ground that it was a heathen festival, and ordered it to be kept as a fast. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... be illegal, and that this Montalvo had left the Netherlands under a cloud to find his death, so he had been told, abroad. More than this Adrian did not know for certain, since everybody showed a singular reticence in speaking to him of the matter. Twice he had plucked up courage to question his mother on the subject, and on each occasion her face had turned cold and hard as stone, and she answered almost in the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... should be quite sufficient to point out and to condemn inaccuracies and errors without bringing upon the record every individual name. No misunderstanding could possibly exist, since the references were ample in every case. But since this reticence, in at least one instance, has been criticized by an unfriendly reviewer, it is perhaps better to state that the repeated allusions to Lord Lister's journeyings to France, and the article in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... better. But Barbara annoyed him, for not only had she shown herself a renegade in marrying a man who was not "one of us," but with all the advantages she had enjoyed since birth of knowing what "we" were, she gloried in her new relations, saying, without any proper reticence about the matter, that they were Real People, whose character and wits vastly transcended anything ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... dodging white balls thrown at him by certain immortals (who, when they hit him, got pipes); and the giant who flung "Look! Look! Look! Look!" through a megaphone, while a good little dog toiled up a ladder and then stood at the ladder's top in a silence that was all nice reticence and dignity. Also, the huge Saxon fellow who, at the portal of the Arabian Court of Art and Regular Cafe Restaurant, sang a love-song through a megaphone—"Tenderly, dearest, I breathe thy sweet name," he hallooed, with his free hand beckoning ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... said Sir Walter. 'He had always a more than Oriental reticence. I've got another colleague for you, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... one way to repair it—just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been right, for all that, in taking ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... women avowed that the mingled truth and tenderness of his genial and generous nature were all but irresistible. Nevertheless they were chagrined by his singular indifference to their allurements; and many a fair one, even more interested than inquisitive, vainly sought to break the unconquerable reticence which, under apparent frankness, he relentlessly maintained. He had, indeed, once been married, for a few years only; but his wife was not of those who can concentrate and absorb the fulness of another soul, wedding memory with immortal longing. Thus the problem of my friend's life-long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... when she saw these two bearing down upon the house; but her mother called her to make a pitcher of lemonade for them—and having entered there was no escape. They harried her with questions, were increasingly offended by her reticence, and expressed disapproval with a fullness ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... said that it was the first time in a public career extending over nearly half a century, he had been accused of a disinclination to meet his opponents in a fair fight, and promised him that neither he nor his friends would have reason to complain of his reticence. Tories and Liberals knew he had not shrunk from meeting the public on this question. He was glad that there was a tremendous feeling abroad upon this Eastern question. He had been told that by the pamphlet he wrote and the speech he delivered, he had done all this ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... to hear of the affair, which had perplexed and puzzled her not a little; for, as her pupils had all felt themselves more or less to blame in the matter, they had all kept it from her knowledge, and she had only guessed from their reticence, and the air of mystery with which they received every allusion to their absent school-fellow, that something was wrong. Before morning school she called the girls together, told them how pained and grieved she had been, and gave them a little lecture upon ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... was mad, and his conduct was sure to belie them before long. He was the precursor of an impassioned and serious age, going to extremes in idea and placing deeds after words. In spite of occasional reticence dictated by sound sense, Voltaire had abandoned himself entirely in his old age to that school of philosophy, young, ardent, full of hope and illusions, which would fain pull down everything before it knew what it could set up, and the actions ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Schoolboy reticence went no further, but Emmeline filled in the gaps for herself with the lavish splendour of feminine imagination. Francesca's bridge went ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for the shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... become a great favorite with us, and with all the officers of the regiment. He talked less than any man I ever knew, but there was nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine,—warmth and brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of shyness, he impressed every one as a man of singular pluck ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually reticent where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified each other. But the partial secretiveness had also ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... those whom he had left in an aggravated suspense could have any idea of his errand, and his sudden reticence after he had been in the habit of telling them all he was going to do, mystified them considerably, Bob in particular being ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... family. Besides, all the Harpers had grown up in full knowledge of and sympathy with their parents' anxieties. Living as they did, in closest family union, it would have been all but impossible to prevent its being so, save by some forced and unnatural reticence, the evil of which would have been greater than the risk of saddening ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... From long association with men she had learnt a manlike reticence. She moved a little towards the open archway leading through ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... been by no means pleasant to him. The Under-Secretary of State for India was as dark as a November day when he reached his mother's house, and there fell upon every one the unintermittent cold drizzling shower of his displeasure from the moment in which he entered the house. There was never much reticence among the ladies at Richmond in Lucy's presence, and since the completion of Lizzie's unfortunate visit to Fawn Court, they had not hesitated to express open opinions adverse to the prospects of the proposed bride. Lucy ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... by persons whose studies and opinions have been worthy of all respect. Our estimate, however, does not abate a jot of our intense interest in his Book and affection for his memory. And we have a strong feeling that, owing partly to his reticence, and partly to the great disadvantages under which the Book was committed to writing, we have in it a singularly imperfect ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... to be questioned, and at the same time she felt a great distaste for the threatened confidence. She loathed arm-in-arm confidences, the indecency of dragging up and exposing, in whispers, things that should have been buried deep in reticence. She hesitated, and Clare slipped an arm ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... flat-chested, with a mass of black hair flung back from her forehead. No one knew from what place they had come nor whither they intended to go—such a visit was rare enough in these days of trains—and the little man's reticence was attacked again and again, but ever unsuccessfully. There were perhaps twenty sailors in the room, and they sat or stood by the ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... taken his new line. The explanation does not explain much. We have no right to ask for more than his friends think fit to tell us of this turning-point of his life. But we observe that this deeply important passage is left with but little light and much manifest reticence. That the crisis took place we have his own touching and eloquent words to assure us. It left him also as firm in his altered convictions as he had been in his old ones. What caused it, what were its circumstances and characteristics, and what affected ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... pauperism are afraid of tracing back its growth to the frequency of births under wretched conditions. One begins to question whether after all sweet charity or dignified philanthropy has not acted with an unwise reticence. Among the problems which defy practical handling this is the most complicated. The pauperism which arises from marriage is the result of the worst elements of character legalized. In America, where the boundaries of wedlock are practically ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... of it would have been a prelude to the opening of his heart to her, at the same time that it vindicated his dear and honoured master, as he called Dr. Shrapnel. To speak, without the explanation of his previous reticence which this letter would afford, seemed useless: even the desire to speak was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all likely," answered Brereton. "There's some very strange mystery about that man, and I'll have to get at the truth of it—in spite of his determined reticence! Bent!—I'm going to see this thing right through! The Norcaster Assizes will be on next month, and of course Harborough will be brought up then. I shall stop in this neighbourhood and work out the ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... correct my letter to you, giving the account of our ascent of Long's Peak, but he said he could not, and insisted on our going in for which young Lyman was more anxious than I was, as Mr. Kavan had seen "Jim" in the morning, and departed from his usual reticence so far as to say, "There's something wrong with that man; he'll either shoot himself or somebody else." However, the "ugly fit" had passed off, and he was so very pleasant and courteous that we remained the whole afternoon. Lyman's one thought was that he could make ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... is, my sweet lad!" Mrs. Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one leg and then on the other; while Tom descended from the gig, and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, "Hallo! ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... speaking, and while, with his glance quickly turning from the father to the daughter, he sat waiting for the effect of his appeal. "It is not your want of means," said Mr. Wentworth, after a period of severe reticence. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... least to the Baron's thinking—is, that the villain of the earlier part of the tale does not turn up again as the real culprit, though the Baron is certain that every reader must expect him to do so, and must feel quite sure that, in spite of the author's reticence on the subject, it was he who really committed the murder, and escaped even the author's detection, unless, out of sheer soft-heartedness towards the puppets of his own creation, JAMES PAYN knowingly let him off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... was slow, but his judgment was clear and accurate. Above all, he was honest, and knew not fear of man, beast, or devil. His life in Styria, hedged about by ceremonious conventions, had given him an undue portion of dignity and reticence, but that could easily be polished down by friction with the rougher side of the world. Except myself and his mother, he had never known a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... continue Robin's narrative, though, as I said, I only picked it up piecemeal, as he was in the humour to talk about past events. He had not been so long among the Indians without acquiring somewhat of their manner and reticence. I had, indeed, to pump him to draw out what I wanted to know. He was more communicative generally to Martin, to whom he had taken a great liking ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... tube and that of the carriage-and-pair. And lest there should remain a link between them, over which we might be sentimental, the face of Buckingham Palace is to be despoiled, the long grey outline, characteristic of English monarchy in its reticence and repose, is, we imagine, to give place to something in the image of ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... Travennes?" Asked Mr. Connors, never having heard of that person, owing to the reticence ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... his wife. She is painted in these lyric poems with a simplicity of tenderness, with a reticence of worship as sacred as it is fair and delicate, with so intense a mingling of the ideal and the real that we never separate them, and with so much passion in remembrance of the past and in longing for the future, that no comment can enhance ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... mine—a barrister with antiquarian tastes—was dining with me in my Cornish home, and the talk after dinner fell upon the weekly papers and reviews. On The Speaker he touched with a reticence which I set down at first to dislike for his politics. By and by, however, he ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... marry his cousin and the property, and his creditors were quieted by news of his engagement. Meanwhile he met Henrietta Temple, and fell in love with her at first sight. In spite of his judicious reticence, Miss Temple heard of his engagement to Miss Grandison, and naturally broke off the match. She fell into a consumption, and he into a brain fever. The heroes of novels are never the worse for a brain fever or two, and young Armine, though Miss Grandison becomes aware of the Temple episode, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and went into the hut. Inside, the walls were adorned with very old-looking frescoes that were equally innocent of perspective and reticence: the floor was of tessellated bronze. In each corner Manuel found, set upright, a many-storied umbrella of the kind used for sacred purposes in the East: each of these had a silver handle, and was worked in nine colors. But most ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... known that it was her duty to marry, and especially her duty to marry well. Between her and her mother there had been no reticence on this subject. With worldly people in general, though the worldliness is manifest enough and is taught by plain lessons from parents to their children, yet there is generally some thin veil even among themselves, some transparent tissue of lies, which, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... inaccuracy which was permitted to the Opposition. Mr. Turnbull no doubt enjoyed these charms to the full, though he would sooner have put a padlock on his mouth for a month than have owned as much. Upon the whole, Mr. Turnbull was no doubt right in resolving that he would not take office, though some reticence on that subject might have ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... such cases. Perhaps the girl knew with intuitive confidence that her passion was returned; and perhaps at first she found John's receptive mode of wooing sweeter far than an aggressive attack would have been. It may be also there was more of the serpent's cunning than of reticence in John's conduct. He knew well the ways of women, and perhaps he realized that if he would allow Dorothy to manage the entire affair she would do his wooing for him much better than he could do it for himself. If you are a man, try the plan upon the next woman whom you seek to win. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... affectionate aspect of face. Hanoverian in type, that is to say, blond, florid, slightly PROFUSE;—yet the better kind of Hanoverian, little or nothing of the worse or at least the worst kind. The eyes, as I say, are gray, and quiet, almost sad; expressive of reticence and reflection, of slow constancy rather than of SPEED in any kind. One expects, could the picture speak, the querulous sound of maternal and other solicitude; of a temper tending towards the obstinate, the quietly ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... said the bishop, driven in his perplexity beyond all carefulness of reticence. "My dear, I do wish you wouldn't,—I do indeed. If you would only ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... sexual desire: it is but the temporary and transitory form of a force having neither beginning nor end but continually manifesting itself in individuals who must have a beginning and an end. This force, to which European taste bids us refer with such reticence, is the true creator of the world. Not only is it unceasingly performing the central miracle of producing new lives but it accompanies it by unnumbered accessory miracles, which provide the new born child with nourishment and make lowly organisms care for ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Grace became aware of the curious reticence that had vaguely annoyed Evelyn. "Where do you live, Miss Brent!" she asked with the sudden directness ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... another letter, more witty and much more severe than the last; and as this was copied into the Bristol, Exeter, and Gloucester papers, Dr Fillgrave found it very difficult to maintain the magnanimity of his reticence. It is sometimes becoming enough for a man to wrap himself in the dignified toga of silence, and proclaim himself indifferent to public attacks; but it is a sort of dignity which it is very difficult to maintain. As well ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... The reticence and disinclination of parents to instruct their children in matters relating to sex cannot be too strongly condemned. It is perfectly natural that the youth should wish to know something of the origin of life and how human beings come into the world. The mystery and concealment thrown around ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... unaffected, modest gentleman; this man, with his sweet calm smile, who met us every day, passing in and out with a certain reticence of modesty, was himself but the type of the age in which he lived and of the people from whom he sprang. All modest as he was, he had given up everything at the call of duty. All simple and kindly as he seemed to be, he had at the head of charging squadrons ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... moonlight upon it, stiffened into a mask-like reticence at this touching upon the sensitive topic which threatened his identification as a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... The American defaulter was a sort of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to Pere Etienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing with it, as the soul of a Protestant and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... rat who demands the soldier's passport, the horrible sensation in the fish's body, etc. Last of all, perhaps, will come the appreciation of the best qualities of the hero: his modesty, his dignity, his reticence, his courage and his constancy. He seems to combine all the qualities of the best soldier with those of the best civilian, without the more obvious qualities which generally attract first. As for the love story, we must ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... sharply blamed Fingall for opposing the petition, and commented adversely on the silence of Pitt. Scully inferred from it "that he is favourably disposed, but in some way, to them unknown, not in a situation in which he can freely act," or even explain his reticence; but no Catholic wished to embarrass him.[705] Nevertheless, the petition was resolved on; and it is clear that Fox encouraged the petitioners rather from the hope of embarrassing Pitt than ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... one. As "Lot 4. Flint spud, two drain scoops, bull lead and five dibbles. Lot 10. Dung rake and dung devil. Lot 11. Four juts and a zinc skip." Farm labourers are men of little speech, and it is often needful that voices should carry far. Hence this crisp and forcible reticence. The vocabulary of the country-side undergoes few changes; and the noises to-day made by the ox-herd who urges his black and smoking team along the hill-side are precisely those that Piers Plowman himself ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... surprised at the frankness with which Kennedy spoke, but absolutely amazed at the coolness of Jermyn. At first he said absolutely nothing. He seemed to be as set in his reticence as he had ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... not mention the object of my visit to York to the doctor or his wife. Indeed, that natural shyness and reticence which I have found it impossible to shake off—except when writing to you, good reader—would in any case have prevented my communicating much of my private affairs to them, but particularly in a case like this, which seemed to be assuming the aspect ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... notwithstanding their old-fashioned dresses and quaint expressions, more alive to us than a great many of the people among whom we live. We know so much more about them to begin with. Notwithstanding a certain reticence and self-control which seems to belong to their age, and with all their quaint dresses, and ceremonies, and manners, the ladies and gentlemen in 'Pride and Prejudice' and its companion novels seem like living people out of our own acquaintance transported ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie) |
