"Secretive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... industrial and political anarchy, and there can be no question that, if continued, it has in it the power of making many McNamaras, if not Bakounins. It will be fortunate, indeed, if there do not arise new Johann Mosts, and if the United States escapes the general use in time of that terrible, secretive, and deadly weapon of sabotage. Sabotage is the arm of the slave or the coward, who dares neither to speak his views nor to fight an open fight. As someone has said, it may merely mean the kicking of the master's dog. Yet no one is so cruel as the weak and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... always some excuse, however—either he hadn't looked at the address, or he had been impatient to see if there were any message for himself, and so on; but Beth was not mollified although she said nothing, and her annoyance made her secretive. She would watch for the postman, and take the letters from him herself, and conceal her own, so that Dan might not even know that she had ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... thought, "I won't say a word to her about it." However, she was conscious of no evil motive; it was simply because she was naturally secretive. She looked ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... know,"—with that grave, secretive look of the insane. "I had to go. So I made a light. I wanted to write a letter to my brother, but my head was so tired I could not; then I took my little Testament, and I marked the fourteenth chapter of St. John. He knew that I liked that best, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Maslova only twice between Nijhni and Perm—once in Nijhni while the prisoners were being placed on a net-covered lighter, and again in the office of the Perm prison. On both occasions he found her secretive and unkind. When he asked her about her prison conditions, or whether she wanted anything, she became confused and answered evasively and, as it seemed to him, with that hostile feeling of reproach which she had manifested before. And this gloomy temper, due only to ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and they tell him there ain't no meat so good as a prime young popcorn-fed elephant, and he'll certainly live high. And just then up rides old Safety First again. So they get silent and mysterious all at once and warn Pete, so Safety will hear it, not to say a word to any one. Pete looks secretive and hostile at the visitor and goes back to his woodpile. Safety naturally says what fool thing have they got into their heads now, and he supposes it's some more of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... its bluff trimmings. In camp and field he quickly learned the routine of duty, and then his daring, active temperament led him gradually into the scouting service. Now, although so young, he was a veteran in experience, frank to friends, but secretive and ready to deceive the very elect among his enemies. Few could take more risks than he, yet he had not a particle of Mad Whately's recklessness. Courage, but rarely impulse, controlled his action. As we have seen, he could instantly stay his hand the second a deadly enemy, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... was Pat McCormick. "Mac," with his grim, set face and his silent, secretive habits, fitted perfectly to Peter's conception of a dynamiter. Also "Mac" was Peter's personal enemy; "Mac" had just returned from his organizing trip in the oil fields, and had been denouncing Peter and gossiping about him in the various radical groups. "Mac" was the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa's mother. Grewgious was very sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight. "A night of memories and sighs" he might "consecrate" to his lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer. Grewgious was to have helped Bazzard to eat a turkey on Christmas Day. But he could get out of that engagement. He would wish to see Edwin and ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... left him: he'd paid his bill at the Rest and his bag was aboard. Must have had this in his pocket all the time; might just as well have handed it to me—with instructions not to open it—and saved the stamp. What a secretive old ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Of all the dark, secretive and lawless Chinese villages that dot the wayward Pacific slope, the one that looks down on the arm of San Francisco Bay, just this side of San Pedro Point, is the most mysterious and lawless. The village hasn't even a name to identify it, but "No Sabe" ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the man, in lighting his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... political principles, overlooking the moral delinquencies of other Democratic neighbors. But the old man, through long years of experience with human nature in California, had grown extremely cautious and secretive. Probably no one would ever have been the wiser in regard to his old sweetheart and her sad history except for the escape of Cummins' murderers. And now it was not necessary that any man ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... a dreadful suggestion," she said. "No such idea ever occurred to me. Secretive I thought Susan might be, but immoral, never. I must forget you ever thought that. Let's talk about something less painful. Perhaps you would like to tell me more ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and glared upon all the besiegers, till his pock-marked face grew white as leprosy, and every spot in his secretive eye faded out in ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... I don't know anything about Holton," replied Amzi, who had, in strictest truth, told them nothing of the kind. He experienced the instant regret suffered by secretive persons who watch a long-guarded fact slip away beyond reclamation; but repentance could ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of the house, while he went to find or to wait for his dear Hattie. But his mother did not know all this, and Kit did not tell her. The quick poison of the unreal life about her had already begun to affect her character. She had grown secretive and sly. The innocent longing which in a burst of enthusiasm she had expressed that first night at the theatre was growing into a real ambition with her, and she dropped the simple old songs she knew to practise the detestable coon ditties ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... weeping, printed on the blackness the figure of the man with whom she had associated herself in this awful way by that idiot capering before the glass, by those maniac words. With rapture and horror she saw his dark-lidded eyes with their brilliant yet secretive gaze, the lips that were parted yet not loose, that his reserve would not permit to close lest by their setting strangers should see whether he was smiling or moody; she remembered the bluish bloom that had been on his chin the first night she ever saw him. At that she brought ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a secretive power which grazing animals possess, enabling them to lay by a store of the superfluous food which they take for seasons of cold or scarcity. It collects round the angular bones of the animal, and gives the appearance ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... not explain that somewhat cryptical remark, and presently he left her and went to his room. Mary V felt that she was not being trusted by a person who surely ought to know by this time that he needn't be so secretive about his thoughts and intentions. If she had not proved her loyalty and her friendship by this time, what did a person want her to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Mollenhauer, sly and secretive himself, was apparently not at all moved by this unexpected development. At the same time, never having thought of Stener as having any particular executive or financial ability, he was a little stirred and curious. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... memorandum in a wild scene of woods and hills where we have come to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy, what I call weather-beaten, and let-alone—a rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early summer wild flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... him abandoned, lost. Then out of the picture she had of him thus slowly grew one of a different man—weak, sick, changed by shock, growing strong, strangely, spiritually altered, silent, lonely like an eagle, secretive, tireless, faithful, soft as a woman, hard as iron to endure, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... I understand, of a very retiring and secretive disposition. In fact, I have had great difficulty in learning anything about him. But at length I have discovered that he receives and answers letters at ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... Parliament called him Vladimir Ulianov, and that's what he called himself. He had proved to be reticent, secretive, deceitful, diligent, and utterly unhuman. His lower lip was shaped as though something dripped from it. Blood, perhaps. His eyes were brown and not entirely unattractive. But God makes the eyes; the mouth ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... always seemed as though it was something that Mr. Morris wanted. At first I got the notion that it was something that he wanted to buy and which Mr. Hume refused to sell; but later I changed my mind. There seemed to be more to it than appeared on the top. Both were very secretive about it." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... something so secretive in the way the manager looked around before venturing into the open, and so stealthy about his whole walk and bearing, that Merriman's heart beat more quickly as he wondered if he was now on the threshold of some revelation of the mystery of that outwardly innocent place. Obeying a sudden instinct, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... shrewd idea what girls John Thomas had taken out. She went to Nora Purdy. Nora was a tall, rather pale, but well-built girl, with beautiful yellow hair. She was rather secretive. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... necessitate her being more conspicuously in his company (though she was still resolved that it should be on just such terms as she chose); and it would be extremely troublesome if, at this juncture, Ralph should suddenly turn suspicious and secretive. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... wrong. The kleptomaniac is generally recognized as being a well-defined class of the insane. Most of the shop-lifters are women. This is especially a female crime. It is useless to explain why. It is not a daring crime; it is secretive in its nature; it requires more stealth than courage; it especially appeals to women on account of their taste for the finery exhibited at stores. The kleptomaniac, however, is generally a rich or influential woman. She steals something ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... recovering, could hardly have explained to herself why she was so secretive, but more and more she determined not to go to The Gap and open her heart to Doris until she was able to command the situation. Since she had, for some reason, dropped from their lives, she would wait. Meanwhile, her heart ached with the pity of ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... coffee, produced sugar and powdered milk, and settled down opposite Barney. He said abruptly, "Have you had any suspicions about the reason for the secretive ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... walked across the state to Tarrytown. Several times during the five years after leaving Lem's scow she walked to Tarrytown, returning only when she had seen the little boy, to take up her squatter life in her father's hut. So secretive was she that no one had been taken into her confidence; neither had she interfered with her child in any way. Never once, hitherto, had her senses left her on those long country marches toward the east; but often when she turned ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... apprehended defeat at the hands of the unofficial majority in the legislative Councils. But the Indian public remained generally in ignorance of the extent to which the influence of the Indian representatives made itself felt, either for good or for evil, on Government. The bureaucracy, more secretive in India than elsewhere, had never realised the importance of guiding public opinion, or, a fortiori, the necessity of keeping it informed if you wish to guide it. The politicians, on the other hand, preferred ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... at by a multitude. One man was its head and heart; its accessories were so numerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse. Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must be admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and as skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, never fully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and intricacy, to the republican plot ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... cousin Samuel was not precisely a charming person. Bigoted, tireless, secretive, this cunning manipulator of political passions followed many tortuous paths. His ability for adroit misstatement of an adversary's position has been equaled but once in our history. But to the casual reader of his four volumes, Samuel Adams seems ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... said Mollie, knitting more furiously than ever. "But just the same, I can't understand why they have been so terribly secretive about it." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... of the death on the morning after it occurred. John Broad, an inarticulate, secretive fellow, had come to the Rectory in quest of the Rector within a few hours of its occurrence. His mother had returned home, he said, unexpectedly, after many years of wanderings in the States; he had not had very much conversation with ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conduct, and never owns it until the final surrender. "When was the first moment you began to love me, dear?" "Why, the first moment, that day; didn't you know it then?" This we are led to believe is common experience with the shy and secretive sex. It is enough, in a thousand reported cases, that he passed her window on horseback, and happened to look her way. But with such a look! The mischief was done. But this foundation was too slight for Philip to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... between England and Russia there are endless parallelisms. We have similar complexities, kindred difficulties. We have for instance an imported dynasty, we have a soul-destroying State Church which cramps and poisons the education of our ruling class, we have a people out of touch with a secretive government, and the same traditional contempt for science. We have our Irelands and Polands. Even our kings bear ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... necessary for him to babble when alone. True, in the early days his confidences are innocent enough. Pepys began to write in cipher some time before there was any purpose in it save the common prudence of a secretive man. Having built, however, this secret and solitary fastness, he gradually became more daring. He had discovered a room to the walls of which he dared speak aloud. Here we see the respectable man liberated. He no longer needs ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... response,"—continued Brent, with sudden querulousness—"Since you arrived we have been talking nothing but generalities and Church matters. Heavens, how sick I am of Church matters! Yet I know you see a change in me. I am sure you do—and you will not say it. Now you never were secretive—you never said one thing and meant another—so speak the truth as you have always done! I ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... be drawn. Much of his success in the paths of crime, both at school and afterwards, was due to his secretive habits. He ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Ludwig Wieland from Bern, they followed the latter to Weimar, where the poet Wieland, the dean of the remarkable group of great authors gathered at Weimar, received Kleist kindly, and made him his guest at his country estate. With great difficulty Wieland succeeded in persuading his secretive visitor to reveal his literary plans; and when Kleist recited from memory some of the scenes of his unfinished Guiscard, the old poet was transported with enthusiasm; these fragments seemed to him worthy of the united genius of AEschylus, Sophocles, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "The lady is secretive," thought Kecskerey. "I know that they are making their palace at Pest habitable. We shall get to the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... her mother's, larger and more robust heartfeltness of tone,—and with the same, but shyer ways, and swift blushes and smiles. In one thing she differed: she was a silent, reticent girl: her tears were not so quick as her mother's, nor her words; she hid her thoughts. She had learned it of us secretive Americans, or had inherited it of her father, a silent, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the sinking of his spirit there returned the old haunting pangs—the memory of Allie Lee, the despairing doubts of life or death for her. Beyond the camp loomed the dim hills, mystical, secretive, and unchangeable. If she were out there among them, dead or alive, to know it would be a blessed relief. It was this horror ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... talk this way." Her friend was apparently not prepared with an assent, and she quickly enough pursued: "If he HAD given her any it would come out somehow in her expenditure. She has tremendous liberty and is very secretive, but still it ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... At worst an unhappy victim of his own carelessness in loosing a peril upon his neighborhood. You're forgetting a connecting link; the secretive red-dot communications from New York City addressed by Moseley to himself on behalf of some customer who ordered simply by a code of ink dots. He was the man I had to find. The giant luna moths helped ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... meant for me, I can not say. Nor have I sufficient proof openly to accuse him, but of this much I am convinced. Themar's presence near the camp of Miss Westfall is, in the face of your peculiar and secretive ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... make a decision: does His Majesty go to Washington or shall the Chautauqua lecturer extend his professional tours to include London?" Graves gave his sly secretive laugh. Then as if ashamed of his momentary levity, and changing his entire manner, he said: "Well, gentlemen, what do ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... truly riled; all the more because he was himself the secretive, the dexterous, libertine, adopting every precaution not to be discovered in his "weaknesses." Was it anger or envy that he felt on seeing a couple enough in love with each other to be fearless of gossip and indifferent to danger, to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Perhaps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... a secretive fellow you are! My only object in having come to see you is to lend you a helping hand in the matter. Look here. On condition that you will lend me three thousand roubles, I will stand you the cost of the wedding, the koliaska, and the relays of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to Champers' office Mr. Thomas Smith was already there, his small frame and narrow, close-set eyes and secretive manner seeming out of place in the breezy atmosphere of the plain, outspoken West of the settlement days. In the conversation that followed it seemed to Virginia that he controlled all of the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... consistent self-devotion, disturbed and detached and pointless as it was at that time, he had indeed a sort of admiration for but no sympathy. Like many fantastic and ample talkers he was at bottom secretive, and he gave me a series of little shocks of discovery throughout ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... ejaculated the word. "She always has. That's her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his sleeve! One ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the interior. The visits, happily, were few and far between. On this occasion Sanders, being uneasy, sent one of his spies to follow the adventurer, with orders to report any extraordinary happening—a necessary step to take, for the N'gombi, and especially the Inner N'gombi, are a secretive people, and news from local sources is ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... saw two men with heads close together over a small table in the center of the opposite stateroom. The tilted mirror transferred the view into their own looking-glass. The men appeared to be examining a map, or, at any rate, some paper, and their manner was secretive, alone though they were. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... characteristic of Lincoln's character was his honesty. Some men are naturally secretive: Lincoln was naturally open as sunshine. The exact fact, truth in the hidden parts, openness, these were the innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli laid out the diplomat's career on the line of deceit, and concealing the cards. Lincoln would have made ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... old self, might well have awakened the wonder of her friend. But whatever Hilda may have thought, and whatever wonder she may have felt, she kept it all to herself; for she was naturally reticent, and so secretive that she never expressed in words any feelings which she might have about things that went on around her. If Zillah chose to stay by herself, or to sit in her company without speaking a word, it was not in Hilda to question her or to remonstrate with her. She rather chose ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... oldsters. And we had no reply for their argument, or if we had one could not find the language in which to couch it. Besides there was another and a deeper reason. A boy, being what he is, the most sensitive and the most secretive of living creatures regarding his innermost emotions, rarely does bare his real thoughts to his elders, for they, alas, are not young enough to have a fellow feeling, and they are too old and they know too much to ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... know how much good these two kindly men accomplished between them in their quiet, secretive way. Dozens of deserving young men were furnished capital to start them in business; dozens more were being educated at universities at Uncle John's expense. Managers of worthy charities were familiar with John Merrick's signature ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... number? What an amazing thing it would be if this gaunt old sheikh held the clue to the burial-place of the treasure! It must have been on the tip of his tongue ever since they met him, yet the knowledge was withheld, solely on account of von Kerber's secretive methods. Had he told Abdur Kad'r that he was searching for an oasis sheltered by seven hills it was almost quite certain that the Well of Moses would at least have been mentioned as the only locality ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the elephant, he wouldn't even have known that babies were called babies. Like all fathers he deceived himself that there was nothing he didn't know about baby-lore. What was very much more surprising, by whispering and looking secretive he managed to impress the animals with his new-found learning and ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... Johnson means," Miss Armitage said to the doctor. "I offered to adopt Marilla and educate her and see that she was well placed in life. I have no near relatives, and I don't believe I shall ever marry, I like my life as it is, but she was so sort of mysterious and secretive and declared she could not give an answer at present, as if she had some further plans. I did make the most of her having a weak heart—you said so and Doctor Baker as well. Oh, do you believe there ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... become the ecstasies of war are vague, even secretive. They contain aggressive thoughts that are disavowed, vanities that are concealed, fears that present a quiet front. But we must not think that the war mood always intends war. Nations have their subjective lives and inner history, and ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to find out what men said across the border. The Afghans were always a secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying anything at all. They would be quiet and well- behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... and the doctor walked to the back of the hall to telephone, Katherine, an anxious figure, a secretive one, beckoned Bobby to the library. He went with her, wondering what she ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... the sick-room. How much she knew of the situation she never told. But Peggy was not a secretive person, and Peggy had arrived at a point with Logan where he told her a good deal, if she coaxed. They never got it out of the old ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... had his way, though Bennett Addenbrooke showed some temper when he was gone, and I myself shared his annoyance to no small extent. I could only tell him that it was in the nature of Raffles to be self-willed and secretive, but that no man of my acquaintance had half his audacity and determination; that I for my part would trust him through and through, and let him gang his own gait every time. More I dared not say, even to remove those chill misgivings with which I knew that ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... betraying her, the knowledge that he had known her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when it has been generously and humanely ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... efface himself entirely among the crowd in the hall, contriving to say nothing of any account to anybody until the great gong boomed and the general led them all in to his long dining table. Yet he did not look furtive or secretive. Nobody noticed him, and he noticed everybody. There is ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... is out one hears the men, in places and then all along, detach themselves from their secretive stillness, get up, and resume the task with ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Uraga has several motives for not letting his subordinate into the knowledge of all his complicated schemes; among them one springing from a moral peculiarity. He is of a strangely-constituted nature, secretive to the last degree—a quality or habit in which he prides himself. It is his delight to practice it whenever the opportunity offers; just as the thief and detective officer take pleasure in their respective callings beyond the mere prize to be ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... different matter. There was usually enough so that one unit of a kind could be unobtrusively trained on Mr. Raichi under the care of Jason's own desk sergeant. In 1999, for example, Moglaut, that erratic and secretive genius in Physlab Nine, came out with a quantum analyzer and probability reproducer. The machine installed in Pol-Anx, reconstructed crimes and identified the probable criminals by their modus operandi and the physical traces they couldn't avoid leaving at ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... tell, for he was not in the least ashamed or secretive about it. He pulled it to where a fallen wire lay very near the ground, threw it partly over the wire, plainly as a hold to pull against, and then jerked off a mouthful, which he ate. Again and again did he fling it over the wire, for it soon slipped off, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... out these two possibilities thoroughly. He had no doubt that there were many valuables in the house, for the woman was reputed rich, secretive, and probably kept her personal property about her. From what the major had said the husband, Mowbray, evidently had been cast off by Helen Mowbray on account of his rascalities, and, being a bird of prey, would swoop down ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a big stretch of the field close to the claim pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories of the success of the Chinese ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and the effect of the names as given over the wire was, to put it mildly, electrical. His jaw dropped and he stared across the table at a man who was seated there. At the repetition of the name, the other arose, and with the stealthily secretive movement of a coyote near its prey he circled the table, and drew a chair close to the telephone. The pencil and paper was in his hand, not in that of "James." ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "I'm never secretive against you, Anstey, old man and the only reason I don't talk at once is that I don't know just what I want to say. But remember—-8.15. By that time I think I shall have solved myself into a ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... about their love-making, especially Englishmen. Mostly we regard such things as too sacred to speak about, even to those we trust and love the most. Besides, there is something in the character of the normal Englishman which is reserved and secretive, and the thought of telling about our love-making is utterly repugnant to us. Nevertheless, Edgecumbe told me the story of their conversation that afternoon almost word for word ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... statues in the least, and your comparison is unnaturally far-fetched. Another thing, and this annoys me even more: my secretive friend sends flowers from the cheapest florist he can find. I argue from this that he is poor, and cannot afford to send me flowers ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... mero," was a favourite with the mediaeval Arabs. Its effect varies greatly with men's characters, making some open-hearted and communicative, and others more cunning and secretive than in the normal state. So far it is an excellent detection of disposition, and many a man passes off well when sober who has shown himself in liquor a rank snob. Among the lower orders it provokes what the Persians call Bad-masti (le vin mechant) see ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... work—the artistic excellence of which is remarkable under these circumstances—he was very secretive, giving as his reason for taking no apprentice, his desire that no one else should ever know or perpetuate ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... pains in her head and abdomen, and, a common condition in hysteria—all four of her limbs were contracted. She passed neither urine nor faeces. Margaret, though only ten years old—hysteria develops the secretive faculties—played her part so well that, after being watched by the priest of the parish and Dr. Bucoldianus, she was considered free from all juggling, and was sent home to her friends by order of the King, "not," the doctor adds, "without ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... out the sixty thousand pounds' worth of bonds to Tracy, who was waiting with his three warning lights, failed because of old Blumenfeld's sleeplessness, but it was substituted by a far more secretive yet simple plan—one never even dreamed of by the astute police attached to the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It being daylight at Lyons, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... curious to me because I am not so reticent now. When I discover anything, if only a new tint in the red sunset, I must publish the fact to all my friends. Is it possible that in my childish reflections I recognized the fact that ours was a secretive atmosphere, where knowledge was for the few, and wisdom ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... which preserved a kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no great effort of the imagination—especially at night when not a light showed—to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch which they must have witnessed ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... appeared in the newspapers regarding a dusty and dirty old house in that part of the Heights in Brooklyn whence all that is fashionable had not yet taken flight, a house of mystery, yet not more mysterious than its owner in his secretive comings and goings in the affairs of men of a generation beyond his time. Further than the facts that he was reputed to be very wealthy and led, in the heart of a great city, what was as nearly like the life of a hermit as possible, I knew little ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... approach by outsiders having opinions (such must generally expect a direct snubbing, polite indifference, or silent scorn), knowing much but not everything, no single one infallible, highly honorable as members of a guild, secretive as doctors or lawyers, chary of talking shop to the uninitiated, hardworking, conscientious, half luring, half scoffing at the glorious visions of the creative imagination granted them chiefly of all men, wonder workers, world reformers, recorders of the past and prophets ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... them brigandage. But the Colossus prospered and slowly built up the foundations of the extraordinary fortune which is the talk and the wonder of the world to-day. Master now of the oil situation, Ryder succeeded in his ambition of organizing the Empire Trading Company, the most powerful, the most secretive, and the most wealthy business institution the ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... exclaimed. "A most horrible and gory dream this night! I thought I was in the wood; James Mottram lay before me, done to death by that puffing devil we saw slithering by so fast. His head nearly severed—a la guillotine, you understand, my love?—from his poor body——" There was a curious, secretive smile on ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Helen quiet of disposition, but strangely secretive on certain subjects. For instance, she seldom said anything about her home or relatives. She lived in Villa Park, a small town midway between Westmoreland and Hollyhill. Her father was dead, and, when not at school, she had lived with her mother; these two, so far as ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... nine Armenians, followed closely by one of the gipsies of Gregor Jhaere's party, who whispered to Maga through lips that hardly moved, and made signals to Kagig with a secretive hand like a snake's head. I got off Fred's stomach then, and when he had had his revenge by emptying hot pipe ashes down my neck he sat close beside me and translated what followed word for word. It was all in Armenian, spoken in deadly earnest by hairy men on edge with ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Everybody and everything associated with the Old Galactic plasmoids had been wrapped up in Federation security measures since the day the plasmoid discovery was announced. And she'd been in the middle of the operations concerning them right along. Why should Holati Tate have turned secretive on her now? When even blabby old ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... lawyer. There is that double possibility. But I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be brought to bear upon a business man. Besides, remember that she had ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... smothering her. No faintest breath of air stirred the piny needles above her, nor ruffled the surface of the river, whose black waters, far below, flowed broad and deep and silent—smoothly—like a river of oil. Ominously hushed, secretive, it slipped out of the motionless dark. Silently portentous, it faded again into the dark, the mysterious half-dark, where the gradually deepening twilight blended the distance into the enshrouding pall ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Philip—Granvelle, Viglius and Barlaymont. Of these Granvelle, both by reason of his conspicuous abilities and of his being admitted more freely than anyone else into the inner counsels of a sovereign, as secretive in his methods as he was suspicious and distrustful of his agents, held the foremost position and drew upon himself the odium of a policy with which, though it was dictated from Spain, his ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... yourself, please. The boys have been doing a little research, and it's clear these unidentified flying objects people have been seeing come from Swamp Creek. That points to the old mansion, especially since Mr. Merlin is so secretive about himself. We decided to get up before the people at the mansion were likely to be about, and look the place over. If it looks promising, we'll try ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... a secretive woman. She could even be silent about her neighbours' affairs. Susini had been guided by a quick intuition, characteristic of his race, when he had confided in this Frenchwoman. She had been some hours in the baron's hospital before she even ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... change clothes with him as I did with Clara; he's too big, but one way or other I'll save him," said Cap, to herself. She said it to no one else, for the more difficult the enterprise the more determined she was to succeed, and the more secretive she ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... life at the Court: and there is small doubt but that the friendship and trust which characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more passionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of her ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... seat to the ground was deliberate, even for him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... her, though she was unable to count the openings she had given him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept his secret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probably the neighbourhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest chatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clue could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing that the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis might be reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager and watchful, and playing up to his wife in fine ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mysterious &c (unintelligible) 519. irrevealable^, inviolable; confidential; esoteric; not to be spoken of; unmentionable. obreptitious^, furtive, stealthy, feline; skulking &c v.; surreptitious, underhand, hole and corner; sly &c (cunning) 702; secretive, evasive; reserved, reticent, uncommunicative, buttoned up; close, close as wax; taciturn &c 585. Adv. secretly &c adj.; in secret, in private, in one's sleeve, in holes and corners; in the dark &c adj.. januis clausis [Lat.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... individuality upon them; figures a trifle strange and obsolete—as of persons by choice hidden away, voluntarily self-removed from the levelling rush and grind of the monster city. The small heavy-browed houses are very secretive, seeming to shelter fallen fortunes, obscure and furtive sins, sorrows which resist alleviation and inquiry. Seen, as to-day, under the low-hanging sky big with rain, in the diffused afternoon light, the place and its inhabitants conveyed an impression low-toned, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... word. Tampering. He had the greatest possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her a little difficult. She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair way, he felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a headstrong and secretive client. She was certainly secretive, for though he had been skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as yet given him no inkling of what was so ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... worshipped and in whose company she would no doubt have recovered her mental balance and moral health, when, by a stupid accident—a passing carriage—they were killed before her eyes. The poor thing went mad ... with the silent, secretive madness which you imagined. Some time afterwards, when I was appointed to an Algerian station, I brought her to France and put her in the charge of a worthy creature who had nursed me and brought me up. Two years later, I made ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... that the hollow space extends wholly round the toe, and as far back as the commencement of the quarters. In the latter position one is able to observe laminae still in their normal positions and condition. At the toe, however, the horny and secretive laminae are widely separated, and the space between them filled with a yellow, semi-solid material, the remains of the inflammatory exudate and new horn secreted by the keratogenous membrane. The laminae, both horny and sensitive, ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... the door, for as it was, he made a spectacle of himself. My suspicion is"—and here every lady stopped eating and sat up straight—"that the Sawyer girls have lost money. They don't know a thing about business 'n' never did, and Mirandy's too secretive ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... nothing about these swaying feelings to Arthur—she had of late grown far more secretive about herself—as for him, he took things as they came. He found a wondrous quiet in this time, when he was allowed to serve Joanna as in days of old. He did not think of marrying her—he knew that even if it was true that the lawyers could set aside parson's ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... easy and steady and not too comical, both had a certain kind of expression, now—like amused and secretive gorillas. Frank wasn't sure whether he got the meaning of this or not, but right then he felt sort of sympathetic to ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... rather outspoken, and not at all secretive," said Nancy Ellen, carelessly, "you will ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... independence. To do the woman justice, she had been actuated, in her design of capturing Joseph Snowdon, at least as much by a wish to establish her daughter satisfactorily as by the ever-wakeful instinct which bade her seize whenever gain lay near her clutches. Clem was proving disloyal, had grown secretive. Mrs. Peckover did not look for any direct profit worth speaking of from the marriage she had brought about, but she did desire the joy of continuing to plot against Joseph with his wife. Moreover, she knew that Clem was a bungler, altogether lacking ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... numbers. Out of seventy thousand votes cast at the last election in my city a little less than half of them were cast by women, and judging from the results, I must say that the men of their families had very little influence with them. The possession of the franchise has developed the secretive instinct among women; they no longer confide their intentions to their doting husbands; they listen to their words of wisdom and then—they vote the secret ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... no more of a sentimentalist in art than Mr. Abbey had been. He was quiet, undemonstrative, alert, and wholly willing to let the public dictate the course of the establishment. Outwardly he was always calm, urbane, neither communicative nor secretive. I sat behind him during all the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations with a "Thank you!" which had ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... taciturn, secretive man, whose tortuous course would have been hard to follow a century ago; now the attempt is hopeless. Yet there is one inference it seems permissible to draw: his admirers have always boasted that he was the inspiration of the town meetings, presumably, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... critic who had courage to point out his defects pleased him; and plainness of speech excited in him no hostility. It was against the cunning rather of the secretive person that he guarded himself, as ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... them, especially those that go mad, like yours!' 'Lor', miss,' said Farmer Hendry, 'he haven't been pastured here for three weeks. I keep him six mile away. There ben't nothing but gentle cows in the home medder.' But I didn't think that you knew, you secretive person! I dare say you planned the whole thing in advance, in order to take advantage of ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... raw-bone he was; and to me, as I casually met his gaze, looked to be obstinate, secretive and small minded. But who can explain those sudden antagonisms that spring up ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... has all been rather cleverly managed. The only regrettable thing will be the death of two—two brilliant detectives. It may interest you to know that you will be found dead—shot—which will account for my having waited for you in vain at Whiteladies to-night. You have helped me greatly by being secretive to-day and not arriving here until after dark. Your death will be a nine days' wonder, but it will be a mystery which will not ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... to understand why it is. I was right, you see, when I told myself last night and this morning that you were harboring unkindly thoughts toward me. You have not been open with me, you have been willfully secretive, and, believe me, that is a mistake. Candor, complete and perfect, is the only great virtue that will steer one clear through all the shoals and rocks of life. Be honest, above board, and, I can assure you, you will never ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... his way among them, and became acquainted with their children, there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in the factory and the sly secretive mill-workers ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... and secretive sort where he could not hope to find intelligent sympathy. This, and some cloudy compromise with his sense of filial dutifulness, will perhaps explain why he passed six years as a student of medicine without any serious purpose of becoming ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... the stronger for being unrecognised. He could not bring himself, however, to take any decisive step till his father's death. But he began to be well known for his "gentlemanly" ideas to many persons of high position in Petersburg, with whom he strenuously kept up connections. He was secretive and self-contained. Another characteristic: he belonged to that strange section of the nobility, still surviving in Russia, who set an extreme value on their pure and ancient lineage, and take it too seriously. At the same time he could not endure Russian history, and, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ledges and boulders like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down into mystery. Here and there above secretive doorways were beautiful carvings set into the thick stone walls, relics of the castle's decorations. At sharp corners were tiny shops with dark interiors, and strange assortments of golden oranges, big pearly onions, ruby beets, and bright green, peasant pottery in low-browed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Robinson, who was clever enough not to appear too secretive, and was thanking his stars that Elkin had introduced the very topic he wanted ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... of the dining-room, and thought how pleasant peace and quietness were. But just when it was time to start for The Hurst in order to talk over the disclosures of the night before with Lucia before the class, and perhaps to frame some secretive policy which would obviate further exposure, he remembered that he had left his cigarette-case (the pretty straw one with the turquoise in the corner) in the drawing-room and went to find it. The window was open, and apparently Foljambe had just come in to let fresh air into the atmosphere ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... knew. She might have told the warm-hearted customer who had bought the over-blouse a story that would indeed have spurred Betty's interest to an even greater degree. But the English girl was naturally of a secretive disposition, ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... camp on its edge and demand to be told; but it will tell you all it knows if you keep quiet and govern yourself in accordance with its moods. The men who live in the desert are of the same pattern—fierce, hot, cold, intolerant, cruel, secretive, given to covering their tracks, and yet not without oases that are better than much fine gold to the man who knows how to find them. They enjoy a proverb better than some ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... artful and secretive about its nesting-habits as any of the sparrows. The male bird seems to know that his brilliant color makes him a shining mark, and he keeps far away from the nest, singing at all hours of the day in a circle around it, the radius of which must be more than fifty yards. In one ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the two stood there facing each other, so sharp was the contrast. The man, the Mongolian, small, weazened, leather-colored, secretive—a strange, complex creature, steeped in all the obscure mystery of the East, nervous, ill at ease; and the girl, the Anglo-Saxon, daughter of the Northmen, huge, blond, big-boned, frank, outspoken, simple of composition, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... experiences of competition, and accepted by business men through contagion and imitation. Certainly the trusts increase. Wherever politics is rigid and hostile to that tendency, there is irritation and struggle, but the agglomeration goes on. Hindered by political conditions, the process becomes secretive and morbid. The trust is not checked, but it is perverted. In 1910 the "American Banker" estimated that there were 1,198 corporations with 8,110 subsidiaries liable to all the penalties of the Sherman Act. Now this concentration must represent ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... was the talk of the school. Its interest eclipsed even the horror of the examinations. It seemed a mystery which no one could disentangle. The girls remembered only too well that Raymonde had been very secretive about how she had obtained the fountain pen; but, on the other hand, witnesses declared that they had seen her both at the post office and in the practising-room, when she certainly could not have been in two places ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... sensitive man had committed a trifling offence, and he drove a great spike into the head of the god. A thick-skinned criminal inserted a small tack where it would do the least harm—in the hoof. An honest, or an egotistic penitent drove his nail in where it stands out prominently; while the secretive devotee placed his among a mass of others of long ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... was proud of her work, and her eager interest in this little knot of people whose lives she had shaped was more possessive than ever. Hurd, indeed, was often silent and secretive; but she put down her difficulties with him to our odious system of class differences, against which in her own way she was struggling. One thing delighted her—that he seemed to take more and more interest in the labour questions she ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... faith: Another Shia sect of Islam, the name reflects followers' devotion to the religious authority of Ali. Alawites are a closed, secretive religious group who assert they are Shia Muslims, although outside scholars speculate their beliefs may have a syncretic mix with other faiths originating in the Middle East. Alawis live mostly in ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... pastures—everywhere, from Indian River to the Yukon, a sparrow nests. Yet one can hardly associate sparrows with marshes, for they seem out of place in houseless, treeless, half-submerged stretches. These are the haunts of the shyer, more secretive birds. Here the ducks, rails, bitterns, coots,—birds that can wade and swim, eat frogs and crabs,—seem naturally at home. The sparrows are perchers, grain-eaters, free-fliers, and singers; and they, of all birds, are the friends and neighbors of man. This is no place ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... were the eyes of the Oriental girl, a creature closer to the animals than we are, lit by instinct more often than by reason, and hiding a soul in its infancy, a repressed, timorous, uncertain thing, spasmodically violent and habitually secretive and aloof. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... four showed any overt sign of being impressed. Phillips knew that the others, like himself, were scrutinizing the old man with cold, secretive stares. They had learned through harsh experience to keep their own counsels. Varret shrugged. "Well, then," he said dryly, "I might as well call the roll. I have been supplied with ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... bargained with the ancient, mahogany-scalped gate-keeper. Faint odors of food frying in oil stole out from the depths of the house behind him. And Dong-Yung, very quiet and passive in the pose of her body, gazed up at Foh-Kyung with those strange, secretive, ardent eyes. All around him was China, its very essence and sound and smell. Dong-Yung was a part of it all; nay, she was even the very heart of it, swaying there in the yellow ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... again took too much to drink, and, coming home toward morning, lay down and went to sleep in the vestibule between our front-door and the storm-doors; and five days later died of pneumonia...In that era I was accounted an odd boy; given to reading and secretive ways, and, they record, to long silences throughout which my lips would move noiselessly. "Just talking to one of my friends," they tell me I was used to explain; though it was not until my career at King's College that I may be said to have ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... days!" He started up, indignant. "You secretive wretch! Why have you never breathed a word of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland |
