"Taciturn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell's mispronunciation, were in the habit of calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... fate had been discussed in the lodge, and how his good humor, his acceptance of conditions and his zeal to help had saved him from a lingering and horrible death. Old Xingudan, taciturn though he was and severe of manner, was his firm friend and would defend him against Heraka, or the great war chief, Red Cloud, himself. Will was not only by formal rite of adoption a Sioux, but in the present crisis he was, on the whole, the most valuable young ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... practice of either, she had more than the society woman's knowledge of them. At seventeen, she married William, fifth Duke of Devonshire, ten years her senior. His was a temperament antipathetic to hers,—unsympathetic, unimpressionable, and taciturn, yet withal of the Cavendish characteristic persistency of purpose ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... at the hospital was much less popular, on account of her taciturn ways. She never spoke to any one, and no one knew anything of her history. She never said a word to us boys, but her haggard and wild look made a deep and painful impression upon us. I have often thought since of this enigma, though without being able to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... was then in about his twenty-first year. I distinctly recollect the first time of our meeting, which was at the aforesaid mess-table; and that his appearance struck me as that of a bashful and awkward person dull and taciturn, with a formal precise way of speaking, and a slight abruptness of manner. If Lord Bacon's saying be correct, that a good face is a letter of recommendation—poor John William Smith may be said to have come without a character! How little did I dream of the bright jewel hid in so plain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the Baron von Herisau, with whom I exchanged the usual commonplaces after an introduction. His manner was cold and taciturn, I thought, and there was something forced in the smile which accompanied his replies to the remarks of the coarse old lady, who continually referred to the "Herr Baron" as authority upon every possible subject. I noticed, however, that he cast a sudden, sharp glance at ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... could not understand that her Wolfgang could find pleasure in having such playfellows. Moreover, he was exactly like the others that day, taciturn and awkward. Even when they commenced to look for the eggs, the children set about it very stupidly; she had positively to push them to ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... ornaments which he wore, and received as magnificent presents a few European trinkets. They parted mutually well pleased. On the following day Quibian visited the ships, where he was hospitably entertained by the admiral. They could only communicate by signs, and as the chieftain was of a taciturn and cautious character, the interview was not of long duration. Columbus made him several presents; the followers of the cacique exchanged many jewels of gold for the usual trifles, and Quibian returned, without ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... had evidently struck even the usually taciturn and phlegmatic driver into his first ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... or three weeks, Arthur had been very quiet and taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent headache came on, and Charles, the servant, who attended him, reported to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal had been untouched ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... down outside in the company of Uncle Pentstemon, while Mr. Voules replaced bottles in hampers and prepared for departure, and the womenkind of the party crowded upstairs with the bride. Mr. Polly felt taciturn, but the events of the day had stirred the mind of Uncle Pentstemon to speech. And so he spoke, discursively and disconnectedly, a little heedless of his listener as wise ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... even the taciturn Monck had already shown that he was not proof against Stella's charms. He wondered what Stella thought of the man, well knowing that few women liked him, and one evening, as they sat together in the scented darkness ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Hicks, Jr.'s, dread of dogs, of all sizes, shapes, pedigrees, and breeds, was well known to old Bannister; hence, the Heavy-weights now jeered him unmercifully. Old "Bildad," as the taciturn recluse was called, who lived like a hermit and owned a rich farm, did own a massive bulldog, and a sight of his cruel jaws was a "No Trespass" sign. With great forethought, when cherries began to ripen, the farmer had brought Caesar Napoleon to the campus, exhibited him to the awed youths, and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... silenced Belllounds. No more was said before supper was announced, and then the rancher seemed taciturn. Columbine did the serving, and most all of the talking. Wade felt strangely at ease. Some subtle difference was at work in him, transforming him, but the moment had not yet come for him to question himself. He enjoyed the ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... lightly of her. His sympathy for the unhappy wife had become something sacred to him, so that even now, twenty years after, he could not bear a slighting allusion to her from any one, and would at once check the offender. Externally, Grigory was cold, dignified and taciturn, and spoke, weighing his words, without frivolity. It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife; but he really did love her, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was doubtless sullen in court the next morning; she was resentful of the policeman's talk, she was oppressed and discouraged and therefore taciturn. She herself said afterwards that she "often got still that way." She so sharply felt the disgrace of arrest, after her long struggle for respectability, that she gave a false name and became involved in a story to which she could devote but half her attention, ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... homely atmosphere, were here as in the other Y.M. centres. One felt, one was made to feel, that his was the right to enter and stay and enjoy himself each in his own way, and that is why the Y.M. is so popular, and why both the taciturn and the jocular find their way by common consent to these ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... Sir Jeremy, I believe, had been very fond of the place. Being of a somewhat morose and taciturn disposition, he liked the seclusion of this lonely corner of the park. He had a chair or two put into the pavilion and 'twas said that he indulged there in the smoking of that fragrant weed which of late had been more generously imported into ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Much less taciturn than Hooper about the composition of his nostrum was Robert Turlington, who secured a patent in 1744 for "A specifick balsam, called the balsam of life."[14] The Balsam contained no less than 27 ingredients, and in his patent specifications Turlington asserted that it ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... to see "Romeo and Juliet." The confidence and enthusiasm of Romeo merely threw him into a deeper despair of his own ability as a suitor, and made him even more taciturn and stumbling of speech than ever. His silence grew heavier and heavier, until at last Lucy threw out her never-failing life-line. She asked ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... took their leave; the Mexican affable, sociable, smiling, smoking; the American civil, but taciturn and grave. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... herself and rarely left the park. But all the women came to her with their troubles. Nearly always the same story—the men spending their earnings on drink and the poor mothers toiling and striving from dawn till dark to give the little ones enough to eat. She was a strict Protestant, very taciturn and reserved, quite the type of the old Calvinist race who fought so hard against the "Scarlet Woman" when the beautiful and unhappy Mary Stuart was reigning in Scotland and trying to rule her wild subjects. I often went to see her and she would tell me ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... we have honest Hutchins: taciturn, a little touchy perhaps, grown grey in the service of the company, and manifesting quite a bulldog-like devotion to ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... the justices in Sussex), I shall never forget the way that valet turned on poor Kennaway (for that was the detective's name) and laid him flat on the grass. Such a snarl of rage I never heard. The man seemed transformed in an instant from a silent, reserved, taciturn servant to a very maniac, fighting with teeth and claw, cursing and swearing horribly, and as strong ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... fired, make down to the shore, occupy a house close to the water, and keep the Malays off till the boats come ashore to fetch you off. Your crew has been very carefully picked. I have consulted the warrant officers, and they have selected the most taciturn men in the ship. There is to be no smoking; of course the men can chew as much as they like; but the smell of tobacco smoke would at once deter any native from entering a hut. If a Malay should come in and try to escape, he must be fired on as ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... professional connection with the sanitarium, Mr. Henry Blake was, in a sense, the oracle of Judson Centre, and he enjoyed his proud distinction to the full. Ordinarily, he was taciturn, but the present hour found him in ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... Taciturn and quiet as he had been in Ajaccio, the little Napoleon was equally so at the military school of Brienne, where he remained from his eleventh to his sixteenth year. His character had always something sombre and hidden; his eye seemed turned more inwardly ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... —Taciturn sylvas inter reptare salubres, Curantem quicquid dignim sapiente bonoque est? HOR. Lib. i. Ep. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... tavern, one night, in a rather desponding mood, he found the man Wollaston smoking his pipe in bed. Wollaston was a taciturn man generally, but this night he was conversational, and Mr. Taggett, too restless to sleep, fell to chatting with him. Did he know much about the late Mr. Shackford? Yes, he had known him well enough, in an off way,—not ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Maxwell called him Dworro, while Rooney Machowl named him Dwarry. This diversity of pronunciation, however, seemed a matter of no consequence to the stolid boatman, who, when directly addressed, answered to any name that people chose to give him. He was taciturn—never spoke save when spoken to; and at such times used English so broken that it was difficult to put it together so as to make sense. He was there only in capacity of owner and guardian of the boat. Those who hired it would gladly have dispensed ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... one operator on a machine with whom I never could gain an acquaintance beyond the usual morning salutation which passed between most of us as we came in to our daily employment. To me she was reserved and taciturn, and it was evident that there was no disposition on her part to be sociable. But somehow she fell in with my sister's gay, open, and prepossessing manner, and there grew up a sort of passionate intimacy between them that I could not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... " Kurprinz Georg Ludwig" (Electoral Prince and Heir-Apparent), who became George I. of England; he, always a taciturn, saturnine, somewhat grim-visaged man, not without thoughts of his own but mostly inarticulate thoughts, was, just at this time, in a deep domestic intricacy. Uncle George the Kurprinz was painfully ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... there arrived a young Spanish halfbreed, who claimed to be the old man's son. He settled, and gave himself to agriculture. Don Saturnino was taciturn and of violent temper, but very industrious. Late in life he married a woman of Manila, who bore him Don Rafael, the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... empty bottle, no valetudinarian neighbour will complain of late hours. If you love books, to what place are books so suitable? The whole spot is redolent of typography. Would you worship the Paphian goddess, the groves of Cyprus are not more taciturn than those of the Temple. Wit and wine are always here, and always together; the revels of the Temple are as those of polished Greece, where the wildest worshipper of Bacchus never forgot the dignity of the god whom he adored. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... small-pox, a boy and a little girl, were originally taken; and we had now on board, York Minster, Jemmy Button (whose name expresses his purchase-money), and Fuegia Basket. York Minster was a full-grown, short, thick, powerful man: his disposition was reserved, taciturn, morose, and when excited violently passionate; his affections were very strong towards a few friends on board; his intellect good. Jemmy Button was a universal favourite, but likewise passionate; the expression of his face at once showed his nice disposition. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... masterful man, fertile in intellect, fluent in speech and with pen, an inspiring leader and one born to command in state and army. Quite as earnest, equally courageous, and upholding in private life a higher standard of morals, San Martin was relatively calm, cautious, almost taciturn in manner, and slower in thought and action. He was primarily a soldier, fitted to organize and conduct expeditions, rather than, a man endowed with that supreme confidence in himself which brings enthusiasm, affection, ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... remember, signed by Slade. Oh, no, the thing was all cut and dried before I knew who Slade was. Then we started a very pleasant correspondence. I expect to see him up here. He was one of the bravest young fellows on the west front; a sort of silent, taciturn, young fellow. Oh, no," young Mr. Barnard laughed in that pleasant way he had, "you boys can't accuse us of usurping your familiar home. You must come up and see us there, and I hope we shall ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Robert Wynn rather taciturn; whereupon he observed: 'I'm long enough in the world young man, to see that to-day's experience, whatever it has been, has bated your hopes a bit; the crest ain't so plumy as last night. But I say you'll yet bless the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate, ate his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... briskly. "It is a rudeness for which I can only crave your pardon. Strange that I should have tasted your father's hospitality so often and should still be a taciturn host." ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... rescue from oblivion. They are in no wise to be compared with this master's frescos in the Chapel of the Annunziata,—which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and delight. You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a sacred place should be; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Ten months of camp life had made him hail with delight the prospect of paying court to a pretty girl; and he had attached himself to her side to the utter exclusion of Dr. Brownlee and the grave, taciturn leveller, who had retired from the contest and was devoting himself to Mrs. Burnam, whom he had known for years. For a few moments, the doctor stood looking on; then he turned away and joined the group of ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... discovered a moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room, where, taciturn as ever, severe, martial, he stood at attention, shoulders back, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he was making, with amazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces for the benefit of the little boy in ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Chayma Indians, though separate from each other, are not surrounded by gardens. The streets, which are wide and very straight, cross each other at right angles. The walls of the huts are made of clay, strengthened by lianas. The uniformity of these huts, the grave and taciturn air of their inhabitants, and the extreme neatness of the dwellings, reminded us of the establishments of the Moravian Brethren. Besides their own gardens, every Indian family helps to cultivate the garden of the community, or, as it is called, the conuco de la ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... his Welf race from Henry the Lion down to these days, has it in an eminent degree: they are not easily put into flurry, into fear. In all Welf Sovereigns, and generally in Teuton Populations, on that side of the Channel or on this, there is the requisite unconscious substratum of taciturn inexpugnability, with depths of potential rage almost unquenchable, to be found when you apply for it. Which quality will much stead them on the present occasion: and, indeed, it is perhaps strengthened by their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... stiff side-whiskers of our driver: the only pair I saw in real life after seeing them so long in pictures on boxes of raisins and cigars. There they were associated with the look and dress of a torrero, and our coachman, though an old Castilian of the austerest and most taciturn pattern, may have been in his gay youth ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires. They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of view, but I judge both industrious and contented from ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of an unfinished structure. To a foreign visitor this life did not seem at all graceful; it was austere, monotonous, and rude, with little beauty or carefree cheerfulness. And as the King's bachelor household, his taciturn servants, and the submissive intimates under the trees of the quiet garden, gave a foreign guest the impression of a monastery, so in all Prussian institutions he found something of the renunciation and the discipline of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... at the back of the Stopping Place where little Patsy lay. At the door they were met by the mother, vociferous with lamentations, prayers, blessings, and entreaties. Within the room, seated beside the bed, was Carroll, gloomy and taciturn. ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... became reserved and taciturn, which the more surprised me, as, up to the present moment, he had at all times been remarkably communicative with respect to his affairs and prospects. From what I could learn from his broken hints and innuendoes, it appeared that, since his arrival at Madrid, he had fallen into ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... could bring herself to marry Mr Gallup. How angry her father would be! But that was a prospective contingency that only amused Mary. He would be angry whoever she married. He would be exceedingly angry if she got engaged to . . . that young man at Chatham who was so taciturn and neglectful . . . who didn't seem to want to get engaged to anyone. Clara Bax said it would be dreadfully dull to marry anyone you'd known all your life. Would it? Clara Bax said it would be tiresome in the extreme ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... was—we formed ourselves into a company of fifty active boys—mostly belonging to my own battalion and to other Illinois regiments—of which I was elected Captain. My First Lieutenant was a tall, taciturn, long-armed member of the One Hundred and Eleventh Illinois, whom we called "Egypt," as he came from that section of the State. He was wonderfully handy with his fists. I think he could knock a fellow down so that he would fall-harder, and lie longer than any person ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... they took their last ride. But few words passed between them. Windham was gloomy and taciturn. Zillah was silent and sad. At length, as they rode back, they came to a place on the shore a few miles away from the city. Here Windham reined in his horse, and, as Zillah stopped, he pointed out to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... with an inattentive manner, and apparently wrapped up in such a taciturn concern for his engines that he seemed to have lost the use of speech. When addressed directly his only answer would be a grunt or a hoot, according to the distance. For all the years he had been in ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... morning in New York where he took them to the bank their L200 was in and saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California—Mr. Twist was taciturn. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Grave, taciturn, watchful, secret and suave, with an appearance of tight-lipped reticence about him which a perpetual faint questioning look in his eyes denied, Hill looked an ideal man servant, who knew his station in life, and was able to uphold it with meek dignity. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the draughts of homage and power, that those who have once quaffed them find all milder stimulants stale and insipid. No sooner were M. and Madame Roland established in their city residence, than they were involved in all the plots and the counterplots of the Revolution. M. Roland was grave, taciturn, oracular. He had no brilliance of talent to excite envy. He displayed no ostentation in dress, or equipage, or manners, to provoke the desire in others to humble him. His reputation for stoical virtue gave a wide sweep to his influence. His very silence ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Grid, who dwelt in a cave in the desert, and that, wooing her, he prevailed upon her to become his wife. The offspring of this union between Odin (mind) and Grid (matter) was Vidar, a son as strong as he was taciturn, whom the ancients considered a personification of the primaeval forest or of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... by one or two taciturn but kindly natives, who seemed to know who they were, and so lent a hand without any request, soon had their simple little camp well under way. At about this time they were approached by a stalwart man wearing the cap of the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... under such circumstances, thus uncommunicative and unaffectionate? All these reflections occurred to the mind of the sensitive Henry, as he sat watching, and occasionally addressing a remark to, his taciturn brother, until he became fairly bewildered in his efforts to find a clue to his conduct. The horrible dread which had first suggested itself, of the partial overthrow of intellect, had passed away, but to this had succeeded a discovery, attended by quite as much concern —although creating less ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... mechanical means. It was a long and laborious task, requiring the exercise of great perseverance and ingenuity. His master, Elliot, described him at that time as inventive, patient, self-denying, and taciturn, undaunted by failures and mistakes, full of resources and expedients, and entertaining the most perfect confidence that his application of mechanical principles would eventually ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... not answering, which indeed he scarcely left her time to do, he had so much to say. His very nature seemed changed, the proud, fastidious, taciturn Warrender babbling like a happy boy, in the sudden overflow of a bliss which was too much for him. But while he ran on, a louder voice than hers interrupted him,—the bell that meant the commonest of all events, the bell for luncheon. It fell into the soft retirement of that paradise, which was ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... saw no one other than Sven Anderssen, the Kincaid's taciturn and repellent cook. She asked him the name of the shore upon which ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bad to worse. Claes became more taciturn and more invisible to his family. He was slovenly in dress and untidy in his habits. Only his servant Lemulquinier, or Mulquinier, as he was often called, was allowed to enter the attic and share his master's secrets. Mme. Claes had a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked in the factory, suspected ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... that he perceived the power he was reputed to wield over the soldiers for whose well-being he fought so hard. Mark would have liked to ask him about life in the Aldershot priory; perhaps if Brother Anselm had been less taciturn, he would have broken if not the letter at any rate the spirit of the Rule by begging the senior to ask for his services in the Priory. But no sooner were they jogging back to Malford than the rain came down in a deluge, and Brother Anselm, pulling the hood of his ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... pointed out the tall young soldier, standing stately and taciturn, but with a strong emotion in that usually mild, grave face of his, perceptible enough to those who knew him. His girl was ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... and lighting his cigar. "We are somewhat in the dark ourselves as to why Jose has been so zealous, for he has been very taciturn since the recent fight at our camp. Perhaps Jose also is a bit hazy about our expedition—he looked rather surprised just now. So here is ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... spoke to him. He made no reply; but arose and took another seat near the fire. M. Joutel, being sleepless, followed him, to enter, if possible, into conversation. Fixing his eyes earnestly upon the taciturn Indian, he saw, to his surprise, that he was one of the French deserters whom he had formerly known very well. His name was Grollet. He informed M. Joutel that he had a comrade by the name of Ruter, who did not dare to come with him, from fear that ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... very few exceptions, had borne the same belief in upon her, and her nature was the sweetest and gentlest imaginable. With his father, now, the case was somewhat otherwise. There were those who said that the rather taciturn and shy Dermot owed some of his wonderfully heavy coat to the mesalliance of a forbear of his with a Tibetan Sheep Dog of a half-wild sort, with a temper far from reliable. But, as yet at all events, Finn's temper was that of a clean ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... they met at breakfast. All three were somewhat silent. It was as if the weight of the matter which was that day to be discussed pressed upon their spirits. The smallest of the trio, Septimus Codd by name, who was habitually taciturn, spoke scarcely a word. He was a strange little man, a nineteenth century villain in a sense. He was a rogue and a vagabond, yet his one hobby, apart from his business, was a study of the Past, and many an authority on Eastern History would have been astonished at the extent of his learning. ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... faces—namely, those of the Public Prosecutor (a man with beetling brows over eyes which seemed to be saying with a wink, "Come into the next room, my friend, for I have something to say to you"—though, in the main, their owner was a man of grave and taciturn habit), of the Postmaster (an insignificant-looking individual, yet a would-be wit and a philosopher), and of the President of the Local Council (a man of much amiability and good sense). These ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... car one divides one's time in moralising on the state of the country or in chatting with the driver, and as the driver seemed somewhat taciturn I examined the fields as we passed them. They were scanty fields, drifting from thin grass into bog, and from bog into thin grass again, and in the distance there was a rim of melancholy mountains, and the peasants I saw along the road seemed a counterpart of the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... Point, where he obtained employment as a hostler. Nobody in the academy dreamed for a moment that the broad-shouldered, dark-browed man who handled the horses so easily had ever smelled the smoke of battle or heard the song of rifle bullets. Day after day on the parade grounds the taciturn man watched the evolutions of the cadets, listened to the commands of the officers, studied the discipline of the place, pored over volumes of military tactics that he had managed to borrow, and added to his natural genius the knowledge of other great generals. Then the dark-skinned ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... Indians were taciturn enough, although Peter thanked La Salle rather warmly for his ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... mind continued in the direction towards which it had been so systematically biased. Entering Oxford, he became absorbed in its academical shades. Amidst his books he almost forgot the impediment of his speech. Shy, taciturn, and solitary, he mixed too little with others to have it much brought before his own notice. He carried off prizes; he took high honours. On leaving the University, a profound theologian, an enthusiastic Churchman, filled with the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brains than with his hands. He understood the principles of piano construction, and was, therefore, no rule-of-thumb man. He had studied his work and, as a result, had continually increased both its quantity and quality Robinson was not self-assertive, perhaps a little taciturn, but there was something about him which made people respect him. Over the dinner pails at noon there had been many a conjecture on the part of Robinson's fellow-workers that he was in line for promotion and that he might be made ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness, he is affected—ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that he received ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... saw, they said; she never went to church or meetings; and, especially since her mother, in an unprecedented flare of rebellion, had gone to live with a married sister in town, she had grown silent and taciturn. As for old Con Darton, he was going to seed, in spite of the remnants of an earlier erudition that still clung to him. That is, though he went about unshaven and in slovenly frayed clothing, he still quoted ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... less pleasant. Quite the contrary. The mixture of teasing and deference which she showed him, in the course of it, had been the secret of her old hold upon him. She reasserted something of it now, and he was not unwilling. During the morose and taciturn phase through which he had been passing there had been no opportunity or desire to talk of himself, especially to a woman. But Alicia had always made him talk of himself, and he had forgotten ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an interlude the fugitive hoped with confidence to have lost himself in a taciturn and apathetic wilderness of peak-broken land where his discovery would be as haphazard an undertaking as the accurate aiming of a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... they were all venal? Did not his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same story? Dealing with men and women in his rude, sceptical way, he comes to doubt about honour, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. "He is wild, but he fights like a man," George I, the taciturn, said of his son and successor. Courage George II certainly had. The Electoral Prince, at the head of his father's contingent, had approved himself a good and brave soldier under Eugene and Marlborough. At Oudenarde he specially distinguished himself. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... life, with so few wants, and those periodically and easily supplied, hardly varied from one year's end to another, it may easily be imagined that I had but few ideas. I might have had more, if my companion had not been of such a taciturn and morose habit; as it was, I looked at the wide ocean, and the sky, and the sun, moon, and stars, wondering, puzzled, afraid to ask questions, and ending all by sleeping away a large portion of my existence. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... served its turn to this extent at least, that it had developed in him scorn for other people's remarks,—and so, unabashed, he donned the uniform of a student. He entered the physico-mathematical department. Healthy, rosy-cheeked, with a well-grown beard, taciturn, he produced a strange impression upon his comrades; they did not suspect that in this surly man, who punctually drove to the lectures in a roomy country sledge and pair, there was concealed almost a child. He seemed to ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... The tenacity and determination with which they pursue their national aims may eventually enable them to vanquish their more brilliant competitors in the struggle for hegemony in the Peninsula. Unlike most southern races, the Bulgarians are reserved, taciturn, phlegmatic, unresponsive, and extremely suspicious of foreigners. The peasants are industrious, peaceable and orderly; the vendetta, as it exists in Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia, and the use of the knife in quarrels, so common in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... show stupidity at a glance. On the contrary, they are sometimes bright on the surface, amiable, good-tempered under trying conditions, and almost likeable for their external social side. This is particularly true of the high grade defectives. The lower order may be taciturn, gloomy and retiring, and these traits may be noticed almost from infancy. But as they grow up their social nature may be developed, and they too may give the appearance of amiableness. One notable thing about them is their pose ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... thoughts, Sir Roger de Launay, whose taciturn and easy temperament disinclined him for argument and kept him aloof from discussion whenever he could avoid it, sat alone one evening in his own room which adjoined the King's library, writing a few special letters ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture. Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... adorning herself, thinks with pleasure, how much she will be looked at and envied by her companions. She fain would show herself at once and begs Heiling to visit a public festival with her. But Heiling by nature serious and almost taciturn, refuses her request. Anna pouts, but she soon forgets her grief, when she sees the curious signs of erudition in her lover's room. Looking over the magic book, the leaves begin to turn by themselves, quicker and quicker, the strange signs seem to grow, to threaten her, until stricken ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... been coldly impassive and resolutely taciturn thus far, now leaned back in his chair, and his eyes glowed like two lamps from beneath the eaves of his shaggy brows. A young and lovely woman was giving voice to his own crushed and ill-starred nature; and strange to say, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... A taciturn, difficult, unaccountable man, who baffled the people that would fain be friendly with him, and chilled any who showed him warmth, and yet was invariably liked and trusted by all who had the perspicacity to see beyond the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) and—though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about making acquaintances—expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park Crescent some afternoon—"My wife and I are generally at home on Thursdays"—when all are back in town for the autumn. They ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... aspect of the place inspired the boy with an enthusiasm beyond his years, leaving an impression which was never afterwards effaced, and which affected his future life and writings. As Petrarch grew up, unlike the haughty, taciturn, and sarcastic Dante, he seems to have made friends wherever he went. With splendid talents, engaging manners, a handsome person, and an affectionate and generous disposition, he became the darling of his age, a man whom princes delighted to honor. At the age of twenty-three, he first met Laura ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... almost all points for the Brunai specimen, except that the nose, as well as being small, is, in European eyes, deficient as to "bridge," and the legs cannot be described as weak, indeed the Brunai Malay, male and female, is a somewhat fleshy animal. In temperament, the Malay is described as "taciturn, undemonstrative, little given to outward manifestations of joy or sorrow, courteous towards each other, kind to their women and children. Not elated by good or depressed by bad fortune, but capable of excesses when roused. Under the influence ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... had not the manners of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled, but was always at work in the daytime and always reading in the evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do, would go to the door or "tend table," bought the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... laugh at my witticisms and display an interest in my stories. Yet I felt that I had a rival in the person of a young man with quiet and refined tastes; and it struck me, at times, that she preferred his taciturn humor to my Parisian frivolity. He formed one in the circle of admirers that surrounded Miss Nelly at the time she addressed to me the foregoing question. We were all comfortably seated in our deck-chairs. The storm ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... was a teacher in the north of France, enjoyed an excellent reputation throughout the whole country. He was a person of intelligence, quiet, very religious, a little taciturn; he had married in the district of Boislinot, where he exercised his profession. He had had three children, who had died of consumption, one after the other. From this time he seemed to bestow upon the youngsters confided to his care all the tenderness ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... man. Italian and Irish blood commingled in his veins. Both strains carry the attributes of vivacity and restlessness, but Cavagnari to the superficial observer appeared as phlegmatic as he was habitually taciturn. This sententious imperturbability was only on the surface; whether it was a natural characteristic or an acquired manner is not easy to decide. Below the surface of measured reticent composure there lay a temperament ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... you came to camp came many a welcome gift; Praises and presents came, and nourishing food—till at last, among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but looked on each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Hawthorne's talking much at the table. Indeed, he was a very taciturn man. One day, tired of seeing him sitting immovable on the sofa in the hall, as I was learning some verses to recite at the evening class for recitation formed by Charles A. Dana, I daringly took my book, pushed ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... silent and grim and pinched with cold, he unrolled himself from buffalo-robes and took the train at Sunkhaze. The postmaster and station-agent gave him several opportunities to relate the outcome of his negotiations, but the attorney was taciturn. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... of snowy gauze-like cambric, with gold-embroidered ends, are wound in graceful folds round the fez, contrasting with the dark mahogany colour of his sun-burnt brow. And what a rich crimson caftan! Perhaps he is from Tunis or Barbary. He sits alone, smoking, with eyes half-closed, grave and taciturn. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... perhaps a snub; Sir Tichborne's was certainly a bottle. Sir Chetwode was somewhat garrulous, and was often like a man at a play, in the wrong box! Sir Tichborne was somewhat taciturn; but when he spoke, it was always to the purpose, and made an impression, even if it were not new. Both were kind hearts; but Sir Chetwode was jovial, Sir Tichborne rather stern. Sir Chetwode often broke into a joke; Sir Tichborne sometimes ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... royal chamber, before a table covered with papers, sat the King and his secretary. Grave, sullen, and taciturn, there was little in the habitual manner of Philip the Third that could betray to the most experienced courtier the outward symptoms of favour or caprice. Education had fitted him for the cloister, but the necessities of despotism had added acute cunning to slavish superstition. The business ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was to fall in with his views and trust to the chapter of accidents to bring the thing to naught. Sir Eustace, for all his apparent worldliness and cynicism, was a good fellow at heart, and cherished a warm affection for his awkward, taciturn brother. He also cherished a great dislike for Lady Croston, whose character he thoroughly understood. He saw a good deal of her, it is true, because he happened to be one of the executors of her husband's will; ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... or five rubbers. Lessingham was by far the most expert player, and he and Philippa in the end were the winners. The two men stood together for a moment or two at the sideboard, helping themselves to whisky and soda. Griffiths had become more taciturn than ever, and even Philippa was forced to admit that the latter part of the evening ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you tell us, Mr. Lang, why it is that desert lovers like yourself, and like the stranger who was here, as a more extreme case are so silent, so taciturn and ever listening for something? What is ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... place of the gay talk-fests that filled their evenings, they began to hold long pessimistic discussions about their future on the island in case rescue were indefinitely delayed. Taciturn periods fell upon them. Frank Merrill showed only a slight seriousness. Billy Fairfax, however, wore a look permanently sobered. Pete Murphy became subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved, almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Hentzner, who travelled in England in 1598, and Monsieur Misson, who wrote precisely a century later, note almost in the same words "a perpetual use of tobacco"; and the latter suspects that this is what makes "the generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thoughtful, and so melancholy." In Queen Elizabeth's time, the ladies of the court "would not scruple to blow a pipe together very socially." In 1614 it was asserted that tobacco was sold openly in more than seven thousand places in London, some of these being already attended by that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... realized that he was placing everything upon the cast of a die. He undertook the campaign with a measure of confidence. He, almost as much as Grant, was a taciturn man, not much given to revelations of his purposes and hopes. No doubt he was somewhat surprised at the successful rising of the Union forces against him. Besides the Army of the Potomac, Pennsylvania seemed to ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... constant toast was, "the one thing needful" (Negroes); and that they themselves had surreptitiously aided in the procurement of Negroes for the colony. The supporters of the colonists grew less powerful as the struggle went forward. The most active grew taciturn and conservative. The advocates of Negro labor became bolder, and more acrimonious in debate; and at length the champions of exclusive white labor shrank into silence, appalled at the desperation of then opponents. The Rev. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... forgiven, when I have been punished. Sorrow and jealousy were in my heart, and no one cared enough for me to ask why I wept. I was left to suffer without one word of kindness—and you wondered that I was taciturn, and mocked at my slighted longings for love, and called them by hard names. And then you pointed to my caressed and indulged brother, and bade ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor Bellegarde came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he must needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled forth alone into the village and looked at the fountain, the geese, the open barn doors, the brown, bent old women, showing their hugely darned ...
— The American • Henry James
... time, breakfasted, but there was no sign of horses. After waiting two hours a square man was brought up to us by the waiter and introduced as our guide. The professor, who had promised to see us off, was apparently clinging to his bed, for he did not come. Our guide was a taciturn, loose-limbed fellow, but had nice eyes and a charming manner; he helped us on to our horses, and off we went. Jan was rather anxious at the start, for he had done very little riding since childhood; but his horse was ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... to look down upon its beautiful valleys. Others soon followed: Joel Estes, for whom the Park was eventually named; "Rocky Mountain Jim," a two-gun man, living alone with his dogs, looking like a bearded, unkempt pirate, taciturn, yet not without charm, as later events proved, unmolesting and unmolested, enveloped in a haze of respected mystery. There was also that noted lady globe-trotter, Miss Isabella Bird, an Englishwoman of undoubted refinement, highly educated—whose ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... While the senators anxiously deliberated among themselves what fit colleague for Nero could be nominated at the coming comitia, and sorrowfully recalled the names of Marcellus, Gracchus, and other plebeian generals who were no more—one taciturn and moody old man sat in sullen apathy among the conscript fathers. This was Marcus Livius, who had been consul in the gear before the beginning of this war, and had then gained a victory over the Illyrians. After his ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... pleased to stay with Eirik during the winter. When now Yule was drawing nigh, Eirik began to look more gloomy than he was wont to be. Presently Karlsefni entered into conversation with him, and said, "Art thou in trouble, Eirik? it appears to me that thou art somewhat more taciturn than thou hast been; still thou helpest us with much liberality, and we are bound to reward thee according as we have means thereto. Say now what causes thy cheerlessness." Eirik answered, "You receive hospitality well, and like worthy men. Now, I have no mind that our intercourse together ...
— Eirik the Red's Saga • Anonymous
... enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... matted hair. Mrs. Murray came often to the room, but her visits were short, and though invariably kind and considerate, Edna felt an involuntary awe of her, which rendered her manner exceedingly constrained when they were together. Hagar was almost as taciturn as her mistress, and as the girl asked few questions, she remained in complete ignorance of the household affairs, and had never seen any one but Mrs. Murray, Hagar, and the doctor. She was well supplied with books, which the former brought from the library, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... them; and if we may suppose a person to have read these Diaries before looking into the tales, we may be sure that such a reader would be greatly surprised to hear the author described as a disappointed, disdainful genius. "This marked love of cases of conscience," says M. Montegut, "this taciturn, scornful cast of mind, this habit of seeing sin everywhere and hell always gaping open, this dusky gaze bent always upon a damned world and a nature draped in mourning, these lonely conversations of the imagination with the conscience, this pitiless ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... energies of the masses," he could not "give them a military organization;" Goergey, on the other hand, an able, hard-headed soldier, believing only in battalions, and capable of using them well, but wanting enthusiasm, without great principle, without even patriotism, taciturn and suspicious, chafing against authority, and aiming throughout chiefly at his own ends in the struggle, wanting that breadth of intellect or strength of courage that might have made his selfishness splendid in its achievement. Had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... game Nina still stood watching. The Countess Kate played as placidly as though she were dealing cards for "old maid," while her husband reminded Nina of a squirrel sitting up and nibbling at a nut. Carlo Olisco was excited but not unnatural. Porter looked gloomy and taciturn. Minotti and Allegro were both tense and keen, the former arrogant, the latter flushed and excited. John Derby, like the Countess Kate, played exactly as he used to play Jack Straws or besique, on rainy days in ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... grandfather's isolation kept her strange to nearly all the faces she saw. Sometimes her evenings on the Molo wasted away without the exchange of a word save with Tonelli, for her mother seldom talked; and then it was quite possible her teasing was greater than his patience, and that he grew taciturn under her tongue. At such times she hailed Pennellini's appearance with a double delight; for, if he never joined in her attacks upon Tonelli's favorites, he always enjoyed them, and politely applauded them. If his friend reproached him for this treason, he made him every ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... disgusted with his own stupidity. Of what use was it that during so many years he had cultivated the art of conversation as a necessary accomplishment, if at his utmost need his wits were to abandon him, and leave him uncouth and taciturn as he had been in his childhood? He looked at Hermione's downcast face; at the perfect figure displayed by her tightly fitting costume of gray; at her small hands, as she stood still and tried to thrust the point of her dainty parasol into ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street. There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery of its silence after ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... doubted if she was kind, and he knew that she was patronizing. Further, she was not a conversationalist. At the luncheon she had not been at ease; but here in the car she was at ease absolutely, yet she remained taciturn. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... sat there till prayer-time taciturn and thoughtful. Their books were open, but they did little work, and it was evident that Montagu was filled with the most touching grief. During the evening he drew out a little likeness which Eric had given him, and looked at it long and earnestly. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... in which Edna, having been worsted, had retired from the field in tears, refusing to have anything further to do with Eleanor or her booth. At this juncture Miss Tebbs had appeared on the scene, and peace was restored, although Edna was still taciturn and sulky, and displayed little interest in what went on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... pretty well as it was; but he would have welcomed the chance to talk to someone. Taciturn as Ward was with men, he had enough of his own company for once. And he would have asked them to make him a cup of coffee and warm up the cabin once more. Little comforts of that sort he missed terribly. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... dull woman, whom her father's brutal despotism had early molded to passive obedience for life. She maintained the same attitude with her husband, whose constant kindness and indulgence never had succeeded in triumphing over that humiliated, taciturn nature, indifferent to everything, and, in some sense, irresponsible. Having passed her life with no knowledge of business, she had become rich without knowing it and without the slightest desire to take advantage of it. Her fine apartments in Paris, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Barnabas—a man of herculean form and strength. His face was marked by smallpox; he wore neither beard or mustache, and his hair was combed smoothly back, like a peasant's. His disposition was melancholy and taciturn; but he seemed constantly striving to atone, by the amiability of his manners, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the form of an eagle, and protected them from a hostile army by sorcery. There was a king named Hrodmar, a wooer of Sigrlinn: he had slain the king of Svavaland, and ravaged and burnt the country. Hiorvard obtained Sigrlinn, and Atli Alof. Hiorvard and Sigrlinn had a son tall and comely: he was taciturn and had no fixed name. As he was sitting on a mound he saw nine Valkyriur, one of whom was of most ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... taciturn, Don Fabrizio!" said Sophonisba. "If he is forbidden to speak at all. . . . He ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... polite reply to this question, and an indulgence, at the same time, of his own taciturn disposition, the Captain presented to Luckie Dods the fifth part of an ordinary playing card, much grimed with snuff, which bore on its blank side his name and quality. But Luckie Dods rejected the information ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... not appear until dinner, and then came down moody and taciturn. The young ladies had heard of his illness the evening before, with significant glances. Mrs. Marchmont partly surmised the truth, but politely ignored the matter, treating it only as a sudden indisposition; and so the affair was passed ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the little bridge gate, the greetings between him and MacPhairrson were brief and quiet. They were fellows both in the taciturn brotherhood of the woods. To Stumpy and Ebenezer, who nosed affectionately at his legs, he paid no attention beyond a careless touch of caress. Even to Ananias-and-Sapphira, who had hurriedly clambered from MacPhairrson's shoulder to his and begun softly nipping ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... while four rested. Everyone took his turn, captain included. There was equality, and if not exactly fraternity, then a deal of good feeling. Sometimes a man, as he dashed a bucketful of water down the hatchway, would yell out, 'Hurrah for Bankok!' and the rest laughed. But generally we were taciturn and serious—and thirsty. Oh! how thirsty! And we had to be careful with the water. Strict allowance. The ship smoked, the ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... garrulous woman. The invincibly taciturn woman is so rare as to have escaped objurgation. Yet she too ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... don't you say more than that? I hate those taciturn "Yesses" of yours. I tell you everything, and yet you are as close as wax ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... after this tragical episode, where they were oddities among the humdrum tradesmen's sons. Victor, thoughtful and taciturn, rhymed profusely in tragedies, "printing" in his books, "Chateaubriand or nothing!" and engaging his more animated brother to flourish the Cid's sword ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the black ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry sorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a fast walker and full of endurance. The mail-rider was taciturn, a natural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely road, and has nothing whatever to think of. He had been in the war sixteen months, in Hugh White's regiment,—reckon ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his Honor, or any one of the Board of Aldermen. One chubby urchin, with a bundle of Tribunes under his arm, looks mischievously into the pit, and says, "His 'Onor 'ill want the Tribune." Another, of a more taciturn disposition, shrugs his shoulders, gives his cap a pull over his eyes, and says, spicing his declaration with an oath, "He'll buy two Heralds!—he will." The taciturn urchin draws them from his bundle with an air of independence, flaunts them in the face of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... is being canvassed and discussed by the bon-vivants in the bar-room of the Choctaw Chief—a subject that seems to have a strange fascination for them—Borlasse, who has become elevated with the alcohol, though usually a man of taciturn habit, breaks out with an asseveration, which causes surprise to ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... melancholy and gloom. (He looks up at the portraits pensively.) Just as if the sun had never shone into their hearts, you know. No air of hopefulness, no suggestion of light and freedom! So chained to the earth! So savagely taciturn? Can that be due to the air and soil? It will probably assert itself in me too, after I have been here for some time. Possibly it would have been better, Auntie, if I had never returned to this house! I should have continued that life of mine, not cold, not warm, not happy, not unhappy! I should ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the Absarakas[4] her own was slain Before her memory could his face retain. Two bitter years his widow mourned him dead, And then his elder brother she had wed. None loved Winona's uncle; he was stern And harsh in manner, cold and taciturn, And none might see, without a secret fear, Those thin lips ever curling to a sneer. And yet he was of note and influence Among the chieftains; true he rarely lent More than his presence in the council tent, And when he rose to speak disdained pretence ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... was a taciturn man, even with his only son. He wondered at first that the boy should have so misjudged him as to suppose he would raise objections, no matter whom the lad wished to marry. He was bewildered rather than enlightened when Ed. told him he feared opposition because ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... were very congenial. To tell the truth, the differences between them arose generally from the petulant quickness of the Prince; for in his son his own irascible character was joined with the melancholy gravity which Giovanni inherited from his mother, and in virtue of which, being taciturn, he ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... window. The couch was white too; and her simple dress or wrapper being light blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily, and got ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... by experience when to talk And when to hold his tongue, now held it till This passion might blow o'er, nor dared to balk Gulbeyaz' taciturn or speaking will. At length she rose up, and began to walk Slowly along the room, but silent still, And her brow cleared, but not her troubled eye; The wind was down, but still the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... restraint between us, I did not tell McKnight. I wondered afterward if he had suspected it. I saw him looking hard at the gate-post which had figured in one of our mysteries, but he asked no questions. Afterward he grew almost taciturn, for him, and let me do most ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in vain. Every gypsy encampment in the kingdom was searched, but without avail; and even the police, sharp eyed as they are, could not guess that the decent-looking Irishwoman, speaking—when she did speak, which was seldom, for she was a taciturn woman—with a strong brogue, working in a laundry in a small street in the Potteries, Notting Hill, was the gypsy they were looking for; or that the little boy, whose father she said was at sea, was the child for whose discovery ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... formed a sort of mist round his head, and convulsive movements announced that his last hour was come. The expression of his face was terrible, desperate, and he threw looks of powerless anger towards the captain. He accused him silently, and Hatteras avoided him and became more taciturn and wrapped up in himself than ever. The following night was frightful; the tempest redoubled in violence; the tent was thrown down three times, and the snowdrifts buried the poor fellows, blinded them, froze them, and wounded ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Callahan, following every move, mapped the situation to their companions as its features developed. With each triumph on the arete, bursts of commendation and surprise came from the usually taciturn men watching the struggle with growing wonder. Bucks, apprehensive of delays in the track-opening on the hill, sent Callahan back in the car with instructions to pick a gang of ten men and pack them somewhom across ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... in August, he and Eleanor went to Green Hill for a few days vacation, the effect of this repression was marked. There were wrinkles on his forehead under the thatch of his blond hair; his blue eyes were dulled, and he was taciturn to the point of rudeness—except to Eleanor. He was very polite to Eleanor. He never, now, amused himself by imagining how he could disappear if he had the luck to be in a theater fire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself to a lie, he had lost the right even to dream freedom. So there were ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... say, give his Address because any letter thither directed will find me sooner or later in my little wanderings. I am at present staying with a Farmer in a very pleasant house near Woodbridge: inhabiting such a room as even you, I think, would sleep composedly in; my host a taciturn, cautious, honest, active man whom I have known all my Life. He and his Wife, a capital housewife, and his Son, who could carry me on his shoulders to Ipswich, and a Maid servant who, as she curtsies of a morning, lets fall the Tea-pot, etc., constitute the household. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... and the vintner silent, until they came to the end of their journey at number forty in the Krumerweg. It was a house of hanging gables, almost as old as the town itself, solid and grim and taciturn. There are some houses which talk like gossips, noisy, obtrusive and provocative. Number forty was like an old warrior, gone to his chair by the fireside, who listens to the small-talk of his neighbors saturninely. What ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath |
