"Reticence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to her future daughter-in-law. But today she had spoken her mind with all the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself with a flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been growing within her ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... about her husband, but in this reticence she was not joined by Rose Dawn or Jennie Cassavant. Jennie maintained that the misfitted Mr. Lawrence was alive, very much so; that Esther and he weren't even divorced, but merely separated. The only sanction Mrs. Lawrence ever ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... various journeys undertaken for the university; and, the more I saw of him, the deeper became my respect for him. There were, indeed, toward the end of his life, some things trying to one of my temperament, and among these things I may mention his exceeding reticence, and his willingness not only to labor but to wait; but these stood not at all in the way of my respect and affection ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of my friends, people on whose side I, too, am to be found, retort with another word: reticence. It is a mistake, they say, to try to uncover these things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow up and develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be sure to grow up and develop wholesomely. But, as a matter of fact, that is precisely what we can not and will ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... professional—in point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist on mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary, she kept her veil down—and it was a very thick one. But Dr. Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar occurrence with him—people are often ashamed to have it ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... purpose to blind people as to her escape; and that therefore she would not now let herself be discovered, unless a strong pressure were put upon her. The writers added that the police were on the track of the porter, who very possibly had absconded in the fear that his reticence was criminal, and that Mr. Manston, the husband, was, with praiseworthy energy, making every effort to clear the whole ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... all right. You're a husker. But there ain't no reason for this reticence with a brother professional. I was the bearded woman with Kitts and Kiljammer's show for over two years, I was Shake, mate." The visitor thrust a hand ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... and looked grave. Like all stable New-England families, the Seymours, while they practised the broadest liberality, had instincts of great sobriety in expense. Needless profusion shocked them as out of taste; and a quiet and decent reticence in matters of self-indulgence was ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... born in Boston, in 1745, and died in 1806. He lived in a large wooden house on Tremont Street, near Hollis Street, and was a near neighbor of Crane, Lovering and the Bradlees. He was a man of unusual reticence, but noted for courage and patriotism. From 1773 till his death, he kept a vow never to drink tea. In 1797 he married Mary, the sister of Joseph Hiller, the first collector of the port of Salem, and was the father of Captain John Fenno, a ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... sensitive nature recoiled from the thought that it might be said of him that he had taken advantage of the inexperience of a kinswoman in order to win her fortune. Also deep down in his mind he had a sincerer and quite secret reason for reticence, whereof ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... not advertise, and are reluctant to speak publicly of the part that they played in the war. They are silent on all that may seem to tell to their own credit or to the discredit of others, and this silence easily develops into a fixed habit of reticence. We are the more grateful to those who have helped us to a true account by telling of what they saw. The best part of the book is yet to come; if the theme is to be worthily treated, it must be by the help of those who remember and of those ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... how jealous the managers are that the secrets of their prison-houses should be revealed. Their aim is to prove they have nothing to conceal, and that all is open as noon-day; but the moment troublesome questions are asked, they exhibit a reticence as to their rules and practices which shows how conscious they are that ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... which they entertained one for another had none of the reticence or delicacy of our love: they went straight to the point, and the language in which, they expressed themselves is sometimes too coarse for our taste. The manners and customs of daily life among the Egyptians tended to blunt in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of Napoleon, an old friend of Landor's told me that, while in London, the Prince was in the habit of calling upon him after dinner. He would sip cafe noir, smoke a cigar, ply his host with every conceivable question, but otherwise maintain a dignified reticence. It seems then that Louis Napoleon is indebted to nature, as well as to art, for his masterly ability in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... less timid, as we have already said, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these audacious outfits, blond Fantine's canezou, with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... combined wisdom of Five Forks ever drove him into exile. My impression is, that he lived alone from choice,—a choice he made long before the camp indulged in any criticism of his mental capacity. He was much given to moody reticence, and, although to outward appearances a strong man, was always complaining of ill-health. Indeed, one theory of his isolation was, that it afforded him better opportunities for taking medicine, of which he ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... sound. There were times when Gabriella felt that she could stand anything if only her mother would fly into a rage—when she positively envied Florrie Spencer because her plebeian parent scolded her at the top of her voice instead of maintaining a calm and ladylike reticence. But Mrs. Carr was one of those women who never, even in the most trying circumstances, cease to be patient, who never lose for an instant so much as the palest or the thinnest ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... at the prospect of a battle. He had been systematically trained into weakness, and he felt that men, when he came to compete with them, would discover and take advantage of his defects. His cold, haughty reticence was but disguised timidity. In Mildred's presence he ever showed the best side of his nature, and his lonely, repressed life had always touched the tenderest chords of her heart. If their love had been smiled upon from the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... be interrogated concerning the nature of his business. The big and the little man, once inside the hostel, which is their club as well, are on an equality. I did not remind my questioner of this—I merely smiled and said nothing, and he of course understood and respected my reticence. With a pleasant nod and a condescending let-us-say-no-more-about-it wave of the hand he passed on to ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... is still sub judice, and I must therefore speak of it with some reticence. But all who are interested in M. Zola's origin and career will do well to read the admirable volume written by M. Jacques Dhur, and entitled 'Le Pere d'Emile Zola,' which the Societe Libre d'Edition des Gens de Lettres (30, Rue Laffitte, Paris) published a short time ago. This will show ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Scollays was a distinct success, so far as establishing the personality of Mr. Thomas Sylvester Hobhouse went. At first they looked at him with an obvious suspicion and replied to his questions with a reticence that gave him a few uneasy moments. But in ten minutes his indefatigable friendliness had conquered the household and he knew that he was safe to visit that knoll whenever the fancy took him. Peter senior told him a long story about the ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... the day in reading proofs, superintending the execution of orders, and looking after the affairs of the printing-house. He said not a word to David. While youth bears a child's heart, it is capable of sublime reticence. Perhaps, too, Lucien began to dread the Phocion's axe which David could wield when he chose, perhaps he was afraid to meet those clear-sighted eyes that read the depths of his soul. But when he ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... sharply. I did not say anything. I felt that I did not understand the inspector sufficiently yet to speak. He seemed to be pleased with my reticence. At all events, his manner grew even kinder ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... amicable relations of the two countries. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, who was selected for this important duty, was instructed to explain to the British Government that the peculiar relation of the States to the Federal Government, and the reticence and reservations consequent upon a change of administration, had hitherto restrained the action of the President in the formation and declaration of his policy; that without foreign interference the condition of affairs still afforded reasonable hope of a satisfactory solution; and especially ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... genial and generous nature were all but irresistible. Nevertheless they were chagrined by his singular indifference to their allurements; and many a fair one, even more interested than inquisitive, vainly sought to break the unconquerable reticence which, under apparent frankness, he relentlessly maintained. He had, indeed, once been married, for a few years only; but his wife was not of those who can concentrate and absorb the fulness of another soul, wedding memory with immortal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... puzzled, not to say piqued, by this curious reticence; he begged hard for names; but Medhurst was adamant. "No, no," he replied; "we detectives have our own just pride in our profession. If I told you now, you would probably spoil all by some premature action. You are ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a soul to exchange a word with except the waiter, who, like most of his class in England, had evidently left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissipate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room under such circumstances as these, with no book at hand save the county directory, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... school. Already I was sick with fear, and in place of my dreams I distressed myself by visualising the scenes of the life I dreaded—the Meat Market, the dusty shadows of the gymnasium, the sombre reticence of the great hall. All that my lost tranquillity had given me was a keener sense of my own being; my smallness, my ugliness, my helplessness in the face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to dull my emotions in unpleasant circumstances and thus achieve ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Bruni. He wondered whether he had ever seen the man before, or whether the face only seemed familiar because it was the type of a class of faces all more or less alike, all intensely respectable and not without refinement, expressing a grave reticence that did not agree with the fluent speech, and a polite reserve at odds with the inquisitive ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to talk. There was indeed, no particular reason for reticence; I could not, she naturally felt, turn the knowledge ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... lessening pauperism are afraid of tracing back its growth to the frequency of births under wretched conditions. One begins to question whether after all sweet charity or dignified philanthropy has not acted with an unwise reticence. Among the problems which defy practical handling this is the most complicated. The pauperism which arises from marriage is the result of the worst elements of character legalized. In America, where the boundaries of wedlock ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... individuals infected, but upon the health and well-being of the community as a whole. This ignorance of the nature of the problem and of the grave issues involved naturally stands in the way of the evil being grappled with effectually. Furthermore, the policy of reticence which has prevailed in the past, while it has led to the omission of proper instruction of the young, either by their parents or as part of our system of education, has not prevented the dissemination of an incomplete ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... a letter. I believe the mission (Catholic) has been allowed some form of communication. On the same occasion I sent down letters and presents. They were refused; and the officer of the deck on the German war-ship had so little reticence as to pass the remark, "O, you see, you like Mataafa; we don't." In short, communication is so completely sundered that for anything we can hear in Samoa, they may all have been hanged at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seeming, on the contrary, to resume all his interest in it, Darrell contrived with admirable dexterity to elude for the present all overtures pressed upon him, and even to convince his admirers, not only of his wisdom, but of his patriotism in that reticence. For certainly he thus managed to exercise a very considerable influence: his advice was more sought, his suggestions more heeded, and his power in reconciling certain rival jealousies was perhaps greater than would have been the case if he had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... error, and all that body of rejected doctrine which, though he himself be free from it, must yet be slowly uprooted from the general belief; if emotion is so sacred to him that his native and habitual reticence becomes so sensitive in this most private part of life as to make it here something between God and him only; if his heart of charity and hand of friendship find out his fellow-men with no intervention; if for these reasons, or any of them, or if from that modesty of nature, which is so much more ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... again, Mrs. Munn sailed away, and her son hung himself farther over the window-sill. Evidently he had inherited none of his mother's reticence. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... propylon, great open courtyard with pillared galleries, halls, chambers, sanctuary. Its dignity and its sobriety are matchless. I know they must be, because they touched me so strangely, with a kind of reticent enchantment, and I am not by nature enamored of sobriety, of reticence and calm, but am inclined to delight in almost violent force, in brilliance, and, especially, in combinations of color. In the Alhambra one finds both force and fairylike lightness, delicious proportions, delicate fantasy, a spell as of subtle magicians; in the Cappella ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... that he had not heard of this old woman and the loss of her son. He had shrunk from all knowledge and mention of this little home and its inmates. The country folk had recognized and respected his reticence, which to people near the soil seems natural. This had been the only issue in his life that he had dodged, and he was bitterly repenting his negligence. In memory of his mother, he should have ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of us calm enough to escape panic was, how had the weed jumped the saltband? It was answered simultaneously by many learned professors whose desire to break into print and share the front page with the terrible grass overcame their natural academic reticence. There was no doubt that originally the peculiar voracity of the inoculated plant had not been inherited; but it was equally uncontroverted that somehow, during the period it had been halted by the salt, a mutation had happened and now every wind blowing over the weed carried seeds no ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... before. She loved him because she believed in him against the evidence of her senses. If she only knew! A diabolical impulse seized him to awaken her then and there and force her to listen to a full confession of his iniquities, without reticence and without apology. Surely no woman's love could stand before that appalling revelation? But no; what other women would do he would not undertake to say; she would only look at him with her innocent eyes, reiterating ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... tingle of triumph warmed him. The daughter of Big Joe Powers, the grim gray pirate who worked the levers of the great Transcontinental Railroad system, had taken pains to be nice to him. The only fly in the ointment of his self-satisfaction had been Alice Frome's reticence. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... troubled in her heart for fear that he might not return, despite the declaration she had made to him in one hysterical moment. It was difficult for her to keep up the show of cheerfulness that was expected of her. Reticence became her strongest characteristic. She persistently refused to be drawn into a discussion of her relations with the absent one. Yetive was piqued by her manner at first, but wisely saw through the mask as time went on. She and Prince Dantan had many quiet and interesting chats concerning ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... ascribed his behaviour of the previous day, his first, false version, his reticence and his confusion to scruples of conscience and vague apprehensions. Anxious about the consequences of the business and dreading lest his testimony might complicate it, he had tried to avoid the ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... vast mass of sentimentalities swathing the whole woman question. It is a question of capital importance to all human beings, and it deserves to be discussed honestly and frankly, but there is so much of social reticence, of religious superstition and of mere emotion intermingled with it that most of the enormous literature it has thrown off is hollow and useless. I point for example, to the literature of the subsidiary question of woman suffrage. It fills whole libraries, but nine tenths ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road, this!—not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the piquant lifted chin which mocked his caution, the little imps of raillery that flashed from the dark live eyes. In spite of a passionate craving for the adventure of life she had a good deal of reticence and an abundant self-respect. He felt that he had said more ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... word from him should change the tenor of the emperor's thoughts. The plan he was thinking out must be allowed to ripen to its full horror. The lowering, uncertain glance that Caracalla cast round the tablinum at the close of the physician's narrative showed that the prefect's reticence was an unnecessary precaution. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... race—present and future—in devoting the crowning effort of my long scientific career to the production of modern biological remedies such as would be felt in the reproductive powers of the people—a consideration concerning which the old-time, prudish reticence is a foolish figment ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... conditions, a consciousness of ever-present danger haunted every thinking mind. The candor of the outspoken was regarded with doubt, and the reticence of the more cautious, with distrust. It was a trying time for sensitive, impressionable natures with nothing to do. Perhaps all this may account for the persistency with which I sat in my open window. I was thus sitting one night—a memorable one to me—when I heard a sharp exclamation ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... This reticence exasperated the curiosity of the young ladies, who crowded round little Giry, begging her to explain herself. They were there, side by side, leaning forward simultaneously in one movement of entreaty and fear, communicating their terror ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... gift; yet both knew that it might entail an obligation of sacrifice. But the sacrifices, were they needful, would be made, and they would not be mentioned. It may be, indeed, that the very knowledge of their friendship's strength constrained them to a particular reticence in their ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... above all things, one of Nature's gentlemen, whom the rough world will never disguise nor the sea life change. He would be thirty-five years of age now, I remember, but he has not lost his boyish face, and there is the same shy reticence which he never could conquer. He has come here according to his promise. A ship lies in the offing, and he would have me go to it. How little he knows of my true condition in this dreadful place. How may a woman go when a hundred ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... that is to say, blond, florid, slightly PROFUSE;—yet the better kind of Hanoverian, little or nothing of the worse or at least the worst kind. The eyes, as I say, are gray, and quiet, almost sad; expressive of reticence and reflection, of slow constancy rather than of SPEED in any kind. One expects, could the picture speak, the querulous sound of maternal and other solicitude; of a temper tending towards the obstinate, the quietly unchangeable;—loyal patience not wanting, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... been called to him as a lad of parts, his Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he remained till shortly before that young nobleman's death. The hunchback passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry flash of his eyes. After the Marquess's death he had lived for a while from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... whirling thoughts burned the one longing to hide Elaine safe in his arms and tell her it would all come right somehow. A silence fell on the group as they walked. Even to the Baron, who was not a close observer, the present reticence of these two newly-betrothed lovers was apparent. He looked from one to the other, but in the face of neither could he see beaming any of the soft transports which he considered were traditionally appropriate to the hour. "Umph!" he exclaimed; "it was never like this in my day." Then his ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... a fit of unguarded confidence. Cross-examining her was a most diplomatic proceeding. If you went the right way about it, you could get anything out of her without committing yourself in the slightest way; whereas, if you set to work wrongly, you might not only be foundered by a provoking reticence, which she could assume at times, but might, also, some day hear that your secret intentions and machiavellian conduct were the common ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the personal application. It would have appeared less admissible among her friends at The Grange, but she felt that the constraints of English reticence were out of place in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... a little hurt by being questioned. She missed the reticence of a gentleman. Then she reproached herself for not understanding that his frank curiosity was a delicate appeal to her confidence in him, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... mistake, and there may really have been a misunderstanding, at any rate, I had to suffer for my unyielding way, inasmuch as the behaviour of our hosts immediately changed from talkative hospitality and childish curiosity to dull silence and suspicious reticence. The people sat around us, sullen and silent, and would not help us in any way, refused to bring firewood or show us the water-hole, and seemed most anxious to get rid of us. Under these circumstances it was ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... understand each other. We are about to make a call on two of our oldest and most respectable townsfolk. If in the course of that call I choose to make mention of the twenty-dollar bill left with Loton, well and good, but if not, you are to take my reticence as proof of my own belief that they had nothing to do ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... thousand ways, seeking to discover her secret; but she was a person both faithful and discreet. Of her interview and journey he got only such news as was already published on the housetops. At such reticence he took umbrage; he grumbled, sulked, and would not speak to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... his boyish reticence could not speak out his inmost thought, or he would have added: 'And the greatest and the grandest man I ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 'I never saw another young person just like her. She's so deep and hidden in her nature, one cannot easily read her thoughts. I wish sometimes she was more open and confiding; but she is a darling, for all her reticence.' ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... happened that they were alone, as a great dinner party had been postponed at the last moment owing to some Royal indisposition. Lord Chelsford in his wife's presence was careful to treat me as an ordinary guest; but directly she had left the room and we were alone he abandoned his reticence. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tedious illness is the only allusion which Seneca has made to the circumstances of his childhood. The ancient writers, even the ancient poets, but rarely refer, even in the most cursory manner, to their early years. The cause of this reticence offers a curious problem for our inquiry, but the fact is indisputable. Whereas there is scarcely a single modern poet who has not lingered with undisguised feelings of happiness over the gentle memories of his childhood, not one of the ancient poets has systematically ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... him look at her. Should he venture to ask her why she sighed? Was her reticence about her own affairs as inviolable as it had often been convenient for rather an egoistical young man to think it? But since her engagement to Rodney, Henry's feeling towards her had become rather complex; equally divided between an impulse ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... reticence finally broke Miss Bergyn did understand. The superintendent nurse knew Bennett only by report. But Lloyd she had known for years, and realised that if she had yielded, it had only been after the last hope had been tried. In the end Lloyd told her everything that had occurred. But, though ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... really must tell you—not a person mentioned the Lusitania at the tea-party, which was, I suppose, a handsome effort at reticence, since the lady of the house was an American, and the Stars and Stripes, in little, were ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... and with something of evasiveness or reticence in the old fellow's manner, greatly troubled Dale. Not at all from selfish motives; but because it confirmed a suspicion that he had long entertained. Although invisible locally, disgraced and hiding somewhere at a distance, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... modulations of other tones he knew and loved. There was something in its cadences that recalled to him the flute-notes of the English white-throat, a melody that attracts only to disappoint. He smiled softly at her transparent reticence, and followed up his question. "Is it because the freshness of the morning tempts you out?" he said. "Or"—dropping his voice with sudden meaning—"is it because you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of composure but in truth she was badly shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the table so that he shouldn't see they were ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... be the intellectual aspect of his defection, though of course there were many accelerating causes at work. Perhaps if Gregory XVI. had met his appeal with a few words of simple explanation and advice, instead of with that mysterious reticence which is falsely supposed to be the soul of diplomacy, the issue might have been as happy as it was miserable. De Lamennais himself, in his Affaires de Rome, makes the same remark in so many words. Again, the illiberal and ungenerous persecution of his triumphant adversaries, who endeavoured ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... could I give? His charming frankness quite disarmed me, and the more completely because I felt that a dignified reticence would have been yet more characteristic of this clean, sweet youth, with his noble unconsciousness alike of evil and of evil speaking. I told him the truth—that there could be no harm at all with such a fellow as himself. And he wrung my hand until he hurt it; but the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... articulate art the very things they know most deeply. Most of the women who have written have said only the lesser phases of themselves; they have unwittingly withheld their deepest and most poignant wisdom because of a native reticence of speech. Many a time they reach a heaven of understanding shut to men; but when they come back, they cannot tell the world. The rare artists among women, like Sappho and Mrs. Browning and Christina ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... are apt to be tiresome when we are not athirst for information; but, to be quite fair, we must admit that superior reticence is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but silence does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... what his intents may be? Wicked seemingly and not charitable! His despatches to Committee openly denounce a factious Convention, for the woes it has brought on France and him. And his speeches—for the General has no reticence! The Execution of the Tyrant this Dumouriez calls the Murder of the King. Danton and Lacroix, flying thither as Commissioners once more, return very ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... her. He would not drive to her in his own carriage, and Koremitz often lent him his own horse to ride. He took no attendant with him except the one who had asked for the "Evening-Glory." He would not even call on the nurse, lest it might lead to discoveries. The lady was puzzled at his reticence. She would sometimes send her servant to ascertain, if possible, what road he took, and where he went. But somehow, by chance or design, he always became lost to her watchful eye. His dress, also, was of the most ordinary ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... at the revelation that a gentleman could see so much in mere vulgarities of opinion, and though she uttered as few words as possible, conversing only in sad smiles and headshakes and in intercepted movements toward the door, she happened, in some unguarded lapse from her reticence, to use the expression that she was disappointed in him. He caught at it and, seeming to drop his field-glass, pressed upon her ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... Petersburg; the 'vie intime' of the eighteenth century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate wit of Voltaire. Who is there interested in men ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was so worn out as poor Miss Martha, anticipating her cousin's reproaches. However, her wonted silence and reticence stood her in good stead, for he merely asked, after little ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... teacher or minister to say a word about certain moral scandals. But they do not say anything about the immorality and the indelicacy and the indecency of doing them. Let us have done with that hypocrisy, brethren. I am arguing for no disregard for proprieties; I want all fitting reticence observed, and I do not wish indiscriminate rebukes to be flung at foul things; but it is too much to require that, by reason of the very inky cloud of filth that they fling up like cuttlefish, they should escape censure. Let us remember Paul's exhortation, and reprove because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... now, why Miss Evelina had refused to tell him the man's name, and he honoured her for her reticence. He perceived, too, the hideous temptation with which she was grappling when she begged him to leave her. She had feared that she would tell him, and he must never let ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... reticence from your British forebears. The British have 'illuminating flashes of silence.' It is one of ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the modern orchestral colouring. But the superiority must be allowed to attach to Haydn, inasmuch as his colouring is the more expansive and decided. Some of his works, even of the later period, show great reticence in scoring, but, on the other hand, as in "The Creation," he knew when to draw upon the full resources of the orchestra. It has been pointed out as worthy of remark that he was not sufficiently trustful of his instrumental army to leave it without the weak ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... quelque exces, c'est par la bienveillance pour les oeuvres de ceux qui pensent autrement que moi.—MONOD, R. Hist. xvi. 184. Nous n'avons nul interet a faire parler l'histoire en faveur de nos propres opinions. C'est son droit imprescriptible que le narrateur reproduise tous les faits sans aucune reticence et range toutes les evolutions dans leur ordre naturel. Notre recit restera completement en dehors des preoccupations de la dogmatique et des declamations de la polemique. Plus les questions auxquelles nous aurons a toucher ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... think everybody is a little vulgar now, except old women like me, who adhered to the Faubourg while you all were dancing and changing your dresses seven times a day at St. Cloud. There is a sort of vulgarity in the air; it is difficult to escape imbibing it; there is too little reticence, there is too much tearing about; men are not well-mannered, and women are too solicitous to please, and too indifferent how far they stoop in pleasing. It may be the fault of steam; it may be the fault of smoking; it may come from that flood of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... cross-examination O'Reilly wrung from him the reluctant admission that everything seemed favorable for a crossing some time that night, and that he had selected a promising point. Beyond that the old man would say nothing. Johnnie asked himself uneasily if this reticence was not really due to apprehension rather than to sullenness. Whatever the cause, it was not particularly reassuring, and as evening came on Johnnie found himself growing ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... astonished to hear of the affair, which had perplexed and puzzled her not a little; for, as her pupils had all felt themselves more or less to blame in the matter, they had all kept it from her knowledge, and she had only guessed from their reticence, and the air of mystery with which they received every allusion to their absent school-fellow, that something was wrong. Before morning school she called the girls together, told them how pained and grieved she had been, and gave them a little lecture ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... Moreover, reticence, the indispensable quality, not of statesmen merely, but of their intimates, was not so rare a virtue in these days as in our own; and as none would have expected Horace, in a poem of this kind, to make any political confidences, he can scarcely be supposed to have written it with any ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... clever. When the Duchess found that he could talk without any shyness, that he could speak French fluently, and that after a month in Italy he could chatter Italian, at any rate without reticence or shame; when she perceived that all the women liked the lad's society and impudence, and that all the young men were anxious to know him, she was glad to find that Silverbridge had chosen so valuable a friend. And then he was beautiful to look at,—putting her almost in mind of another ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... in quills, carried behind the ear, and sold at Suez—not at Cairo for fear of consequences. Yet neither promises nor bribes would persuade the poorest to break through the rule of silence. The whole might have been a canard: on the other hand, there was also a valid reason for reticence; the open mouth would not long have led to a sound throat. So our many informants contented themselves with telling us frequent tales of gold ornaments picked up after rain; they showed us a ring made from a bit found on the Tabk road, and they invariably assure us ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... might see Hugh alone. But he came in late, haggard and pale, living evidence of a sleepless night. Veath was with him and her heart sank. During the meal the good-natured Indianian did most of the talking, being driven at last, by the strange reticence of his companions, to the narration of a series of personal experiences. Struggle as he would, he could not bring a mirthful laugh from the girl beside him, nor from the sour visaged man beyond. They laughed, of course, but it was the laugh ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... methods were absolutely alien to his nature, but he had to set against his own convenience the immeasurable disappointment which his refusal would cause his readers. It was one of the most pathetic tragedies of genius that the dictates of an austere reticence were so often set at nought by the impulses of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... the reticence of the authorities, it is at present impossible to arrive at a definite conclusion as to the nature or extent of the incident, but it is quite certain that public interest will be much excited when details are forthcoming. All sorts of rumours attain credence in the ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... of this reticence, expressing itself on occasions as resistance, it seems an inappropriate response to the needs and opportunities of our day and age and one of the many factors responsible for the alienation between young and old which is popularly termed the "generation gap." Our trainees were ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... gesture with her pretty hand as if to dismiss the subject; and, after wondering a moment at the girl's singular reticence after her previous frankness, Andras thought only of enjoying her grace and charm, until the Tzigana gave him her hand and bade him good-night, begging him to remember that she would be very happy and proud to receive him in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the antique feeling for literary unity, and abstention from irrelevancy, the frank love for all that is beautiful or charming, for the beauty of the body and for everything connected with the joy of mortal life, the antique reticence as to hopes or fears of what was beyond the grave,—these qualities ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... horse trader, stood against a window, with his big straw hat on. His trotting sulky was outside. Gagnant, the established merchant, with contented reticence of well-to-do-ness, was remarking of some enterprise, "It won't pay its tobacco." Toutsignant, his insecure and overdaring young rival; who was bound to cut trade, and let calculation take care of itself, sat on the opposite side of the room, and, bantering ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Bodies has already been discussed, and attention has been drawn to the importance of the history given by the patient and to the various sources of fallacy or deception—in children it may be artful reticence or misrepresentation, in adults, the possibility ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Susannah hoped by the reticence of her tone to ward off further excess of sympathy. "I am no longer bound to your Church, Mr. Smith. I should not be honest if I did not tell you ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... German tongue, still carried, deep in his nature, an odd compound of Indian and German transcendentalism; essentially Indian in opinion and prejudice, but German in instinct and thought. A little liquor only mellowed him—it thawed away the last remnant of Indian reticence. He talked with his associates upon all the knotty questions of law, art, and religion. Indian Theism and Pantheism were measured against the Gospel as taught by the land-seeking, fur-buying adventurers. A good class ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... a great favorite with us, and with all the officers of the regiment. He talked less than any man I ever knew, but there was nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine,—warmth and brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of shyness, he impressed every one as a man ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... absent. It seems to me now sometimes, that perhaps he was wisely retentive of his feelings, and waited a better time to let them flow. For, ever as we grew older, we drew nearer to my father, or, more properly, my father drew us nearer to him, dropping, by degrees, that reticence which, perhaps, too many parents of character keep up until their children are full grown; and by this time he would converse with me most freely. I presume he had found, or believed he had found me trustworthy, and incapable of ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... touched him deeply, and he suspected the other men of the same emotions, but by that time they had regained the independent, self-contained poise of the frontiersman. They read it with unmoved faces, and tossed it aside with a more than ordinarily rough joke or oath. Thorpe understood their reticence. It was a part of his own nature. He felt more than ever akin ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... case of Boswell and Johnson, it is Boswell's magnificent scorn of reticence which has done the trick, like the spurt of acid, of which Browning speaks in one of his best similes. The final stroke of genius which has established the Life of Johnson so securely in the hearts of English readers, lies in the fact that Boswell has given us something to compassionate. As ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the financier possessed a certain sympathy. Perhaps even there was a lurking sense of honour in him, where a woman, whom he regarded as another man's property, was concerned. Again it may simply have been that he understood the other's reticence, and it suited him for the moment to restrain his grosser inclinations. He laughed. And it ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum |
