"Reticent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how reticent owners of automobiles are concerning the shortcomings and eccentricities of their machines; they seem leagued together to deceive one another and the public. The literal truth can be found only in letters of complaint written to the manufacturers. The man who one moment says his machine is ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... reticent man, with a palate of wood, And I judge by results if a vintage be good. But I own to the charm of my Wine-merchant's worst, If he gives me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Rose was inclined to be chatty and draw Edith out in regard to city life. She responded good-naturedly as long as Rose confined herself to generalities, but was inclined to be reticent on ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... ideal one; Garry, tall, fair and winsome; myself, dark, dreamy, reticent; and between us, linking all three in a perfect bond of love and sympathy, our ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... impression on your imagination," said Rosa; and Floracita explained that it was because she had never seen anything like her. She did not mention that she had seen that lady on the island. The open-hearted child was learning to be reticent. ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... more the responsibility of the Chameleon devolved almost entirely upon me. Child that I was, knowing no world but my own vanity, and pleased with those who fed its sensitive love of approbation rather than with the just and reticent, I harbored no distrust till one day when Axiom visited the office, and I was drawing my three dollars from the treasurer, I heard Mr. Watch ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... a bronze statue, or a polished obelisk of porphyry. To-day as he curiously watched the quivering yet proud little girlish face, her brave struggles to meet the emergency touched some chord far down in his reticent stern nature, and he suddenly stooped, and took her hand, folding it up ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... even any place of refuge for her. Breathing with difficulty, and seeing nothing that was before her, she was chained to her seat by a feeling that was half terror, half joy—a feeling utterly inexplicable in its total destruction of her self-possession to reticent Leam, who hitherto had held herself in such proud restraint, and had kept her soul from all influence from the world without. And now the citadel was stormed and she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... shyest, most reticent, most uncouth and awkward-appearing, homeliest and worst-dressed of any in the crowd. So superlatively wretched a butt could not hope to look on long unmolested. He was attacked one day as he stood near a tree by a larger boy with others at his back. But the crowd ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to "a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the Fides Publica, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... not much to say, but it could be said over and over again in various ways. It was the one night of the world, and her overwrought feeling sought relief. It would not be so again. She would be more reticent and more coquettish about her lover, but now it was all ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... touched your dear father in the road, so near the spot where the Holkitts' house once stood. I could never discover whether Lady Holkitt or her daughters ever saw anything of a superphysical nature in their house; after my experience they were always very reticent on that subject, and naturally I did not like to press it. On Lady Holkitt's death, Margaret and Alice sold the house, which was eventually pulled down, as no one would live in it, and I believe the ground on which it stood is now a turnip field. That, my ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... back like a steel-trap to its usual indifferent expression, smiled nonchalantly at Merril's remark. One whose reticent habit makes his secrets so absolutely secure as Hunt's private affairs always were is stirred to amusement rather than trepidation by random guesses which ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... friend's identity his discretion might readily be relied upon. And so the sequel proved. During our repast, however, I felt a little doubtful about one of the waiters who know French, and I therefore cautioned M. Zola and M. Desmoulin to be as reticent as possible. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.[1] In his estimation of men ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... his strange host necessarily spoke a good deal while welcoming him and offering him the hospitalities of his abode, he was by no means communicative. On the contrary, it was evident that he was naturally reserved and reticent, and that although polite and gentle in the extreme, there was a quiet grave dignity about him which discouraged familiarity. It must not be supposed, however, that he was in any degree morosely silent. He was simply quiet ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... strange to him, when he had always been able to advance so swiftly in his relations with others to a point of frankness and even brotherliness, to discover that there was a whole world of emotion beyond that. He was really deeply reserved and reticent; but he admitted even comparative strangers so easily and courteously to his house of life, that few suspected the existence of a secret chamber of thought, with an entrance contrived behind the pictured arras, which was the real fortress of his inner existence, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... understand the kind of superstitious apprehension I feel about Roderick, who is the last and only one left to come after me in the old place. He has always needed special looking-after, being extremely curious and impulsive while, at the same time, nervous and reticent. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... possible, lure them away to a service of song—Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. It was a bitter place in a narrow street. The street was gay and loud with humanity, only at its centre was a dark and forbidding door, reticent and inhuman. There was no sign of good-fellowship here; no warm touch of the flesh. It was as brutal as justice; it seemed to have builded itself on that most horrible of all texts: "Be ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... learnt at last the whole story of Hester's birth and of her tragic death. The beauty of Meynell's relation to the mother and child was plainly to be seen through a very reticent narrative; and to the tale of those hours in Long Whindale no man of heart like the little Bishop could have listened unmoved. At the end, the two men clasped hands in silence; and the Bishop looked wistfully at the priest that he and the diocese ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Nina and Elise were beautiful sailing yachts, and would have been an ornament to any waters. Clark was described by village contemporaries as a man of somewhat peculiar temperament. He was naturally reticent, and seemed to be most highly appreciated by his intimates. In educational matters he was greatly interested, having given largely to Williams College, of which he was a graduate and Doctor of Laws. He contributed generously to the welfare of the schools of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, Brian was over-reticent. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... into the country on business, she would go miles out of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the women who seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmothers who spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell her their story without realizing they were doing so. She went to country funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer's daughter who was to be married could count on a wedding ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... condition to which the detective could readily agree. It was no part of his duty to supply the newspapers with the intimate details associated with every crime. He was habitually reticent toward reporters, yet he was not unpopular with them. For, besides recognizing and admiring his unbending honesty, his courage and resourcefulness, they were aware that on the rare occasions when he took them into his confidence, they could rely upon his statements as upon a mathematical ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... too, who refused to believe any good of the self-contained, reticent stranger. The nephew of somebody's brother-in-law, who lived in Lexington Avenue, was one. He had been promised, by the cousin of somebody else, the position of clerk with Otto Kling, and although Otto had never heard of it, he WOULD have heard of it and the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... often detrimental to a literary career in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity, in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that makes trifles significant. Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike; he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... appears to have been always curiously timid and reticent; to have suffered from excessive moral cowardice. On his first arrival in London and association with the young painters of the day, he began to feel some shame at his early imprudence, and some alarm lest it should present any hindrance to his professional advancement. He ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... type; but there were others—professional men who did not make or sell things—and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the fittings of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... under their weight. President Grant was then filling his first term as Chief Executive of the nation and, although Mr. Gouverneur had known him in Mexico, it was my first glimpse of the distinguished man. As a whole we were a merry party, but Grant was a reticent guest. General Sherman, however, as usual made up for all deficiencies in this line, and as he sat next to me I found him to be a highly agreeable conversationalist. This dinner party proved a great social success and at its conclusion a number ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... feelings with regard to myself changed. I was no longer reticent about my rank. I displayed my uniform in a public restaurant, without any reserve. In consequence they'd only let me eat three-and-sixpence worth for my first meal. This time I was not so clever, it appeared, as I thought. I had erroneously supposed that by not being a civilian ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... some neighbours came hurriedly in, and spoke with me of the same matter eagerly. They pleaded with me on no account to miss the event of the day, upon whose specific nature they were somewhat reticent. They evinced the warmest possible interest in my personal relation to it; as people do who possess a happy secret that they wish, but may not feel at liberty, fully ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... neolithic folk, in Egypt and over a wide tract of country which includes Britain, of dismembering the dead body previous to its burial.[467] Mr. Lang, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Hartland, and others are strangely reticent on this subject. That Mr. Lang should be content to trace a story from the Vedas, in which Urvasi tells Pururavas that he must never let her see him naked, to "a traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette,"[468] ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... but agree, and I was glad that I had been discreetly reticent about my companion in talking with the friend who was to gain us entrance to the Avernus ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... but this before him was associated with something beyond love, which tended to increase rather than diminish it. When at last they left the room he did what was very unusual with him. He was reticent, like the ordinary middle-aged New-Englander. He took his wife's little, thin, veinous hand and clasped it tenderly. Her bony fingers ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... trouble in learning the names of their gentes, their order in the camping circle, &c., provided the interpreters were absent. During his visit to the Omaha, from 1878 to 1880, he did not find them very reticent in furnishing him with such information, though he was generally referred to the principal chief of each gens as the best authority for the names in his own division. But he found it very difficult to induce any of them to admit that the gentes had subdivisions, ...
— Osage Traditions • J. Owen Dorsey
... remarked sometimes, however, by those who knew them best, that the confidence between the two did not appear to be complete, since the wife was either very reticent about her husband's past life, or else, as seemed more likely, was imperfectly informed about it. It had also been noted and commented upon by a few observant people that there were signs sometimes of some nerve-strain upon the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appearance and manner are as frank as his welcome is hearty, is by no means reticent as to the matters in debate between him and the tenants holding from him and other members of his family for whom he acts as agent. To the question whether he goes in fear of his life, he replies, "Not at all; I take care ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... sought entertainment with such of the passengers as were congenial, though in this Isaac Hecker was more ready than his companions. Father Walworth tells an incident characteristic of both himself and his transcendental companion. He was admonishing young Hecker to be more reticent among the crew and was asked why. "You wouldn't like to kneel down and kiss the deck before all those sailors," said Walworth. "Why not?" was the reply. "Then do it." And down dropped Hecker to the deck and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... custom gave, in fact, the measure of his idealism. What he feared, or what he thought he feared, after nineteen years of unchecked entrance, could never have been ascertained; but there it was, that flower of something formal and precise, of something reticent, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... master and owner, Ben-Ahmed, was a stern and exacting, but by no means an ill-natured or cruel, man. He appeared to be considerably over sixty years of age, but showed no signs of abated vigour. In character he was amiable and just, according to his light, but dignified and reticent. ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman was not at all reticent, that she had been a low comedian and a dancer at Drury Lane Theatre, and like most comedians, high tragedy was her passion, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... the fine manners, the governing faculty, the reticent and dignified habit, of the Aristocracy. He deplored its limitations and its obduracy, its "little culture and no ideas." He made fun of it when its external manifestations touched the region of the ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. Some of the colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly answered. Yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection were, to the colonel, a revelation. Through air thick with flying particles of ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... all about yourself," she suggested. "Really, when I come to think of it, considering the length of our conversations, you have been remarkably reticent. You are the youngest of the family, are you not? How many brothers ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the mother, the sides and bottom of the picture fade off into artificial shadow, exquisitely used, without which that glorious light would have been dissipated over the picture, losing all its effectiveness and carrying power. See how finely he has understood the reticent tones of the man behind, and how admirably the loosely painted convention of landscape background is made to carry on the purely artificial arrangement of light and shade. In the Reynolds the shadowed figure on the left, and the shadows that flit across the skirts of the other two figures, ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... privately an account of the words used, with frequent use of the phrases, "I says to him," and "He says to me." But as evenings of the week went by, and other girls at Hilbert's, on leaving at the hour of seven, were met by courageous youths near the door, and by shyer lads at a more reticent spot (some of these took ambush in doorways, affecting to read cricket results in the evening paper), then Gertie Higham began to wonder whether the message had been communicated in the precise tone and manner that she had given it. The blue pinafored girls, stitching gold thread in the workroom ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... MUST give up possession IMMEDIATELY," which they have done, and in every instance before the quarter was up. Being naturally greatly astonished and perturbed, I made careful inquiries, and, at length—for the North Country rustic is most reticent and difficult to "draw"—succeeded in extracting from three of them the reason for the general exodus. The houses are all HAUNTED! There was nothing amiss with them, they informed me, till about three weeks ago, when they all heard all sorts of alarming noises—crashes as if every atom of crockery ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... candidacy of a man named Bryan six or seven thousand years later. Consequently the only history with which I took the trouble to familiarize myself was that which ante-dated my birth, and even that was somewhat hazy in the minds of historians. My predecessors in the patriarchal profession were a reticent lot, inherited no doubt from our original ancestor Adam, who could never be got to talk even to members of his immediate family on the subject of his early years. True, it is generally believed that he had no early ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... in this which shocked Mr Booker. He laughed inwardly, with a pleasantly reticent chuckle, as he thought of Lady Carbury dealing with his views of Protestantism,—as he thought also of the numerous historical errors into which that clever lady must inevitably fall in writing about matters of which he ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... heart's food, and to be desired to make one wise. A pure domestic love shines through it, tender, tranquil, and intense. Its inmates are daintily, delicately, yet distinctly drawn. They are courteous without being cold, playful without rudeness, serious, yet sensible, reticent or demonstrative as the case may be, yet in all things natural. It is not book, it is life. Each is a type of character matchless in its way, but each is also a living soul, whose outward elegance and grace are but the fit adjuncts of its inward purity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... think that any man could call himself Heneage's particular friend," he answered. "He is exceedingly reticent about himself and his doings. He is a man whom none of us ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... primarily one who produces a split or rent in the church. A heretic differs in doctrine from the religious body with which he is connected; a schismatic differs in doctrine or practise, or in both. A heretic may be reticent, or even silent; a schismatic introduces divisions. A heresiarch is the author of a heresy or the leader of a heretical party, and is thus at once a heretic and a schismatic. With advancing ideas of religious liberty, the odious sense once attached ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... found the village quiet and very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his determination to win ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually reticent where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient, serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only man that perfectly glorified God in His body no less than in His spirit. It is worthy of remark, that in choosing His disciples He chose plain men from the laboring classes, who had lived the most obediently to the simple, unperverted ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... than a few words in an investigating magistrate's presence, without betraying his intentions or his thoughts; without, in short, revealing more or less of the secret he is endeavoring to conceal. All criminals, even the most simple-minded, understand this, and those who are shrewd prove remarkably reticent. Confining themselves to the few facts upon which they have founded their defense, they are careful not to travel any further unless absolutely compelled to do so, and even then they only speak with the utmost caution. When questioned, they reply, of course, but always ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... when we set forth on our journey, the Hindu told me that he could get nothing from the lamas, who were very reticent. I will not stop to describe the life of the monks in those convents, for it is the same in all the cloisters of Ladak. I have seen the celebrated monastery of Leh—of which I shall have to speak later on—and learned there the strange existences the monks ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... usually reticent about his domestic sorrows while in exile, but when his thoughts were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness spoke the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these spasmodic periods ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... and perfect is its design—broad 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, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... council of war considered the matter. After the members had delivered their opinions, Pelissier expressed himself thus: "I too have my plan, but I will not breathe it to my pillow." There is, however, no need to be so reticent with the reader. The French commander had learned that the relief of the troops in the works before him took place at noon, and that in order to avoid the great additional loss which would be caused by introducing the new garrisons before the old ones moved ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... nothing to deny." He felt secure now that he knew she had been reticent with Tetlow as to the happenings in ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... anecdote ever told of Hendricks after he was forty—for he was not a man about whom anecdotes would hang well, though the town is full of them about John Barclay. So Hendricks lived a strong reticent man, who succeeded in business though he was honest, and who won in politics by choosing his enemies from the kind of noisy men who make many mistakes, and let every one know it. The time came when ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... oppressive, uncomfortable, muggy, unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; intent, assiduous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was almost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into some new terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before. What another nature felt in opposition to her own ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... youth, was not disposed to be reticent. The gist of his rambling statement was as follows. Rich uncle. Impecunious nephew. Visit of former to latter. Handsome tip, one sovereign. Impecunious nephew pouches sovereign, and ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... squire, "when I am so fortunate as to have something good, I will be as reticent ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one of the three who were "allowed" to pay their rents. Several Land League huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the "squatters" who have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another holding in Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large house, at the end of a good ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... answered his wife, "sure that something is troubling her very much, and I was about to speak of it to you. She is such a reticent, reserved child, that I did not like to try and force her confidence, although I have opened the way for her to give it to me if she ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... bore. I think there are not many things in poets' lives more touching than his silence, in verse, as to his own chief sorrow. A stranger intermeddles not with it, and he kept secret his brief lay on that insuperable and incommunicable regret. Much would have been lost had all poets been as reticent, yet one likes him better for it than if he had given us a new ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... While reticent as to his part at Gettysburg, he spoke with feeling of what his corps had been through, and knowing that both Mr. May and I were Massachusetts men took an evident pleasure in commending the regiments from that State. Of the 2d Massachusetts ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... that she felt was sitting there; and encountered the only sign Nathanael gave,—the unmistakeable "lover's eyes." They seemed to pierce into her heart and make it quiver—not exactly with tenderness, but with the strange controlling sense by which the love of a strong nature, reticent, and self-possessed even in its utmost passion—at times appears to enfold a woman—and any true affection, whether of lover or friend, to those who have never known it, and are unconsciously pining for lack of it, comes at first like water in ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... they were afraid she would expose their folly. If most people were fools, it was no fault of hers, and she was not obliged to indulge them by pretending to believe that they knew anything. She had once owned considerable property, but was reticent about her affairs, and told no one how much she was worth, though it was supposed that she had considerable ready money, besides her house and some other real estate. Mrs. Carteret was her nearest living relative, though her grand-nephew Tom ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... processes of our world—a view held by the Mutakallimun as represented by their spokesman al-Basir, but when it comes to explaining his own view of the nature of the divine will, and whether it is identical with God or not, he suddenly becomes reticent, refers us to the writings of Empedocles, and intimates that the matter is involved in mystery, and it is not safe to talk about it too plainly and openly. Evidently Ibn Zaddik was not ready to go all the length of Gabirol's emanationism ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... Hunter and Dyer and two staff captains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the empty chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword contrasting with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crape on his arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... the signs also visible everywhere of the Napoleon-worship which the Orleanists themselves had most favoured. Accident brought Dickens to England a fortnight later, when again we met together, at Gore-house, the self-contained reticent man whose doubtful inheritance was thus rapidly preparing to fall ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... strong an ally as she proved. But our ideas were no novelty to her, as we soon discovered. In truth, at nine years old, she was a bit of an enthusiast. She read with avidity religious biographies furnished by Miss Blomfield. She was delicate in health, but reticent and resolute in character. She was ready for any amount of self-sacrifice. She contributed liberally to our box; and I fancy that she and Polly continued it after I had gone ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... accusation of childishness by confessing her positive reason, so she answered, 'The man is a kind of man . . . I was not there long; I was glad to escape. He . . .' she hesitated: for in truth it was difficult to shape the charge against him, and the effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative, now that he had been spoken of, as to the detested doctor, reduced her to some confusion. She was also fatally anxious to be in the extreme degree conscientious, and corrected and modified ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of domestic happiness! What wonder that the American bachelor living in German lodgings feels half the terrors of the conjugal future removed, and rushes madly into love—and housekeeping! What wonder that I, a long-suffering and patient master, who have been served by the reticent but too imitative Chinaman; who have been "Massa" to the childlike but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the brotherly but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and have been proudly disregarded by the American aborigine, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is strange, for I know no one more reticent on such subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand pounds in ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... with her usual calm precision, proceeded to measure the tea into the fluted Georgian tea-pot. She could be as reticent in approval as in reprehension, and not for the world would she have seemed to claim any share in the turn that events appeared to be taking. She even preferred the risk of leaving her old friend to add ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... in his tone that the girl could not mistake; more especially as her sister had not been reticent about those notions ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... otherwise disturb me while I was writing or reading; yet at other times they could be positively impertinent, especially if excited. The islander is very nervous; when he is quiet, he is shy and reticent, but once he is aroused, all his bad instincts run riot, and incredible savageness and cruelty appear. The secret of successful treatment of the natives seems to be to keep them very quiet, and never to let any excitement arise, a point in which ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... thought you wouldn't mind'! How had this youth known that Sylvia would not understand passion so out of hand as this? And what had made it clear that he (Lennan) would? Was there, then, something in his face? There must be! Even Johnny Dromore—most reticent of creatures—had confided to him that one hour of his astute existence, when the wind had swept him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was in a dilemma. With Mullet dead, his power was at an end and his visions of wealth dissipated. He resolved to feather his nest immediately, and interviewed the surgeon. The surgeon was ominously reticent, the ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... this outrage carried to my house, and, his wounds not proving serious, he was soon well, and able to think of resuming his journey. He was very reticent concerning the motive of his servant for attempting his life, and foolishly, to my mind, made no effort to trace the miscreant. When leaving he said that in all probability he would return this way a few weeks later. So, my friend, he may be here any day, ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... infinitely astonished, for Maxwell, my companion on our bicycling and walking tour, was a quiet, somewhat dour but devout Scot, a history scholar of Balliol College, and usually most reticent of emotion. I talked of Border ballads and Lord Wardens of the marches, and endeavoured to draw him on the subject, but he ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... and that was the passionate absorption of her affection in him. To her parents she was dutiful and submissive, but when she grew up the yoke of her mother's will was felt to be oppressive. Her father's nature was more in sympathy with her own; but even with him she was reticent. She was good to all her brothers and sisters, and especially devoted to Dottie; but her affection for them was so strongly pervaded by anxiety and the overweight of responsibility that its pains overbalanced its pleasures. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... upon a pleasanter subject; and being unluckily a man of much courtesy and little curiosity, he complied with her request. This, however, was the only part of the ghostly traditions of her husband's home upon which she was so reticent. The haunted chamber, for instance—which, of course, existed at the Grange—she treated with the greatest contempt. Various friends and relations had slept in it at different times, and no approach to any kind of authenticated ghost-story, even ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... stories entitled Marjorie Daw and Other People (1873), Aldrich applied to his later prose work that minute care in composition which had previously characterized his verse—taking a near, new or salient situation, and setting it before the reader in a pretty combination of kindly realism and reticent humour. In the novels, Prudence Palfrey (1874), The (Queen of Sheba (1877), and The Stillwater Tragedy (1880), there is more rapid action; but the Portsmouth pictures in the first are elaborated with the affectionate touch shown in the shorter humourous tale, A Rivermouth Romance (1877). ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... but everything was of the best, and when three or four of the elder man's friends would come to dine, as happened occasionally, the contents of the cellar made them look at each other over their glasses. Mr. Lenox was very reticent in all matters relating to himself, and in his talks with his son, which were mostly at the table, rarely spoke of business matters in general, and almost never of his own. He had read well, and was fond of talking of his reading when he felt in the vein of ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... with a great number of refugees, many of whom are naturally very bitter against us. She is not reticent as to the tales which they told her. Not one of them all has a story of outrage. One woman, she says, was kicked by a drunken soldier, for which, ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the church, and his lips were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. He was animated enough when drawn out in discussion religious, educational, or political, but he had great powers of silence. I once took him to see General Grant, our reticent President. On that occasion they both seemed to do their best in the art of quietude. The great military President with his closed lips on one side of me, and my brother with his closed lips on the other side of me, I felt there was more ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... his mind. He could not cease his efforts; it seemed to him as if he were pleading for Alice herself. Captain Farnsworth, strange to say, was the only man in the fort who leaned to Beverley's side; but he was reticent, doubtless feeling that his position as a British prisoner gave him no right to speak, especially when every lip around him was muttering something about "infamous scalp-buyers and Indian partisans," with whom he was prominently counted by ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... for particulars of his life and career was of the most meagre nature. Although in common with the majority of other distinguished men, averse to giving publicity to the incidents of his life, he was otherwise than reticent with his friends, and was never happier than when surrounded by them. His house in Gloucester Place was a rendezvous during many years for his companions in arms, and his "Highland cousins" (as he fondly termed ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... who had always been singularly reticent concerning himself, both in public and private, the President gave free expression to what he regarded as the mistreatment and abuse he had received from political opponents. He looked forward, he said, "with the greatest anxiety for release ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... authorised lieutenant of Bentham, considered themselves to be in the van of progress. Though differing on many points from each other, and regarded with aversion or distrust by the recognised party leaders, they were in their most militant and confident state of mind. They were systematically reticent as to their religious views: they left to popular orators the public advocacy of their favourite political measures; and the credit of finally passing such of those measures as were adopted fell chiefly to the hands of the great political ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... guns are blazing away merrily now. The Boers, if they have guns, are very reticent. They have sent us a few shells, which have done no harm, mostly falling short. Hamilton is said to be at or near Winburg. If this is so, he will be threatening the retreat of the Boers here soon. Meantime a huge column, miles long, is crawling in the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... calmly as they peacocked across to St. George's Hospital, still laughing, and evidently discussing him. He did not know them, but he was accustomed to being known. His life had never been a cautious one. He was too modern to be very reticent, and he liked to be wicked in the eye of the crowd. Secret wickedness held little charm for him. He preferred to preface his failings with an overture on the orchestra, to draw up the curtain, and to act his drama of life to a crowded audience ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... came to her senses. A man was leaning over her. Half blind as she was, she could recognize Cho[u]bei. His look was grave. His voice was reticent and confused. "What has been going on here, O'Iwa Dono? Ah! Cho[u]bei comes at a bad season. Ma! Ma! The house, too; stripped bare to the very boards, and the season still wintry. Truly this Iemon is a beast—a very brute (chikusho[u]). What is Cho[u]bei to ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... self-command. In his ordinary temper the most humane of men, he simply raged at Gumbo. He would teach him, he said, to destroy his papers. And it appeared, from what we could piece together (for old Tom was very reticent and my father very incoherent), that he actually branded or tattooed a copy of what Gumbo had burnt on the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... to set, was she fit for that? She was so quaint, so original, there were such depths of passionate thought and feeling side by side with such strange shallows of social and intellectual ignorance—though reticent she was so direct, though tenacious so simple, her love, if difficult to win, had such marvelous vitality when won—that he felt as if she spoke a language sweeter and purer in many of its tones than the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Chase,—his able, but self-important Secretary of the Treasury,—not a word of reproach had fallen from him; he was still gentle, conciliatory, patient, forgiving on all occasions, and marvellously reticent and self-sustained. His transcendent moral qualities stood out before the world unquestioned, whatever criticisms may be made as to the wisdom of all ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... castle and among the servants; and during them the young couple were abundantly discussed. One of these discussions, occurring between the factor of the estate and Miss Campbell's maid, is worth repeating, as it indicated a possible motive in the reticent little lady's life with which her ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... it was a desire to sleep, and that alone, which had made her lie down there. Despite the rude and hectoring familiarity with which she treated her companion I could recognise in her the obsequious and reticent advances, the abrupt scruples and restraints which had characterised her father. Presently she rose and came to the window, where she pretended to be trying to close the shutters and ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... excellent man, who educated himself in solitude, was reticent in society, serious and discreet in his personal life and conduct toward others, he was free and unconstrained in his letters, in which he often reveals himself, without hesitation, just as he felt. We see him worried, troubled, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
