"Shyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or shyness, came upon him. The idea of meeting Mrs. Armstrong or even the members of the Smalley family he shrank from. Barbara invited him to come in, but he refused even to accompany her ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... affection as she left the house. Often when she longed to thank her for her many little acts of kindness, the words would not come. It was the habit of her life to repress every emotion of her mind, whether of bitterness or pleasure, and an unconquerable shyness seized upon her in any least attempt to reveal herself to those who were good ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... with a restless quivering. She had shown no shyness. She was bold, intense, absolutely without fear; and however stimulating or attractive the situation evidently was, it was neither new nor novel to her. Some strange leaven worked deep in her. Lane could put no other interpretation on her words ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... in his generous soul. He felt that the Duke had spoken slightingly of Esperance to wound him. Twice, during dinner, he had caught the covetous glance of the Duke fixed on Esperance, and he had suffered acutely in consequence. He looked at the Duke coldly; his shyness would have made him dumb had it not been for the sustaining power ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... shyness, she slipped behind the ample figure of her friend till only her fluttering skirt betrayed her presence. Perhaps she was saved something by this move; perhaps not. She did not see the beam of joy sparkling in his eye as he greeted Ermentrude; ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... human sweat was overpowering in the little ante-room. Some of the men had hearts and anchors and ships and dancing-girls tattooed in blue on their chests and arms. Some were skinny and others too fat. Very few looked fit. I remarked upon the shyness they suffered in walking ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... I see? The only person who much struck me was Lady S* *d's eldest daughter, Lady C.L. They say she is not pretty. I don't know—every thing is pretty that pleases; but there is an air of soul about her—and her colour changes—and there is that shyness of the antelope (which I delight in) in her manner so much, that I observed her more than I did any other woman in the rooms, and only looked at any thing else when I thought she might perceive and feel embarrassed by my scrutiny. After all, there may be something of association ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sedative to her fears. She did not know what she feared; but that made her anxiety the more pervasive. Her husband had not reverted to the subject of his Saturday talks. He was unusually kind and considerate, with a softening of his quick manner, a touch of shyness in his consideration, that sickened her with new fears. She told herself that it was because she looked badly—because he knew about the doctor and the nerve tonic—that he showed this deference to her wishes, this eagerness to screen her from moral draughts; but ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... shy of Cosmo—he had been away so long! but at intervals her shyness would yield and she would talk to him with much the same freedom as of old when they went to school together. In his rambles Cosmo would not pass her grandfather's cottage without going in to inquire after him and his ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... by this first interview, and deepened by all that followed, was that Queen Wilhelmina is a woman admirably fit for her task. Her natural shyness of temperament is sometimes misinterpreted as a haughty reserve. But that is not correct. She is, in fact, most sincere and straightforward, devoted to her duty and very intelligent in doing it, one of the ablest and sanest crowned ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... passed and the first shyness between them wore off, the primitive life he had led for so many years showed itself in a certain slowness of speech, a disinclination to make acquaintance with the neighbours, and an increasing tendency to long, tranquil silences with a pipe in the garden. But, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... brother's stories, of my play-box packed for a voyage, of the money in my pocket increased now by my eldest brother's unexpected generosity; and by dint of these violent mental exercises I had reduced my mind to a comfortable stupor by the time I reached the school gates. There I was overcome by shyness, and although I saw lights in the form-rooms and heard the voices of boys, I stood awkwardly in the playground, not knowing where I ought to go. The mist in the air surrounded the lights with a halo, and my nostrils were filled with the acrid ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... route. They had often found their way together through the tangled thickets of the Woods or along the shores of the Strathsey River, in season accompanied by dog and gun hunting fox and rabbit or partridge and wild duck. In Tom's company Nancy seemed to forget her shyness and would talk freely enough of her interests and her doings. He had always been fond of her, though until lately she had seemed to him hardly more than a child. This winter, as so frequently he had watched her sitting in the firelight listening to ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Squander, And now I've seen her up the stair, Oh Peace!—but here comes Captain Hare. Oh Peace! thou art the slumber of the mind, Untroubled, calm and quiet, and unbroken,— If that is Alderman Guzzle from Portsoken, Alderman Gobble won't be far behind. Oh Peace! serene in worldly shyness,— Make way there for ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... finished he would give it to her, for comparison, and criticism, if she chose to make any. She proved, however, a most charming critic, her shafts falling mainly upon herself, for she declared that her novel seemed unworthy of its elegant new dress. She conceived a shyness toward this quiet youth, and blushed when the striking situations and bold language of her tale came into the conversation. It was so different ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... it, especially about the dance; but he neglected to mention the kiss. Shyness overcame any desire that he had to strut. Besides, there was something about that kiss that made it impossible for him to tell any one, even Carl. When he went to bed that night, he did not think once about the coming football game. Before his eyes floated the girl in the corn-colored frock. He wished ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Above all, they differ in what is the most English of all English traits; that shame which the French may be right in calling "the bad shame"; for it is certainly mixed up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of which we called shyness. Even an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon or a large meal to ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... startling promptitude, but he did not return. It was an agony of perplexity and shyness which had moved him, not a willingness ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... instinctively eastward to the Pacific coast, and the civilised humanitarian in fearful anxious dependence watched the proceedings with awe. Through all these weeks he could never make up his mind to appeal to human compassion. In the wary primeval savage this shyness might have been natural, but the other too, the civilized creature, the thinker, the escaping "political" had developed an absurd form of morbid pessimism, a form of temporary insanity, originating ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the landlady, unwilling, I suppose, to lose any time, observing my silence and shyness before this entire stranger: "Come, Miss Fanny," says she, in a coarse familiar style, and tone of authority, "hold up your head, child, and do not let sorrow spoil that pretty face of yours. What! sorrows are only for a time; come, be free, here is a worthy gentleman ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... with Smoke he was always absurdly gentle; also he was fatherly; and at the same time betrayed a certain diffidence or shyness. He recognised that Smoke called for strong yet respectful management. The cat's circuitous methods puzzled him, and his elaborate pretences perhaps shocked the dog's liking for direct, undisguised action. Yet, while he failed to comprehend these tortuous feline mysteries, he was ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... cabinet—for mine, or that of any other teacher or pupil, she cared not a jot. Smart, trim and pert, she stood, a hand in each pocket of her gay grisette apron, eyeing Dr. John with no more fear or shyness than if he had been a picture instead of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... suspicion,—that she was a grande dame, engaged in some romantic "adventure." She was not more than nineteen or twenty years of age, and he felt—without knowing what it was—the atmosphere of sweet, womanly purity and innocence which surrounded her. The shyness of a ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... grateful and ready to be affectionate. Too ready, he thought. He looked so eagerly for shyness—a flicker of the eyelids, a mounting flush. He was no fool, nor was he in the least ascetic. In his dreamy life before Hazel came, he had thought of a sane and manly and normal future when he thought of it at all. Now he found that the reality was not like his dreams. The saneness ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Tommy's brother-officers on the following day that it was he rather than the bride who displayed all the shyness that befitted the occasion. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... from Charles Town three weeks before, and there she was to welcome him. There was a ladder further in along the pier, but before they reached it some one had thrown a rope and Bob swarmed up hand over hand. Jeremy, stricken with a sudden shyness, watched the happy, tearful scene that followed from ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... for his eyes were like sunbeams, and I thought they went through everything at that minute. I don't know what moved me, the consciousness of this inspection or the consciousness of what it discovered; but I know that floods of shyness seemed to flush my face and brow, and even to the tips of my fingers. I would have escaped if I could, but I could not; and I think Thorold rather liked what he saw. There was no hiding it, unless I hid it on his shoulder, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... feel any shyness about meeting this formidable conclave? Remember you have at least two good ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... a deep hazel, nearly allied to blackness. Her form had the height of the usual American girl, and the round plumpness of the usual Spanish girl. Even in her bearing and expression you could discover more or less of this union of different races. There was shyness and frankness; there was mistrust and confidence; there was sentimentality and gayety. In short, Clara Munoz Garcia Van Diemen was a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... By a fortunate chance he happened to take lodgings in a house where Mr. Levett frequently visited, who readily obtained Johnson's permission to bring Mr. Langton to him; as indeed, Johnson, during the whole course of his life, had no shyness, real or affected, but was easy of access to all who were properly recommended, and even wished to see numbers at his levee, as his morning circle of company might, with strict propriety, be called, for he received his friends when ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... was intoxicated with a felicity which seemed too immense, and yet I felt melancholy, but Henriette, who looked sad likewise, had no reproach to address to me. Our sadness was in reality nothing but shyness; we loved each other, but we had had no time to become acquainted. We exchanged only a few words, there was nothing witty, nothing interesting in our conversation, which struck us both as insipid, and we found more pleasure in the thoughts which filled our minds. We knew that we were going to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... highly improbable one," I began with some natural shyness at the idea of airing my wits before this master of inductive method; "in fact, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... hour they stood talking. Dolores said but little. She had felt no shyness with the stalwart sailor, but to this youth who had done her such signal service she felt unable so frankly to express her feelings ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... and, finding that his friend hung back, went out again and half led, half pushed him indoors. Mr. Bell's shyness he attributed to his having lived so long ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha, still out ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... inured, without ever reconciling, to a different state of things at home. The difference of the English and French character peeps out amusingly at this critical time of the day; when, oh! commend us to a Frenchman's vanity, however grotesque it may sometimes be, rather than to our own reserve, shyness, formality, or under whatever other name we please to designate, and seek to hide its unamiable synonym, pride. Vanity, always a free, is not seldom an agreeable talker; but pride is ever laconic; while the few words he utters are generally so constrained and dull, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... discussion, it might be well to remark upon one phase of expression that is sometimes a source of difficulty. This is the embarrassment incident to some forms of expression, notably oral. Many people are deterred from utilizing this form of expression because of shyness and embarrassment in the presence of others. If you have this difficulty in such excess that it hinders you from free expression, resolve at once to overcome it. Begin at the very outset of your academic career to form habits of disregarding your impulses ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... for me to learn, to really understand what the others were interested in. I did not dare to ask Terry too many questions, especially there, where everybody admired him and looked up to him so. A new shyness came over me when I began to see him in the light of a philosopher and a poet. He seemed so far above me and I felt myself so small and unworthy. But it was not long before I really began to feel a strong interest in all that was said, in all these social theories, in these ideas ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... where Henriette's name was never mentioned; no one, except the good old duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her to me; but by the way he welcomed me I guessed that his daughter had privately commended me to his care. At the moment when I was beginning to overcome the foolish wonder and shyness which besets a young man at his first entrance into the great world, and to realize the pleasures it could give through the resources it offers to ambition, just, too, as I was beginning to make use of Henriette's maxims, admiring their wisdom, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... profession would have cured me of being shy, but not a bit. Nervous disease, of course! Ought to be treated as such. Almost universal. Besides, even if he is shy, your governor—even if he's a hundredfold shy, that's no reason for keeping out of England. Shyness is not one of those diseases you can cure by change ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... approaching carelessly nearer as I spoke. "But I admit the road is solitary hereabouts, and no doubt an accident soon happens. Little fear of anything of the kind with you! I like you for it, like your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of disposition. But why not put it out of my power to hurt? Why not open the door and bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?" And I laid my hand demonstratively on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... So they went and made a four-handed game with two of the girls. And then Miss Clarissa read over the scenes in which Crawley had to take part with her, and made him repeat what he had learned, with appropriate action. And he got partially over his shyness, and spent rather a pleasant evening, thanks, a little bit, I fancy, to a little vanity. His friend came to have a chat with him after they had gone up to their rooms, and when he left Crawley could not help thinking what ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... an ardent wooer. It is an exceedingly interesting and amusing sight to see a couple of males paying their addresses to a coy and coquettish female; the apparent shyness of the suitors as they sidle up to her and as quickly retreat again, the shy glances given as one peeps from behind a limb watching the other—playing bo-peep—seem very human, and "I have seen," says an observer, "few more amusing ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... their mother's eyes and mischievous smile, had been brought in to the tea table to be polite and share a lump of sugar. And they had been very polite, and had shown the proper command over their shyness, and had shaken me decorously by the hand, and made their funny grave little bows and asked me how I did. And I had said something in praise of the little girl to her face, and Fulton had reproached me ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... abruptly Graham was introduced to the owner of the haunting face. He had lived too much in the great world all his life to retain the innate shyness of an Englishman; but he certainly was confused and embarrassed when his eyes met Isaura's, and he felt her hand on his arm. Before quitting the room she paused and looked back. Graham's look followed her own, and saw behind them the lady with the scarlet jacket escorted by ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the public platform had by this time become so insistent that Riley could no longer resist it, although modesty and shyness fought the battle for privacy. He told briefly and in his own inimitable fashion of these trying experiences. "In boyhood I had been vividly impressed with Dickens' success in reading from his own works and dreamed ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... little colony of about half-a-dozen pairs, and where I discovered they bred every year. At first I used to go to any bush where I had caught sight of a bird and sit down within a few yards of it and wait until the little hideling's shyness wore off, and he would come out and start reeling. Afterwards I always went straight to the same bush, because I thought the bird that used it as his singing-place appeared less shy than the others. One day I spent a long time listening ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... looks. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," such as we have seen was one of the governing principles of his life; and he read very well. Of nervousness there was no trace in his composition. To some one who asked him whether he ever felt any shyness as a speaker, he answered, "Not in the least; the first time I took the chair (at a public dinner) I felt as much confidence as if I had done the thing a hundred times." This of course helped him much as a ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... been a most engaging little companion, and really, he reflected, he had been extremely fond of her. It gave him a distinct pain to reflect that their relation had, in the nature of things, come to an end. Gradually, as they talked, the young girl growing out of the first restraint of her shyness, and falling back into something of her old manner, the first painful impression of her entire strangeness left Rainham. In spite of her mature, little society air, her engaging attempts at worldliness, she was, after all, not so grown-up as she seemed. The child gleamed out here ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... some day," he said, and to his amazement she flushed and looked away. They continued their walk, but there was a strange shyness in ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... which claims from others and by reason of its arrogance gets to be called pride; but her dignity strove above everything to be sufficient for itself. Such a spirit shrinks from claiming the appreciation it hungers for, shrinks back into itself, and passes for shyness, or humility, or anything but what it is, that supreme pride that seeks from the world its highest, the allegiance of love, in return for its own love of what is true and grand. Finding a denial in those it ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... field not far from the fence of the Harmon garden. And that which had broken the spell was the appearance of Alec Trenholme. He came right up to her, as if he had something of importance to say, but either shyness or a difficulty in introducing his subject made him hesitate. Something in his look caused her ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... withal that you almost see the animal spirit careering within; the drooping shoulder, the rounded bust, clean limbs, well-turned ankle, fine almost to a fault, the light springy step, the graceful easy carriage, the absence of sheepishness or shyness, an air cheerful without noise, a manner playful without rudeness, and you have the true son or daughter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... glance round the rooms and the company; then, as if conscious of the remarks and glances directed toward him, but completely "ignoring" them, and without the least shyness or awkwardness, he walked quietly through the hall to the host and ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the two children, having lost trace of the butterfly, had run up towards Sophy. But her shy look made themselves shy,—shyness is so contagious, and they stood a little aloof, gazing at her. Sir Isaac stalked direct to the Mayor, sniffed at him, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... generally given out that Mr. Meeks had a vague desire to get married, but, being a shy and timorous youth, lacked the moral courage to do so. It was also well known that the Widow Conway had not buried her heart with the late lamented. As to her shyness, that was not so clear. Indeed, her attentions to Mr. Meeks, whose mother she might have been, were of a nature not to be misunderstood, and were not misunderstood by ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and with it the silvery glow of moonlight across the hoary headed queen of the Oberland. When Robin came out from dinner he seated himself on the porch, expectant, eager—and vastly lonesome. An unaccountable shyness afflicted him, rendering him quite incapable of sending his card up to the one who could have dispelled the gathering gloom with a single glance of the eye. Would she come stealing out ostensibly to look at the night-capped peak, but with furtive glances into ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Perhaps it was the easy finesse of ceremonial. He looked at Brillon. He had seen him sit arms folded like that, looking from the top of a bluff down on an Indian village or a herd of buffaloes. There was wonder, but no shyness or agitation, on his face; rather the naive, naked look of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... veteran, the boy was without confidant or friend. Serious and eager, he came through school and college, and moved among a crowd of the indifferent, in the seclusion of his shyness. He grew up handsome, with an open, speaking countenance, with graceful, youthful ways; he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in the Speculative Society. It should seem he must become the centre of a crowd of friends; but something ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more like himself when Felix came in, but he was a good deal shaken, and listened to the conventional Christmas greeting like mockery, shrinking from the sisters, when they looked in on him, with what they thought a fresh access of shyness, but which was a feeling of terrible shame beside the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... girl ran down the stairs. As she came forward she stopped, with sudden shyness. Absorbed in her anxiety for her father and mother, she had taken but little heed of the appearance of the officer who had saved them. That he was kind as well as brave she was sure for, although he had scarce spoken to her, the gentleness with which he had moved her father and her mother from ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... "Kenkenes offered us refuge with his father—alas! that the young man should die!" After shaking her head and muttering to herself in her own tongue, she went on. "But Rachel hesitated to accept, at first from maiden shyness, though now she hath a secret fear, I doubt not, that the Egyptian may have played her false. The sorry news must be told her ere ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... housekeeper, and was not sorry to have an excuse for taking tea with her. So Bobby and Nobbles, with smiling faces, presented themselves at the appointed time, and Lady Isobel greeted the small boy most affectionately, Nurse went off to the house, and then he lost all shyness, and was soon the greatest friends with the sad-faced woman. It was not very long before he told her of the ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... dog into church. For though a dog is all very well on a gravel path, and shows no disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror (should you be one of a congregation—alone, shyness is out of the question), a dog destroys the service completely. So do these women—though separately devout, distinguished, and vouched for by the theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek of their husbands. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and fifty pounds a year, and three years later was transferred to the Colonial Secretary's Office at two hundred pounds a year. During this period he read extensively, and wrote much verse. By 1867 he had so far overcome his natural shyness that he undertook to deliver a series of lectures at the Sydney School of Arts. One of these, on "Love, Courtship and Marriage", precipitated him into experience of all three; for he walked home after the lecture with Miss Charlotte Rutter, daughter of a Government medical ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... the branches, his reins loose on his horse's neck, his eyes, unseeing, roving over copse and meadow across to the eternal hills—a face, seen for an instant, smiling and gone again; a whisper in his ear, with that dear stammer of shyness; a touch on his knee of those rippling fingers that he had watched in the moonlight playing gently on the sluice-gate above the moonlit stream.... He would tell no one if God wished it to be a secret; he would keep it wholly to himself. He did not ask now ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... of Chesterfield; who upon this occasion addressed the House for the first time. "His father," says Dr. Maty, "took infinite pains to prepare him for his first appearance as a speaker. The young man seems to have succeeded tolerably well upon the whole, but on account of his shyness was obliged to stop, and, if I am not mistaken, to have recourse to his notes. Lord Chesterfield used every argument in his power to comfort him, and to inspire him with confidence and courage to make some other attempt; but I have not heard that Mr. Stanhope ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... tuberculosis one summer up there, and I'd cured him, and I had a thought I could do the same for other lads. I wanted to get near a city to have that chance. I've been doing it here," and then he drew back into his Scotchness and was suddenly cold and reserved. But I knew that was shyness, and because he had spoken of his secret good deeds ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... was milking, and, taking with her a little bundle of clothes under her arm, and all the money she was worth in her own purse, without consulting any one, immediately set forward in pursuit of one whom, notwithstanding her shyness to the parson, she loved with inexpressible violence, though with the purest and most delicate passion. This shyness, therefore, as we trust it will recommend her character to all our female readers, and not greatly surprize such of our males as are well acquainted with the younger part of the other ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... shyness possessed Tim now, a thing which he had never felt in his life. He moved about self-consciously, awkwardly, until at last there was a sudden silence over ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... sat still, not from pride but from shyness, and presently her husband said to her: "Get up, my dear, and show how smart you are." She obeyed, but she had no need to get up to show it. She walked to the end of the studio and then came back blushing, her fluttered eyes on the partner of her appeal. I was reminded of an incident ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... some quarrel with the inhabitants, which unfortunately obliged him to use his fire-arms against them: this affair, joined to the ill behaviour of some of the convicts, who in spite of all prohibitions, and at the risque of all consequences, have wandered out among them, has produced a shyness on their parts which it has not yet been possible to remove, though the properest means have been taken to regain their confidence. Their dislike to the Europeans is probably increased by discovering that they intend to remain among them, and that they interfere with them in some of their ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... on in sinuous avoidance of protruding boughs and upstart bushes, she was seized by a shyness quite new to her. It seemed as if she could not bear to question Melissa about the Baron. She fancied she saw the girl's possible look of amusement. It became suddenly a position which she stigmatized ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... he led a life of absolute mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence, the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being spoken to by persons of his acquaintance—an unfavorable result of "solitary ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... into herself again in a sudden fit of shyness. But she could not bear to keep silent, she simply longed to speak to somebody about it all. If only she could—dared—say to him, "In a secret chamber of the loft there stands an old chest, and in that old chest I've hidden something." But then if he ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... said Ermengarde, overwhelmed with shyness. Then spasmodically she thought of something to say which seemed more intimate. "Are you—are you very unhappy?" ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stood a feminine full moon—an elliptical young woman, with half of her pink and corpulent face showing above a gauzy veil, her two chubby hands clasped in front of her, the whole attitude one of massive shyness. ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... day, hearing the wheels of the wagonette on the drive, she slipped out into the garden to visit a border where the crocus spears were pushing through the soil. She could not explain her own sudden shyness. She was tremulous, tremulous with life. There was a smell of spring in the air. Arthur came out to find her in the garden. His eyes glowed with the pleasure of seeing her again, but she would ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... whose importance, founded on the chances of yesterday, is fed on its self-sufficiency—of individuals whose consequence grows neither out of manners, intellectual endowments, superior taste, nor polished connections—and of inhabitants of a metropolis, among whom shyness of intercourse is necessary as a security against imposture—it is not to be wondered that most of the showy mansions in these villages are points of repulsion rather than of attraction. It must, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... at Manchester, his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. His flight was significant. Early on a July morning he slipped quietly off—in one pocket a copy of an English poet, a volume ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... to keep them from trembling. What would they think of her? She saw that they were smartly dressed. Doubtless they were very grand and clever indeed, and would think her more trying than ever. But although all her shyness threatened for a moment, it was summarily routed ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the marvellous from the familiar by putting the life-story of Hilda Lessways on a foreground behind which lies the already familiar story of Edwin Clayhanger. We remember Clayhanger living in the printing shop in the Potteries; his uncouthness, his shyness, his pertinacity; his desire to be an architect and to live the imaginative life, thwarted by his grim old father; and the manner in which Hilda dawned upon him, entered into his experience in a brief rapture of passion, and disappeared, leaving Clayhanger to grope again with the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... people, and many of them, doubtless, readers of this paper, who understand all about fairies. I want to ask them, as one poor old hard-worked man to another, whether this is the proper way for a fairy to behave. There seems to be a lack of delicacy—and shall I say shyness?—about it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... exclaim, "How beautiful is Nature—how magnificent!" I turned, and saw two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, of sufficiently pleasing appearance. It was from the elder that the exclamation had come, which brought me back from my dream to this nether world. Conquering the shyness which appears to be the Englishman's birthright, I made some remark on the beauties of sunset. Like the earth, we revolved round the sun; but, unlike that planet, we quickly diverged into other orbits. I dimly remember that we talked of Angola cats, Dresden china, Turkish ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... good-naturedly to the little girls, endeavoring to dispel the shyness with which they seemed inclined to view each other—and Therese crossed the ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... dread in which man is held by the various kinds of kangaroos is given by their extreme shyness. I never but on two or three occasions got within shot of the larger kangaroos as they were always so wary; and, although I at different times wounded two, I never could succeed in actually capturing either. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... That placid dame, The Moon's Celestial Highness; There's not a trace Upon her face Of diffidence or shyness: She borrows light That, through the night, Mankind may all acclaim her! And, truth to tell, She lights up well, So I, for one, don't ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... weeks in our Otriad had been like the painful return to drab reality after a splendid dream. "After all I am the hopeless creature I thought I was. What was there, in those days in Petrograd, that could blind me?" His shyness returned, his awkwardness, his mistakes in tact and resource were upon him again like a suit of badly made clothes. He knew this but he believed that it could make no difference to his lady. So sure was he of himself in regard to her—she might be transformed into anything ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... dignity of Mr. Grierson's soul I cannot kneel down with him and take part in the performance of his prayer. Prayer is either the Supreme Illusion, or the Supreme Act, the pure and naked surrender to Reality, and attended by such sacredness and shyness that you can accomplish it only when alone or lost ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... until their foreheads touched the floor. Japanese women, both in features and general appearance, are far from prepossessing, but we were told there were marked exceptions among the people of rank. The exclusiveness and debased condition of the sex produces a shyness and diffidence very prejudicial to their appreciation by strangers. The eyes of the women, though elongated, are not nearly so much so as those of the Chinese, the features being more open in expression, and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... to veil so austerely a face which the gods had made for the admiration of men, his evident vexation upon her refusal to appear in Greek costume at the sacrifices and public solemnities, his unsparing raillery at what he termed her barbarian shyness, all tended to convince her that the young Heracleid had sought to admit some one into those mysteries which should remain secret to all, for without his encouragement no man could have dared to risk himself in an undertaking the discovery of which would have resulted in the punishment ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... England. It is the same that is common in many parts of America, and termed by the inhabitants of that country, bundling. The lover steals, under the shadow of the night, to the bed of the fair one, into which (retaining an essential part of his dress) he is admitted without any shyness or reserve. Saturday or Sunday nights are the principal times when this courtship takes place, and on these nights the men sometimes walk from a distance of ten miles or more to visit their favorite damsels. ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... sought after," said Clelia, with a prim shyness not like her own stormy confession. Sabrina, with her white hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... cause of stage-fright is exaggerated self-consciousness. The sufferer from stage-fright can hardly fail to be a worrier. A certain shyness, it would seem, may also result from too acute a consciousness of one's audience, as in the case of Tennyson, whom ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... garments was too common an occurrence in her career to call for more than a passing attention. Strange to say, it had been much easier to talk when she had been half-hidden in the apple-tree. A sudden shyness came upon them both, as they looked in each other's eyes. There was an interval of silence. Then Theodora dropped down on the turf by the lounge, and held ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... failed to impress those who met him was his reserve. It was the quality of it which was so striking. It was not a reserve which was raised of aloofness; there was no particle of that, no self-esteem, no egoism—common builders of reserve—yet on the other hand it was not the retreat of shyness as many might have thought, though out of it a certain constraint was undoubtedly born. One might almost say it was a result rather than a reserve; the result of a something hard at work within; a preoccupying something; a gestating something, ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... this respect never was there a better-assorted couple. They could never be happy except in their own little menage. Everywhere out of it they had to stifle their melancholy yawns, and they have transmitted to me that secret shyness which has always made the gay world intolerable, and home ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... had ended but lately, soon came downstairs at her father's summons. Dr. Tisco bowed low before the charming girl. Tom and Harry were presented, and tried to make themselves agreeable to the young Mexican girl. Senorita Francesca's shyness, however, made this somewhat difficult, so the young engineers felt inwardly grateful when Dr. Tisco strolled down ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... strangers. The very first act, however, of her liberty, was to take a pew at church, a whole pew, to herself, which she ordered to be curtained all round. Some said this indicated pride, some said ostentation; but it was simply shyness. And soon after she placed in the aisle a white marble tablet, "To the memory of Jacob Bond, who died in the seventy-eighth year of his age, deeply lamented by ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... kept my eyes fixed on him. I was changed. I no longer felt disorderly nor impudent: for disorderliness and impudence in me were but unnatural efforts to copy Pennybet, that master-fool. I dropped into my natural self, a thing of shyness and diffidence. I was not conscious of any ill-will towards Radley for returning to his class-room, when he was not expected; it was just a piece of bad fortune for me. I was about to be "whacked," I knew; and, though I did not move, I felt strange emotions within me. Certainly I was a little afraid, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... participators in the ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the members being solely women. In men's clubs such celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) or this their glory and consummation. The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... for many years, not so much a possession of my memory as an inherent part of myself. It was ever present to my mind and ready to my hand, but I was loth to touch it from a feeling of what I imagined to be mere shyness but which in reality was a very comprehensible mistrust ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... round and saw another standing by her—a woman, younger and fairer and more stately than herself, but of so sweet a countenance that our little Pilgrim felt no shyness, but recognised a friend at once. She was more occupied looking at this new face, and feeling herself at once so much happier (though she had been so happy before) in finding a companion who could tell her what ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... do so because I knew that the presence of such a large and learned audience would embarrass me. But my master advised me to imagine that my hearers were not men, but mere cabbages. This gave me new light; I took his advice, got over my shyness, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but her off-hand cursory manner had not altered in the interval. She spoke remarkably fast, as if speech were not in itself a pleasure—to have it over as soon as possible; and her brusquerie was of the dark shade friendly critics account for by pleading shyness. Shyness had never appeared to him an ultimate quality or a real explanation of anything; it only explained an effect by another effect, neither with a cause to boast of. What he suspected in Julia was that her mind was less pleasing than her person; an ugly, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... scheme on which she had set her mind seemed to be working satisfactorily. From the first day Tom Virtue had exerted himself to play the part of host satisfactorily, and had ere long shaken off any shyness he may have felt towards the one stranger of the party, and he and Miss Graham had speedily got on friendly terms. So things were going on as well as ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... army. All the endeavours of his holiness, however, could not effect a peace; but they agreed to a truce of ten years. Mezerai affirms, that these two great princes never saw one another on this occasion; and that this shyness was owing to the management of the pope, whose private designs might have been frustrated, had they come to a personal interview. In the front of the colonade, there is a small stone, with an inscription in Latin, which is so high, and so much defaced, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the letter of Alypius to his master at the time when the miracle happened. Libanius, another pagan friend and admirer of Julian, both in the history of his own life, and in his funeral oration on Julian's death, mentions these earthquakes in Palestine, but with a shyness which discovers the disgrace of his hero and superstition. Julian himself speaks of this event in the same covert manner. Socrates testifies, that at the sight of the miracles, the Jews at first cried out that Christ is God; yet returned home as hardened as ever. St. Gregory Nazianzen ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Milly's shyness made it peculiarly awkward for her to find herself in possession of a number of friends whom she would not have chosen herself, and of whose doings and belongings she was in complete ignorance. However, if she gave offence she was unconscious of it, and it came ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... influence breathing out of her such as we might suppose to come from Eve, when she was just made, and her Creator brought her to Adam, saying, "Behold! here is a woman!" Not that I would convey the idea of especial gentleness, grace, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm and rich characteristic, which seems, for the most part, to have been refined away ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... taken care of me ever since I was born, wished me to be in ignorance as to my family, but they have looked after my education, and have bestowed on me endless kindness. I have always lived in seclusion, and for the last two years I have wished for nothing better. I had a mirror'—here shyness and embarrassment choked her words—but regaining her self-control, she added, 'You know that fairies insist on being obeyed without questioning. It was they who changed the little house you saw before you into the fountain for which you are now ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... it too, but it only made her discursive brain think of cuckoos. She would no doubt immediately have begun to talk of cuckoos, incoherently, unrestrainably and deplorably, if she had been in the condition of nerves and shyness she was in last time she saw Mrs. Fisher. But happiness had done away with shyness—she was very serene; she could control her conversation; she did not have, horrified, to listen to herself saying things she had no idea of saying when she began; she was quite at her ease, and completely ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... desultory reader of English, with some French; he had no intellectual interests, apparently, of a philosophical kind; the aloofness in which he stood from Longfellow and Emerson, for example, was not shyness of nature wholly, but stood for the real aloofness of his mind from their ways of life, from the things that absorbed them in their poetic and speculative activity; it is but another example, if it is added that he took no ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... innocence, by the circumstance that she was fatherless, and by the crown she must one day wear. She had to learn to conduct herself with the mingled self-respect and ease which became her station. Impulsiveness, shyness, nervousness, are more serious defects in kings and queens than in ordinary mortals. To use a homely phrase, "to have all their wits about them" is very necessary in their case. If in addition they can have all their hearts—hearts ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... curious fact that diffidence often betrays us into discourtesies which our hearts abhor, and which cause us intense mortification and embarrassment. Excessive shyness must be overcome as an obstacle to perfect manners. It is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon and the Teutonic races, and has frequently been a barrier to the highest culture. It is a disease of the finest organizations and the highest types of humanity. It ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... again. Billie had no further remarks to make of immediate interest, and Mr. Peters was struggling with a return of the deplorable shyness which so handicapped him in his dealings with the other sex. After a few moments, he pulled himself together again, and, as his first act was to replace the pistol in the pocket of his coat, Billie became conscious of a faint ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... a man so educated be less liable to be entrapped by rival powers, and so escape a common fate of living creatures, some of which (as we all know) are hooked through their own greediness, and often even in spite of a native shyness; but through appetite for food they are drawn towards the bait, and are caught; while others are similarly ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... peeping out beneath the tiny frill of her thin garment, looked at the broad-shouldered handsome girl Manella who had just brought in her breakfast tray and now stood regarding her with an odd expression of mingled admiration and shyness. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... the object of my visit to York to the doctor or his wife. Indeed, that natural shyness and reticence which I have found it impossible to shake off—except when writing to you, good reader—would in any case have prevented my communicating much of my private affairs to them, but particularly ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... to-night. His first shyness having worn off, he had since always had plenty to say. Elsie was always quiet, and not a word was spoken until they were next ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... from the main land near Point Dale. It seemed to be eight or nine miles in length, by about five in breadth; the southern part is sandy and sterile, but some trees are produced; and I saw kangaroos of a small kind, too lean to be worth the pursuit their shyness required. The natives are of the same colour and appearance as in other parts of Terra Australis, and go equally naked; their presence here showed the south end of the island to be not wholly destitute ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... rather lost and bewildered amongst the crowd of strangers, had retired to rest under the elder bushes, until called upon by Marged Hughes to help at the table, which she did at once, overcoming her shyness, and keeping as much as ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... but Ned, driven by some unknown impulse, seized it and with a mighty effort hurled it over the wall, where it burst. Then he stood licking his burned fingers and looking rather confusedly at Crockett. He felt a certain shyness ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... die!" said I, with an emphasis which went from my heart to hers. Then all her shyness fled. She knew me; and we shook hands, and smiled into each other's eyes with the smile of kindred as ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... that the thought of marrying for money did not particularly commend itself to me. At length, when I felt sufficiently certain of my own feelings to justify such a step, I proposed, and was accepted with a sweet half-shyness, half-abandon of manner, which was as piquant and charming in effect, as I afterwards had reason to believe it was a consummately skilful piece of acting—now, do not interrupt me, Leo; wait until you have heard me to an end before you attempt to judge. Well, not to drag out my story to ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood |
