"Secretiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woods. Burning with anxiety Johnny threw himself in Uncle Ben's way. But here occurred one of those surprising inconsistencies known only to children. As Uncle Ben turned his small gray eyes upon him in a half astonished, half questioning manner, the potent spirit of childish secretiveness suddenly took possession of the boy. Wild horses could not now have torn from him that question which only a moment before was on ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... friendly interview as a general would manage a campaign; and if they make their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us after their kind. No man can be treated frankly in this world unless he himself be frank. If we would win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which stands ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... a sudden rush of blood. "Peter hates to have any one else know a thing before he does!" Alix explained this later. But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with Martin, and was presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness in his old, or almost ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... tell. He drew away and looked at the man with that scrappy grin. Silence, secretiveness where grown people were, had been beaten into his small brain. Out behind the house, the conference finished, Tommy reassured his guest again and again, sometimes laughing, sometimes ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... fact may be, that he has more sense in the aggregate than either, but it is not the same kind of sense. Other things being equal, the man with large Acquisitiveness will exhibit more sense in acquiring property, and the man with large Caution and Secretiveness more sense in economizing, than those having these organs small. It is curious to observe the different phases of financial sense in different individuals. One man will be a miser, eager to get and anxious to hold property; another ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... His secretiveness and his unpopularity point to one of the most important functions of the municipal and state "Bosses," to which as yet only incidental reference has been made. The "Boss" became the man who negotiated with the corporations, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... sentiments indicated by the translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by the opacity in the regions of Religion, Hope, Reverence, Love, Conscientiousness, Industry, Cheerfulness, Love of Approbation, Sense of Honor, and Self-respect. Secretiveness shows opacity, while Combativeness shows intense activity which ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... down into this next gully to talk it over, Buck," he suggested with an air of secretiveness that fired the Kid's imagination. "They started out to follow me, and I don't want 'em to see me talking to you, ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... of our efforts to run the leaders of this gang to ground—he tells me he is sure there is a gang working together and playing into one another's hands very cleverly—will largely depend upon our discreetness and our secretiveness, also upon our tact and our knowledge of when to act. So not a word, mind; not a syllable even to ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... repeated, "South Africa?" To her it was an incredible distance. It was not a place—it was something on the map. Perhaps she had never imaginatively realized that actual people did in fact go to South Africa. "But this is the first I have heard of this!" she said. Julian's extraordinary secretiveness always disturbed her. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... college life which fosters a reticence that is almost secretiveness; and this becomes a code, a religion; yet Stewart found himself seized with an intense longing to confide in someone. And at that moment, from under the wide archway leading into the quadrangle, appeared the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... which the people of the sirens' house were, somehow, connected. He was sure that Gaspare either knew or suspected what had happened, yet meant to conceal his knowledge despite his obvious hatred for the fisherman. Was the boy's reason for this strange caution, this strange secretiveness, akin to his—Artois's—desire? Was the boy trying to protect his padrona or the memory of his padrone? ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... mother and aunts as an undesirable scholar for her, and that his sister's remonstrances ought not to have been scouted. She had done the thing in her simplicity, but it was through her own wilful secretiveness that her ignorance ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Of his secretiveness for his wife's sake I had a touching little instance after luncheon. We had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. The car was already in attendance, and Peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... was a Russian, to whom he had been introduced by Vola, and he was a character for fidelity and secretiveness. His name was Ulrich, and Barnwell had saved him from going to prison by paying a fine that he would never have been able to pay, and he at once became attached to his new master by all the ties that bind a lesser intellect and fortune ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... although singularly attractive, of a moody, fitful, unrestful nature,—eager, earnest, but unsteady,—with varying phases of imprudent frankness and of the most stubborn and unfathomable secretiveness. He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as full of hitches as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar beauty, and a certain electrical power of attraction, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and disposition, not of the best, but of the worst, of its members shall have become sensibly improved; for occasional unintentional leakage, by well-meaning officials possessing more information than native secretiveness, cannot be wholly obviated, and must be accepted, practically, as one of the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... was his slow reply as he gave his head a nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, "since I have given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all there is ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... expedients may be reckoned the oath or promise of secrecy, exacted for no sufficient reason, and kept in defiance of common sense and common humanity. Lord Windermere's conduct in Oscar Wilde's play is a case in point, though he has not even an oath to excuse his insensate secretiveness. A still clearer instance is afforded by Clyde Fitch's play The Girl with the Green Eyes. In other respects a very able play, it is vitiated by the certainty that Austin ought to have, and would have, told the truth ten times over, rather ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... straining her eyes to detect anyone who might be coming along the street; and before reaching the Frys' she crossed over to avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy she felt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animal secretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passed unnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white front glimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong of light on the lower ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton |
