"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... usual drawbacks of African travel. As the river pools were the only drinking-places for birds and game, the gun supplied not only my own party, but I had much to give away to the Arabs in exchange for goat's milk, the meal of the dome nuts, &c. Gazelles were exceedingly numerous, but shy, and so difficult to approach that they required most careful stalking. At this season of intense heat they drank twice a day—at about an hour after sunrise, and half an hour ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... they were strangely shy in making their presence known. Rod after rod the hoys advanced, careful not to show themselves, making their casts with greatest caution, and keeping as quiet as possible. But no fish so much as smelled their bait. Again and again they let their hooks float down into promising ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... that day, they fell in with a small party of Bushmen; they were shy at first, but one or two of the women at last approached, and receiving some presents of snuff and tobacco, the others soon joined; and as they understood from Omrah and the Hottentots that they were to hunt ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... was obliged to him for his friendship, in seeking to promote him to the command of a vessel which he himself had worn out in the service; but that, notwithstanding, he should be content to take charge of her, though he could not help being shy of coming after such ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... visitor. He saw a young man with very fair hair, a narrow forehead, watery blue eyes and a weak, dissipated face. Walter Hine was dressed in a cheap suit of tweed much the worse for wear, and he entered the room with the sullen timidity of the very shy. Moreover, he was a little unsteady as he walked, as though he had not yet ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... the fairest ones adorned it. "Poor pale man, till there are blooming On your own cheeks just such roses, On your hat you'll have to wear them. But now tell me, wherefore is it That I do so dearly love you? Not a word you ere have spoken, That could show me that you loved me. Sometimes only shy and bashful Did you raise at me your glances, And sometimes you played before me. Is it, then, your country's custom, That a woman's love is won there, Without words ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... landscape, but stands on terms of lifelong friendship with hill, stream, rock, and tree. In his descriptions he often catches the expression of rural scenery, a very different thing from the mere looks, with the trained eye of familiar intimacy. A somewhat shy and hermitical being we take him to be, and more a student of his own heart than of men. His characters, where he introduces such, are commonly abstractions, with little of the flesh and blood of real life in them, and this from want of experience rather than ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... it best to introduce all my pets together," returned Wildegrave, patting his sister's meek head. "Clary is a shy, timid, little creature, very unlike your sparkling Juliet, with whom I happen to be personally acquainted; but she is a dear good girl, and the darling of her brother's heart. Her orphan state seems to press painfully ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... in reaching Mr. Larabee, who was a bit shy of strangers. When one, (in this case Larson) was announced by Aunt ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... back to Archie, and then ingratiated himself with a shy elderly woman who was having a difficult time finding partners for her granddaughters. The Governor introduced himself with a charming deference, a winning courtesy, that gained her heart at once. He not only danced with her young charges but found other partners ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... once more. "Nice way to act, ain't it, when you're ast out to dinner in the best society of the place? Tell a feller he's shy on facts, when all he's handin' out is just the plain, unfreckled truth, for onct at least. We got oysters, four cans of 'em, and done had 'em for a month. They're up there." He jerked a thumb toward the top of old Carrizo Mountain. I looked at the snow, and in a flash comprehended. There, indeed, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... underneath her skin, the straight-hanging, mane-like hair, the gaudy shawl she never went without, the shapeless, skin-shod feet, the slovenly, ill-fitting garb of a mis-cast woman vanished, and he saw her as she was on a day long past, a slim, shy, silent creature, with great, watchful, trusting eyes and a soul unspoiled. No woman had ever been so loyal, so uncomplaining. He had robbed her of her people and her gods. He had shifted hither and yon at ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... where the shy brook fluttered through, Nepenthe held her chalice leaf (Undrained as yet by human grief), And ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... the Mohammedans are great meat eaters. So are the English. Meat can be had almost every place. The kind of meat differs much in locality. Chickens can be obtained anywhere. The Indian cock is small of head and long of leg, shrill of voice and bold in spirit. The Indian hen is shy and wild, but gives plenty of small, delicately-flavored eggs. On the whole, aside from a few idiosyncrasies, the Indian fowl ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... more than a cipher. She was mistaken. It was impossible to look upon Helen without interest, and Master Hightower seemed especially drawn towards her. He bent down till he overshadowed her with his loftiness, then smiling at the quick withdrawal of her soft, wild, shy glances, he took her up in his lap as if she were a plaything, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... perfect Italian. But she comes honestly by it. After the talk I have just jotted down she changed her place, and the conversation for half an hour was general. Stanmer indeed said very little; partly, I suppose, because he is shy of talking a foreign tongue. Was I like that—was I so constantly silent? I suspect I was when I was perplexed, and Heaven knows that very often my perplexity was extreme. Before I went away I had a few more words tete- a-tete ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... with a close embrace, and he would have embraced Evring, too, in his delight. But the little Prince was shy, and shrank away from the painted Scarecrow because he did not yet ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... the shy decisiveness of a man who seldom spoke his mind. If necessary I would have wrested his name from him and pretended a relationship with his wife. But he needed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... to play his part, was the moment for him to salute. He half lifted his hand as he reclined, but let it fall again. From the river-bank a pair of eyes looked down into his; dark grey eyes—or were they violet?—shy and yet bold, dim and yet shining with emotion. God help him! This child—she could be little more—was worshipping him ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... find it gone and a present in its place in the morning. Perhaps you may even feel the same little soft tickle on your forehead that King Bubi did; but I do not promise for certain that you will see kind Mr. Mouse, because he is rather shy. ...
— Perez the Mouse • Luis Coloma
... much to tell of his father, now dead,—the only one of the Tenners, beside themselves, in whose fate his uncle was interested. With Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender in his manner; with the few visitors whom they saw, shy and silent,—perhaps a little watchful, if any young man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... should not be chastised for an offence about nuts or cherries as if they had broken open a money-box. His parents, he acknowledged, had meant it for the very best, but they had kept him, nevertheless, so strictly that he had become shy and timid. Theirs, however, was not that unloving severity which blunts the spirit of a child, and leads to artfulness and deceit. Their strictness, well intended, and proceeding from a genuine moral earnestness of purpose, furthered in him a strictness and tenderness of conscience, which ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!" And, quite still, she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and long, so that every two months a tuck has to be let down in her frocks, then a great difference becomes visible. The boy goes on racing and whooping and comporting himself generally like a young colt in a pasture; but she turns quiet and shy, cares no longer for rough play or exercise, takes droll little sentimental fancies into her head, and likes best the books which make her cry. Almost all girls have a fit of this kind some time or other ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... carrying buckwheat for so many days to his hole for nothing: was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or providing against the demands of a very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,—came down that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the burr on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually severe winter I have known ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... of its being there, for really it would be too bad if the other boat, with such a history back of it, should be finally wrecked. Brad was almost tempted to shout out a warning, when he saw with one look behind, that, judging from the change in course, Buck was fighting shy of the dangerous quarter. He had been brought up on the banks of the Mohunk, and ought to be acquainted with every foot of ground and ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the shipwrecked men with joy. It was to them a proof of civilization. New hopes, new joys, new strength came with the sight of these animals; and they advanced cautiously toward them. But the animals were shy, and scampered away up the hill at the first sight of ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... and never stop for a drink at Rocky Brook, though I were ever so thirsty, because of the sharp pitch down to the watering-trough. And though from having been scared nearly to death, when I was a colt, by a wheelbarrow in the road, I always have to shy a little when I see one, our Ada will tell you, if you ask her, that in the circumstances, ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... was one of the very nicest things about him, his understanding) but as he was feeling a bit the same way himself, he would have liked the bulwark of her presence. Two shy folk to back each other up are in not nearly so bad a fix as the one who goes it alone. So he stood hesitatingly in the middle of the front walk, slowly drawing on his gloves. Perhaps ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... answered Clarice, in the shy way which she was not one to lose quickly. "I fancied she ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... I can do for you?" asks Dora, in some confusion. Of late she has grown very shy of being alone ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... experience of Christian is an exhibition of Bunyan's own feelings, the temptations of Madam Wanton are very properly laid in the way of Faithful, and not of Christian. She would have had no chance with the man who admired the wisdom of God in making him shy of women, who rarely carried it pleasantly towards a woman, and who abhorred the common salutation of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and whole worlds of dirty people—make up, altogether, such a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and yet so quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering: so wide awake, and yet so fast asleep: that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... huts hidden away in a beautiful grove of moriche palms, through which the moonbeams filtered in silvery stringers. Little gardens lay back of the dwellings, and the usual number of goats and pigs were dozing in the heavy shadows of the scarcely stirring trees. Reserved matrons and shy doncellas appeared in the doorways; and curious children, naked and chubby, hid in their mothers' scant skirts and peeped cautiously out at the newcomers. The tranquil night was sweet with delicate odors wafted from numberless plants and blossoms in the adjacent forest, and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that several members of a beaver family are trapped in succession. The survivors then become extremely shy, and can scarcely be "brought to medicine," to use the trapper's phrase for "taking the bait." In such case, the trapper gives up the use of the bait, and conceals his traps in the usual paths and crossing places of the household. The beaver now being completely "up to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... looking out into a garden below, laid out in the formal Dutch fashion, with walks and beds centring in a fountain, the grass plats as sharply defined as possible, and stiff yews and cypresses dotted at regular intervals or forming straight alleys. She felt strange and shy, but the sunshine, the cheerfulness, and the sight of the children, had reassured her, and when she had said her morning prayer, she had lost the last night's sense of hopeless dreariness and unprotectedness. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and turned into the turning towards the chapel, and I after her, and upon the stairs there met her coming up again, and there kissed her twice, and her business was to enquire for Sir Edward Bishop, one of the serjeants at armes. I believe she was a woman of pleasure, but was shy enough to me, and so I saw her go out afterwards, and I took a hackney coach, and away. I to Westminster Hall, and there walked, and thence towards White Hall by coach, and spying Mrs. Burroughs in a shop did stop and 'light and speak to her; and so to White Hall, where I 'light ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... everybody loved Eva St. Clair, especially her father, for she was his only daughter. Tom saw her play about the steamboat, for they were days and nights on the voyage. Eva used to come close and look at him, when he sat thinking of Chloe and the children. The little one was shy, notwithstanding all her busy interest in everything going on, and it was not easy to tame her. But at last Tom and she ...
— Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin • Unknown
... confess that I was relieved for I was lonesome and a bit nervous, and when I discovered that she knew a little English I could have hugged her. We spread our cold supper on the top of my dress suit case, put our one candle in the center, and proceeded to feast. Little Miss Izy was not as shy as she looked, and what she lacked in vocabulary she made up in enthusiasm. We got into a gale of laughter over our efforts to understand each other, and she was as curious about my costume as I was about hers. She watched me undress with unfeigned ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... match for him, knew it, and accepted his fate. He was not so good-looking as his brother, nor was his address so good; as a child he had been violently passionate; now, however, he was reserved and shy, and, I should say, indolent in mind and body. He was less tidy than John, less well able to assert himself, and less skilful in humouring the caprices of his father. I do not think he could have loved anyone heartily, but there was no one in his family circle who did not repress, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... She was a little, shy, hard-working woman, this Mrs. Martin; so when she took her seat among the paupers of every sort in Mr. Lampeer's office, and waited her turn, it was with a trembling heart. She watched the hard man, who didn't mean to be so hard, but who couldn't tell the ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... rather than deep," she returned; "and you'll find, my dear, that women who've had any wading to do are rather shy of stirring up mud. It sticks—especially ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... whimsical thing—and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence which followed. The little, nickel alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the rocky bluff opposite, and the ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... which he deposited on the seat beside him; then away went the snorting steam horse, train, people, and all, and out came this abrupt question. "Little friend" was a mite of a girl of nine, dressed in a homely blue serge frock and jacket, with blue velvet hat to match: a shy little midge of a grey-eyed maiden, with sunny brown curls twining about her forehead and rippling down upon her shoulders, nestling in one corner of the carriage—the sole occupant thereof until this merry questioner came to keep ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... emotion having any effect on the offspring. Allow me to add one word about blushing and shyness: I intended only to say the habit was primordially acquired by attention to the face, and not that each shy man now attended ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... be shy, avoid encounters—act like a man who's not supposed to be here, but who came to help Feisul contrary to express commands laid on him by the Foreign Office. Get that? Lawrence is a shy man, anyway—hates publicity, rank, anything that calls attention to ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... at Bo and Bo looked at him. Their glances were strange, wondering, and they grew shy. Bo dropped hers. The cowboy apparently forgot what had ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... enjoyments that spring up of themselves. Company was seldom seen, for Papa and Mamma had little time or means for visiting; and a few morning calls and a little dining out was all they did; which tended to make the young ones more shy and homely, more free and rude, more inclined to love their own ways and despise those of other people, than if they had seen more of the world. They were a happy, healthy set of children, not faulty in essentials, but, it must be confessed, a little wild, ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not overlook the fact that without Steele, as he himself says in his dedication to The Drummer, Addison would never have brought himself to give to the world these familiar, informal essays. Addison was naturally both cautious and shy; the mask which Steele invented lent him just the security which he needed, and the Spectator endures as the monument of a great friendship, a memorial such as Steele had always desired. [Footnote: ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... quite a different light that afternoon. Compared to John, he was an astoundingly difficult person to get to know. He was the opposite of his brother in almost every respect, being unusually shy and reserved. Yet he had a certain charm of manner, and I fancied that, if one really knew him well, one could have a deep affection for him. I had always fancied that his manner to Cynthia was rather constrained, and that she on her side was ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... was able to discover. It was partly by the magic of an extraordinary and powerful mind, partly by an expression of manner, if I may use such a phrase, that seemed to sneer most, when most it affected to respect; and partly by an air like that of a man never exactly at ease; not that he was shy, or ungraceful, or even taciturn,—no! it was an indescribable embarrassment, resembling that of one playing a part, familiar to him, indeed, but somewhat distasteful. This embarrassment, however, was sufficient to be contagious, and to confuse that dignity in others, which, strangely ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was shy of accepting this challenge. He colored and looked uneasy—all the more so because Olivia lifted her eyes to him appealingly, as though begging him to come to her support. It was perhaps in the belief that he would do so that she said, earnestly, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... wounded men in all stages of agony were patiently waiting their turn,—ah, God! how patient those men were,—and scattered here and there on both sides of the road were groups of men who had just begun their last sleep, and at sight of them the horse would shy and balk every few yards. I had no spurs with which to control the animal, and my work was cut out for me! he was an ideal parson's horse, for the brute would hardly go faster than a walk. Getting through the gas barrage, I came to a camouflage hedge, used to screen ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... shy as he was short-sighted. He shrank from new acquaintances, and did not always detect old friends. His failure to recognize a young politician who sat in his Cabinet, and a zealous clergyman whom he had just made a Bishop, supplied his circle with abundant mirth, which was increased when, at the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and spoke: "I also take my refuge in the exalted one and his teachings," and he asked to accepted into the community of his disciples ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... failed to secure admiration as a woman of singular penetration. She had the gift of being able to listen with apparent interest to a conversation, throwing in the necessary question here and there. When it was necessary to talk, she could change her tactics and make conversation for the shy, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... speakers. There was a coloured print over the mantelpiece of Moses smiting the rock. What a solemn contrast to the streams of fire-water soon about to flow! John Gubbins sat at the top of the table, looking fat and anxious, half shy and half foolish; the man with the false hair and ornaments placed himself next to him. Three other strangers were present, a mixture of sham gentility and swagger, of whom it would be difficult to say which ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... the time had now arrived for making my little peace-offering; and yet, I felt as shy and nervous about it as did poor "Young John," the gaoler's son of the Marshalsea, when he went to call on Little Dorrit's father in the grand Bond Street hotel, and drew his humble present of a bundle of cigars from ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is only a small proportion of Hilda's life which is given to poetry. Much is devoted to running about, a part to study, etc. It is, however, significant that Hilda is not very keen about games with other children. Not that she is by any means either shy or solitary, but they do not greatly interest her. Doubtless childhood pays its debt of possession ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... Professors, shy and otherwise, were lured from their classrooms to lecture before ladies' clubs hitherto sacred to the accents of transoceanic celebrities and Eleanor Roosevelt. There they competed on alternate forums with literate gardeners and stuttering horticultural amateurs. Stolon, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... you what that bird was—a kingfisher, the celebrated halcyon of the ancients, about which so many tales are told. It lives on fish, which it catches in the manner you saw. It builds in holes in the banks, and is a shy, retired bird, never to be seen far from the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... She was too shy to describe her ambition, but her fancy had already cast a glow over the calling which George was to adopt. There was in the family an innate tendency toward the more exquisite things of life, and this would colour his career. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... rising man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman, admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was strangely unlike any one else. However, at the time when I was elected Fellow of Oriel, he was not in residence, and he was shy of me for years, in consequence of the marks which I bore upon me of the Evangelical and Liberal schools, at least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us together about 1828; it is one of the sayings preserved in his "Remains"—"Do ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... was still a shy lad and while he meant to forget his awkwardness and help all he could he shrank from taking a prominent part in ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... few of his magnates seemed shy of Media and their laurels. Especially a tall robustuous fellow, with a terrible javelin in his hand, much notched and splintered, as if it had dealt many a thrust. His left arm was gallanted in a sling, and there was a patch upon ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... certainly," said he; and then he took her hand; he held it, while he looked into her face. He had thought it changed when he had first seen her, but it was now almost the same to him as of yore. The sweet shy eyes, the indicated dimple in the cheek, and something of fever had brought a faint pink flush into her usually colourless cheeks. Married judge though he was, he was not sure if she had not more charms for him still in her sorrow and her shabbiness than the ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... description of his friend had not prepared her for the beautiful wisp of a lad with the sky-blue eyes and the red-gold hair. Polly thought she had never seen so lovely a face. Her smile brought a shy response from the pillow, though talk ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... life,—here a touch of the East, there a whisper of the West, a busy, brutal, picturesque city, beauty growing up as it does in London, suddenly for a moment out of the life of the place, not made or contrived as in Paris or Florence, but naturally, a living thing, shy and evanescent. Here poverty and riches jostle one another side by side as they do in life, and are antagonistic and hate one another. Yet Genoa, alone of all the cities of Italy proper is living to-day, living the life of to-day, and with all her glorious past she is as much a city of the twentieth ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... we made the acquaintance of Larime Hutchinson, then a lad of twenty, shy, self-conscious, pathetically credulous, and hobbled by a prodigious ineptitude which made him a favorite butt for schoolboy jokes and pranks. Larime was in great disfavor with the teachers because he almost never had his lessons. He was also in disfavor with the college treasurer because ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... daresay he will be very tired and shy when he arrives. It is a sad thing to leave father and friends and come among strangers, Bunny," said Miss Kerr, and there were tears in her eyes as she gazed out ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... Government, and every distinction which it was in their power to bestow, and demeaned himself en bon prince, adorning with skilful eloquent touches of description the glorious scene beneath his windows, the pageants at which he was an honoured spectator. Nothing could be more unlike the young, shy, proud, yet genial-hearted rustic, holding firmly by that magic wand of poetry which was his sole right to consideration, and facing the curious, puzzled, patronising world with a certain suspicion, a certain defiance, as of one whom no craft or wile could betray ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... first, for after you have heard the nightingale you won't care for the canary," added Rose, wishing to put Phebe at her ease, for she sat among them looking like a picture, but rather shy and silent, remembering the days when her place ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... within, it was still ample enough to effect a very thorough and remarkable change in the whole external appearance of Mr. Frank Webber; for scarcely had the oaken panel shut out the doctor, when he appeared no longer the shy, timid, and silvery-toned gentleman of five minutes before, but dashing boldly forward, he seized a key-bugle that lay hid beneath a sofa-cushion and blew ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... long kiss a new love put forth its strength, not the pale beatitude of his dream, with its sweet wistfulness, its shy desires. That was large and vague and insubstantial, permeating like an odor the humdrum purlieus of the day. This was savage, triumphant, that leaped like flame from his heart to his mouth, that burned blood-red ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... than the taffeta, except her evening gown, and as the sunshine was streaming into the room, she could not change to that. So she merely freshened her appearance, and wasted fifteen or twenty minutes in a close inspection of the room, before they went down. To her somewhat shy question Bert responded ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... for the return of his master. He is, we hear, at this moment deeply occupied in his laboratory, seeking to produce a Homunculus. The servant retires, and the bachelor enters—the same whom we knew some years before as a shy young student, when Mephistopheles (in Faust's gown) made game of him. He is now become a man, and is so full of conceit that even Mephistopheles can do nothing with him, but moves his chair further and further, and at last addresses ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... purple when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun. During the severe drought a few years ago the robins wholly vanished from my garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks, meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing, seemed to find the dusty air congenial, and, dreaming, perhaps of its sweet Argos across the sea, decked itself with a score or so of fair bunches. I watched them from day to day till they should have secreted sugar ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... Miller admitted. "My cousin, however, desired me to point out to you the fact that in any case he would probably be shy of doing so. He is behaving in an absurd manner; he is in a very weakly state; and without a doubt he is to some degree insane. Nevertheless, the fact remains that he is in the Colony, or was three months ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like soft music. That showed me that there was no coldness on her part; and so, too, when I did catch at times the glance of her dark eyes, there was something in them so timid, so soft, and so shy, that I could not think of her as wearying of me. Yet this Marion, timid, tender, and shy; this Marion, holding aloof under evident constraint, keeping apart, giving me no opportunity; this Marion, who had now exchanged the intensity and the solemnity of former days for something so ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... complete quarrel and then a reconciliation, in which she did beguile me of my tears, but the deuce a one did she shed. What do you think? She cajoled me out of my little Buonaparte as cleverly as possible, in manner and form following. She was shy the Saturday and Sunday (the day of my departure) so I got in dudgeon, and began to rip up grievances. I asked her how she came to admit me to such extreme familiarities, the first week I entered the house. "If she had no particular ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... companion, and a considerable intimacy had grown up between them. Peter found that his friend seemed to understand a great deal of his thoughts without explanation. He neither condoled nor exhorted; rather he watched with an almost shy interest the other's ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... fellow-passenger. He brought with him a friend, who, like himself, had been educated in England, and who had obtained a good appointment, together with the rank of a field officer, from the Pasha. The manners of the gentleman were good; modest, but not shy. He spoke excellent English, and conversed very happily upon all the subjects broached. Our friend was still in doubt and anxiety respecting his own destination. Mehemet Ali had left Alexandria for one of his country residences, on the plea of requiring change of air; ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... identity of the editor who makes this statement. And here let me remark in passing that it is a remarkable fact that all the editors of the numerous editions of the protocols, both here and abroad, are very shy persons and hide under the mask of anonymity. Nor is any clew given to the identity of the traveler from Siberia. Another report, also by a traveler returned from Siberia, who may possibly be the same person, makes ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... a step, and there rested motionless, under the sway of an emotion akin to dismay. He stood staring intently at his son with a perplexity in his expression that was almost ludicrous. When, at last, he spoke, his voice was a rumble of strangely shy pleasure. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... dancing by leading out the wife of his principal tenant, a handsome matron, whose behavior and expression were such as to give a safe, home-like feeling to the shy and doubtful of the company. But Tom knew better than injure his chance by precipitation: he would wait until the dancing was more general, and the impulse to movement stronger, and then offer himself. He stood therefore near Letty for some little time, talking to everybody, and making himself ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... wilderness, that was all; and it was for him to learn the ways of it, the signs and trails and water-holes where good hunting lay, and the bad stretches of field and flood to be avoided. As usual, he fought shy of the women. He was still too badly scared to come to close quarters with the dazzling and resplendent creatures his ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... misty and remote period. In the house of this ancestor, who (proh dedecus!) let lodgings, lived Charles Jenkinson, then holding some nondescript office under government. We still want a history of that singularly dexterous, shy, silent, and successful man; who, like Jupiter in Homer, did more by a nod than others by a harangue—made more as a scene-shifter than any actor on the stage of Westminster—continually crept on, while whole generations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... action. When going round a corner at a brisk pace, or riding in a circle, the body should lean back rather more than in the walking position: to the same extent that the horse bends inward, must the body lean in that direction. If a horse shy at any object, and either turn completely and suddenly round, or run on one side only, the body should, if possible, keep time with his movements, and adapt itself so as to turn or swerve with him; otherwise, the balance will be lost, and the rider be ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... judge has taken to following Molly about as bad as Billy Moore does. But don't you all say a word, for John's mighty timid, and I don't believe, in spite of all these years, he's had a single notion yet. If he had had he'd have tried a set-to with you, Molly, like all the rest of the shy birds in town. He doesn't see a woman as anything but a patient at the end of a spoon, and mighty kind and gentle he does the dosing of them, too. Just the other day—dearie me, Judy, what has boiled over now?" And in the excitement that ensued I escaped ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... never arrived very early at a ball. She liked to make her entree when most of the other guests were assembled. It was sweet to her to see how sorry and shy the ladies looked at her arrival, and how the faces of the men brightened. The first thing, of course, when she arrived at Hexham House, was the archduke. It was wonderful to watch the various phases of character that she ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... King went to drink in his hall, Audunn ate his meal out of doors, as is the custom of Rome pilgrims, so long as they have not laid aside their staff and scrip. In the evening, when the King went to Vespers, Audunn intended to meet him, but shy as he was before, he was much more so now that the courtiers were merry with drink. As they were going back, the King noticed a man, and thought he could see that he had not the confidence to come forward and meet him. But as ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Baldwin," Kendrick said, "has a vivid imagination and a wonderful gift of picturesque similies. Still, I have just been telling them that one reason why I wouldn't touch B. & I.'s is because they have an idea over here that you are going to have a shy at them." ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... neither without a sense of immeasurable and disastrous failure. One petty satisfaction regarding the payment of the mortgage was his only com-fort. He might now show McLean that it was not want of money that had made him hitherto shy of "the good investments" offered him. He had been sure McLean in their last interview had thought so, and had, indeed, felt the half-veiled contempt with which the rich young man had expressed his pity for Mostyn's inability to take advantage at the right moment of an exceptional ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... doubt that is the case," answered her aunt; "otherwise I should be at a loss to account for her sudden fondness. She is usually very shy with strangers." ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... if you did learn them you would never remember them at the right time because the whole scheme is so complicated. This is only one of the many reasons which make us so shy at speaking foreign languages. Now, the same thing is true of German, and of all other languages, but it is not true of Esperanto. I will teach you the whole Esperanto conjugation in five minutes and you will never forget it, because there is nothing to remember. You already know that a noun ends ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... over his boat to the British. We are all at liberty to form any opinion we like on the use made of this Diary and I am not going to reveal mine. For, after all, it is the book itself—however produced—that matters, and even those of us who are getting a little shy of literature connected with the War will find something original and intriguing in this Diary. With what seems to me unnecessary frankness the publisher refers to the Commander's "incredible exploits and adventures on the high seas." For my own part my powers of belief in regard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... grave Lady Constance plays with the poor fish in a very sportsmanlike manner; only, methinks, a little too shy, and a trifle too sensitive! Marry, girl! what a most yielding, docile, and affectionate wife you would make!—like one of the heroines in the ancient Spanish romances; or such a one as—Judith!—no—for you ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... his own La Mancha until Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things he stands in need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness and want of learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by nature shy and careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself can say without them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found me in, and reason enough, what you ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... pretty, smooth-lined nest in a fork of the limb that came directly under the window, and the building of this nest had been superintended, day by day, by the five pairs of bright eyes of these five children. The robins at first had been rather shy of this inspection; but as they got better acquainted, they seemed to think no more of the little curly heads in the window than of the pink blossoms about them, or the daisies and buttercups at the ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... catch the moments as they fly, And use them as ye ought, man: Believe me, happiness is shy, And comes not aye ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... cold, too uninviting, and yet there was nothing repellent about it. It was as if, wounded by contact with the world, she had withdrawn behind her own defences. She, who had suffered insult and indignity, looked on all the world with suspicious, shy eyes. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... up, feeling rather shy, and wondering what she ought to say, but in the next breath Betty had said it all, even to declaring laughingly that as Doris had come to them they ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... laughing matter to the defendant in such an action. He can always bring exculpatory evidence, and in spite of any evidence he is always believed to be guilty. The effect of Milton's furious denunciation of Morus had been to damage his credit in religious circles, and to make mothers of families shy of allowing him to visit at ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... slowly. These two men, who became friends and generous rivals, were very different in character and disposition. Instead of possessing the self-confidence, energy, and industry that brought Dickens fame in his youth, Thackeray had to contend with a somewhat shy and vacillating temperament, with extreme modesty, and with ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the first time that day, intensely shy. She walked away, towards the big half-moon window opposite the front door. A wide grass gallop, bordered with splendid old trees, stretched out as if illimitable, and she began gazing ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... luncheon tray, brought also her farewells. Lawford surveyed, not without a faint, shy stirring of incredulity, the superbly restrained presence. He stood before her dry-lipped, inarticulate, a schoolboy caught redhanded in the shabbiest ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... me to read to you now, granny? Out of—of the Bible?" She hesitated, as though shy ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Mayhew, the Chumba Rajah, a shy taciturn boy of sixteen, had despatched a formal invitation, hoping that the Residency party would honour him with their company at the Palace on the evening of their arrival from Dalhousie; though in truth he wished them anywhere else in the world; and Colonel Mayhew, who was by no ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... sunset like strong wine Or, hushed in trance divine, Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... we must!" answered Clem merrily, and rising, he went to the "key," with his eyes looking straight into Nattie's, and wrote something that made her blush and seize his hand in shy and unnecessary ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... imaginative faculty, while with Faraday its exercise was incessant, preceding, accompanying and guiding all his experiments. His strength and fertility as a discoverer is to be referred in great part to the stimulus of his imagination. Scientific men fight shy of the word because of its ultra-scientific connotations; but the fact is that without the exercise of this power, our knowledge of nature would be a mere tabulation of co-existences and sequences. We should ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... many friends, she impressed you as being a shy home-woman. That was the reason her father did not offer to take her to the meeting, though half the women in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... go without her diamonds. The chief of the bailiffs declared it was impossible to trust them out of his sight. The matter was compromised—the bailiff went with my mother to C, and was introduced as my tutor. "A man of singular merit," whispered my mother, "but so shy!" Fortunately, the bailiff was abashed, and by losing his impudence he kept the secret. At the end of the week, the diamonds went to the jeweller's, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most shy and ladylike of trees, 50 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 55 As one who proudlier ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... garments and with a smile on her lips, so that her still great beauty is impressive. But her eyes bear traces of tears. She accepts NAPOLEON'S attentions with the stormily sad air of a wounded beauty. Whilst she is being received the KING arrives. He is a plain, shy, honest-faced, awkward man, with a wrecked and solitary look. His manner to NAPOLEON is, nevertheless, dignified, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... but he is no coward," interrupted La Mothe hastily. He foresaw what was coming and had all a shy man's horror of being thanked. "He sat his horse like a little hero. There is no such courage as to wait quietly ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... he felt on the palms of his hands that soft hair, and saw those innocent, slightly parted lips, through which pearly teeth gleamed with moist brilliance in the sunshine. He began to watch her with great attention in church, and tried to get into conversation with her. At first she was shy of him, and one day meeting him at the approach of evening in a narrow footpath through a field of rye, she ran into the tall thick rye, overgrown with cornflowers and wormwood, so as not to meet him face to face. He caught sight of her little head through ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Patty. "I'm housekeeper for my father, and in my father's house, but to the great outside world I'm still a shy ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... captain remarked quickly, "I have it! Who was that Persian poet you were reading about the other night, in Portsea, Faith? Why not name him that? Don't you remember, he was said to be rather a shy, retiring man. Now, kitty, here, seems ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry |
