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More "Reticence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyse that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward; and will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... boundless ambition and thirst after greatness, regardless of all means and consequences. Thus, in the preface to Machiavelli's Florentine history, in which he blames his predecessors Leonardo, Aretino and Poggio for their too considerate reticence with regard to the political parties in the city: 'They erred greatly and showed that they understood little the ambition of men and the desire to perpetuate a name. How many who could distinguish themselves by nothing praiseworthy, strove to do so by infamous deeds! ' Those writers did ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... hostess. Half the room was between them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of reticence and ambiguity had fallen. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... than either Erasmus Darwin or Buffon on the score of unwillingness to assign its full share to mere chance, but I do not for a moment believe his comparative reticence to have been caused by failure to see that the chapter of accidents is a fateful one. He saw that the cunning or functional side had been too much lost sight of, and therefore insisted on it, but he did not mean to say that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... but she could not talk with Madeleine on the subject without discussing Mr. Ratcliffe, and Carrington had expressly forbidden her to attack Mr. Ratcliffe until it was clear that Ratcliffe had laid himself open to attack. This reticence deceived poor Mrs. Lee, who saw in her sister's moods only that unrequited attachment for which she held herself solely to blame. Her gross negligence in allowing Sybil to be improperly exposed to such a risk weighed heavily on her mind. With a saint's capacity for self-torment, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... yourself," returned Mr. Brimsdown, rubbing his brow thoughtfully. "I cannot make the faintest guess at the reason which called forth this letter. I know next to nothing of my late client's private life. He was a man of the utmost reticence in personal matters. My relations with him were not ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... when a persistence in this reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... the house. Why wasn't it better anyway to wait until he and his father were quiet and alone? Who could blame him for not wanting to confess his misdemeanors before an audience? His father would understand and forgive his reticence, he was sure. Having lulled his conscience to rest with the assurance of this future reparation he sank back against the cushions and drew the robe closer about him. There was no use in letting the ride be spoiled by worry. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... dealing at the last with the prisoner's evidence in her own behalf, and that mercifully enough, though with less reticence than had characterized the earlier portions of his address. He did not think it possible or even desirable to forget that this was the evidence of a woman upon trial for her life. It must not be discredited on that account. But it was for the jury to bear in mind that the story was one which admitted ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... who formed his opinion on the best basis—namely, experience, and that had taught him that a bold reticence does less harm to one's neighbor ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... contemplating; of the coyote that was bothering and the possibility of trapping him. There was no dearth of topics of mutual interest. Nevertheless, Mormon Joe knew that she was holding something in reserve and wondered at this reticence. It came finally when they had finished and ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... folly. I believed this impossible, but so it is. I am thankful to say, however, that he has every reason to hope that the future, after this, is secure. I have chosen you to care for him, because I know your ability; have heard of your powers of reticence and cheerfulness. I depend upon ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... numberless descriptions of Violet. From Eugene she has learned that Miss Violet was offered to him, and there is no doubt in her mind but that she was forced upon Floyd. She cannot forgive him for his reticence those last few days, but her patience is infinite. The wheel of fate revolves, happily; it can never remain at one event, but must go on to the next. The Ascotts' house is a perfect godsend to her, and her intimacy with Mrs. Latimer a wise dispensation. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the method of telling his story in letters necessitates the acceptance of various improbabilities; reticence has sometimes to be violated, and confidences to be unduly made. Still, with all these allowances, the gossip of every one with regard to the likelihood of Sir Charles returning Harriet's very thinly veiled attachment is highly undignified, and often indecent. ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... peculiar gaiety—which always sounded as though she were laughing at herself, at you, and at the world in general—was gauche and anything but infectious, while her sympathy was too evidently forced. Lastly, she knew no reticence with regard to her ceaseless rapturising to all and sundry concerning her love for Papa. Although she only spoke the truth when she said that her whole life was bound up with him, and although she proved it her life long, we considered such unrestrained, continual ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... in this particular instance seemed to me to be that of a person who was concealing something. Politician's talk, Grogan, is specious, but notable for its reticence." ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... youngest members of a large family. Besides, all the Harpers had grown up in full knowledge of and sympathy with their parents' anxieties. Living as they did, in closest family union, it would have been all but impossible to prevent its being so, save by some forced and unnatural reticence, the evil of which would have been greater than the risk of saddening the ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I had given play to my imagination in a little practical joke. I had drawn an ideal portrait of the man whom I should wish for my lover in a letter which I designed giving to ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... reticence told me more than if you had used tons of words. I'm a reader of secret ciphers; you don't imagine a mere individual presents much of a problem. I tell you there are too many petticoats mixed up in this affair of the cab of the sleeping ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... This is a terrible temptation to put in the way of an historian, and few there be who are found able to resist it. How easy to keep back an ugly fact, sure to be a stumbling-block in the way of weak brethren! Carlyle is above suspicion in this respect. He knows no reticence. Nothing restrains him; not even the so-called proprieties of history. He may, after his boisterous fashion, pour scorn upon you for looking grave, as you read in his vivid pages of the reckless manner in which too many of his heroes ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... what is called the questionless age. This is not an indifferent age—quite the opposite—but spontaneous questions are less frequent. Possibly they are crowded out by other interests, possibly bits of desultory information satisfy for the moment; and there is always the gradual adoption of reticence which takes ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these audacious outfits, blond Fantine's canezou, with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... thought to be really creditable little beasts, that may do good, and at all events cannot do much harm. And as I have taken to the Puritanic order in my discourse, I shall set them in sevens, as Noah did his clean beasts in the ark. Now my seven little foxes are these:—Fault-finding, Intolerance, Reticence, Irritability; Exactingness, Discourtesy, Self-Will. And here," turning to my sermon, "is what I have to say ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... no such reticence, nor had he yet learned how to cloak the ugliness of a naked truth in the pleasant euphemisms of diplomacy. With frank brutality he completed Commines' ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Wondering at the reticence of the Kansas sparrows, I wrote to a friend living in Springfield, Ohio, my former home, and inquired what the song sparrows were doing in that locality. His reply was that, as usual, they had been singing with splendid effect on almost every day after ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the motionless, silent figure, I realized that my position was one of extraordinary difficulty and perplexity. On the one hand my suspicions—aroused, naturally enough, by the very unusual circumstances that surrounded my visit—inclined me to extreme reticence; while, on the other, it was evidently my duty to give any information that might prove ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... acute and successful lawyer, an eloquent debater, and a young man. The world was at his feet, and Mr. Die was very proud of him. Mr. Die was proud of him, and proud also of his own advice. He said nothing about it even to Harcourt himself, for to Mr. Die had been given the gift of reticence; but his old eye twinkled as his wisdom was confessed by the youth at his feet. "In politics one should always look forward," he said, as he held up to the light the glass of old port which he was about to sip; "in real life it is better ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... that, in some grotesque, exaggerated way, as a cartoon may be like a photograph, Sophy resembled Flora. It was as though nature, in prankish mood, had given a cabbage the color and texture of a rose, with none of its fragile reticence and grace. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... to explain to herself the feeling that imposed this reticence on her, until the discovery that it didn't exist toward Alice. She couldn't have feared that they would not approve of what she had done; it squared so exactly with all their ideas. Indeed the one real bond between them was a common revolt ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thought you were Judge Granger. But—please wait a moment—I thought that you were different when away from your judicial position, admired your reticence concerning your profession, and—and I thought that I knew the real man better than anyone else. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... course, and so did her uncle once or twice, but they did not tell her much of what she wanted to know. Bessie's letters were, it is true, full of allusions to what Captain Niel was doing, but she did not go beyond that. Her reticence, however, told her observant sister more than her words. Why was she so reticent? No doubt because things still hung in the balance. Then Jess would think of what it all meant for her, and now and again give way to an outburst of passionate jealousy which would have been painful enough ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... even if the hose did not break; it was fun to see the hose break. The Neptune was a favorite with the boys, though they believed that the Tremont could squirt farther, and they had a belief in its quiet efficiency which was fostered by its reticence in public. It was small and black, but the Neptune was large, and painted of a gay color lit up with gilding that sent the blood leaping through a boy's veins. The boys knew the Neptune was out of order, but they were always expecting ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... once possessed very little reticence, and had been quite ready to talk her husband over, any day and all day, with Dora. But now, though she would begin in the old way, there soon came a point ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... compliment her on her quiet midnight courage, and yet warn her against recklessness; I wanted to know whether she had been accustomed to such alarms; and if the gun she carried was really a necessity. But I could only respect her reticence, and I was turning away when I was struck by a more inexplicable spectacle. As she neared the end of the extension I distinctly saw the tall figure of a man, moving with a certain diffidence and hesitation that did not, however, suggest any intention of concealment, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hand caressingly upon the banker's shoulder as she spoke. It was not a time for reticence; it was not an occasion upon which to be put off by any girlish fear of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... For good or evil, therefore, children are the real teachers of sexual morals in England. Children deal with the impressionable age and give the early bias. Adults stand aside, and teach only extreme reticence. The discussions of boys are often obscene. As a consequence vast numbers grow up with the idea that unchastity is a gallant adventure, or, at worst, only a peccadillo. Even in old age such men look back to past intrigues with satisfaction. After marriage another tradition, or bias, also ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... doubtless have been greater had they shared the same religious views. Adrian held to the old-fashioned evangelical dogmas of his early manhood; his nephew for many years had been thinking of embracing Buddhism. Both men possessed, too, the reticence the Borlsovers had always shown, and which their enemies sometimes called hypocrisy. With Adrian it was a reticence as to the things he had left undone; but with Eustace it seemed that the curtain which he was so careful to leave undrawn hid ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... their frugal meal, smoked a pipe, and rolled in their blankets without exchanging many words. In the morning the same reticence, the same aloofness characterized the manner of both. But Cameron's companion, when he had packed his burro and was ready to start, faced about and said: "We might stay together, if it's ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until that time comes, you must forgive me if I choose to preserve a certain reticence as ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... well aware, are all that is respectable. I have not the slightest wish that you should ill-use them. But if you desire that your family concerns should be treated with reserve and reticence, you had better learn to treat the family affairs of others ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... vexed about Bentham's reticence, for it would have been of real value to know what parts appeared weakest to a man of his ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... dark and brooding as he watched the advent of that line of burdened camels. His thoughts were still labouring with the doubt of Sakr-el-Bahr which Fenzileh's crafty speech and craftier reticence had planted in them. But at sight of the corsair leader himself his countenance cleared suddenly, his eyes sparkled, and he rose to his feet to welcome him as a father might welcome a son who had been through perils on a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Landor's told me that, while in London, the Prince was in the habit of calling upon him after dinner. He would sip cafe noir, smoke a cigar, ply his host with every conceivable question, but otherwise maintain a dignified reticence. It seems then that Louis Napoleon is indebted to nature, as well as to art, for his masterly ability in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Tartaglia seems to have had something of Boswell's gift. He gives an abstract of an eventful dialogue with his host on March 25, 1539, which Cardan begins by a gentle reproach anent his guest's reticence in the matter of the rule of the cosa and the cubus equal to the numerus. Tartaglia's reply to this complaint seems reasonable enough (it must be borne in mind that he is his own reporter), and certainly helps to absolve him from the charge sometimes made ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... that she might know something about her future mistress, had been to Dame La Theyn a delightful opportunity for a good dish of gossip. Reticence was not in the Dame's nature; and in the thirteenth century—and much later than that—facts which in the nineteenth would be left in concealment, or, at most, only delicately hinted at, were spoken ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... again, went bravely dressed in his livery of white and green, with his hooded falcon across her bosom and embroidered slantwise upon the fold of her doublet. Thus she made a very handsome page. She was different though. He thought that there was now about her an allure, a grave richness, a reticence of charm, an air of discretion which he must always have liked without knowing that he liked it. Yet he had never noticed it before. The child was almost a young woman, seemed taller and more filled out. No doubt this was true, and no doubt it braved her ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... pleasure is very small in the aggregate compared with the annoyance and pain suffered by sensitive and refined people from these merciless invasions of their privacy. No precautions can forestall them, no reticence prevent; nothing, apparently, short of dying outright, can set one free. And even then it is merely leaving the torture behind, a harrowing legacy to one's friends; for tombs are even less sacred than houses. Memory, friendship, obligation,—all ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... behind a thick closed door! They look extraordinarily intelligent, thrusting out their long arms and crooking up their elbows, as I said. It's just as if you asked them, "How do I get to the sea?" and they, with Indian reticence, answered with a gesture instead of speech. Some of these arms have grown to such a length and thickness that they look like the bodies of animals. You can imagine little girls and boys riding on them, playing they are on horses. Or you can picture a fair maid and a ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... my heart throbbed while I turned away; but the pain instead of melting my pride, only increased the terrible reticence which I wore now as an armour. Her face, above the heavy furs that seemed dragging her down, had in it something of the soft, uncompromising obstinacy of Miss Matoaca. So delicate she appeared that I could almost have broken her body in my grasp; yet I knew that she would ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... hear of the affair, which had perplexed and puzzled her not a little; for, as her pupils had all felt themselves more or less to blame in the matter, they had all kept it from her knowledge, and she had only guessed from their reticence, and the air of mystery with which they received every allusion to their absent school-fellow, that something was wrong. Before morning school she called the girls together, told them how pained and grieved she had been, and gave them a little lecture upon ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... replied the small baker's boy with the dignified reticence of superior knowledge, "she knocked the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... stimulating, by calling attention to it, the very impulse which it is desired to curb, of dissipating the fear of the unknown which may be greater than that of clearly understood, and thereby, perhaps, avoidable dangers, and of breaking down barriers of shyness and reticence, which form one of the most effective of safeguards. Personal attention to the individual needs of boys and girls of widely differing temperaments and mental condition is imperative. But in general, it is to be remembered that almost every boy and girl learns, somehow, long before marriage, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... hills I met the old man in presence of his charge, like a general reviewing his troops. As the flock passed on before us the professional reticence of Snarley was broken, and he began to talk of the animals before him, pointing to this and to that. Little by little his remarks began to remind me of something I had read in a book. On returning home, I looked the matter up. The book was a treatise on Mendelism, and, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... they held the whole truth in their hand, they would not open one finger. Such men know little of the working of the spirit of truth, of the true missionary spirit. As long as there are doubt and darkness and anxiety in the soul of an inquirer, reticence may be his natural attitude. But when once doubt has yielded to certainty, darkness to light, anxiety to joy, the rays of truth will burst forth; and to close our hand or to shut our lips would be as impossible as for ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... fact that love is nothing but a bout, a game of skill between two individuals of opposite sexes: the one seeking to gain as much, and the other striving to lose as little as possible; and that the sharper of the twain thus met on the chessboard must, in the long run, win. And reticence is but a habit. Practise it for a year, and you will find it harder to betray than to conceal your thoughts. It hath its joy also. Is there no pleasure, think you, when suppressing an outbreak of tender but fatal confidence ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... it is the old style custom, for in times past there were few advocates capable of explaining themselves better. The Filipinos believe that composed and moderate writs can have no effect at court, and they are only contented with those which are full of invective, reticence, interrogation, and exclamation. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... suffered, no doubt;—but with Spartan consistency he so hid his trouble from the world that no one knew that he suffered. Those with whom he lived, and who speculated often and wondered much as to who he was, never dreamed that the silent man's reticence was a burden to himself. At no special conjuncture of his life, at no period which could be marked with the finger of the observer, did he glaringly abstain from any statement which at the moment might be natural. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... displayed less reticence regarding your station in the world to that woman you were ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... manifest delight in their rude encampment and gypsy life, although he had been one of Li Tee's oppressors in the past. But that stolid pagan had a philosophical indifference which might have passed for Christian forgiveness, and Jim's native reticence seemed like assent. And, possibly, in the minds of these two vagabonds there might have been a natural sympathy for this other truant from civilization, and some delicate flattery in the fact that Master Skinner was not driven ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... It is unfortunate that in this, as in many other similar occasions in these delightful volumes by the poet's nephew, the reticence as to names—warrantable perhaps in 1851, so soon after the poet's death—has now deprived the world of every means of knowing to whom many of Wordsworth's letters were addressed. Professor Dowden asks about ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... Except for the fact that Mrs Verloc breathed these two would have been perfect in accord: that accord of prudent reserve without superfluous words, and sparing of signs, which had been the foundation of their respectable home life. For it had been respectable, covering by a decent reticence the problems that may arise in the practice of a secret profession and the commerce of shady wares. To the last its decorum had remained undisturbed by unseemly shrieks and other misplaced sincerities of conduct. And after the striking of the blow, this ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the one longing to hide Elaine safe in his arms and tell her it would all come right somehow. A silence fell on the group as they walked. Even to the Baron, who was not a close observer, the present reticence of these two newly-betrothed lovers was apparent. He looked from one to the other, but in the face of neither could he see beaming any of the soft transports which he considered were traditionally appropriate to the hour. "Umph!" he exclaimed; "it was never like this in ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... Muzafferpur, and other young fanatics of the same type belonged. The Young Indian Association seems to devote itself chiefly to the study of explosives and to smuggling arms into India. In Anglo-Indian official circles extreme reticence is naturally observed in these matters, but from other sources I have seen evidence to show that both these associations were in frequent communication with the seditious Press all over India, in the Deccan as well as in Bengal and in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... curious fact that whilst her father made the most guarded references to all their exploits and clothed them with garments of euphemism, his daughter never attempted any such disguise. The psychologist would find in Mr. Briggerland's reticence the embryo of a once dominant rectitude, no trace of which remained in his daughter's ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... here would be proud to serve you, Madame Caron," said the woman, lapsing again into calm reticence. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... had written home regularly, but his letters had been models of discretion and confined to matters of the strictest personal interest. Since his return quite a number of temporary coldnesses had arisen as a result of his obstinate reticence, and the retired station-master, after several attacks both in front and flank had ignominiously failed, flew into a rage and said he didn't believe there was any Navy left to tell about, the Germans having sunk it all at the Battle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... the Morgans had farmed their land for hundreds of years; they were what Miss Gervase and Miss Colley and the rest of them called common people. Tennyson's noble gentleman thought of their ladies with something of reticence; they imagined them dressed in flowing and courtly robes, walking with slow dignity; they dreamed of them as always stately, the future mistresses of their houses, mothers of their heirs. Such lovers bowed, but not too low, remembering their own honor, before those who were to be equal companions ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... The same remark applies to the young unmarried women, and it is a fact that they do not sleep in the house with their parents. They are generally frank enough when questioned about their habits, but on this subject there is always a certain amount of reticence, and I have seen girls quietly withdraw when it was mooted. I am told that in some villages a separate building is provided for them like the Dhumkuria, in which they consort under the guardianship of an elderly duenna, but I believe the more common practice ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... sufficient to point out and to condemn inaccuracies and errors without bringing upon the record every individual name. No misunderstanding could possibly exist, since the references were ample in every case. But since this reticence, in at least one instance, has been criticized by an unfriendly reviewer, it is perhaps better to state that the repeated allusions to Lord Lister's journeyings to France, and the article in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... His reticence served only to fortify her trust—to elevate it. It was impossible for her not to feel something of that which was in him and crying for utterance. She was a woman. And if this one action had been but the holding of her coat, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was staggered: the case looked ugly, as Archie said. And there was a veil of reticence, of secrecy, about Dredge, that always kept his conduct in a half-light of uncertainty. Of some men one would have said off-hand: "It's impossible!" But one ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... much what it was, and with a sudden impulse he felt that he would have given worlds to break through it and talk frankly with this man whom he revered beyond all others, wide as was the intellectual difference between them. But the tutor's reticence and the younger man's respect ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... That is because of my Bostonian reticence. No secret, I assure you. I found it, sir, in the lining of this coat. The fair donor of this spacious garment on one occasion, at least, gave a tip to ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... of the merits of Stevenson's personal essays and accounts of travel, that few men have written more or more attractively of themselves without ever taking the public unduly into familiarity or overstepping proper bounds of reticence. Public prying into private lives, the propagation of gossip by the press, and printing of private letters during the writer's lifetime, were things he hated. Once, indeed, he very superfluously gave himself a dangerous cold, by dancing before a bonfire in his garden at the news of a 'society' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he took the measure of his abilities. He knew that whenever he pleased he could command personal distinction, but he cared more for his subject than for himself. He was contented to work with patient reticence, unknown and unheard of, for twenty years; and then, at middle life, he produced a work which was translated at once into French and German, and, of all places in the world, fluttered the dovecotes of the Imperial Academy of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... and for purity and chastity of lines. The most perfect toilets that have ever been achieved in America have probably been those of the class familiarly called the gay Quakers,—children of Quaker families, who, while abandoning the strict rules of the sect, yet retain their modest and severe reticence, relying on richness of material, and soft, harmonious coloring, rather than striking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... mission (Catholic) has been allowed some form of communication. On the same occasion I sent down letters and presents. They were refused; and the officer of the deck on the German war-ship had so little reticence as to pass the remark, "O, you see, you like Mataafa; we don't." In short, communication is so completely sundered that for anything we can hear in Samoa, they may all have been hanged at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... known that it was her duty to marry, and especially her duty to marry well. Between her and her mother there had been no reticence on this subject. With worldly people in general, though the worldliness is manifest enough and is taught by plain lessons from parents to their children, yet there is generally some thin veil even among themselves, some transparent ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... more complex, they would require so much. For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an uncommunicative man: that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more openly than most people; but there is a skilful fencing even in our talk. We are not inclined to say the whole of what ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... that it was an impossibility, but he nevertheless hastened to throw it open. Miss Flossie Lane stood there, very becomingly dressed in a tailor-made costume of covert coating. She wore a hat with yellow buttercups, and she had shown a certain reticence as regards cosmetics which amounted to a tacit ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my titles, they are the only things I work out myself, and you will therefore excuse me if I preserve a measure of reticence as to the method by which I ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... November day when he reached his mother's house, and there fell upon every one the unintermittent cold drizzling shower of his displeasure from the moment in which he entered the house. There was never much reticence among the ladies at Richmond in Lucy's presence, and since the completion of Lizzie's unfortunate visit to Fawn Court, they had not hesitated to express open opinions adverse to the prospects of the proposed bride. Lucy herself could say but little in defence of her old friend, who had ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... yet once again he broke away from the detaining finger; and when at last he finally allowed himself to be drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices, hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr. Sonneschein's eloquence grew ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... sentiment with her sympathy. By the light of the late confessions, his life and character looked very different to her now. His apparent contentment was resignation; his cheerfulness, a manly contempt for complaint; his reserve, the modest reticence of one who, having done a hard duty well, desires no praise for it. Like all enthusiastic persons, Christie had a hearty admiration for self-sacrifice and self-control; and, while she learned to see David's virtues, she also exaggerated them, and could not do enough to show the daily ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... struck him for a moment that Molly might think it was for her sake that he had tried to see her mother, as he had not known of her existence when he was in Florence. But his reticence made her incline much more to that idea. She almost blushed in the firelight. Edmund was feeling baffled and sorry. If there were another will—and he still maintained that there was another—certainly ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... wonderful Egypt which holds always so strong an attraction for the romantic temperament; but with all her young insouciance Iris Wayne was not one to wear her heart upon her sleeve; and her friendliness never lost that touch of reticence, of unconscious dignity which constituted, to Anstice, one ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the existence of a Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth while to ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Courtland was not clever enough to know that it is only the beautiful girls who seem well dressed in the eyes of men.) There was a certain frankness in her face that made it very interesting—the frankness of a child who looks into the face of the world and wonders at its reticence. He felt her soft gray eyes resting upon his face, as she shook hands with him and begged him to go in and have tea with her. He felt strangely uneasy under her eyes this evening, and his self-possession failed him so far as to make it impossible for him to excuse himself. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... out of the forty notebooks, or thereabout, that I have handled, there are six or seven that do not relate any exactions, either from hypocritical reticence or because there are some regiments which do not make war in this vile fashion. And there are as many as three notebooks whose writers, in relating these ignoble things, express astonishment, indignation, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hint of the matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth herself or by Farfrae either. Reasoning on the cause of their reticence he concluded that, estimating him by his past, the throbbing pair were afraid to broach the subject, and looked upon him as an irksome obstacle whom they would be heartily glad to get out of the way. Embittered as he was against society, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... earnestly, like a child who felt itself repulsed, and stood silent as if expecting me to come out of my reticence and receive her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... persons he had despatched, of his system of torturing prisoners to make them confess what they had concealed and where. He would drivel about his amours, of the style in which he lived when ashore, and the like; but whether reticence had grown into a habit too strong even for drink to break down, he never once gave me so much as a hint touching his youth and early life. He was completely a Frenchman in his vanity, and you would have thought him entirely odious and detestable for this excessive quality in him alone. Methinks ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... father, too, and the beloved home-circle, Lucy had much to tell. She said much less about the Brooke family; and Mary, who could understand how little congenial was the atmosphere of her uncle's house, respected her reticence. Lucy felt that she had no right to communicate any unfavourable impression of those from whom she had received so much kindness, and whose hospitality and kindness she had enjoyed ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... Desmaines, the wonderful Garda, sat next to her host, her bosom and hair on fire with jewels, yet with the most wonderful light of all glowing in her eyes. A famous actor, who had thrown his proverbial reticence to the winds, kept his immediate neighbors in a state of semi-hysterical mirth. The clink of wine glasses, the laughter of beautiful women, the murmur of cultivated voices, rising and swelling through the faint, mysterious gloom, made a picturesque, a wonderful ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and confusion that we would not, and even dare not, trail across a friend's mind? So often the heart holds more than ever should be poured out into another's ear. There are in life strained silences that we could not break if we would. And there is a law of reticence that true love and unselfishness will always respect. If my brother hath joy, am I to cloud it with my grief? If he hath sorrow, am I to add my sorrow unto his? When our precious earthly fellowship has been put to its last high uses in ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... and are able to announce an impending calamity, hardly ever give us the one useful and definite indication that would allow us to avoid it. What can be the childish or mysterious reason of this strange reticence? In many cases it is almost criminal; for instance, in a case related by Professor Hyslop[1] we see the foreboding of the greatest misfortune that can befall a mother germinating, growing, sending out shoots, developing, like some gluttonous and deadly plant, to ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... symmetrical detail offers a suspicion of mere mechanism, yet it is no less evident that after longer study the charms of this exquisite structure tell with a lasting power. Too subtle to extort admiration at first, it bewitches a student of architecture who notes the scholarly reticence of its detail, the masterly way in which, as a rule, the construction is legitimately ornamented and the decoration made an integral part of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... dried and consoled her before her people came back—and had the tact not to mention this adventure, guessing what fillips she would catch on her poor little pink nose for her stupidity. She looked her gratitude for this reticence of his in the most touching way, with her big black eyes—and had a cunning smile of delight at their common tacit understanding. Her rescuer from a watery grave did not apply for the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... have the charm of the springtime upon them, the best recent example I know of is Bjornson, the Norwegian romancist. What especially makes his books spring-like is their freshness and sweet good faith. There is also a reticence and an unwrought suggestiveness about them that is like the promise of buds and early flowers. Of Turgenieff, the Russian, much the same thing might be said. His stories are simple and elementary, and have none of the elaborate hair-splitting and forced hot-house ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... views of Madame Gauthier as to the meagreness and pallid baldness of the one and the sturdiness and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... after the existence of her charge's friends and relations from one who might very probably have heard something of them. They settled that Madame Babette must believe that the Marquise and Clement were dead; and admired her for her reticence in never speaking of Virginie. The truth was, I suspect, that she was so desirous of her nephews success by this time, that she did not like letting any one into the secret of Virginie's whereabouts ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... his own horse to ride. He took no attendant with him except the one who had asked for the "Evening-Glory." He would not even call on the nurse, lest it might lead to discoveries. The lady was puzzled at his reticence. She would sometimes send her servant to ascertain, if possible, what road he took, and where he went. But somehow, by chance or design, he always became lost to her watchful eye. His dress, also, was of the most ordinary description, and his visits were always paid late in the evening. To her all ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... l. 217. Notice the reticence with which the mere fact of the murder is stated—no details given. Keats wants the prevailing feeling to be one of pity rather than ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... tell him instantly!" cried Mrs. March who began to find reason in the supposition, as well as comfort for the hurt which the girl's reticence had given her. "Or if she wouldn't, it would be because she was waiting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... crossed himself, and went into the hut. Inside, the walls were adorned with very old-looking frescoes that were equally innocent of perspective and reticence: the floor was of tessellated bronze. In each corner Manuel found, set upright, a many-storied umbrella of the kind used for sacred purposes in the East: each of these had a silver handle, and was worked in nine ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... month or so ago. But a month or so ago the secrets came. Oh, I know him so well. He is trying to hide that there are any secrets lest his reticence should hurt me. But we have been so much together, so much to each other—how should I not know?" And again she leaned forward with her hands clasped tightly together upon her knees and a look of great ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... an abyss. A slight mustache and pointed beard partly concealed the ironical smile that played on his passionate lips. The natural grace of good manners and quiet but admirably cut clothes completed the young man's exterior, behind which, in spite of all his reticence, could be divined a haughty and exceptional nature. A more profound psychologist would have seen in him an obstinately passionate, ungrateful nature, which takes from others everything it desires, demanding it from them as ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... this body was scarcely known to the University at large; and its members held reticence to be a point of honour. You might be aware that your most intimate friend belonged to it: you had dimly inferred the fact from his familiarity with certain celebrities, and from discovering that upon Saturday evenings he was always mysteriously engaged. But he never mentioned ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... already been revealed. She gave us chairs and she talked. Little Roscoe Potts writhed near by upon an ottoman and betrayed that he, too, could talk when circumstances were kindly. The detail of their personalities, salient in that first moment, was that Heaven had denied them both the gift of reticence. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... presently a young girl with two children came and stood near me. These were of a different class. There was no timidity or reticence about them. After standing at my side, and finding that they could not see to advantage, the three sidled round to the back, and gradually edged themselves nearer and nearer until they commanded a satisfactory view ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... conqueror of women's hearts, which he was accustomed to win with as little trouble as a child gathers strawberries in the woods, and was envied by the whole regiment for his numberless successes, which he did not treat with too much reticence. This time the adventure lasted somewhat longer; those who were passing heard loud outcries and uproar for a short time, as if a wrestling match were going on in the hut, and the letter-carrier, an old woman, who was just going by, even stood still in surprise ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... pioneer found Dock before him among the Indians and buffalo that ran riot over the wind-brushed prairie where now the nation's beef feeds quietly. Why he was there no man could tell; he was a fresh-faced young Frenchman with much knowledge of medicine and many theories, and a reticence un-French. From the Indians he learned to use strange herbs that healed almost magically the ills of man; from the rough out-croppings of civilization he learned to swallow vile whiskey in great gulps, and to ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... enables the soul to pass with equal step through this supreme ordeal; never did the habits and qualities of a lifetime, solemnly gathered into a few last sad hours, more grandly maintain themselves amid the gloom and shadow of approaching death. The reticence, the self-contained composure, the obedience to proper authority, the magnanimity, and the Christian meekness, that marked all his actions, still preserved their sway, in spite of the inroads of disease and the creeping lethargy that weighted down ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... "that you are rather overdoing your diplomatic reticence, Captain Granet. You haven't told me a single thing. Why, some of the Tommies I have been to see in the hospitals have been ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the young Polish pianist and composer, Chopin, then a recent arrival in the gay city. His peculiarly original genius, his weird and poetic style of playing, which transported his hearers into a mystic fairy-land of sunlight and shadow, his strangely delicate beauty, the alternating reticence and enthusiasm of his manners, made him the idol of the clever men and women, who courted the society of the shy and sensitive musician; for to them he was a fresh revelation. Dr. Franz Liszt gives the world some charming pictures ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... desired to be questioned, and at the same time she felt a great distaste for the threatened confidence. She loathed arm-in-arm confidences, the indecency of dragging up and exposing, in whispers, things that should have been buried deep in reticence. She hesitated, and Clare ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a spirit all their own. Especially is this the case in the Orient, where the most original and suggestive thought is half disguised in the garb of metaphor, and where, in spite of vivid fancies and fiery passions, the people affect taciturnity or reticence, and delight in the metaphysical and the mystic. Hence the early annals of the Siamese, or Sajamese, abound in fables of heroes, demigods, giants, and genii, and afford but few facts of practical value. Swayed by religious influences, they joined, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... has none of the culture, the spontaneity, the suavity, the reticence, the abandon, the heating power, the cooling power, the light, the shade, or any of the other ingredients referred to by the great Small in his noble ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... hysterics. But he isn't a bad sort of parent, as they go; he fusses, but he lets one do as one wants. I suppose I oughtn't to give my people away; but I never can see why one shouldn't talk about one's people just as if they were anybody else. I don't think I hold things sacred, as the Dean says: 'Reticence, reticence, the true characteristic of the English gentleman and the sincere Christian!'" and Jack delivered himself of some paragraphs of the Dean's ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... were absolutely alien to his nature, but he had to set against his own convenience the immeasurable disappointment which his refusal would cause his readers. It was one of the most pathetic tragedies of genius that the dictates of an austere reticence were so often set at nought by the impulses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... entered at Caius 29th June 1667, migrating to St. John's, where he entered 2nd February 1668-69. Thomas Baker for once abandons his decorous reticence and states of Oates: "He was a lyar from the beginning, he stole and cheated his taylor of a gown, which he denied with horrid imprecations, and afterwards at a communion, being admonisht and advised by his ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... Eastern manners, throw a veil in general over all that concerns the weaker sex, neither representing to us the forms of the Assyrian women in the sculptures, nor so much as mentioning their existence in the inscriptions. Very rarely is there an exception to this all but universal reticence. In the present instance, and in about two others, the silence usually kept is broken; and a native woman comes upon the scene to tantalize us by her momentary apparition. The glimpse that we here obtain does not reveal much. Beyond the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... to himself as he studied her (which having put aside the personal he could now do), "She has the New England alertness of mind inherited from her mother without the New England reticence, and from her Kentucky father, eccentric as he is, she gets the vivacity and charm which is the Kentucky ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... order in the United Kingdom, but welcoming the new French monarchy in terms which Grey emphatically commended. It gave offence to liberals by describing the revolutionary movement in Belgium as a "revolt"; but what called forth an immediate outburst of popular resentment was its significant reticence on the subject of reform. This resentment was aggravated tenfold by the Duke of Wellington's celebrated speech in the lords, declaring against any reform whatever. The duke always refused to admit that this declaration was the cause of his subsequent fall, which he attributed, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... and all the rest was included. And when he thought of her eyes and the maddening way in which they looked into his; of the grave little smile, evanescent, delicate, subtle, the very aroma of a smile, so different from the coarse hilarity of your commonplace English girls; of the reticence and pride which gave such value to her smaller graces; of the enchanting look and accent which had accompanied her act of self-surrender just now—that acceptance of his word and renunciation of her own fancy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... flat-chested, with a mass of black hair flung back from her forehead. No one knew from what place they had come nor whither they intended to go—such a visit was rare enough in these days of trains—and the little man's reticence was attacked again and again, but ever unsuccessfully. There were perhaps twenty sailors in the room, and they sat or stood by the fireplace watching ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... young gentleman hasn't taken me into his confidence. Neither has the young lady. Of course I entertain an opinion, on the subject, but since I am not given to discussing the intimate personal affairs of other people, you'll excuse my reticence on this subject, I'm sure. I repeat that this has been a ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... nodded, and there was pride but no amusement in her smile; for she had a quick enthusiasm, and the reticence of Insular Britain has no great place in ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... Reticence on the part of business men respecting their financial position may seriously impair their credit. It is universally regarded by the intelligent business man to be good policy to make known his condition. A ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... this letter was ever received from McKiernon. The cause of his reticence can be as well conjectured by the reader ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... mention of Simon or his house. It is noticeable that the synoptic writers say very little about this home in Bethany. Farrar has aptly remarked (p. 483): "We seem to trace in the Synoptists a special reticence about the family at Bethany. The house in which they take a prominent position is called 'the house of Simon the leper'; Mary is called simply 'a woman' by St. Matthew and St. Mark (Matt. 26:6, 7; Mark 14:3); ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... making her acquainted with the real truth, and in endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others, without betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister or any resentment towards Edward. At first Marianne wept in grief and amazement; then she began to ascribe Elinor's long reticence about the engagement to lack of real depth of feeling; and it was not till the latter had done a deal of protesting that the younger girl was able to give her sister due credit for self-sacrifice and generosity. So when Mr. John Dashwood came round ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... capacious and frank, as permits him to take up the grandest character in history into the hollow of his hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's face.[G] But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and are not subsequently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... election, I have come to tell everything to you, as to a confessor, a priest, begging you not to divulge a word of this conversation, even in the interest of my cause. I ask nothing but that, my dear colleague,—absolute reticence on this subject; for the rest I rely upon your justice ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Jehovah is the Rock of Ages.' In the former verse the prophet had given up in despair the attempt to characterise the peace which God gave, and fallen back upon the expedient of naming it twice over. In this verse, with similar eloquence of reticence, he abandons the attempt to describe or characterise that great Name, and in adoration, contents himself with twice taking it upon his lips, in order to impress what he cannot express, the majesty and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... She manifestly thought that Faraday ought to have come forward in Lord Melbourne's defence, and there is a flavour of resentment in one of her letters to him on the subject. No doubt Faraday had good grounds for his reticence, but ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... nervous, restless, and gloomy. This was attributed to the joylessness of avarice as contrasted with the spendthrift gayety of the more liberal Arthur, and he was feared and RESPECTED as a miser. His long, solitary walks around the promontory, his incessant watchfulness, his reticence when questioned, were all recognized as the indications of a man whose soul was absorbed in money-getting. The reverence they failed to yield to his religious isolation they were willing to freely accord to his financial abstraction. But Mr. McGee was not so deceived. Overtaking him one ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in him. He knew also that his mother would not betray him—he would have counted it betrayal—to his father; nor would any one who had ever heard Mr. Raymount give vent to his judgment of any conduct he despised, have wondered at the reticence ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... looked strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A day or two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, he tackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of a praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice look blank with amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing certain incidents in his friendship with Krafft, under ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... bitterness of a deeper disillusionment, back to an estranged wife; and yet another way to somewhere near the faith of his childhood and the peace of resignation. Barely is so serious a theme treated by a novelist with such simplicity, sincerity and eloquent reticence. Nobody need fear the dulness known as "pi-jaw." The story is full of interest. The characterisation, extraordinarily careful and balanced, is conveyed not only in description but in the cleverly-constructed dialogue. It is part of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... cross-examination O'Reilly wrung from him the reluctant admission that everything seemed favorable for a crossing some time that night, and that he had selected a promising point. Beyond that the old man would say nothing. Johnnie asked himself uneasily if this reticence was not really due to apprehension rather than to sullenness. Whatever the cause, it was not particularly reassuring, and as evening came on Johnnie found ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... only separated by a measurable number of days from the horror of school. Already I was sick with fear, and in place of my dreams I distressed myself by visualising the scenes of the life I dreaded—the Meat Market, the dusty shadows of the gymnasium, the sombre reticence of the great hall. All that my lost tranquillity had given me was a keener sense of my own being; my smallness, my ugliness, my helplessness in the face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to dull my emotions in unpleasant ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... grow emotional or sentimental. American traditions are largely borrowed from England. We have the Anglo-Saxon reticence. A parade of emotion in public embarrasses us. A simple and sincere expression of feeling is often desirable in ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... up from the first between Mr. Dundas and madame could not stop at friendship now, when both were free and evidently so necessary to each other. For madame, with that noble frankness backed by wise reticence characteristic of her, had told every one of her loss by which she had been necessitated to become Leam's governess; always adding, "So that I am glad to be able to work, seeing that I am obliged to do so, as I could not borrow, even for a short time: I am too proud for that, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Cairo for fear of consequences. Yet neither promises nor bribes would persuade the poorest to break through the rule of silence. The whole might have been a canard: on the other hand, there was also a valid reason for reticence; the open mouth would not long have led to a sound throat. So our many informants contented themselves with telling us frequent tales of gold ornaments picked up after rain; they showed us a ring made from a bit found on the Tabk ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... washed and dried and consoled her before her people came back—and had the tact not to mention this adventure, guessing what fillips she would catch on her poor little pink nose for her stupidity. She looked her gratitude for this reticence of his in the most touching way, with her big black eyes—and had a cunning smile of delight at their common tacit understanding. Her rescuer from a watery grave did not apply for the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and the sparkling frost of a winter's day. But he very rarely expresses his enthusiasm in superlatives: "a usefulish lot," and "a smartish few," meaning in Worcestershire "a very good lot," and "a great many," is about the limit to which he will commit himself. His natural reticence in serious situations and calamity, and his reserve in the outlet of feeling by vocal expression, give a wrong impression of its real depth, and may even convey the impression of callousness to anyone not conversant with the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... for a Christian teacher or minister to say a word about certain moral scandals. But they do not say anything about the immorality and the indelicacy and the indecency of doing them. Let us have done with that hypocrisy, brethren. I am arguing for no disregard for proprieties; I want all fitting reticence observed, and I do not wish indiscriminate rebukes to be flung at foul things; but it is too much to require that, by reason of the very inky cloud of filth that they fling up like cuttlefish, they should escape censure. Let us remember Paul's exhortation, and reprove because the things ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... expected her confidence. He called upon her several times in this expectation; but each time there was more perceptible an indefinable something which prevented it. In fact, he felt mortified by Elizabeth's reticence. People had confidently expected that Miss Hallam would explain her conduct to him; some had even said, they were ready to resume friendly relations with her if the rector's attitude in the matter appeared to warrant ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... morning a furiously driven cart was significant. Jonathan Beers, who farmed the Jenks land, had heard the wheels and caught an indistinct glimpse of the vehicle as he was feeding the cattle, but with a reticence purely rustic had not been moved to mention ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gain admittance: all was dark with the gloom of despair, and this notwithstanding that Adam had not been mentioned, and Reuben had no more certain knowledge of a rival to guide him than the jaundiced workings of a jealous heart. Many events had concurred to bring about this blamable reticence. In the first place, the letter which Eve had commenced as a mere fulfilment of her promise had grown through a host of changing moods; for as time went on many a sweet and bitter found its way to that stream whose course did never yet run smooth; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... grouping and narration of its old incidents it exhibits no dramatic power, and little skill of characterization in the portraiture of its personages. And not only does a matter-of-fact air pervade the narrative, but the tale is told with such reticence of fact as well as of feeling, that it reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he took up the book of what it is that makes the horror of such existence; all of which might have been imparted without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in the newspapers became warm, and almost angry. Walsh was pestered with all sorts of suggestions, and a deputation waited upon him, urging the "claims" of the General Hospital. Walsh received them with politeness, but with reticence, and they left dissatisfied. It was a difficulty, but Walsh was equal to it. Summoning his committee, he urged that the fete having been given for a specific purpose, that purpose must be fulfilled, and the whole sum must go ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... amount of work; and though he knew how great was the prize before him, he refused to leave his Board before the day had come at which his Board must necessarily dispense with his services. Between him and his father there had been no reticence, and it was clearly understood by him that he was to go down and win twenty thousand a year and the prettiest girl in Cumberland, if his own capacity that way, joined to all the favour of the girl's father and mother, would enable him to attain success. To Emily ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... a word with regard to his daughter, Mrs. Bowles, but the townsfolk were well aware that he thought his son-in-law a fool, if not worse; Mrs. Bowles, in the seven years since her wedding, had only two or three times revisited her father's house, and her husband never came. A like reticence was maintained by Mr. Daffy concerning his son Charles Edward, once the hope of his life. At school the lad had promised well; tailoring could not be thought of for him; he went into a solicitor's office, and remained there just long enough ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... providing for a rainy day. The following notes respecting local societies have been culled from blue books, annual reports, and private special information, the latter being difficult to arrive at, in consequence of that curious reticence observable in the character of officials of all sorts, club ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... little ways the distinction and the difference was apparent to Mary. The dignity of a gentleman and a man of the world was partly shorn away: the gentleman portion, which comprised kindness and reticence, had vanished, the man of the world remained, typified by a familiarity which assumed that this and that, understood but not to be mentioned, shall be taken for granted: a spurious equalization perched jauntily but insecurely on a non-committal, and that base ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... fellow," went on Mary, with a yearning note in her voice which stabbed Katherine like actual pain. "When Father asked him about the affair in the tidehole, he never once said anything about my fearful panic, which so nearly cost him his life; and the very fact of his reticence has made me feel the meanest creature on the face of the earth. I can scarcely look my father in the face, and when he pities me for having been in such sore straits I feel like sinking through the couch from ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... well-known reticence of the Japanese," I continued, "we hope to meet some of them who will show us something more of their domesticity than we can see ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... "That," she said, "is what seems so impossible for some to accept—so terrible—the apparent indifference, the lack of explanation—God's dreadful reticence in this thunderous whirlwind of prayer that storms skyward day and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... for youthful and ignorant folly. I believed this impossible, but so it is. I am thankful to say, however, that he has every reason to hope that the future, after this, is secure. I have chosen you to care for him, because I know your ability; have heard of your powers of reticence and cheerfulness. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... being an accomplice if she "said anything." The necessity for this intimidation arose from his plans at the moment, of which she, of course, knew nothing; and only later, five days afterwards, she guessed why he had been so doubtful of her reticence and so afraid of a new outburst ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... intervals of rest he had even learned to snap the thirty-foot caribou-gut lash of the dog-whip. He had asked a hundred questions, had insisted on Jackpine's smoking a cigar at every stop, and had been so happy and so altogether companionable that half of the Cree's hereditary reticence had been swept away before his unbounded enthusiasm. He helped to build their balsam shelter for the night, ate a huge supper of moose meat, hot-stone biscuits, beans and coffee, and then, just as he had stretched himself out in his furs ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... or even syllables of the names of persons connected with the speaker by marriage can hardly be separated from the reluctance evinced by so many people to utter their own names or the names of the dead or of the dead or of chiefs and kings; and if the reticence as to these latter names springs mainly from superstition, we may infer that the reticence as to the former has no better foundation. That the savage's unwillingness to mention his own name is based, at least ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... lent him his own horse to ride. He took no attendant with him except the one who had asked for the "Evening-Glory." He would not even call on the nurse, lest it might lead to discoveries. The lady was puzzled at his reticence. She would sometimes send her servant to ascertain, if possible, what road he took, and where he went. But somehow, by chance or design, he always became lost to her watchful eye. His dress, also, was of the most ordinary description, and his visits were always paid late in the evening. To her ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... again, Mrs. Munn sailed away, and her son hung himself farther over the window-sill. Evidently he had inherited none of his mother's reticence. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... first time Grace became aware of the curious reticence that had vaguely annoyed Evelyn. "Where do you live, Miss Brent!" she asked with the sudden directness so characteristic ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... suggestion of quickness. But the only personal traits of this sort that I recall in the New Testament are the eyes of Jesus and Paul's way of stretching out a hand when he spoke. In view of this reticence, it is rather remarkable how often the Gospels refer to Jesus "looking." He "looked round about on" the people in the Synagogue, and then—with some suggestion of a pause and silence while he looked, "he saith unto the man" (Mark 3:5). ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... wondered what possibilities of communion there could have been between Mr. Leath and his wife. Now he concluded that there had probably been none. Mrs. Leath's words gave no hint of her husband's having failed to justify her choice; but her very reticence betrayed her. She spoke of him with a kind of impersonal seriousness, as if he had been a character in a novel or a figure in history; and what she said sounded as though it had been learned by heart and slightly dulled by repetition. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Josephine that their confessor had told them a wise reticence was not the same thing as a moral deceit. She reminded her, too, how often they had acted on his advice and always with good effect; how many anxieties and worries they had saved their mother by reticence. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... me a few weeks later. The second offence, on the other hand, was to prove the less serious of the two against society, and might in itself have been published to the world years ago. There have been private reasons for my reticence. The affair was not only too intimately mine, and too discreditable to Raffles. One other was involved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose name shall not even now be sullied ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Monsieur de Merri would have passed away. But meanwhile, what was the cause of that unwillingness? Did he know, after all, what had occurred at La Fleche, and had he begun to suspect me? I inwardly cursed his reticence, and went soon to bed, that ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the week I lay there, waiting and growing stronger, I never heard their name spoken. Preoccupied with my own searchings for the right way, and with my feeble but determined fight against despair, I simply acquiesced in Jack's reticence, taking for granted that he was afraid to speak of them, lest I should turn unruly and insist on seeing them. Meanwhile I said over and over to myself, how would it be when life began again for us all? We would take up our relations exactly ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... his five hundred confidants, by a reticence as remarkable as his laxity, had not kept his secrets better than he did himself, the very devil might have been played with I don't know how many people. But there was always this saving reflection to be made, that the man who could be guilty of such extravagances for the sake of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have, and that were best for her. I would often have talked with him about her; but he would never say much. Once he said to me: 'There are reasons why I should not speak more than is necessary. Some day you will know—and understand!' I respected his reticence; and beyond asking after her on my return after a journey, I have never spoken of her again. I had never seen her till I ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... these books are inartistic in several regards. No criminals, even allowing them to be hypocrites, ever disclose themselves in the open-hearted manner of these autobiographers. Vice always pays to virtue the homage of a certain reticence in details. Despite all his Newgate experiences and his acquaintance with noted felons, Defoe never understood either the weakness or the strength of the criminal type. So all his harlots and thieves ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... revealed the splendid lines of his muscular shoulders. He had grown to a physical manhood which had the leopard's lithe grace and the lion's gravity. His dimpled and clean-shaven chin was strong, and the line of his lips firm. His eyes were steady and penetrating, giving an impression of reticence. His hands were slender and brown, and soft in the palms as those of a girl. The citizens marveled over him as he moved slowly through the streets, thinking himself quite indistinguishable among the other young men in dark suits and ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... mysterious rapidity, considering the reticence which a prosecuting attorney who was friendly to the negroes should display, the report got abroad that the negroes had confessed their crime, and soon after dark, ominous looking crowds began to gather in the streets. They passed and repassed the place, where ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... some annoyance. She was annoyed that Anthony had been lessened, and she was annoyed to find that she cared whether he had been lessened or not. She would also have liked to know the reason for his proposed departure. Undoubtedly it had to do with Anne Alison. His very reticence proved it. Perhaps she was going, too.... Anne Alison.... At the very thought of the girl, Valerie's resentment welled up anew. Jealousy knows no law. The reflection that it was at her instance that Anthony had gone as footman to the house where Anne was housemaid rode her with a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... you, giving the account of our ascent of Long's Peak, but he said he could not, and insisted on our going in for which young Lyman was more anxious than I was, as Mr. Kavan had seen "Jim" in the morning, and departed from his usual reticence so far as to say, "There's something wrong with that man; he'll either shoot himself or somebody else." However, the "ugly fit" had passed off, and he was so very pleasant and courteous that we remained the whole ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... father's communication. Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might suddenly end—might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The thought took away from her all her former reticence, and made her action bold. She started from her seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... that reason, dear madame," I soothingly said; "because reticence is art's brightest crown; because Zola never gives us a real human document and Flaubert does; and the difference is a difference of method. Flaubert is magnificently naked, but his nakedness implicates ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... like to think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness. Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a certain note of ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... old friend of Landor's told me that, while in London, the Prince was in the habit of calling upon him after dinner. He would sip cafe noir, smoke a cigar, ply his host with every conceivable question, but otherwise maintain a dignified reticence. It seems then that Louis Napoleon is indebted to nature, as well as to art, for his masterly ability ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... handsome old head rather high. Had he belonged to a higher station in life, his natural reticence, and a fastidious personal dignity would have carried him far. To a modern statesman they are at least as valuable as brains. In the small world of Ipscombe they only meant that Halsey himself held rather scornfully aloof from the current village gossip, and got mocked at for his ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was an acute and successful lawyer, an eloquent debater, and a young man. The world was at his feet, and Mr. Die was very proud of him. Mr. Die was proud of him, and proud also of his own advice. He said nothing about it even to Harcourt himself, for to Mr. Die had been given the gift of reticence; but his old eye twinkled as his wisdom was confessed by the youth at his feet. "In politics one should always look forward," he said, as he held up to the light the glass of old port which he was about to sip; "in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... what he does not tell he leaves you to infer, without risk of going astray. Mr. William Nelson Cromwell, of New York; the general counsel of the Company, offset Varilla's loquacity by a proper amount of reticence. Bunau-Varilla hurried over from Paris, and had interviews with President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay, but could not draw them into his conspiracy. The President told him that, at the utmost, he would only order American warships, which were on the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of your position," he assured her. "I take that for granted. No one with a spark of kindly feeling could look at this matter except in one way. Now, you must admit that I have behaved beautifully. I have made no attempt to surprise your reticence, or even to discover your name. Truly, I haven't made the faintest effort to entrap you into any revelations, have I? Now, I am sure that we must know quantities of the same people, and all I ask is that you mention some of your engagements to me ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... notice the red-headed one?" asked Pete Murphy. "My first girl had red hair. I always jump when I see a carrot-top." He made this intimate revelation simply, as if the time for a conventional reticence ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... enough to escape panic was, how had the weed jumped the saltband? It was answered simultaneously by many learned professors whose desire to break into print and share the front page with the terrible grass overcame their natural academic reticence. There was no doubt that originally the peculiar voracity of the inoculated plant had not been inherited; but it was equally uncontroverted that somehow, during the period it had been halted by the salt, a mutation had happened and now every wind blowing over the weed carried seeds ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... know what Sam had come for. The last time they had heard of him he was a freighter. His reticence ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... did not fail to note that, after he began to make use of information she let drop as to her whereabouts from day to day and her free companionship, he heard less of Gardner Knowles, Lane Cross, and Forbes Gurney, and more of Georgia Timberlake and Ethel Tuckerman. Why this sudden reticence? On one occasion she did say of Forbes Gurney "that he was having such a hard time, and that his clothes weren't as nice as they should be, poor dear!" Stephanie herself, owing to gifts made to her by Cowperwood, was resplendent ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... instead of taking leave of Annie, went up to the counter, and asked for an "unce o' tobawco," as if his appearance along with Annie were merely accidental; while Annie, with perfect appreciation of the reticence, ran through the gap in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... performed a difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the whole town in on his joy. The next day he had been sober and from that day forth he had not taken even a drink. It was noted also that nothing was doing in the direction of developing his mine; and another quality, the rare gift of reticence, had taken the place of his brag. He sat off by himself, absent-minded and brooding, which was not ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... what that demand was to the hearer—how probingly it touched the hidden sensibility, the vividly conscious reticence of years; how the uncertainty he was insisting on as part of his own hope had always for Daniel been a threatening possibility of painful revelation about his mother. But the moment had influences which were not only new but solemn to ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... home he tried Cardington on the subject of Emmet, but found him uncommunicative, almost brusque, in his reticence. Leigh suspected that the subject might be a sore one with him, and that he thoroughly disapproved of Miss Wycliffe's odd charity. When a talker is silent, his silence has the tactile quality of Egyptian darkness, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... ashamed of this mild outburst as soon as it was uttered. But it was true enough, and he could not help saying it. There was something about this girl that broke down his reticence, made him want to talk, made him feel sure he would not ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... outside. Adrienne and Mrs. Adams had come back, and Errington turned composedly to greet them, the veil of reticence, momentarily swept aside by the surge of a sudden emotion, falling once more into ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... seriously, even when he was mad, and his conduct was sure to belie them before long. He was the precursor of an impassioned and serious age, going to extremes in idea and placing deeds after words. In spite of occasional reticence dictated by sound sense, Voltaire had abandoned himself entirely in his old age to that school of philosophy, young, ardent, full of hope and illusions, which would fain pull down everything before it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... her friends dared not break the spell, for fear that the Englishman might hold to his usual modest reticence. He had explored in Brazil, seen service in the Boer War, hunted in India and Africa—matters of experience of which he never spoke. Upon this occasion, however, evidently taking Monty's recital word for ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... that wise government consists in restraining men from injuring one another and leaving them free to regulate their own pursuits, the inaugural address contains no declaration of purpose or policies. No such reticence marks Jefferson's private letters, which are, indeed, the best expression of his political philosophy. Nowhere is the governing purpose of his Administration stated more clearly than in a letter written just before his inauguration. "Let the general government be reduced to foreign ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. Only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation and administration, should dictate." In this way, just a hundred years ago, the opportune reticence, the politic hesitancy of European statesmanship, was at last broken down; and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control. The Americans placed ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... that a gentleman could see so much in mere vulgarities of opinion, and though she uttered as few words as possible, conversing only in sad smiles and headshakes and in intercepted movements toward the door, she happened, in some unguarded lapse from her reticence, to use the expression that she was disappointed in him. He caught at it and, seeming to drop his field-glass, pressed upon her with nearer, ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... Cameron concluded that her reticence, now her brain was growing clearer, came from a determined effort to cover her tracks and perhaps those of a man—unworthy, undoubtedly, and Cameron believed this man to be the "Pat" to whom his patient had so frantically referred ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... same,' says Moore, 'if I was you, I'd take the saddle off my emotions, an' hobble 'em out to rest some. Meanwhile I'd think up a new system. You-all lacks reticence; also you're a heap too much disposed to keep yourse'f in the public eye. I don't know how it is in Texas, but yere in Arizona a gent who gets too cel'brated gets shot. Also, I might add in concloosion that your Panhandle ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... unseen world. One knows not whether to wonder more at the decisive authority with which He tells us of that mysterious region, or at the small space which such revelations occupy in His words. There is an air of simplicity and unconsciousness, and withal of authority, and withal of divine reticence about them all, which are in full harmony with the belief that Christ speaking of heaven speaks of that He knows, and testifies that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... present or a letter. I believe the mission (Catholic) has been allowed some form of communication. On the same occasion I sent down letters and presents. They were refused; and the officer of the deck on the German war-ship had so little reticence as to pass the remark, "O, you see, you like Mataafa; we don't." In short, communication is so completely sundered that for anything we can hear in Samoa, they may all have been hanged at the yard-arm ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... violin's, to out the very soul of you. She spoke with her hands too, with her shoulders and bosom, with her head and stamping foot. She never faltered though she ran from scorn of him to deep scorn of herself, and appealed in turn to his pride, his pity, his honour and his lust. She had no reticence, set no bounds: she was everything, or nothing; he was a god, or dirt of the kennel. In the end—and what a climax!—she stopped in the middle of a sentence, covered her eyes, sobbed, gave a broken cry, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... narrates the act of Resurrection. Apocryphal Gospels cannot resist the temptation of describing it. Why did the Four preserve such singular reticence about what would have been irresistible to 'myth' makers? Because they were not myth-makers, but witnesses, and had nothing to say as to an act that no man had seen. No doubt, the Resurrection took place in the earliest hours of the first day of the week. The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and enter Angel's at that remarkable pace which the woodcuts in the hotel bar-room represented to credulous humanity as the usual rate of speed of that conveyance. At such times the habitual expression of disdainful reticence and lazy official severity which he wore on the box became intensified as the loungers gathered about the vehicle, and only the boldest ventured to address him. It was the Hon. Judge Beeswinger, Member of Assembly, who to-day presumed, perhaps rashly, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lonely tree which lives to shelter unnumbered lives and to stand quietly in its place. There was such rustic homeliness and constancy belonging to her, such beautiful powers of apprehension, such reticence, such gentleness for those who were troubled or sick; all these gifts and graces Martha hid in her heart. She never joined the church because she thought she was not good enough, but life was such a passion ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to present the flowers to Deanie," said Nellie. "You see, the girls always give her something at this dance, and they choose the freshies just to act in the capacity of page. You don't have to say a word," as Sally showed reticence. "A senior makes a speech and you just walk up prettily with ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... than as the man who had suffered so much for his patriotic and independent opinions. As I naturally could not attach much value to the political importance of my past career, he imagined this arose from suspicious reticence, and encouraged me by the assurance that, although great mistakes and even offences might have been committed in this respect, these only affected those who, while they had remained in Germany, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt upon Mr. Wallace's originality, or to question his claim to the honour of being ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Francis was even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly set herself above dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, overruled it. He, having asserted in the strongest terms the principle of obedience, paid no further attention to dogma, but, without the least reticence, insisted on practices and ideas that no Church could possibly permit or avow. Toward the end of his life, his physician cauterized his face for some ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... hurt by being questioned. She missed the reticence of a gentleman. Then she reproached herself for not understanding that his frank curiosity was a delicate appeal to her confidence in him, and answered: ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... His remarks were kept within careful lines so as not to offend. Hauptmann said afterwards that he had noticed such cautiousness in all weavers. No doubt it had grown out of the great poverty that often brought out diffidence and reticence toward strangers. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... it is undeniable that Mr. Darwin has purposely been silent upon the philosophical and theological applications of his theory. This reticence, under the circumstances, argues design, and raises inquiry as to the final cause or reason why. Here, as in higher instances, confident as we are that there is a final cause, we must not be overconfident ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... foolishness; but she could not talk with Madeleine on the subject without discussing Mr. Ratcliffe, and Carrington had expressly forbidden her to attack Mr. Ratcliffe until it was clear that Ratcliffe had laid himself open to attack. This reticence deceived poor Mrs. Lee, who saw in her sister's moods only that unrequited attachment for which she held herself solely to blame. Her gross negligence in allowing Sybil to be improperly exposed to such a risk weighed heavily on her mind. With a saint's capacity for self-torment, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... he knew that he had grown somewhat churlish; that men who did not understand his unsociable ways and extreme reticence looked at him askance. But what of it? How little such things mattered! The tragedy was his and the silence was his, and he had never asked anyone to ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... really have been a misunderstanding, at any rate, I had to suffer for my unyielding way, inasmuch as the behaviour of our hosts immediately changed from talkative hospitality and childish curiosity to dull silence and suspicious reticence. The people sat around us, sullen and silent, and would not help us in any way, refused to bring firewood or show us the water-hole, and seemed most anxious to get rid of us. Under these circumstances it was useless to try to do any of my regular work, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... face, but Mrs. Penniman never met her brother's eye. Late in the evening she went with him, but without Catherine, to their sister Almond's, where, between the two ladies, Catherine's unhappy situation was discussed with a frankness that was conditioned by a good deal of mysterious reticence on Mrs. Penniman's part. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... ignorance. Bessie wrote to her, of course, and so did her uncle once or twice, but they did not tell her much of what she wanted to know. Bessie's letters were, it is true, full of allusions to what Captain Niel was doing, but she did not go beyond that. Her reticence, however, told her observant sister more than her words. Why was she so reticent? No doubt because things still hung in the balance. Then Jess would think of what it all meant for her, and now and again give way to an outburst of passionate jealousy which would have been painful enough ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Imogen. By any emotion, any appeal or passion that he might show, she would remain, so his intuition at moments told him, quite unbiased; while she weighed simply worth against worth, and weight—in the sense of strength of soul—against weight. And it was this intuition that made self-control and reticence easier than they might otherwise have been. His theories might assure him that such integrity of purpose was magnificent; his manly common-sense told him that in a wife one wanted to be sure of the taint of personal preference; so that, while he ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a late hour that night, but although she was dying to have him tell her about his romance, his dream of love, he never so much as referred to it, and she could not bring herself to disregard his reticence. Nor could she bear to discuss with him the problem that lay nearest her own heart. She had brooded long over that problem, and her soul was hungry to share its bitter secret; nevertheless, she could not do so, for ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Left. The MAYOR takes the upper chair behind the bureau, sitting rather higher because of the book than CHANTREY, who takes the lower. Now that they are in the seats of justice, a sort of reticence falls on them, as if they were afraid of giving away their attitudes of mind to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dismissed, with a hope on the part of his judge that his accusers might prove as honest as he appeared to be, and even with a general licence to preach.[49] Barnes was less fortunate; he was far inferior to Latimer; a noisy, unwise man, without reticence or prudence. In addition to his offences in matters of doctrine, he had attacked Wolsey himself with somewhat vulgar personality; and it was thought well to single him out for a public, though not a very terrible admonition. His house had been searched for books, which he was suspected, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Whibley has justice. Sterne is a sentimentalist. Sterne is indecent by reason of his reticence—more indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have plumped out with a coarse word and a laugh. Sterne is a convicted thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sparkling in those eyes which had met his but an hour or more ago, when disappointed hope had thrown them into deep shadows, there was a tentative significance. It appealed to the lowest nature of his senses to see her, whom he had long desired, unbending in her reticence. Her laughter was a whip about his body; her lips, parted—losing that expression of restraint—were becoming an obsession to his eyes. But he guarded all his ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... avoided all allusion to her, and been thankful that the boy's reticence made it easy, so now they grew almost feverishly anxious to discover how he felt towards his mother's memory. They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed. They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness he walked past the traps, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... learned, he was deserting, while I was escaping. A fellow-feeling, though at first unconfessed to each other, drew us together, and at length I learned his whole history. My greater caution and accustomed reticence, gave him but a meager idea of my adventures or purposes. His story, reaffirmed to me when near death some weeks later, is worth recital, especially as it illustrates both the strength of the Rebel Government, and the desperate ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... typical tourist—shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel. But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and—which he held more precious—it gave her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci's, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us, The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo's could have anything so vulgar as a "story." She ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Navy. Of course during his absence Bill had written home regularly, but his letters had been models of discretion and confined to matters of the strictest personal interest. Since his return quite a number of temporary coldnesses had arisen as a result of his obstinate reticence, and the retired station-master, after several attacks both in front and flank had ignominiously failed, flew into a rage and said he didn't believe there was any Navy left to tell about, the Germans having sunk it all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... inaccuracy which was permitted to the Opposition. Mr. Turnbull no doubt enjoyed these charms to the full, though he would sooner have put a padlock on his mouth for a month than have owned as much. Upon the whole, Mr. Turnbull was no doubt right in resolving that he would not take office, though some reticence on that subject might have been ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... of a large family. Besides, all the Harpers had grown up in full knowledge of and sympathy with their parents' anxieties. Living as they did, in closest family union, it would have been all but impossible to prevent its being so, save by some forced and unnatural reticence, the evil of which would have been greater than the risk of saddening the children by ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the peculiar reticence of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... said little, listening attentively to the random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment, whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not know himself. Not a man there but had run the gamut of human emotions in trying to protect his ranch; they had driven herders off with guns; they had cut their huddled bands at ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... admirable self-restraint which, next to the power of thought and expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy godmother can bestow upon him, saves Kielland from saying too much—from enforcing his lesson by marginal comments, a la George Eliot. But he must be obtuse indeed to whom this reticence is not more eloquent and effective than a page ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... made no secret of the fact that he lived for love alone, that he had known innumerable loves, but none like one particular variety, which he described in full detail. As a confession, and especially as a confession uttered before many maidens, it did not err on the side of reticence. Presently, having described a kind of amorous circle, he came again to: "O Love!" But this time his voice cracked: which made him angry, with a stern and controlled anger. Still singing, he turned slowly to the pianist, and fiercely glared at the pianist's unconscious back. The obvious ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... any man who was my friend that his life should be as open as my life. If I had hurt him, angered him by my question when I last saw him, he had hurt, had angered me far more. For now I was angry. Did he imagine I was the sort of woman who accepted reticence with ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... indignation had no such reticence, nor had he yet learned how to cloak the ugliness of a naked truth in the pleasant euphemisms of diplomacy. With frank brutality ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... his book as to the reticence of Charleston newspapers, where society is concerned, is, however, generally true—amazingly so to one who has become hardened to the attitude of the metropolitan press elsewhere. The society columns of Charleston papers hardly ever print the names of the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... large part or all of their time to some work connected with the enterprise. As far as possible this was confined to paid employees, but in a few cases the question of wages of those employed could not be successfully ascertained on account of reticence of the employer. No record was made of whether or not the time of the proprietor was also put into the business since in this respect there ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... confusion that we would not, and even dare not, trail across a friend's mind? So often the heart holds more than ever should be poured out into another's ear. There are in life strained silences that we could not break if we would. And there is a law of reticence that true love and unselfishness will always respect. If my brother hath joy, am I to cloud it with my grief? If he hath sorrow, am I to add my sorrow unto his? When our precious earthly fellowship has been put to its last high uses in the hour of sorrow or shame, the heart has ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... altogether interested in the topics of adults; and as the conversation of both sexes is said by those who know them best to be without reticence or modesty, the purity which is one of the greatest charms of childhood is ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... had not that of reticence, and her mother had soon learnt from her what had been said that night in their bedroom about Charley. But this violation of confidence, if it was a violation, was hardly necessary to make Mrs. Woodward aware of what was passing in her daughter's bosom. When Katie ceased to ask that Charley might ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... himself, however unwittingly, in a position in which his private interests or sense of obligation might easily have been in conflict with his public duty. . . ." Of his silence in the House, Lord Robert said: "We regard that reticence as a grave error of judgment and as wanting in frankness and in respect for ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Timothy?" he said. "I fear Lady Mary may be deeply shocked and hurt at being thus excluded from your confidence in so serious a case. Should anything go wrong," he added bluntly, "it would be difficult to account to her even for my own reticence." ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... happiness of others, of however doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so languidly to her friend's outpourings. But she herself had no desire to confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a similar reticence? ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... stethoscope and took a last look at the motionless, silent figure, I realized that my position was one of extraordinary difficulty and perplexity. On the one hand my suspicions—aroused, naturally enough, by the very unusual circumstances that surrounded my visit—inclined me to extreme reticence; while, on the other, it was evidently my duty to give any information that might prove serviceable ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... and pallid baldness of the one and the sturdiness and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ever is on ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... ability to take a commanding position in Hampton society, gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious residence. In a certain kind of intuition she was rich. Her husband had meanwhile become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that his prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of an increasing prosperity. He had indeed made money, been given many opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social pre-eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, recriminations, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from him, that deliberate ingratiation of which the lowest form is the bawdy joke in the Pullman smoker. One imagined that, having been fawned upon financially, he had attained aloofness; having been snubbed socially, he had acquired reticence. But whatever had given him weight instead of bulk, Anthony no longer felt a correct superiority ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to modest respect were so great as hers are known to be," said the same critic, "with such self-denial fling off their protection in her resolution to lay hold of the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina, in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed absolutely on the side of the libertine hero—so much invitation was thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." Here was a capital ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... may not think very highly of the young men of to-day, but my opinion of them is not so low as that. Come, now—I am an old gentleman and the model of reticence—I will never tell. I'll wager you a box of roses against anything you like that you had a proposal no later than last week. Perhaps you even came to New York to ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Dignified reticence is not a leading characteristic of the bridge-player's manner at the Senior Conservative Club on occasions like this. Mr Bickersdyke's partner did not bear his calamity with manly resignation. He gave tongue on the instant. 'What on earth's', and 'Why on earth's' flowed from his mouth ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... disquietude, and this increased the suspicions that had already been aroused. The inn-keeper, who was a zealous patriot, compelled her to go with him to the district Commissioner. Her presence of mind deserted her; and her incoherent replies and her reticence caused her arrest. The Commissioner intended to send her to Nantes; but she begged so hard to be sent to Paris, instead, that he finally granted her request. That same evening a party of prisoners from La Vendee passed through the village; and Antoinette was entrusted to the care ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... there was only one way to repair it—just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been right, for all ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... Bat. Tombstones and oysters is plumb raucous institutions to what I'll be from now on." He turned to the others with the utmost gravity. "You folks will pardon any seemin' reticence on my part, I hope. But there's times when Bat takes holt an' runs the outfit—an' this ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... saw the ghost of a smile on his lips for a moment. He evidently saw through Quarles's reticence, and knew that the professor would ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... hitherto been no reserve between them, though they were not usually confidential in its full sense. But the divergence of their emotions on Stephen's account had produced an estrangement which just at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Strange reticence is shown by all Watt's historians regarding his religious and political views. Williamson, the earliest author of his memoirs, is full of interesting facts obtained from people in Greenock who had known Watt well. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... to make society gape. The patient dead were sacrificed; they had no shrines, for people were literally ashamed of mourning. When they had hustled all sensibility out of their lives they invented the fiction that they felt too much to utter. Adela said nothing to her sisters; this reticence was part of the virtue it was her idea to practise for them. SHE was to be their mother, a direct deputy and representative. Before the vision of that other woman parading in such a character she felt capable of ingenuities, ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... was tracking the moose, a certain reticence or moderation in him. He did not communicate several observations of interest which he made, as a white man would have done, though they may have leaked out afterward. At another time, when we heard a slight crackling of twigs and he landed to reconnoitre, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... white and green, with his hooded falcon across her bosom and embroidered slantwise upon the fold of her doublet. Thus she made a very handsome page. She was different though. He thought that there was now about her an allure, a grave richness, a reticence of charm, an air of discretion which he must always have liked without knowing that he liked it. Yet he had never noticed it before. The child was almost a young woman, seemed taller and more filled out. No doubt this ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... reproach, but she knew that this reticence was due to self-respect rather than to any lingering remnant of deference, and now when she saw his face ablaze she was prepared for an outburst of wrath. All he said, however, was, speaking with quiet dignity: "You need not have allowed that part of the deception to go on. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... town very few people showed the same discretion and reticence as the magistrates. The bigoted believed, the hypocrites pretended to believe; and the worldly-minded, who were numerous, discussed the doctrine of possession in all its phases, and made no secret of their own entire incredulity. They wondered, and not without ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... women—not from an autobiographical point of view, because that is generally romantic too—but from the point of view of the friends to whom they showed themselves frankly and naturally, and without that infernal reticence which is not either reverence or chivalry, but simply an inability to face the truth,—which is the direct influence of the spirit of evil. If one of my young men turns out a good biography of an interesting person, however ineffective he ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The nuncio, Monseigneur Czaski, came too sometimes at tea-time. He was a charming talker, but I always felt as if he were saying exactly what he meant to and what he wanted me to repeat to W. I am never quite sure with Italians. There is always a certain reticence under their extremely natural, rather exuberant manner. Monseigneur Czaski was not an Italian by birth—a Pole, but I don't know that ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... Betty's confidential speeches rather embarrassing, and when I knew her a little better I took her to task rather seriously for her want of reticence. But she only pouted, and said, 'When one looks at you, Miss Garston, one cannot help telling you things: they all tumble out without one's will. That is what Gladys means when she says you have a sympathetic face. I wish you would get her to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... near enough to hear, and colour. She had imagined the last night's conversation unknown to all; but Underwood reticence was so incapable of guessing at Harewood communicativeness, that it never entered her brain to suspect the topic of conversation between the three juniors as they walked up ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
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