|
|
|
More "Shyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concern for others? These things are the barometer of the Highway. If they are disturbed, then sin has crept in somewhere—self-pity, self-seeking, self-indulgence in thought or deed, sensitiveness, touchiness, self-defence, self-consciousness, shyness, reserve, worry, fear ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... eyes rested upon her he forgot that he was a marked man. She looked very fresh and desirable; there was a hint of regret and pity in her face and a trace of shyness in ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... his fellow-students, had imbued him with the manly courage with which he faced the world. Yet not one of us can permanently alter his temperament; and, to the end of his life, Ivan was destined to suffer periodic torments from shyness, natural reticence, and a never-dying sense of shame at the memory of that unjust disgrace which by this time many interpreted rightly, and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... little, and instead of answering her mother's look of helpless appeal, stared at the row of tall hollyhocks that blazed along the ivy-hidden garden wall. She did not speak for an instant, and then she said with the dainty shyness of a child pinned to a statement by uncomprehending elders, "It isn't a joke. Nonsense, maybe—yet not a joke. I've always thought of him—for so many years I've forgotten when it first began. He's so great, so—everything that appeals to me; how could ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... meeting on the moor between Learn and Edgar, Mr. Dundas drove to the Hill, carrying Fina with him. Leam had a fit of shyness and refused to go: thus Sebastian had the child to himself, and was not sorry to be without his elder and less congenial daughter. He owned to himself that she was good, very good indeed, and a great deal better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... cat, which was tame enough to wander between our legs as we sat round the fire, but too wary to be caught. I can hardly imagine a prospector carrying a cat as companion, and yet how else did it get there? Its shyness inclined us to think it had strayed from civilisation. Jim tried to catch it one evening, and not only got scratched and bitten for his trouble, but so startled the beast that it never returned. Our party was now increased to five; for an extra hand, Alfred Morris, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to any one who noticed me kindly, as the young mistress of a house I was ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... half, though I do look small," cried Rose, forgetting her shyness in indignation at this insult ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... entering, discovered but one vacant seat, next the grocer's wife, which, from his natural shyness of temper, he made no scruple to occupy, however aware that riding backwards always ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... well-nigh impossible for him to look directly into Rose Mary's deep eyes, quaff a draft of the tenderness that he always found offered him and keep equanimity enough to go on with the affairs in hand. What business had a woman's eyes to be so filled with a young child's innocence, a violet's shyness, a passion of fostering gentleness, mirth that ripples like the surface of the crystal pools, and—could it be dawning—love? Everett had been in a state of uncertainty and misery so abject that it hid itself under an unusually casual manner that ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... you do?" said Sophie, and took off the shawl from her head and sat down in a corner. The boy thought that this was shyness upon her part, but later on he realized that it was lassitude. The child rested her head upon her hand every chance that she got, and she never did anything that she ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... whom one of the young women addressed as her grandfather. All fears however, Bertram flattered himself, should have been dispersed immediately by his appearance and the gentleness of his demeanour: much therefore it perplexed him to observe after the lapse of some time that the shyness and something like displeasure, which had at first clouded the faces of his fair friends, seemed in no degree to give way before his amiable looks and manners. The children in particular, he remarked, regarded him with eyes of dislike, and rejected all ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... Indeed, nothing is more remarkable among intelligent people than the recollections they retain of their early childhood. A few, as I do, remember it all. Many remember nothing whatever which occurred before they were five years old.... I have suffered much from a feeling of shyness and reserve, and I have not been able to do things by trying to do them. What comes to me comes of its own accord, and almost in spite of me; and I have hardly any power when verses are once written to make them any better.... There were no hardships ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... tried to remain unobserved by the door. The whole effect of a surprise, upon which we had been counting, was entirely lost. When at last every one had made the sign of the cross I became intolerably oppressed with a sudden, invincible, and deadly attack of shyness, so that the courage to, offer my present completely failed me. I hid myself behind Karl Ivanitch, who solemnly congratulated Grandmamma and, transferring his box from his right hand to his left, presented ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... dumb and paralysed. I have known general practitioners who were so shy that they could not bring themselves to ask the way in the street. Fancy what sensitive men like that must endure before they get broken in to medical practice. And then they know that nothing is so catching as shyness, and that if they do not keep a face of stone, their patient will be covered with confusion. And so they keep their face of stone, and earn the reputation perhaps of having a heart to correspond. I suppose nothing would shake ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we are." His eyes met Mary V's with a certain shyness, a wistfulness and a daring quite unusual. "Get out. I'll help ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... all the shyness of a country-bred boy coming over me; for I had a quick ear, and this strange voice was not like the voices I was used to hearing; it was like Father L'Homme-Dieu's, fine and high-bred. But the next instant Father L'Homme-Dieu had stepped to the ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... threescore, yet vigorous in his own person, and rich in valiant sons and sons-in-law, besides a great number of influential relations and friends, all of whom joined in urging him to yield to the desires of the people, who called him to the consulship. He at first manifested some shyness of the people, and withdrew himself from their importunity, professing reluctance to hold office; but, when they daily came to his doors, urging him to come forth to the place of election, and pressing him with noise and clamor, he acceded ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Since however the old man began to talk and compelled her and Joern Uhl to listen, she was concerned almost entirely for the latter, whose "long, quiet face with its deep discerning eyes she observed with a silent wonder, without shyness, but with confident curiosity." Not alone in the kitchen, which is under her control, can Lena show what is in her. When a young bull broke loose and came after the women, she met him with sparkling eyes, "Stop you wretch!" When he would not allow himself to be turned aside, she threw ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... eyes, as if she would pierce to his soul, and understand by very force of insight whether he was or was not one to be honored with her confidence; and I have often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward, often unmanageable ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Una's face, if he had eyes for it at all, Captain Twinely might have seen something more than shyness. There was an expression of loathing on the girl's lips and in her eyes when he stepped up to her, hat ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the little hostess, quite forgetting her shyness, showed us women many of her native costumes, several of them being wonderfully beautiful in their rich, barbaric colours. There were jabuls or sarongs of gaily striped cotton stuff woven by the Moros; there ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... entered a strip of silvery sand, about two miles wide, and rode almost in silence, for a singular shyness ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... until they were well on their way along the Trumansburg road that the boy turned to her. How beautiful she looked, her shoulders completely covered with dusky-dark curls and her head bowed in maidenly shyness! All his doubts as to the expediency of his act were set at rest. She was deeply essential to his happiness, to his progress. To know she was his wife, married to him, so that none could separate them, would make his absences from Tessibel much easier to bear. He had in the past feared ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the money. It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools, including a large black board of a menacing appearance. On referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting that human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor make- weight piece of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the head with Gas, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... I first came across the evidences of civilisation aforesaid, that my only surprise was I had not reached them before. Walking about were Europeans in the usual dress of the Australian prospector. Suddenly a strange feeling of shyness and hesitancy came over me. Almost stark naked and darkened as I was—a veritable savage, in fact—I realised I could not go and introduce myself to these men without proper clothing. I knew the value of caution in approaching so-called ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the most part kind—touched by her youth and innocence, by the circumstance that she was fatherless, and by the crown she must one day wear. She had to learn to conduct herself with the mingled self-respect and ease which became her station. Impulsiveness, shyness, nervousness, are more serious defects in kings and queens than in ordinary mortals. To use a homely phrase, "to have all their wits about them" is very necessary in their case. If in addition they can ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... accustomed to her, and suffered her to wander about unmolested; their distrust of her subsided on discovering that most of her peculiar and lonely habits arose from the misfortune of being deaf and dumb. Still she was regarded with some degree of shyness, for it was the common opinion that she was not exactly in her ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... touch of shyness about Violet this morning that is enchanting. She carries off Cecil at once. There sits the lovely doll in a rocking-chair, and a trunk of elegant clothes that would win any little girl's heart. Cecil utters an ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... character; the most recent to appear in print is from the late Mr. Conway, who said that Turgenev was "a grand man in every way, physically and mentally, intelligence and refinement in every feature. . . I found him modest almost to shyness, and in his conversation—he spoke English—never loud or doctrinaire. At the Walter Scott centennial he was present,—the greatest man at the celebration,—but did not make himself known. There was an excursion ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... had gone, I expressed my astonishment at this shyness for which my previous experiences with the tribes of the Sahara had not ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... few and colorless and meager to tell it all, or tell the half. Those simple old men didn't realize her; they couldn't; they had never known any people but human beings, and so they had no other standard to measure her by. To them, after their first little shyness had worn off, she was just a girl—that was all. It was amazing. It made one shiver, sometimes, to see how calm and easy and comfortable they were in her presence, and hear them talk to her exactly as they would have talked to any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time that the Albert Hall was reached, the two young people had progressed so far towards intimacy that Miles had forgotten his shyness, and confided to his new mentor some of the trials and grievances which beset him in his work, the which he had never before confided in a human being. The attraction of one sex to another is a natural and beautiful thing. God designed it as one ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... came often, when the first shyness had worn away. He was an orphan, like Marie herself: a pretty, dark-eyed little fellow, who looked, she fancied, like the children at home in France. He did not expect her to talk and answer questions, but was content to sit, as she loved to do, gazing at the trees or the clouds that went ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... Liverpool plains; and it was also equally numerous in all the low scrubby ranges in the neighborhood of the Namoi, as well as in the open brushes that intersect the plains on its borders. Mr. Gould is gifted with the eye of an observer; but from the extreme shyness of its disposition, it generally escapes the attention of ordinary travelers, and it seldom allows itself to be approached near enough for the spectator to discern its colors. Its 'harsh, grating, scolding note,' betrays its haunts to the intruder; but, when disturbed, it ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... prevented by a certain shyness from mentioning his wish at once to his grave master. He said how he had longed to see him once more, to hear how he was; and reproached him tenderly for not coming to see him. He added that he had certainly a great many curious things in his warehouses, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... a low voice, "you talk like a fresh-water sailor. I can only attribute this shyness to some strange delusion; for surely" (his voice assumed a slightly sneering tone as he said this), "surely I am not to suppose that you have become soft-hearted! Besides, you are wrong in regard to the cargo being aboard; there's a good quarter of it lying ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Godfrey was introduced, named Colonel Josiah Smith, and a big, blond Dane, who talked English with a German accent, called Professor Petersen. All of these studied Godfrey with the most unusual interest as, overwhelmed with shyness, he was led by Miss Ogilvy to make their acquaintance. He felt that their demeanour portended he knew not what, more at any rate than hope of deriving pleasure from his society; in fact, that they expected to get ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... of society now glanced at the clock once more, and then glided to the window for the fourth time. She peeped at the side a good while, with superfluous slyness or shyness, and presently she drew back, blushing crimson; then she peeped again, still more furtively; then retired softly to her frame, and, for the first time, set to work in earnest. As she plied her harpoon, smiling now, the large and vivid blush, that had suffused her face and throat, turned ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... sentiments throughout all his life. The idea of being what we call a lion is offensive enough to any man, of not more than common vanity, or less than common understanding; it was doubly offensive to him. His pride and his modesty alike forbade it. The delicacy of his nature, aggravated into shyness by his education and his habits, rendered situations of display more than usually painful to him; the digito praetereuntium was a sort of celebration he was far from coveting. In the circles of fashion he appeared unwillingly, and seldom to advantage: ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... practical jokes upon parents, teachers, and all those in authority; brags, fibs, fights, plays truant, learns to swear and smoke, with the same devices and consequences; suffers from the same agonies of shyness, the same indifference to the female sex, the same awkward inclination toward particular little girls. For the most part, thanks to the formulas, he has been examined from the angle of adult irritation or amusement; only very recently—as ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... its author. By a fortunate chance he happened to take lodgings in a house where Mr. Levett frequently visited, who readily obtained Johnson's permission to bring Mr. Langton to him; as indeed, Johnson, during the whole course of his life, had no shyness, real or affected, but was easy of access to all who were properly recommended, and even wished to see numbers at his levee, as his morning circle of company might, with strict propriety, be called, for he received ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... not. The next day passed, and the next, and still no books. Apparently he had meant nothing by his remark, "I've some books you'd be interested to read." Was his silence indifference, or was it shyness? Probably she could only faintly appreciate the effect her position, her surroundings produced in this man whose physical surroundings had always been as poor as her mental surroundings—those created by that marvelous mind of ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... and repairing of their nests, as well as all their hunting, is done by night. This habit, in connection with their extreme shyness, makes the task of getting at their life-histories a difficult one. The inside of the burrow seems coated with a finer and harder substance than the soil in which they are dug. It is made on the spot, the spider mixing some secretion of her own with the clay, and working it up into ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and patient with children, but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an irritable pride. With all this there is much good in him. He is disinterested; an enthusiastic lover of the great men who have been before us. He says things that are his own, in a way of his own: and though from habitual shyness, and the outside of bear skin, at least of misanthropy, he is strangely confused and dark in his conversation, and delivers himself of almost all his conceptions with a Forceps, yet he says more than any man I ever knew (you yourself only excepted) of that which is his own, in a ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... perplexity; and his restraint would of itself have been enough to make Letty, whose heart was now beating in a very thicket of nerves, at once feel it impossible to carry out her intent—impossible to confess to him any more than to his mother; while Godfrey, on his part, perceiving her manifest shyness and unwonted embarrassment, attributed them altogether to his own wisely guarded behavior, and, seeing therein no sign of loss of influence, continued his caution. Thus the pride, which is of man, mingled with the love, which is of God, and polluted it. From that hour he began to lord ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... a dance of some forty young girls, very well dressed, covered with the usual gold and coral beads and silver chains, and wearing the silver crown, or pansngiat. The young women danced with great spirit, and with an absence of all shyness, but still with the greatest decorum. Many of the women, spectators as well as dancers, were observed to be without the usual tap moh khlih, or head-cloth, the absence of which is always a sign amongst the Khasi women of merry-making. There were women ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... danced for very joy, and the next instant he was conscious of wistful doubt, a gravity that he could not understand. It dawned upon him that for the brief instant when Nell had met his gaze she had lost her shyness. It was a woman's questioning eyes ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... man still," Carter added, impulsively, and hastened to look away from Lingard, who had tried to smile at him and had failed. Carter didn't know what to do next, remain in the cabin or leave that unsupported strong man to himself. With a shyness completely foreign to his character and which he could not understand himself, he suggested in an engaging murmur and with an embarrassed assumption of his ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the ward after the others, and the door was closed, but his image, sorrowful and disquieting, lingered before my eyes. Of course, he, too, tried not to attract attention—and therein is the cause of his shyness; and when his wound will be dressed and he will be put into bed, he will also try not to moan. For, what right has he to ...
— The Shield • Various
... hear more often than see—he is a will-o'-the-wisp for shyness, whether on his journeys or about home. But remember three things about him: his back is evenly olive (if you do not know what this dark-greenish color is, look at the olives you have on the table, or that ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room with her long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang, and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each felt at the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch of expression to meet again in the same ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the last hour. She seemed, as far as he could judge, to be in a state of the utmost excitement; she had shaken off the timidity which her brother's temper too often imposed on her, and with it her reticence and her shyness before strangers. All the Irish humour in her fluttered to the surface, and her tongue ran with an incredible gaiety. Uncle Ulick, the O'Beirnes, the buckeens, laughed frank admiration—sometimes at remarks which the Colonel could not ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reflected, exceedingly unlike that practised by Jakes. She, too, was wishing that he would detect her, and come to talk to her; but, amongst other new sensations, she was now the victim of a most unaccountable shyness, and could not make up her mind to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... if the professor's explanation itself required to be explained. And Ishmael, who seemed to think that a confession of faith was imperatively demanded of him, looked anxious—as if eager, yet ashamed, to speak. Presently he conquered his shyness, and said: ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... face which the gods had made for the admiration of men, his evident vexation upon her refusal to appear in Greek costume at the sacrifices and public solemnities, his unsparing raillery at what he termed her barbarian shyness, all tended to convince her that the young Heracleid had sought to admit some one into those mysteries which should remain secret to all, for without his encouragement no man could have dared to risk himself in an undertaking the discovery of which ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... when she went down to dinner, her inward tremor of shyness sustained by the consciousness of the perfect fit and cut of her elaborate little dress. People sat at small tables, and the general impression was one of circumspection and withdrawal. Most of the occupants were of Althea's type—richly ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... praises shall be sung While yet my heart is young . . . Thy whiteness, and thy brightness, and the sweet Flushed softness of thy little restless feet . . . The tossed and sunny tangle of thy hair, Thy swiftness, slimness, shyness, simpleness, That set the old folk sighing for the rare Red rose of Joy ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... After this long recess De Quincey was placed in the grammar school at Manchester, his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. His flight was significant. Early on a July morning he slipped quietly off—in one pocket a copy of an English poet, a volume of Euripides in ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... It was with great difficulty that he mastered the elementary process of keeping step, and despite his youthful proficiency as a jockey, the regulation seat of the dragoon, to be acquired on the back of a rough cavalry trooper, was an accomplishment which he never mastered. If it be added that his shyness never thawed, that he was habitually silent, it is hardly surprising to find that he had few intimates at the Academy. Caring nothing for the opinion of others, and tolerant of association rather than seeking ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... in not the least delightful though one of the most melancholy of his works, the Introduction to the Chronicles of the Canongate. Lockhart, one of whose distinguishing characteristics throughout life was shyness and reserve, was no speaker. Indeed, as he happily enough remarked in reply to the toast of his health at the farewell dinner given to celebrate his removal to London, "I cannot speak; if I could, I should not have left you." But if he could not speak he could write, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of bringing down one of these noble birds, partly because the taste he had had of their flesh had given him a liking for it; and partly because their shyness had greatly tantalized him. One is always more eager to kill shy game, both on account of the rarity of the thing, and the credit one gets for his expertness. But the voyageurs had now got within less than twenty miles of Lake Winnipeg, and Francois had not as ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... indefinite expansion of mind it might have caused,—how many narrow prejudices it might have rubbed away,—how much wiser and better a man it might have made you. Or more society and wider reading in your early youth might have improved you,—might have taken away the shyness and the intrusive individuality which you sometimes feel painfully,—might have called out one cannot say what of greater confidence and larger sympathy. How very little, you think to yourself, you have seen and known! While others skim great libraries, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... gaze, she slowly raised her arm and held out to me a fresh, sun-tanned hand; and I had meant to press it, but a sudden shyness scotched me, and, as the soft fingers rested in my palm, I raised them and touched them with ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... occupations were about books, and everybody in Edinburgh, gentle and simple, knew him as the poet, he would be still more free to make his jokes and his compliments to all those fine people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has always maintained a freedom of independence ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Charing Cross Road.' Another saw me over a dangerous crossing (London is the best policed city in Europe), a third recommended a shop 'over yonder: you've just passed it by, sir.' 'Thank you, thank you,' I cried back, and no sooner was I on the other side than, overcome by shyness, as always in these stores of dusty literature, I asked for the Drama in Muslin, pronouncing the title so timidly that the bookseller guessed me at once to be the author, and began telling of the books that were doing well in first editions. 'If I had any I wanted to get rid of?' he mentioned several ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the declaration, affected a small emotion of shyness and repugnance, and, seating herself upon a settee, after having cautiously informed herself of the privacy of the apartment, gave such a detail of the succession of her lovers, as amazed, while it entertained, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in the doorway, a smile trembling on her lips. In her gray eyes I read hope; and I took her hands in mine. She stood silent with bent head, exquisite in her silent shyness; and I told her I loved her, and that I asked for her love; that I had found employment in Egypt, and that it was sufficient to justify my asking her to ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... upon her, but went on to the meeting-house. On reaching the little country church, Mr. Odell found a small company of men assembled in front of the humble building, who looked at him curiously, and with something of shyness in their manner, as he rode up and dismounted. No one offering to take his horse, he led him aside to a little grove and tied the reins to a tree. One or two of the men nodded, distantly, as he passed them on his way ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... significance of her remark, which he attributed to shyness, Almante rose from where he had been seated, and, approaching the girl, endeavoured to place his arm round her waist. Ever guarded against the casualties of insult, Miralda retreated a step, and at the same moment drawing ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Secretary of State did not contribute to his happiness. His wife appears to have been arrogant and imperious; his step-son the Earl was a rake and unfriendly to him; while in his public capacity his invincible shyness made him of little use in Parliament. He resigned his office in 1718, and, after a period of ill-health, d. at Holland House, June 17, 1719, in his 48th year. Besides the works above mentioned, he wrote a Dialogue on Medals, and left unfinished ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Mrs. Spafford and she washed up. Later, they brought their sewing into the sitting-room. While we were trying to thaw the little schoolmarm's shyness, a mouse ran across the floor. In an instant Miss Buchanan was on her chair. The mouse ran round the room and vanished; the girl who had been sent to Paradise to keep in order the turbulent children of the foothills ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... him; at least he said that after we left the room a good deal of his shyness wore off, and that he conversed pleasantly and well. Above all, he ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... making himself than with the cut of his cloak, or with the fitness of his loin-cloth. But the fool either loses his head by comparing himself with still greater fools, or is prostrated when he finds himself inferior to other and lesser fools. This shyness he calls modesty, humility, and so forth. Now, whenever entering a corpse, whether it be of man, woman, or child, I feel peculiarly modest; I know that my tenement lately belonged to some conceited ass. ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Gardens are very shy and restless; when alarmed they dash and leap about their dens and utter a short guttural cry somewhat resembling a bark. This shyness is partly to be attributed to their imperfect vision by day, and partly to their resemblance in character to the wolf, whose treachery and suspicious manners in confinement must have struck every one who has gazed on this "gaunt savage" ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... background to fix a new string. It lent a decided element of excitement to the programme that nobody knew what the next item was to be. The lot, as it happened, fell on one of the younger girls, who was overwhelmed with shyness and could only with great urging be persuaded to recite a short piece of poetry. By the law of the Stunt everybody was obliged to perform if called upon, so Aveline fired off her sixteen lines of Longfellow with breathless speed, and fled back joyfully to the ranks of the Juniors. Two piano ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Earl of Chesterfield; who upon this occasion addressed the House for the first time. "His father," says Dr. Maty, "took infinite pains to prepare him for his first appearance as a speaker. The young man seems to have succeeded tolerably well upon the whole, but on account of his shyness was obliged to stop, and, if I am not mistaken, to have recourse to his notes. Lord Chesterfield used every argument in his power to comfort him, and to inspire him with confidence and courage to make some ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in response to his gentle insistence, but her shyness went with her. She was aware of something intangible in the atmosphere that startled, that almost ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... however, our shyness and strangeness wore off. We no longer sang with the soldiers, but segregated ourselves into congenial groups; and under the electric lights the promenade deck looked, for all the world, like the ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... not speak. Rose sent him a ray from eyes full of a new divine shyness. He smiled gently in answer to it, and full of her own young emotion, and of the effort to conceal it from all the world, she noticed none of that change ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hardness of determination. Her countenance altogether seemed the index to an interesting mental history. Signs of mental trouble were always an attraction to him; in this case so great, that he overcame his shyness, and spoke to her one evening as they left the works. He often walked home with her after that; as, indeed, was natural, seeing that she occupied an attic in the same poor lodging-house in which he lived himself. The street did not bear the best character; nor, indeed, would the occupations ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... grew between them. She loved Ruth, but she took him unreservedly into her heart. Ruth observed, idly, that she never called him "Mr. Winfield." At first she spoke of him as "your friend" and afterward, when he had asked her to, she yielded, with an adorable shyness, and called him Carl. ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... preference. The diplomatists who had grown up in small courts and had been taken into the Prussian service had not infrequently the advantage over natives of greater assurance in Court circles and a greater absence of shyness. An especial example of this tendency was Herr von Schleinitz. In the list we find also members of noble houses in whom descent supplied the place of talent. I scarcely remember from the period when I was appointed to Frankfort anyone of Prussian descent being appointed chief of an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that she did not intend to marry. She would ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... graceful, so clean, so condescending, appalled him. Yet he had found the Silchester men who came to visit the Mission easy enough to get on with. No doubt they, without their background were themselves a little shy, although their shyness never mastered them so far as to make them ill at ease. Here, however, they seemed as imperturbable and unbending as the stone saints, row upon row on the great West front of the Cathedral. Mark apprehended more clearly than ever the powerful personality of Father Rowley when he found ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... few years I had crows, but their nests are an irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement was broken up. They grew so wonted as to throw off a great part of their shyness, and to tolerate my near approach. One very hot day I stood for some time within twenty feet of a mother and three children, who sat on an elm bough over my head gasping in the sultry air, and holding their ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... with the moss-rosebuds that she fastened in his breast. Yet he played with her, because she was such a little, soft, tempting female thing; and because, to see her face flush, and her heart heave, to feel her fresh feelings stir into life, and to watch her changes from shyness to confidence, and from frankness again into fear, was a natural pastime in the lazy ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... moments in the boat I met Dugald Shaw in commonplace fashion at the table, a sudden, queer, altogether unprecedented shyness seized me. I sat looking down at my plate with the gaucherie ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... ensued, a game dear to all New Englanders, comical to Barbo. The two contestants calculated. Barbo reckoned, and put his money on his new-found fellow-clerk. Eliphalet, indeed, never showed to better advantage. The shyness he had used with the Colonel, and the taciturnity practised on his fellow-clerks, he slipped off like coat and waistcoat for the battle. The scene was in the front yard of the third house in Dorcas Row. Everybody ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in due time and was presented to Mrs. Copley; but Mrs. Copley did not admire his looks, and the supper-table party was very silent. The silence became unbearable to the new-comer; and though he was not without a certain shyness in Dolly's presence, it became at last easier to speak than to go on eating and ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... forward slowly, a wild-haired nymph; and that odd shyness which sat so ill upon her was manifest in her manner. She had expected Paul; had really been waiting for him—and she felt ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... friends, but when they meet in society, they at once make fun of one another—out of shyness. ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... If David's shyness was at all disturbed by this speech, it was entirely soothed again by Mr. Richmond's reception of it, and of him. The genial, frank clasp of his hand, the kindly, free glance of the blue eyes, quite won David, ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... Sydney Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. Robertson, later so popular as a preacher at Brighton. Meeting him for the first time, and knowing Robertson's "wish to pluck the heart from my mystery, from pure nervousness I would only talk of beer." This kind of shyness beset Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl (and a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, nec diversa, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But his speech was all of that wingless insect which "gets there, all the same," according to an American lyrist; the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... know," murmured the Imp in forlorn shyness. This man was—was actually—the—the Prime Minister! Matters would have been rather better if he had consented to look just a little like it. As it was, her head was in a whirl. Lady Evenswood called him "Robert" too! Nothing about Lady Evenswood had impressed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... from all but a few. However, be this as it may, no one at least realized more fully than I how lovable was his nature, with all his angularities—how simple and courageous, how manly and noble. His shyness, his apparent coldness, his crotchety obstinacy, repelled people, and consequently those who at any time during his life really understood him must have been very few. How was it, then, that such a man wandered about over Europe and fraternized so ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... his mother talked, and he seemed to detect in her a certain aloofness as far as he was concerned, although he was not sure that the impression was not due to his absence so long from the society of women. It gave him a feeling of shyness which he found difficult to overcome, and which he contrasted in his own mind with her ease and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... but with sorrow, your Highness, I'm forced to confess—be the cause what it will, Whether fewness of voices or hoarseness or shyness,— Our Beelzebub Chorus ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... rode a little way beside them, he and Katie assuming conversational responsibilities. But Ann's smile warmed her aloofness, and her very shyness seemed well adjusted to her fragility. "And just fits in with what I told him!" gloated Kate. And though she said so little, for some reason, perhaps because she looked so different, one got the impression of her having said something unusual. She had a way of listening which conveyed the impression ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... were sitting near the window. How changed she looked, with her cheeks so full of rich red colour, and her dark eyes sparkling with happy, almost joyous excitement! But she did not speak when Fan, blushing a little with shyness, advanced into the room and stood before them, her eyes cast down in a pretty confusion. Smiling, she watched the girl's face, then the face of her guest, her eyes bright and mirthful glancing from one ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... and looked him in the face. They were not more than three inches apart, and Jeffrey, gazing into the passionate black eyes, tasting, as it were, the odour of the handsome creature and feeling his breath, was not repelled, but had a sudden shyness before him, as if the man's opinion of him were an attack on his inmost self, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... words her look had magically changed. The defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him ... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the gleam ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the child—the last daughter of the ever-beautiful Rothesay line—which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive looked up at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no childish shyness—only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied unbelief. Then his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp of an ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and she came on, blushing with the sweet shyness of a child. She was winding her silken silver scarf about her breast hastily, as best she ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... not a morose or unhappy man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very happy one, full of generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... she came to think over this conversation, her own subtle instinct told her that stronger pressure than ever would now be brought on her. Her timidity, her maiden modesty, and her desire to do right set her on her defense. She determined to have loving but impartial advice, and so she overcame her shyness, and wrote to Mr. Hope. Even then she was in no hurry to enter on such a subject by letter, so she must commence by telling him that her father had set a great many people, most of them strangers, to dig for coal. That cross old thing, Colonel ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... feel young again, no doubt. What a lot they were! some aged to thinness, others become fat and piggish. Only Uncle Jake appeared quite sound in wind and limb. He took off his boots and stockings, walked into the ring with a fine imitation of the athlete's swagger combined with a curious touch of shyness. "Go it Uncle Jake!" they shouted. At the end of the first lap, he found himself so far ahead that he threw his old round sailor's cap high into the air and caught it, and he skipped along to the winning-post like a young lamb. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of shyness about him at this. He stammered a little at first, but his voice became more ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... the stranger most cordially in French, and was still more bewitched by the retiring shyness of his modest demeanor. As the jailer retired, a wink signified his desire to commune with me apart in his office, where I learned that the new comer had been arrested under a charge of counterfeiting, but on account of his genteel appearance and ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... inspection was the discovery that twenty-seven of the attacking party had lost that number of their mess, while nearly double as many had been more or less seriously hurt in that first rush; which was quite as good as could reasonably have been expected; and it seemed fully to account for the shyness which the enemy was now exhibiting. I stated what had happened at my own window, urged every man individually to keep quite cool, and to take careful aim before pulling trigger; and then returned to my post, just in ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... winter-wilderness with the menfolk of her family, like any other Indian or half-breed girl, and in the primeval solitariness of the land the red blood of her mother had asserted itself; the hand of her native deity had been laid upon her mouth, staying her flow of words, the shyness of the forest-gods had entered into her eyes, and the Lord God of Women had stooped her shoulders, causing her to carry her head less bravely, binding the hereditary burden of the red woman upon ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... attitude on his part failed to cloud Pearl's spirits. She had seen men taken with this not inexplicable shyness before, and she made no effort to rouse Harry from his abstraction or to lure him from his meditations; femininely, intuitively wise, she ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... he attended Emily and me on our expeditions with the donkey. Though living over the border of Hillside, he had a family of relations at Earlscombe, and for a time lodged with his grandmother there. When his shyness and lumpishness gave way, he proved so bright that Emily undertook to carry on his education. He soon had a wonderful eye for a wild flower, and would climb after it with the utmost agility; and when once his tongue was loosed, he ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day a sort of shyness came over the three children, and they spoke no more of the strange adventures they had had together, but just played at all the ordinary every-day games, till they almost forgot that there was any magic, had ever been any. The fact was, the life they were leading ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... door of the kitchen and ushered the visitor in. Mrs. Burton was making a batch of bread, and had to limit her welcome to cheery words and smiles; but the twins immediately claimed him as an old friend, rushing upon him with a freedom from shyness which was surprising, until one knew that they were never troubled with ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... shoulder, and he turned to meet his banker; behind them towered half a dozen old squatter friends, with fellow clubmen, all trying at once to get hold of his hand. David Linton's constitutional shyness melted in the heartiness of their greeting. Beyond them Norah seemed to be the centre of a mass of girls, one of whom presently detached herself, and came to him. He said in amazement, "Why, it's Jean Yorke—and grown up!" and actually kissed her, to the ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sanction, or to afford him in any way an excuse for making himself unpleasant. In the mean time, arms and accoutrements were looked to, and the escort cleaned and smartened up as well as circumstances would permit. The natives overcame their shyness next morning, and brought us goat's milk and "rogan," or clarified butter. The Baluchis seldom eat meat, their food principally consisting of cakes or bread made of grain, with buttermilk and rice. A favourite ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Shyness hitherto had been no infirmity of this young Canadian; but Bertie somehow had mesmerized her into a state of consciousness—it was a cobwebby kind of fetter, but the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of the young girl was pleasant to behold, and if it did not heighten her beauty, it certainly did not detract from it. It was a shyness in which there was not an awkward element, for Babe had the grace of youth and beauty, and conscious independence ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... into the background to fix a new string. It lent a decided element of excitement to the programme that nobody knew what the next item was to be. The lot, as it happened, fell on one of the younger girls, who was overwhelmed with shyness and could only with great urging be persuaded to recite a short piece of poetry. By the law of the Stunt everybody was obliged to perform if called upon, so Aveline fired off her sixteen lines of Longfellow with breathless speed, and fled back joyfully to ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... was dressed, a great shyness fell upon her, born partly of the still mystery of the presence of Death that wrapped the little house. She stood by the window of her room, looking forth, ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... but there was even a sternness in the manner in which he repelled these advances, that gave little encouragement for their renewal. Nor did it seem that his companions of the Hospital were more in his confidence than Middleton himself. They regarded him with a kind of awe, a shyness, and in most cases with a certain dislike, which denoted an imperfect understanding of him. To say the truth, there was not generally much love lost between any of the members of this family; they had met with ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more, and again brokenly she laughed; then suddenly raised her eyes to his, and gave him both her hands impetuously, confidingly, yet with a certain shyness notwithstanding. "I—I am going to marry again after all," she said, "if—if you ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... work: as I found not more than eight years ago [Footnote: Circa, 1861.] at Carlsruhe, when old Capellmeister Strauss conducted "Lohengrin." This venerable and worthy man evidently looked at my score with some little shyness; but, he took good care of the orchestra, which he led with a degree of precision and firmness impossible to excel. He was, clearly, a man not to be trifled with, and his forces obeyed him to perfection. Singularly enough, this old gentleman was the only German ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... brought in to see her father. First of all Mr. Clark ran up to say how glad he was to see the traveller back again; and on her way to school Miss Moore looked in with a merry greeting; then Emma and the General were waylaid in the hall and introduced, the former in a dreadful fit of shyness; and last, Miss Sherwin was pounced upon and dragged reluctantly ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... perceiving the slight touch of sarcasm in his tone. She saw he was hurt by her coldness and shyness, and that made her still more cold and shy. Without another word she walked before him to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Belding still sat in her rocking-chair, moaning and wringing her hands. Mr. Temple was standing beside her trying to soothe her, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... quietly, "I rather like people who are not too sure of themselves, and I think all the more of Ranald for his shyness and modesty." ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... from the caves—a small black cat, which was tame enough to wander between our legs as we sat round the fire, but too wary to be caught. I can hardly imagine a prospector carrying a cat as companion, and yet how else did it get there? Its shyness inclined us to think it had strayed from civilisation. Jim tried to catch it one evening, and not only got scratched and bitten for his trouble, but so startled the beast that it never returned. Our party was now increased to five; for an extra hand, Alfred ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... stay with pleasure, but she couldn't think of troubling Mr. Hardy, and she said so with a girl's shyness. Mr. Hardy stammered a little and tried to say that it would be no trouble at all, but the effort was not a brilliant success considered as a compliment. He longed to stay, and yet hated and feared to stay. This anomalous frame of mind was new; it confused and staggered him. He seemed ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... very gravely to take the sweet bits off Uncle Hugh's fork, I remember. But when he had pushed back his chair, given his arm to grandmamma, and his hand to me, and taken us into the drawing-room—then, while he made me nestle down on his knee in the soft easy-chair, all my shyness went away at the ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... suddenly tightened round their throats by stalwart men that squeezed behind them in the narrow ways, so that not many more than twenty heads on both sides were broken that day; and Margot Poins kept her mouth closed tight with a sort of rustic caution—a shyness of her mistress and a desire to spare her any pain. Thus it was not until long after that Katharine heard ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Walter-Scotticized, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal Wasted face, and his gay eyes had the death-look We have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end Welcome me, and make the least of my shyness and strangeness Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be lost with you What he had done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent When to be an agnostic was to be almost an outcast Whether every ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... she did not repeat her assertion. A sudden shyness descended upon her, and she became silent. Nick was quiet too, and she wondered what was passing in his mind. But for the tenseness of the arm that encircled her, she could have believed him to be dozing. The silence was becoming oppressive ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... speak to every man, for on being recognized as a Sanitary Visitor the men would tell her their wants, and her eye was sufficiently practiced to discern where undue shyness prevented any from speaking of them. An assistant always went with her, who drove the horses, and who, by his knowledge of German, was a great help in understanding the foreign soldiers. They carried a variety of common articles with them, so that the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... he might walk up to Rosemount with her, but felt he was dismissed. He wanted, too, to ask her if she would not come out on the lake again, but his shyness kept ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... might suffer no discouragement. He had the brilliant skin, with frequent blotches, which belongs to persons with red hair; but his clear brow, his eyes the color of a grey-veined agate, his pleasant mouth, his fair complexion, the charm of his modest youth and the shyness which grew out of his deformity, all inspired feelings of protection in those who knew him: we love the weak, and Popinot was loved. Little Popinot—everybody called him so—belonged to a family essentially religious, whose virtues were intelligent, and whose ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... by the attentions of the journeyman printer. From her earliest childhood, the knowledge of her exceptional beauty had made her careful to be on her guard against any advances from the other sex; but since her misfortune, she had come to regard every attention as a kind of persecution. But her shyness was generally received with an incredulous smile or a coarse joke. What shocked her most was, that men seemed no longer to believe that she really meant to shun them in earnest, and she was therefore quite nervous if any of them approached her. When, however, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... plea for fairness and for justice; but it showed the working of a heart that would be true to itself, in some measure at least, in spite of its shyness and shrinking, and in spite of the peril of the hour. The question at first excited anger and contempt against Nicodemus himself; but it checked the gathering tides of violence, probably preventing ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... tribulation played directly upon the delicate chords of her nature. She could afford to forgive him for a concealment or two. Moreover, the shyness which would not allow him to look her in the face lent bravery to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... limited to give Norah much experience of the outer world, and she shrank instinctively from anything that lay beyond Billabong and its surroundings. No one, meeting her in her home, would have dreamed that she might be shy; but the truth was that a very passion of shyness came over her when she thought of confronting a number of girls, all up to date and smart, and at ease in their environment, and all, if Cecil were to be believed, ready to look down upon the recruit ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... was this address of mine that moved Oscar to try his hand at a similar feat by writing 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism.' (4) A chance meeting near the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our resolutely cordial and appreciative conversation so difficult that our final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession. (5) A really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching one another ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... who were so shy that they could not bring themselves to ask the way in the street. Fancy what sensitive men like that must endure before they get broken in to medical practice. And then they know that nothing is so catching as shyness, and that if they do not keep a face of stone, their patient will be covered with confusion. And so they keep their face of stone, and earn the reputation perhaps of having a heart to correspond. I suppose nothing ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... exceedingly unselfish and sweet and good, was at that transition period of life when girlhood is least attractive—at least to young men: when bones are obtrusive, and angles too conspicuous, and the form generally is too suggestive of flatness and longitude; while shyness marks the manners, and inexperience dwarfs the mind. We would not, however, suggest for a moment that May was ugly. By no means, but she had indeed reached what may be styled a plain period of life—a period in which some girls become silently sheepish, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... gay spirits and freedom of speech vanished, and she was instantly enveloped in a mist of shyness and reserve that Merrit's direct look did ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... to deny that their circle was charming as well as charmed. But I had no gift for making friends, although I was often attracted by people the very opposite of myself; especially by little, clever, quick, but not too familiar men; but even if they were disposed to make advances, a miserable shyness and stiffness of manner on my part, that I could not help, would raise a barrier of ice ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... man—a fact she doubted in proportion as her aunt assured her of its truth; she liked his looks and tried to determine whether he was handsome or not, and she watched closely for any awkwardness or shyness of manner, that being the fault in a ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... first time I went to Boodle's, I won twenty-five guineas of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at this time to five clubs, Miles' and Evans', Brookes', Boodle's, White's, and Goosetree's. The first time I was at Brookes', scarcely knowing any one, I joined, from mere shyness, in play at the faro-table, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim dressed out for sacrifice, called to me—'What, Wilberforce, is that you?' Selwyn quite resented the interference, and turning to him, said in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... in the mixed bloods. Her hair was thick and glossy and black in the mode that throws deep purple shadows under the rolls and coils. Her face was a regular oval, like the opening in a wishbone. Her skin was dark, but rich and dusky with life and red blood that ebbed and flowed with her shyness. Her lips were full, and of a dark cherry red. Her eyes were deep, rather musing, and furnished with the most gloriously tangling of eyelashes. Dick went into ecstasies, took several photographs which did not turn out well, and made one sketch which did. Perpetually ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... had two doors—one opening into the passage, and one into the douche-chamber, which also served for another bathroom. Presently the first of the doors opened, and a girl, without apology, entered and took away a sponge. Did this intrusion make me feel shy? Well, you see, one gets over shyness after being washed like a baby once or twice; but she had hardly disappeared before the other door opened, giving admission to a second woman, who came in and deposited a towel; a moment later some one else appeared, and after a good stare departed; then came a fourth on some pretext or other, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Pitt was praying, and to his mother's somewhat shocked astonishment, not in any words from a book, but in words—where did he get them?—that broke her heart. They were solemn and sweet, tender and simple; there was neither boldness nor shyness in them, although there was a frankness at which Mrs. Dallas wondered, along with the tenderness ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... cause," said Miss Pringle. "I have suffered for it, too!" And, with a certain shyness, she patted Lady Agatha on the arm. But ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... that American small boys have not the quaint courtliness of French small boys; that American little girls are without the pretty shyness of English little girls. We are compelled to grant that in America between the nursery and the drawing-room there is no great gulf fixed. This condition of things has its real disadvantages and trials; but has it not also its ideal ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... girl continued to converse with him in friendly frankness, showing neither ardour nor shyness. As for love—it was evidently further from her mind ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... were called out, one after the other, but as there were no further displays of pitiable shyness or nervous embarrassment (although errors were frequent) the proceedings began to bore us intensely, and once again we counted the minutes and longed for the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... thing" all over town—there are such moments, when the lady throws off all reserve, and by a look, a smile, a blush, a half-articulate word, repays her lover for months, if he is fool enough to court so long, of prudish and affected shyness, past or future. These moments occur but seldom, even in the most patriarchal courtships, and it is well that it is so. Love is a fiery steed, and should always be ridden with a curb bridle, both before and after marriage. (I am sorry that I cannot think ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... came to meet her son with a smile and morning greeting, setting her hands on his shoulder and kissing him, and so turned to me as if to ask Ethelbert to say who I was. And when she heard, I knelt and kissed the hand she held to me; and my shyness went, for I was no longer at a loss for somewhat to think of besides myself. I suppose the king or queen made some sign at this time, for the ladies rustled back to their seats, and their pleasant talk began again as if we were not present, only so low that it was like the murmur of the bees ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... chatter, an exchange of recollections and comparisons of cities and countries they had visited at separate times; but neither she nor he mentioned the chief subject of their thoughts. She refrained because of a strange yet natural shyness of a woman who has found herself; and he, because from his angle of vision it was best that Warrington should pass out of her life as suddenly and mysteriously as he had entered it. Had he spoken frankly he would have saved ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... her shyness was now her desire to be near him, and to hear his voice; to have him look again upon her as he had looked that morning, when in terror for him she had sought to dissuade him from opposing the craven impulse of her men-at-arms. A woman of mature age, or one riper in experience, would have ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... of salt. Otherwise one would get sick of the diet one prays for, and that would be not only improper, but impious. From impiety of that or any other kind—save us! An ideal of reserved manner, adhered to from a sense of proprieties, from shyness, perhaps, or caution, or simply from weariness, induces, I suspect, some writers of criticism to conceal the adventurous side of their calling, and then the criticism becomes a mere "notice," as it were, the relation of a journey where nothing but the distances ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... irritating, and he seemed either very shy or very deep. Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore, because she was not sure which it was. She intended to study him a little longer, unless she forgot the matter. If he was only shy, she would abandon him, for shyness is a bore. If he was deep, she would also abandon him, for ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... In spite of their shyness and timidity, they respond readily to kind treatment. They are never seen on the rivers, as they have no boats and cannot easily be persuaded to venture a trip in a boat. It is possible to make many expeditions through the jungle without ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in front of the courtyard of La Thuiliere, and watched the lamps being lighted inside. But he had not ventured to knock at the door of the house; a foolish timidity had prevented him; so he had returned to the chateau, dissatisfied and reproaching himself for allowing his awkward shyness to interpose, as it were, a wall of ice between himself and the only person whose acquaintance seemed to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... up, with a little shyness and a little vanity, just to see if he was looking at and thinking of her; but as she lifted up her head, instead of finding that his eyes were resting on ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... was an expression, too, in the whole face, of fixedness of purpose, without any hardness of determination. Her countenance altogether seemed the index to an interesting mental history. Signs of mental trouble were always an attraction to him; in this case so great, that he overcame his shyness, and spoke to her one evening as they left the works. He often walked home with her after that; as, indeed, was natural, seeing that she occupied an attic in the same poor lodging-house in which he lived himself. The street did not bear the best character; nor, indeed, would the occupations ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the homely but well-laden mess-table, there entered still another at whom the newcomers gazed in surprise but without recognition. He was a little man dressed in the costume of the backwoods, a belted buckskin shirt, leggings, and moccasins, and a coonskin cap. He hesitated, as though from shyness, as he glanced irresolutely about him. Then Gladwyn, stepping quickly forward, took him by ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... vigorous in his own person, and rich in valiant sons and sons-in-law, besides a great number of influential relations and friends, all of whom joined in urging him to yield to the desires of the people, who called him to the consulship. He at first manifested some shyness of the people, and withdrew himself from their importunity, professing reluctance to hold office; but, when they daily came to his doors, urging him to come forth to the place of election, and pressing him with noise and clamor, he acceded to their request. When he appeared ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... succeeded in modulating the hoarse thunders of Dave Olden's voice, that rose like a fog-horn over the winds and waves whenever he ventured upon the high seas; and how he cut off remorselessly the grace-notes of Abby Lyden, who has begun to think herself an Albani; and how he overcame the shyness of the fisher lads, and brought clear to the front the sweet tenors of the schoolboys, on whom, he said, all his hopes depended. And how his own rich baritone ascended strongly and softly over all, blending into perfect ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... less active; it was exceedingly difficult for her to climb the stairs. Philippina took the place of a maid. The only kind of work she refused to do was work that would soil her clothes. Gertrude's shyness irritated her; one day she said in a snappy tone: "You are pretty proud, ain't you? You don't like me, do you?" Gertrude looked at her in amazement, and made no reply; she did ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... forward in response to his gentle insistence, but her shyness went with her. She was aware of something intangible in the atmosphere that ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... dining-room; here ice-cream, cakes, and other camp-dishes were provided in great abundance, the soldiers stacked arms, and seemed to enjoy themselves as easily as private citizens. The numerous young sisters of the B. B.'s gradually forgot their shyness, and the afternoon was spent in games and merriment,—the Old Stone House being entirely given up to the young folks early in the evening, when the weary ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... was full when she went down to dinner, her inward tremor of shyness sustained by the consciousness of the perfect fit and cut of her elaborate little dress. People sat at small tables, and the general impression was one of circumspection and withdrawal. Most of the occupants ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a frail body and very little physical endurance. In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious and gay. He was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew him. He was very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally sincere, and quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and West Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882 ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... receiving a message from his majesty. Now it was no great peculiarity in the princess that, once she was set a-going, it always cost her time and trouble to check herself. On this occasion there was no time. She must kiss—and she kissed the page. She did not mind it much; for she had no shyness in her composition; and she knew, besides, that she could not help it. So she only laughed, like a musical-box. The poor page fared the worst. For the princess, trying to correct the unfortunate tendency of the kiss, put out her hands to keep her off the page; so that, along with the kiss, he ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... the order which had with such Aladdin-like magic been so promptly and mysteriously fulfilled. It certainly was kind of them to do this and Ted determined they should not find him wanting in gratitude. Pocketing his shyness, he opened the door and stepped into the room. "Well, youngster, I thought it was about time the host made his appearance," exclaimed Mr. Wharton. "We could not have waited much longer. Mr. Fernald, this is Ted Turner, the lad I have been ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... thy raiment for the needy poor, And taught the fatherless to know thy door; 30 From griping hunger set the needy free; That they were needy, was enough to thee. Thy fame to please, whilst others restless be, Fame laid her shyness by, and courted thee; And though thou bade the flattering thing give o'er, Yet, in return, she only woo'd thee more. How sweet thy accents! and how mild thy look! What smiling mirth was heard in all thou spoke; Manhood ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... carriages that formed the procession in which some little girl friends and relatives of the deceased were driving, their plain white dresses relieved only by a scrap of black ribbon here and there. Their silent sympathy, expressed with girlish shyness, was evident, though their snow-white dresses were in striking contrast to the colour of their carriage and of the horses, and the sombre black of the rest of the funeral party. As we saw the solemn procession and heard the clank of the horses' hoofs, we were suddenly reminded ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... have had him at the Club too, with old Lamb and Colonel Hamilton. He made us all miserable with his shyness. Don't ask me to do ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... you pursue, it flies—a little frightened perhaps. If then you keep still and look perfectly safe, she will return, but remain at a fixed distance, like a bird that will stay in your yard, but not enter your house. It is hardly shyness, for she is not shy, but more like some strain of wild nature in her that refuses to be domesticated. One's faith is strained to accept Sylvia's estimate that Georgiana is deep—she is so light, so airy, so playful. Sylvia is a demure little ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... youths who gave homage to her most freely. She was of that high-stepping and flamboyant type that captivates youth most surely. Old men and men of middle age admired her, but she had not that flower-like quality of shyness and helplessness, that look of innocence, so dear to men who carry life's secrets in their heads. Yet Zuleika WAS very innocent, really. She was as pure as that young shepherdess Marcella, who, all unguarded, roved the mountains and was by all the shepherds adored. Like Marcella, she had given ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... she began to call out to him, but stopped, for her new mother came out to the gate, and looked anxiously down the hill. She was looking for herself, Mona knew, and a fit of shyness came over her which drove every other thought from ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Her eyes are blue, and their clear, candid expression indicates an unusually sincere and simple character. But, unfortunately, it is only her friends who are fully conversant with the expression of her eyes, for she is very shy. Shyness in little people is frequently piquant, but its effect in girls of the Juno style is too often that of awkwardness. Her friends call Maud Elliott stately; those who do not like her call her stiff; while indifferent ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Mrs Falconer first with a yarn of Job's alleged phenomenal shyness, and gradually, as she grew stronger, and the truth less important, they told it to her. And so, instead of Job being pushed, scarlet-faced, into the bedroom to see his first-born, Gerty Falconer herself took the child down to the hut, and so presented Uncle Job ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... they went and made a four-handed game with two of the girls. And then Miss Clarissa read over the scenes in which Crawley had to take part with her, and made him repeat what he had learned, with appropriate action. And he got partially over his shyness, and spent rather a pleasant evening, thanks, a little bit, I fancy, to a little vanity. His friend came to have a chat with him after they had gone up to their rooms, and when he left Crawley could not help thinking what a pity it was that his sister Clarissa had not been the boy ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... things to those who make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often comes as a kind of by-product of an intense devotion of a principle or ideal. He was rude and unfriendly at times but shyness probably had something to do with that. In spite of a certain self-possession he was diffident in most company, but, though he may have been subject to those spells when words do not rise and the mind seems wrapped ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... is all very well on a gravel path, and shows no disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror (should you be one of a congregation—alone, shyness is out of the question), a dog destroys the service completely. So do these women—though separately devout, distinguished, and vouched for by the theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek of their husbands. Heaven ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... away when Miss Hallman put out a soft, jewelled hand. She thought it was diffidence that made Andy Green hesitate perceptibly before he took it. She thought it was simply a masculine shyness and confusion that made him clasp her fingers loosely and let them go on the instant. She did not see him rub his palm down the leg of his dark gray trousers as he walked down the aisle, and if she had she would not have seen any significance in ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... That placid dame, The Moon's Celestial Highness; There's not a trace Upon her face Of diffidence or shyness: She borrows light That, through the night, Mankind may all acclaim her! And, truth to tell, She lights up well, So I, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... believe be avoids the whole human race. He does not look as if he hated them, so far as I have remarked his expression. I passed a few words with him when his man was ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't believe it is much more than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some congenital or other personal repugnance to which has been given the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Victor moving to and fro, but she listened in vain for her husband's voice, and a great shyness came upon her. She could not ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... particular came often, when the first shyness had worn away. He was an orphan, like Marie herself: a pretty, dark-eyed little fellow, who looked, she fancied, like the children at home in France. He did not expect her to talk and answer questions, but was content to sit, as she loved to ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... strolled forward to meet his wife and Juliette Marny, and acknowledge with a bow here and a nod there the many greetings from subordinates and friends, there was quite an apologetic air about his good-looking face, and an obvious shyness in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Moss was silenced whenever her low voice tried to utter a sentence. Annette, quiet and gentle as ever, looked drooping and subdued, and scarcely spoke, while the two fine blooming girls, who seemed like new acquaintance, were still as mice in awe and shyness. Caroline, the second sister, was married and settled in Canada; and the three blanks that weddings had made only now impressed themselves on her mind as ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Avdotia herself seemed to catch the infection of the happiness which sparkled at this period in Papa's large blue eyes; yet there were moments also when she would be seized with such a fit of shyness that I, who knew the feeling well, was full of sympathy and compassion as I regarded her embarrassment. At moments of this kind she seemed to be afraid of every glance and every movement—to be supposing ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... that moment, though Eyebright still felt a little qualm of shyness and fear at the thought of the unknown Mrs. Joyce. "How horrible it would be if she didn't like me when I get ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... it, and even made use of some indefinite pretext to draw the circle closer before she uttered it again. Swann begged to be introduced to everyone, even to an old friend of the Verdurins, called Saniette, whose shyness, simplicity and good-nature had deprived him of all the consideration due to his skill in palaeography, his large fortune, and the distinguished family to which he belonged. When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... hasten with her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... whole situation struck Patty. The incident was not serious, but humorous, and as soon as she realised this her shyness disappeared, and the spirit of mischief once again took possession of her. She knew now she would do herself credit when she sang, and when her turn came she rose and walked slowly and gracefully to the platform which had been temporarily placed ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... my horses, she only glanced at me, and resumed her walk towards the landing, apparently determined to avoid me. I was rather vexed at this treatment, for I wished to invite her to ride down to the river. I knew nothing about the shyness and reserve of young ladies in civilized life. I drove on once more, and she stepped out of the road to permit the team to pass. She glanced at me again, and I saw that she was not angry with me. I stopped the horses, and then I ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... a soul, Which soul were shy, which shyness might A visible influence be, and roll Through heaven and earth ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to any one ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Crotin's unpopularity, it was perhaps a great mistake that she should make herself responsible for the raising of funds for the local women's hospital. But she was under the impression that there was a magic in her name and station which would overcome what she described as shyness, but which was in point of fact the frank dislike of her neighbours. A subscription list that she had opened had a weak and unpromising appearance. She had with the greatest difficulty secured help for the bazaar, and knew, even though it had been ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... first acquaintance with him [Motley] was at Cambridge, when he came from Mr. Cogswell's school at Round Hill. He then had a good deal of the shyness that was just pronounced enough to make him interesting, and which did not entirely wear off till he left college. . . I soon became acquainted with him, and we used to take long walks together, sometimes taxing each other's memory for poems or passages from poems ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... going to be horribly greedy. But perhaps when you see Miss O'Hara and Miss O'Flynn you'll take a fit of shyness. It's to be ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... expand, to grow taller, to thrill under her nervous hands. And then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness, a happiness, a something hitherto foreign to his attitude. It was spiritual, and somehow she received an ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... new visitor as if he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased. As a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight, he much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went in women's society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of shyness, of deficiency—perhaps partly caused by the conscious disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born; but it was a feeling that he would have been the last to be credited with, and which he certainly need have been ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read the Uncle Remus book; and a fine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (who owned the Harrington horses now) went to the station to meet the afternoon train. Up to this hour there had been nothing but confidence and joyous anticipation in Pollyanna's heart. But with the whistle of the engine there came to her a veritable panic of doubt, shyness, and dismay. She realized suddenly what she, Pollyanna, almost alone and unaided, was about to do. She remembered Mrs. Carew's wealth, position, and fastidious tastes. She recollected, too, that this would be a new, tall, young-man ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... hair brushed perfectly flat to their little bullet-shaped heads, in which the brains worked with much excitement and anticipation. Their eyes were mostly blue and innocent, and they were all afflicted with a sort of springy shyness which led them at one moment to jumps of joy, and at another to blushes and smiling speechlessness. They were altogether naive and invigorating, and even Madame Valtesi, peering at them through her tortoise shell eyeglass, was ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... smallness of her frame, a contrast with their own more solid fairness. In their family, Helene had taken all the beauty; there was not much left for them, but they were honest girls and knew how to admire. Riette on her side, untroubled with any shyness or self-consciousness, quite innocent of the facts that her dress was old-fashioned and her education more than defective, was delighted to improve her acquaintance with the new cousins. She could tell them a thousand things they did not know. To begin with, Lancilly itself, the woods, the walled ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... more of them; could it be that the abominable life he had been leading for the last two months, his horrible sufferings, physical and moral, had exerted a refining influence on him? But that which assisted him most to overcome his shyness was to find that she was really not so very much wiser than he. She was but a little child when, at her mother's death, she became the household drudge, with her three men to care for, as she herself ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... she grew, till on a time there came A sudden restless yearning to my heart; And as we went a-nesting, all for shame And shyness, I did hold my peace, and start; Content departed, comfort shut me out, And there was nothing left ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... me!" sighed her Father. Like two people most precipitously smitten with shyness they sat for a moment staring blankly around the room at every conceivable object except each other. Then quite suddenly they looked back ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... well-bred. Genji treated him with the greatest kindness, at which, in his boyish mind, he was highly delighted. Genji now asked him many questions about his sister, to which he gave such answers as he could, but often with shyness and diffidence. Hence Genji was unable to take him into his confidence, but by skilfully coaxing and pleasing him, he ventured to hand him a letter to be taken to his sister. The boy, though he possibly ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... she does not shy back, on seeing him in company with another man. She neither starts nor shows any shyness; evidence that the presence of the third party is a thing understood ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... brother's stories, of my play-box packed for a voyage, of the money in my pocket increased now by my eldest brother's unexpected generosity; and by dint of these violent mental exercises I had reduced my mind to a comfortable stupor by the time I reached the school gates. There I was overcome by shyness, and although I saw lights in the form-rooms and heard the voices of boys, I stood awkwardly in the playground, not knowing where I ought to go. The mist in the air surrounded the lights with a halo, and my nostrils were filled with the acrid smell ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... remained alone in the room. Martin would have liked to go out with them and look at the cattle—he took great interest in such things—but he had remained behind on account of shyness. The girl had not invited him, and the woman's eyes fixed him to the spot. He was not shy as a rule; anywhere else he would have said, "I want to go to the stables too." But he did not feel at home ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... Wellers, the name of the Misanthrope; and, once distinguished as an object of curiosity, he was the person most attended to, who could at the ordinary of the day give the most accurate account of where the Misanthrope had been, and how occupied in the course of the morning. And so far was Tyrrel's shyness from diminishing the desire of the Wellers for his society, that the latter feeling increased with the difficulty of gratification,—as the angler feels the most peculiar interest when throwing his fly for the most cunning and considerate ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
