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More "Timid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the way with timid people," Miss Penfold said. "They are often afraid of shadows, and see no danger where danger really exists. At any rate, I am determined to see whether the will really is where we suppose it to be. If it is I shall take it out and hide it in the mattress of my ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the ladies of the family he was a great favourite, and used to romp with them to his heart's content. The youngest, however, being of a timid disposition, could never get over a certain amount of terror with which his first appearance had ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... complacently. 'You stamped. The gentle, blue-eyed blonde whom I was looking for three days ago would have drooped timidly. Three days ago my passion for timid droopers amounted ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... can follow all the same," she answered. He looked at her with a glance in which I read both surprise and grief, and for a minute he found no answer. When she moved to look at him he had turned away, and did not see how timid and beseeching her eyes were, for all ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... and strict Sister Scholastica, to keep the establishment in order, and deal with the younger nuns and lay Sisters. Being not entirely out of reach of a raid from the Scottish border, it was hardly a place for the timid, although the better sort of moss troopers generally spared monastic houses. Anne St. John had been sent thither at the time when Queen Margaret was making her attempt in the north, where the city of York was Lancastrian, as the Mother Abbess ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matured swiftly in the boy's mind, all unconsciously to himself. Perhaps it was the timid air of the priest he had met an hour ago that consummated the process. At least it was ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... who from natural disposition, or early training, or both, is mild, diffident, and gentle. So far he is an estimable character. Were this all, he were not a muff. In order to deserve that title he must be timid and unenthusiastic. He must refuse to venture anything that will subject him to danger, however slight. He must be afraid of a shower of rain; afraid of dogs in general, good and bad alike; disinclined to try bold things; indifferent about learning to swim. He must object to the game called ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... her meaning, risking its decency. "Why, yes, I would be sorry not to see you again; why should I mind saying so? I have liked meeting you." And, becoming timid at its appearance, she hurried after it a cloak that would utterly disguise it. "I meet so few people," ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... aquarium. It must be recollected that many of the marine tenants are burrowers, and require a bottom adapted to their habits. Some rock-work is considered essential to afford a grateful shelter and concealment to such creatures as are timid by nature, and require a spot in which to hide: this is true of many fishes. Branches of coral, bedded in cement, may be introduced, and form beautiful and natural objects, on which plants ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... being somewhat timid, began to be afraid of what was going on; and wrote to ask counsel of a clerical neighbour at C—, who answered his letter by inviting him to come over, and bring me with him. He said that he wanted me to preach ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... had perched himself directly upon the pile of earth in front of his hole, sitting up, and offering a fair mark, while a companion's head, too timid, perhaps, to expose himself farther; was seen poking out of the entrance. A well-directed shot carried away the entire top of the head of the first dog, and knocked him some two or three feet from his post, perfectly dead. While reloading, the other ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... with great dignity, and after straightening his armor, let down his visor, and Dorothy saw a kind, timid face with melancholy blue eyes—not at all Pokish, as she explained ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and stood rather dramatically by the table on which the father was writing,—the son with dark set face, in which could be seen both the father and mother, and the daughter, timid and close to him, resolutely keeping back her tears, a slim young copy of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... attends quick imaginations, Lord Byron had, of course, a considerable share, and in all situations of ordinary peril gave way to it without reserve. I have seldom seen any person, male or female, more timid in a carriage; and, in riding, his preparation against accidents showed the same nervous and imaginative fearfulness. "His bridle," says the late Lord B——, who rode frequently with him at Genoa, "had, besides cavesson and martingale, various reins; and whenever he came near a place ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Appleton had barely left the cabin when she was followed by the most timid member of the delegation. He plunged up ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... follows "Do not repent of your tears, nor yet of your passing affliction; For they perfect my happiness; yours too, I fain would consider. I came not to the fountain, to hire so noble a maiden As a servant, I came to seek to win you affections. But, alas! my timid gaze had not strength to discover Your heart's leanings; it saw in your eye but a friendly expression, When you greeted it out of the tranquil fountain's bright mirror. Merely to bring you home, made half of my happiness certain But you now make it complete! ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... thin and compressed mouth, and a vast double chin, buried in a voluminous white neckcloth of more than one day's wear, completed the portrait. Nor did the expression of his countenance undergo any perceptible change as, after a timid knock, the door opened, and a young man entered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... 'ad she dared? That dazzling sea of faces, with the eyes all fixed on her, was terrifying. A big lump grew in her throat, and the crowded benches tilted, and the flaming lights leaped to the roof as the helpless, timid tears welled into ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... remained seated at the broad, flat-topped desk, his head bent at an angle which gave Mr. Grimston a view of the tips of shaggy eyebrows, a broad nose, and that peculiar kind of protruding lower lip before which timid people quail. As there was no response, Mr. Grimston looked round vaguely on the sombre, handsome furnishings, fixing his gaze at last on the lithographed portrait of Mr. van Tromp senior, the founder of the house, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... man we know—Lord Chesterfield said he was the most timid man he ever knew—and it speaks well for his resolution and strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical power was a drawback to his efficiency, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... these, the sacred precincts, where none entered except by its owner's invitation; but it was a far different James from the man who had called upon Mr. Gorham some weeks earlier. The younger Riley's self-assurance was missing, his jaunty air was replaced by a bearing almost timid in its gentleness, his voice had become halty; and when Mr. Gorham first spoke to him he started suddenly, turning his face toward his questioner, and showing ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the timid archdeacon, a little bewildered by the company in which he found himself, glad that his daughter was considered to have distinguished herself, but unable to help glancing at her from time to time with nervous apprehension. But Tuppence behaved admirably. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... to New York, which they knew would make trouble in the London Exchange. Money, which for a short time before had been at the high rate of interest, for this place, of five per cent, had become abundant, and the people were demanding of the Bank a reduction in the rate; but so timid were they about these post notes that they did not change the rate until I took measures to allay their fears. This I did because I thought it would be injurious and prejudicial to the Funded Loan to have a panic in London, in which the market price of the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Cleveland, had a vulture Sought a timid dove for prey, Would you not, with human pity, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... in a woman, has its dreams, and though trembling at the approaches of the unknown, does not fear them all. As to Gwynplaine, his sensitive youth made him pensive. The more delirious he felt, the more timid he became. He might have dared anything with this companion of his early youth, with this creature as innocent of fault as of the light, with this blind girl who saw but one thing—that she adored him! But he would have thought it a theft to take what she might have given; so he resigned ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... scriptural series, to which we have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and more poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice in modern art. As the Frenchmen, of whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo collected no inferences ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a bit timid because of the shadows of twilight, had risen stiffly from her seat on a low rock, and was hastening after Max, when she heard the boy's shout, and then the angry words of the tramp, and quickly as she had come, she ran back to her perch upon ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... finished our tour and given our guide several letters to deliver, we returned to his father-in-law's, who regaled us in the evening with milk, which refreshed us much. We had so many peaches set before us that we were timid about eating them, though we experienced no ill effects from them. We remained there to sleep, which was the first time in nine or ten weeks that we had lain down upon a bed undressed, and able to yield ourselves to ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... thee at the altar, Making that festal day, that through every land shall be honored, My anniversary, too, henceforth of domestic rejoicing! But I observe with regret, that the youth so efficient and active Ever in household affairs, when abroad is timid and backward. Little enjoyment he finds in going about among others; Nay, he will even avoid young ladies' society wholly; Shuns the enlivening dance which ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the affairs of her friend in her mind, during the night. The intensity of the mental crisis through which she had herself just passed had developed her in many inward respects, so that she looked upon life no longer as a timid girl, but as a strong, experienced woman. She had thought, and suffered, and held converse with eternal realities, until thousands of mere earthly hesitations and timidities, that often restrain a young and untried nature, had entirely lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... every physical need and every desire of the human heart can be claimed and received from the "Encircling Good" by the true believer. Miss Philura is enchanted with this creed, adopts it literally, and obtains thereby various blessings of particular value to a timid ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... while confined to Wood's scheme, began to be alarmed, when, in the fourth letter, he entered upon the more high and dangerous matter of the nature of Ireland's connection with England. The object of these verses is, to encourage the timid to stand by their advocate in a cause which was ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... those days it was possible to do this to some purpose, if a man were looking for somebody; the streets were not as now filled with a confused and confusing crowd going all ways at once; and no policeman was needed, even for the most timid, to cross Broadway where it was busiest. What a chance there was then for the gay part of the world to show itself! A lady would heave in sight, like a ship in the distance, and come bearing down with colours flying; one all alone, or two together, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... from a stranger. I am ungrateful to call you a stranger. Oh! how one may be mistaken! If I had known you were so bold—" And Margaret's bosom began to heave, and her cheeks were covered with blushes, and she looked towards her sleeping father, very much like a timid ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... You're timid and jumpy as a girl. How are we ever to put this thing over if you don't pull yourself together? I might as well have a baby to help ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... silence upon the tumultuous outcries of his heart. In exact proportion, however, as Madame suspected this change of feeling, she redoubled her activity to regain the ray of light she was about to lose; her timid and indecisive mind was displayed in brilliant flashes of wit and humor. At any cost she felt that she must be remarked above everything and every one, even above the king himself. And she was so, for the queens, notwithstanding their dignity, and the king, despite the respect which ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... shock of seeing Lad appear from nowhere and stand thus, by the veranda, a few minutes earlier—these and the once-timid Sonya's confident belief in Lad's presence,—all wrought on the stupid, easily-thrilled mind ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... feet, it sets itself to dry up the sources of wealth at the centre of the empire. But it is no use talking. One thing a Government in this country cannot stand is imagination; and another is courage. The British Empire is in the hands of a lot of clerks—and timid clerks at that. We must do our best to get along without ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... was young and fundless he had not a bad reaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into the ownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing timid at the time he ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... unrealized Mason Grew. It was in New York that the scene of this hypothetical being's first exploits had always been laid; and it was in New York that Ronald was to achieve his first triumph. There was nothing small or timid about Mr. Grew's imagination; it had never stopped at anything between Wingfield and the metropolis. And the real Ronald had the same cosmic vision as his parent. He brushed aside with a contemptuous ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... point; and Mr. Crawley—when the matter before him was cold roast-beef and hot potatoes, instead of the relative position of a parish priest and his parishioner—became humble, submissive, and almost timid. Lady Lufton recommended Madeira instead of sherry, and Mr. Crawley obeyed at once, and was, indeed, perfectly unconscious of the difference. Then there was a basket of seakale in the gig for Mrs. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... they had all the greed and arrogance of the noble Dons without their proud reserve and sense of chivalry and honour. In a hurry to get rich, they ground down the hapless natives into the dust. They robbed and ill-treated their timid dependants without fear or remorse, and exacted a cringing obedience that hid smouldering fires of hate and revenge. The Spanish troops were as lawless as their leaders, and black ink would turn red ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... left him, and, entering the ballroom, flung herself into the arms of the first partner she met. It was a timid boy, who, startled by the eagerness with which she chose him, with her bright eyes and quickly drawn breath, was just coming to the conclusion that a lovely, rich, and admired lady, had fallen passionately in love with him, when with equal suddenness she stepped ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... being injured. It is astonishing how unknowing the people seem to be, with any method to check bleeding from a wound temporarily; even the most simple method of pressure is in the majority of such accidents not resorted to. The sight of a little blood does not alone upset a timid, nervous woman, but many times the strongest of men; and why? because it naturally creates a feeling of awe and detestation. If a person is wounded by a machine, or otherwise, a crowd of all his fellow workmen gather around ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... were our own home that we are about to enter!—and I glanced at her face to see whether a like thought had visited her. She maintained a subdued demeanor, with an expression about the mouth and eyes of a peculiar timid gentleness, and, as it were, a sort of mental leaning upon me for support and protection. She felt, it may be, a little fear of herself, at finding herself—in more senses than one—so near to me; and, woman-like, she depended upon me ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... schools; they had not endeavored to obtain results, but to establish results already determined; and, along with real arguments, popular appeals had not been despised. Each of the opposing schools had given variations on a definite theme, and whenever timid attempts had been made to bring the two melodies into harmony they had met with no approval. The proceedings thus far had at least made it evident to the unbiased hearer that each of the two parties ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... I had no valet she insisted combing my hair. She felt flattered at my not presuming to go to bed in her presence, and kept me company for an hour; and as I was not really amorous of her, I had no difficulty in playing the part of the timid lover. When she wished me good night she was delighted to find my kisses as affectionate but not so daring as those of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sent for, and was sent to Mr. Pitt, from whom, though offering almost carte blanche, he received a peremptory refusal. The next measure was to form a Ministry from the Opposition. Willing were they, but timid. Without Mr. Pitt nobody would engage. The King was forced to desire his old Ministers to stay where they were. They, who had rallied their very dejected courage, demanded terms, and hard ones indeed—promise of never consulting Lord Bute, dismission of his brother, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... six-shooter from under his leg and raising and lowering the hammer with one hand, keeping the muzzle pointed toward the steward's head all the while, the latter grew as white as a sheet and trembled in every limb. After he thought he had inflicted sufficient torture upon the timid fellow, the Confederate put up his ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... going back is a needless throwing away of a valuable life,' I began, with a timid hope beginning to grow in my heart—'I will chloroform him and have him ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... selfishness is as bad. I have known very good men who were cowards; men that I liked and trusted but who, from weakness of nerves or other physical causes—perhaps from prenatal influences—were easily frightened and always constitutionally timid. The Colonel was a very pugnacious man: he professed himself to be a lover of peace—and so did the Kaiser—but really he enjoyed the gaudium certaminis, as all ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... been a marvel amongst men who believed that her body was anything but "an index to a most fair mind"—that Wyvis said to himself that he had never seen any woman like her. He was fascinated and enthralled. The qualities which made her so different from his timid, underbred, melancholy mother, or his coarse and self-indulgent wife, were those in which Margaret showed peculiar excellence. And before these—for the first time in his life—Wyvis Brand ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... satisfactory information upon it, would have rejoiced to do it. But I found it otherwise; and this frequently to my sorrow. There was an aversion in persons to appear before such a tribunal as they conceived the privy council to be. With men of shy or timid character this operated as an insuperable barrier in their way. But it operated more or less upon all. It was surprising to see what little circumstances affected many. When I took out my pen and ink to put down the information ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... objects under the quilts, which when awake identified themselves as Peter Kittredge's children. She had dressed and uncovered the embers, and put on a few of the chips which had been spread out on the hearth to dry, and had sat down in the chimney corner. A timid blaze began to steal up, and again was quenched, and only the smoke ascended in its form; then the light flickered out once more, casting a gigantic shadow of her sun-bonnet—for she had donned it thus ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... dressed, He roamed, content alike with man and beast. Where darkness found him he lay glad at night; There the red morning touched him with its light. Three moons his great heart him a hermit made, So long he roved at will the boundless shade. The timid it concerns to ask their way, And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, To make no step until the event is known, And ills to come as evils past bemoan. Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps To spy what danger on his pathway creeps; Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Turkeys, timid, sweet-tempered people, who were fond of walking. They had never been known to answer back when the Gobbler scolded them, although at times he was very unreasonable. This was polite of them, but it made the Gobbler ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the second act of the tragedy. The new hopes, the fond yearnings, the terrified misgivings, the timid belief, and weak confidence; the child that is born—and dies smiling prettily—and the mother's heart is rent so, that it can love, or hope, or suffer no more. Allah is God! She sleeps by the little fezzes. Hark! the guns are booming ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the ante-dungeon, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... generally believed that Russia was more vulnerable from the confines of Podolia, and by a campaign carried into Poland, than elsewhere. Austria dreaded the appearance of French and English uniforms in too close proximity to Russian Poland; nor was Prussia less timid of that phenomenon; for both were apprehensive of a general rising of Poland against her tripartite oppressors. At one time Austria was said to be willing to join in the war and march across the Russian frontier in the rear of an allied ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... come in his tent for a minute. Can I go?" he asked, in a timid voice, and in such a low tone as to render ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... wretched and short-lived attachments, of which I blushed to preserve the memories; not one of which I could recur to with pious regret, save that of poor Antonina. I was penitent and ashamed of my past follies and disorders; disgusted and satiated of vulgar allurements; and being naturally of a timid and reserved disposition, without that self-confidence which prompts some men to court adventures, or to seek the familiarity of chance acquaintances, I neither wished to see nor to be seen. Still ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... such an effect upon all three of us that it confounded our senses and deprived us of judgment. We were smitten with terror and apprehension of the great disorders about to be perpetrated." Catherine, who was a timid woman, adds Tavannes, would willingly have recalled her orders, and with that intent hastily despatched a gentleman to the Duke of Guise expressly desiring him to return and attempt nothing against the admiral. "It is too late," was the answer brought back; "the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... eyes Ann would repeat to her best beloved, as they sat together in the oriel bay, how that Laura had led her Petrarca from the ways of common men; and it went to my heart to hear her entreat him, with timid and yet fond and heartfelt prayer, to grant to her to be his Laura and to guide him far from the beaten path, forasmuch as it was narrow and low for his winged spirit. And while she thus spoke her great eyes had a marvellous clear and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her own reasons for uneasiness; more reasons I fancy than I then guessed. For she seemed to have lost her voice. She stammered and made but poor replies; and Madame Claude being deaf and stupid, and we boys too timid after the rebuff we had experienced to fill the gap, the conversation languished. The Vidame was not for his part the man to put himself out ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and the Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously, ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... few of the poor creatures who were so recently burnt out of their homes, and had lost most of those dearest to them, had ventured, as if drawn by an irresistible spell, to return with timid steps to the scene of their former happiness, but only to have their worst fears confirmed. Their homes, their protectors, their children, their hopes, all were gone at one fell swoop. Only one among them—one who, having managed ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Day Diurnal, meridian, ephemeral Disease Morbid East Oriental Egg Oval Ear Auricular Eye Ocular Flesh Carnal, carnivorous Father Paternal Field Agrarian Flock Gregarious Foe Hostile Fear Timorous, timid Finger Digital Flattery Adulatory Fire Igneous Faith Fiducial Foot Pedal Groin Inguinal Guardian Tutelar Glass Vitreous Grape Uveous Grief Dolorous Gain Lucrative Help Auxiliary Heart Cordial, cardiac Hire Stipendiary Hurt Noxious Hatred Odious Health Salutary, salubrious Head ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... thirty-nine illustrations (Allen, 1896), the best example of his later manner, and a book which all admirers of the more severe order of "decorative illustration" will do well to preserve, the list is complete. Whether a certain austerity of line has made publishers timid, or whether the artist has declined commissions, the fact remains that the literature of the nursery has not yet had its full share from Mr. Heywood Sumner. Luckily, if its shelves are the less full, its walls are gayer by the many Fitzroy pictures he has ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... the welcoming brightness of a well-lighted house sprang out to greet them. It was Croyden's one extravagance—to have plenty of illumination. He had always been accustomed to it, and the gloom, at night, of the village residence, bright only in library or living room—with, maybe, a timid taper in the hall—set his nerves on edge. He would have none of it. And Moses, with considerable wonder at, to his mind, the waste of gas, and much grumbling ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... have been able to overcome physical limitations, but it is necessary to reckon with those limitations, and they are always a handicap. The physical endowment of a race has been a deciding factor in certain times of crisis. The physical prowess of the Anakim kept back the timid Israelites from their intended conquest of Canaan until a more hardy generation had arisen among the invaders; the sturdy Germans won the lands of the Roman Empire in the West from the degenerate provincials; powerful vikings swept the Western seas and struck such terror into the peaceful ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... telling these highly moral (sic) stories but we have reached the point of parodying them, in sign of ridicule, as, for instance, in such writing as Belloc's "Cautionary Tales." These would be a trifle too grim for a timid child, but excellent fun ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... ago The asas to meet In the giant's old eagle-guise. The eagle perched Where the asas bore Their food to be cooked. Ye women! The mountain-giant Was not wont to be timid. ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... the carriage, was struck dumb with horror to see the apparition, but the timid little figure kept close to his mistress, and she wore such a look that the old ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... acutely among them, but, like all timid creatures, he kept silence as to his pain; and so by degrees schooled himself to hide his feelings, and learned to take sanctuary in his inmost self. Many superficial persons interpret this conduct by the short ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... was packed suffocatingly close. The timid passenger thought of pickpockets, and thrust his hand into his pocket protectingly. He was startled to encounter the fist ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... is always denying her theory," he added. "That's what makes her confusing. The fact of her weeps at departures, shell shocks, amputations; grows timid and organizes pacifist societies. It's a case of sex ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... said of him as a writer of French. In the earlier years he felt the weight of the Academy. He did not feel that French would allow full freedom. He was scrupulous and timid. He soon shook off this timidity and became a really remarkable wielder of the French tongue. His translations of his own works have doubtless reached a far wider public than the works themselves, and are certainly characterized ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... was a curiously pathetic look in her great blue eyes such as we sometimes see in those of a timid child. "Yes—very glad." ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Church, what sex or age, what rank or order is there, which could not find something beneficial to itself [aliquid sibi utile] in this treasure-house of ours? Here the light of truth is furnished to schismatics, confidence to timid pastors, health to the sick, and pardon to the deserving penitent [paenitentibus venia ejus meritis, the last two words probably implying an offering]. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... plain he's a killer jest the same. It's frequent that a-way. I'm never much afraid of one of your cold game gents like Cherokee Hall; you can gamble the limit they'll never put a six-shooter in play till it's shorely come their turn. But timid, feverish, locoed people, whose jedgment is bad an' who's prone to feel themse'fs in peril; they're the kind who kills. For myse'f I shuns all sech. I won't say them erratic, quick-to-kill sports don't have courage; only it strikes me—an' I've rode up on a heap of 'em—it's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... Fanny boldly; "but during the last few days I have discovered that Sibyl is a sweet girl—most charming, most unselfish, most obliging. She is very timid, however, and lacks self-confidence; and I have observed that she is constantly snubbed by girls who are not fit to hold a candle to her and yet look down upon her, just because she is poor. Now, if she were made a member of the club all that would be put ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching the alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself was a little shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable of explanation ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... by, it had become a habit of his mind to think of the days to come, when they would be married. Then he had gone away to a little college. When he returned for the holidays he always saw her again, but when he spoke of marrying her she blushed, and was timid, for she was passing away from childhood. In later days he saw less of her, but he always wrote long letters to his little comrade. After a few years he went abroad to study, but they corresponded often, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... berth above or below is not, however, and is much more disturbing than the noise of the train. Forgetting the number of one's berth and blundering into the wrong place is a serious breach of good manners in a sleeping car, and it is extremely severe on timid persons who have gone to bed with visions before their minds of the man who was murdered in lower ten and the woman who brought her husband's corpse from Florida in the same ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... towards the spot she came. When that foul shape of evil mien And stature vast as e'er was seen The wrathful son of Raghu eyed, He thus unto his brother cried:— "Her dreadful shape, O Lakshman, see, A form to shudder at and flee. The hideous monster's very view Would cleave a timid heart in two. Behold the demon hard to smite, Defended by her magic might. My hand shall stay her course to-day, And shear her nose and ears away. No heart have I her life to take: I spare it for her sex's sake. My will is but—with minished force— To check her in her evil course." While ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... fountain hid in heavenly dell. I looked, and in the low roofs broken place A single snowdrop stood—a radiant bell Of silvery shine, softly subdued by grace Of delicate green that made the white appear Yet whiter. Blind it bowed its head a space, Half-timid—then, as in despite of fear, Unfolded its three rays. If it had swung Its pendent bell, and music golden clear— Division just entrancing sounds among— Had flickered down as tender as flakes of snow, It had not shed more influence as it rung Than from ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... revenge. Then, those thick lips of his suggest passion. So there you have it: wounded self-love and passion. That is quite enough motive for a murder. We have two of them in our hands; but who is the third? Nicholas and Psyekoff held him, but who smothered him? Psyekoff is shy, timid, an all-round coward. And Nicholas would not know how to smother with a pillow. His sort use an ax or a club. Some third person did the smothering; ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Groseillers warned the Indians of the risk they were running. Many of these Algonquins had never before possessed firearms. With the muskets obtained in trade at Three Rivers, they thought themselves invincible and laughed all warning to scorn. Radisson and Groseillers were told that they were a pair of timid squaws; and the canoes spread apart till not twenty were within call. As they skirted the wooded shores, a man suddenly dashed from the forest with an upraised war-hatchet in one hand and a blanket streaming ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... timid as men are when they confront the illness of women. "I want to say to you, Ann, that having your power of attorney I have withdrawn your fifty thousand dollars you had lent to the mills. My partners were glad to take it." He said nothing of ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... come and wish him joy. He sat down in the room moodily and silently, as he was wont when anything troubled him; then, without speaking a word, he shook Pierce warmly by the hand, and at last remarked, 'Ah, Frank, what a pity!' The moment the victory was won, that timid, hesitating mind saw the evils of the successful course—the advantages of the one which had not been followed. So it was always. Of two lines of action, he was perpetually in doubt which was the best; and so, between the two, he always ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... is an Industrial Congress in which women occupied in every branch of labor are to be represented, you may think this question could not legitimately come before you. And even if it could, you may not think best to startle the timid or provoke the powerful by the assertion that a fair day's wages for a fair day's work and the dignity of labor, alike depend on the political status of the laborer. Perhaps in your country, where the right of representation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... mamma died last summer we had absolutely no one left to help us. Our papa in his old age was of no account in the city. He was a timid man, and so he didn't get on well. Our father was a clerk in the Chancery Office, and he received a salary of thirty rubles a year. How could we live on such a sum? And yet we saw something of society. At first we were hardly ever at home, and ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... believed God himself had thought it necessary to proclaim. Probably Tillotson's own mind was a good deal divided on the subject between two opinions. In many respects his mind showed a very remarkable combination of old and new ideas, and perceptibly fluctuated between a timid adherence to tradition and a sympathy with other notions which had become unhappily and needlessly mixed up with imputations of Deism. In any case, what he has said upon this most important subject is a singular and exaggerated illustration of that ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... a slender lad, with corn-silk hair and wide blue eyes. He was shy and timid, not strong physically, dreading the cold of winter, and avoiding the rougher sports of his playmates. And yet he was full of the spirit of youth, a spirit that manifested itself in the performance of many ingenious pranks. His every-day life was ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... audience all men forsook Paul, as he tells us; though not one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained at his side,—still he triumphed over Nero ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... she presents the situation, turning in vain to every quarter whence help might come. To the whole body of the priesthood; to the timid monastic orders; to pious laymen honestly devout, yet touched by no flame of sacrificial passion such as she felt might bring salvation. It is never the sins of the world that most torture Catherine: always, as here, the sins of the Church. She does not pause till she comes to the terrible climax: ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... seem to some that so conservative an estimate of the tendencies of civilization in matters of sexual love is due to a timid adherence to mere tradition. That is not the case. We have to recognize that marriage is firmly held in position by the pressure of two opposing forces. There are two currents in the stream of our civilization: one that moves towards an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... exploration as far as the Gold Coast in his lifetime and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope twenty-five years after his death. The first decade of his endeavor brought little result, for the Sahara shore was forbidding and the sailors timid. Then in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador and found its dangers imaginary. Subsequent voyages added to the extent of coast skirted until the desert began to give place to inhabited country. The Prince was now eager for captives to be taken who might inform him of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... their absent host; but the Little Chemist and Medallion remained. For a time Mrs. Secord remained with them, then retired, begging them to await her husband, who, she knew, would be grateful if they stayed. The Little Chemist, with timid courtesy, showed her out of the room, then came back and sat down. They were very silent. The Little Chemist took off his glasses a half-dozen times, wiped them, and put them back. Then suddenly turned on Medallion. "You mean ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... engagement, she found that Maxwell actually thought she could make excuse of his work to go without him, and she had to be painfully explicit before she could persuade him that this would not do at all. He was not timid about meeting her friends, as he might very well have been; but, in comparison with his work, he apparently held them of little moment, and at last he yielded to her wishes rather than her reasons. He made no pretence of liking those people, but he gave them no more ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... to one another. Though meetings come and go, and weeks and even years pass, and it does not happen, nevertheless I renew this expectation at every meeting. I have faith that some day it will be fulfilled. We should be bold in our expectations, look forward to momentous events. We should not be timid or small but large with expectancy, and, at the same time humble, so that there is no ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... impossible for me to practice either the piano or singing within hearing of her exclamations of impatient anguish at my false chords and flat intonations; and I suppose nothing but my sister's unquenchable musical genius would have sustained her naturally timid, sensitive disposition under ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Soon our timid tune is joined by a more expressive line that rises in ardent reaches to a sudden tumult, with a fiery strain of trumpets where we catch a glimpse of the triplet figure. After ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... supper, the cup which she had gone to fetch in her hand. The strength of night made her heart timid; the touch of food was dry and tasteless upon her lips. For the first time since coming to that country she felt the pain of discouragement. What could she do against such a great, rough thing? Would it ever be worth the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... prince they passed before the king. The proud and stately he would greet with grace, The timid cheer with kind and gracious words. But when Yasodhara bowed low and passed, He started, and his color went and came As if oppressed with sudden inward pain. Asita, oldest of his counselors, Sprang ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... the things which they conceived to be best worth their telling it. Especially has this been the case in the province of fiction. Let me explain the situation. Most novels nowadays have to run as serials through magazines or newspapers; and the editors of these periodicals are timid to a degree which outsiders would hardly believe with regard to the fiction they admit into their pages. Endless spells surround them. This story or episode would annoy their Catholic readers; that one would repel their ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... that it is impossible to test a child satisfactorily in the presence of others. If the examiner is experienced, and if the child is not timid, it is sometimes possible to make a successful test in the presence of quite a number of auditors, provided they remain silent, refrain from staring, and otherwise conduct themselves with discretion. But not even the veteran examiner can always be sure of the outcome ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... boys who pass off finely before strangers, because they are not in the least bashful, and have a knack of putting on any manner they choose; and Fred was one of these. Willy, a far nobler boy, was naturally timid before his betters; but even if he had been as bold as Fred, his conscience would never have let him say and ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... part,' said the Count of Artois, with his characteristic rashness, 'I dislike timid counsels. Why not at once attack Cairo, which is the capital of Egypt? When you wish to kill the serpent,' added he, 'you ought always to endeavour to crush his head. Then, I say, ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... voice issued from this isolated point of darkness? I went back to see. A pitiful figure was crouching there, a frail, agitated little being, whom I had no sooner recognised than my manner instantly assumed an air of friendly interest, called out by her timid and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... my boy. I can't accept so great a kindness— unless," said Graham with a timid flash of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... mind, and tell me if he is not a subject worthy the genius and chisel of a Chantrey. Mark him as he swings his axe and buries it deep into a giant tree. Hark! how that first blow rings through the wood, and echoes along the shores of the bay. The wild duck starts and flaps her wings; the timid deer bounds away. Yet stroke follows stroke in measured force. The huge tree, whose branches have been fanned and tossed by the breeze of centuries, begins to sway. Another blow, and it falls thundering to the ground. Far and wide does the crash reverberate. It is ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... his new wife pleased him; he found that she was what he had wanted her to be,—gentle, kindly, timid, modest. It seemed sure that she would bring him heirs. Being neither ambitious nor prone to intrigue, she did not meddle with politics. She was religious, moral, and her principles were most sound. She would never ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... her room she was lying on her sofa in a white wrapper of some silky stuff. The black lace had been drawn again round her head, and he saw nothing but a very pale face and her eager, timid eyes—timid for no one in the world but him. As he caught sight of her, she produced in him that exquisite mingled impression of grace, passion, self-yielding, which in all its infinite variations and repetitions made up for him ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... property that did not belong to them. There were Senator and Mrs. Jorrocks. The Senator is after bigger game than diamond stomachers, and Mrs. Jorrocks is known to be honest. There were Harry Gaddsby and his wife. Harry doesn't know enough to go in when it rains, and is too timid to call even his soul his own, so he couldn't have taken it; and Mrs. Gaddsby is long on stomachers, having at least five, and therefore would not be likely to try to land a sixth by questionable means. In that way we practically cleared ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... scheme, began to be alarmed, when, in the fourth letter, he entered upon the more high and dangerous matter of the nature of Ireland's connection with England. The object of these verses is, to encourage the timid to stand by their advocate in a cause which was ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... cautiously from the wood to the road, and at sight of the blinking light walked stealthily to the window, peeped in, then in timid perplexity drew back a few steps till a fresh blast of wind froze him so that the poor boy turned back once ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... well as she could, and then looked up, a swift, timid glance, and found his eyes upon her earnestly ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... wasn't fussing, sir!" protested Rae Malgregor with a timid sort of dignity. "Why, it never had occurred to me for a moment that anybody blamed me for—anything!" Just from sheer astonishment her hands took a new clutch into the torn flapping corner of the motto that she still clung desperately to ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... thoroughly conversant with the Chaco, ways of wild Indians and animals, please apply "T.W.M.," Offices of this paper. Good shot, can cook and sew, able to point out all the beauties of nature, animal and vegetable. Terms moderate. Inspires confidence in the most timid ladies ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... receded from his face, leaving it pale. His eyes were appealing. They had a kind of timid look that struck Madeline even in her anger. There was something boyish about him then. He took a step forward and reached out with his hand open-palmed in a gesture that was humble, yet ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... York, and she plunged into its gayeties, never pausing, never tiring, and seldom giving herself time to think, much less to pray, as Morris had bidden her do. And Wilford, though hardly able to recognize the usually timid Katy in the brilliant woman who led rather than followed, was sure of her faith to him, and so was only proud and gratified to see her bear off the palm from every competitor, while even Juno, though she quarreled with the ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Thor, being town-bred, was timid about venturing into the woods beyond the sound of Corney's axe; but day by day he went farther, guiding himself, not by unreliable moss on trees, but by sun, compass, and landscape features. His purpose was to learn about ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... once made null the Sulpician laws, punished their author and his adherents, as Sulpicius had feared. The gray-haired conqueror of the Cimbri fled, and found his way to the coast and embarked on a trading-vessel, but the timid mariners put him ashore, and Marius stole along the beach with his pursuers in the rear. He was found in a marsh concealed in reeds and mud, seized and imprisoned by the people of Minturnae, and a Cimbrian ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... whatever left now of Lady Jane of Woolhanger. Segerson would probably not have recognised his autocratic mistress. The most timid of her tenant farmers would have adopted a bold front with her. She was simply a very beautiful woman, trembling a little, unsteady, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... MAN CAUGHT | | | |The wild man who has been frightening school | |children of Yonkers, scaring hunters in the woods, | |and causing hurry calls to the police from timid | |housewives, has been captured by the reserves of the| |Second precinct. He was caught last night in Belmont| |woods, near the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... Acarnania went over to his side. From Medio he went to Thurium, whither he had sent on before him the same Mnasilochus, and his colleagues in the embassy. But the detection of the treachery practised at Medio rendered the Thurians more cautious, but not more timid. They answered him explicitly, that they would form no new alliance without the approbation of the Romans: they then shut their gates, and posted soldiers on the walls. Most seasonably for confirming the resolution of the Acarnanians, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... pretty! Now, Bud, you tote in the lady's trunk, 'n then go. She's tired." And the usually timid country girl entered into her new role of care-taker ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... his purpose to aid Alice. Let that wear off, as in a short time it would, and then what? The old man studied his companion with eyes that slowly resumed their expression of smouldering and almost timid geniality. His priestly experience with desperate men was demanding of him a proper regard for that subtlety of procedure which had so often compassed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... fine as Mrs. McLane's, but too aloof and sensitive to care for leadership. She had made the grand tour in Europe, they discovered, and enjoyed a season in Washington. She should continue to live at the Occidental Hotel as her husband would be out so much at night and she was rather timid. And she was bright, unaffected, responsive. Could anything be more reassuring? There was nothing to be apprehended by the socially ambitious, the proud housewives, or those prudent dames whose amours were conducted with such secrecy ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... in his cloak, was walking down the Rue Ecole de Medecine towards his own lodgings, he suddenly felt a timid hand upon ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the stupidest man alive," she said. "Is not your name Bold, and are you not timid, and backward, and humble, and despondent, and a great big baby! Why, Lucy thinks the world of you; she is never tired of hearing that red-haired man Punchard talk of you; and yet you are glum, and scowl at her, and glower at the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the days of St. Agobard of Lyons in the ninth century to Pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or suggestions, more or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men against this system. Medicine had made some advance toward a better view, but the theological torrent had generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... voice in this assembly to the "Third Estate," the common folk or "citizens," as well as to the nobles and the clergy. So even in France we find the people acquiring power, though as yet this Third Estate speaks with but a timid and subservient voice, requiring to be much encouraged by its money-asking sovereigns, who little dreamed it would one day be strong enough to demand a reckoning ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... material growth has gone the spiritual uplift of a great human race. From contempt and amusement they have passed to the pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while within their own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open protest and more and more manly self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of them could not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300 papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compelling ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... found the youthful sailor whom they sought, with his body rolled in the shaggy covering, extended at his length along the naked boards, and buried in a deep sleep. So timid were the steps of his visitors, and so noiseless was their entrance, that they approached even to his side without disturbing his slumbers. The head of the prisoner lay rudely pillowed on a billet ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... who, for all her wilfulness, was timid as a bird, drew close to the knight and whispered, 'Are you also angry with me, ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Miss Rawle honestly admires Miss West and seems to have a great deal of faith in her ability to write. Sometimes Kathleen is the soul of hospitality. At other times she barely responds to Miss Rawle's timid remarks. When she behaves in that fashion I feel tempted to give her a good shaking. More than once I have seen Miss Rawle say good night when she looked ready ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... offence may come, as Jesus says they must; misapplications and complaints, which are almost always misapprehensions, may be made; but are not these better than indifference and death? No doubt there is a prudence, and still more an impartial candor and equity, in treating every matter, but no beauty in timid flight from any matter there is to treat. The clergyman, like every man, speaks at his peril, and is as accountable as any one for what he says. He ought justly and tenderly to remember the diverse tenets represented ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... son and fatherless though he was, he had not been "spoilt" in the ordinary sense of the word. Mrs. Tudor, though gentle, and in some ways timid, was not a weak or silly woman. She had brought up her children on certain broad rules of "must," as to which she was as firm as a rock, and these had succeeded so well with the girls that it was a complete surprise ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... restore order, to assist the wounded, to encourage the timid, and to revive expiring hope. Most providentially, when the vessel struck, the mainmast, in falling overboard, served to form a communication between the ship and the shore, and Captain Lydiard was the first to point out this circumstance ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of something different in their manner—which is freer and rounder, if they come of what is called a good family, and often more timid and precise if they are of the middle class—serves, in these days, to accentuate the difference of age and add a distinction to gray hairs. But their superiority is founded more deeply than by outward marks or gestures. They are before us in the march of man; they have more or less ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disastrous trades. The large, powerful Bears were its friends, the Bears strong of grip, tenacious of jaw, capable of pulling down the strongest Bull. Thus the firm had no consideration for the "outsiders," the "public"—the Lambs. The Lambs! Such a herd, timid, innocent, feeble, as much out of place in La Salle Street as a puppy in a cage of panthers; the Lambs, whom Bull and Bear did not so much as condescend to notice, but who, in their mutual struggle of horn ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... hinting at the many hazards and difficulties always attending them; in vain did they urge the strength of the Spanish fort, and the expenses incurred by a fruitless and perhaps bloody expedition: such men were called enemies and traitors to their country, and represented as timid and pusillanimous wretches, who were utter strangers to great and glorious undertakings. Accordingly, a great majority of the assembly declared for the expedition, and a sum of two thousand pounds sterling was voted for the service of the war. Six hundred ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... a timid suppliant; he asked to lie down on the red man's bearskin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children. Now he is become strong and mighty and bold, and spreads out his parchment over the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... started out one of the big entrances. As he did so he noticed a timid country girl, dressed ridiculously behind the fashions, and wearing an old-fashioned bonnet. She carried a rattan ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... South, certain; that they always did catch every one who ran off, but never brought them home, but sold them right off where they could never run away any more, or get to see their relatives again. This threat, George said, was continually rung in the ears of the slaves, and with the more timid it ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... clasp-knife he had drawn from his rags he was digging bait! Not as she had dug, with timid, tentative jabs from the point of a stick, but systematically, thoroughly, just as Monty would have done. He had found a spot where the earth was soft and rich, and was wholly absorbed in his task. So absorbed that Katharine felt ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... became a fugitive, the Duke of Brunswick was killed, and the intrepid Mansfeld died. The Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the natural defenders of Protestantism and the leading princes of the league, were awed into an abject neutrality. The old protectors of Lutheranism were timid and despairing. The monarchs of Europe trembled. Germany lay prostrate and bleeding. Christendom stood aghast at the greatness of the calamities which afflicted Germany and threatened ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... identified with them. Without carrying over with him one single person, he is now in a state of as perfect obscurity as if his name had never been known. Mr. J. Randolph is in the same track, and will end in the same way. His course has excited considerable alarm. Timid men consider it as a proof of the weakness of our government, and that it is to be rent into pieces by demagogues and to end in anarchy. I survey the scene with a different eye, and draw a different ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... this, yet Gaston became thoughtful; but he quickly threw off his suspicions, accusing himself of becoming timid at a time when he most needed courage; his brow remained clouded, however, for the ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... smiles and greetings for everybody—for you, without the price of a glass of beer in your pocket, for the timid hobo who lurks in the corner and who certainly hasn't a vote, but who may establish a lodging-house registration. And do you know, when these politicians swing wide the doors and come in, with their broad shoulders, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... troops of Lord Cornwallis, with all the pomp and circumstance of glory, advanced from the battle-field of Camden to Charlotte, with the fond expectation of soon placing North Carolina under his subjection. Many of the brave had despaired of final success, and the timid, and some of the wealthy, to save their property, had taken "protection" under the enemy. Colonel Ferguson, with chosen troops, was ravaging the whole western portion of upper South Carolina, subduing ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... once written, 'has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune raises a courageous mind, and makes it collect all the forces that before were unemployed: it is in indolence and littleness that virtue suffers, when a timid prudence prevents it from rising in flight and forces it to creep along in bonds.'[12] He was true to the counsel which he had thus given years before, and with the consciousness that death was rapidly approaching, and that all hope of advancement in the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... houses, and which, from its incapacity to hold more than one, secured to the worthy recluse the privacy he longed for; and here, among superannuated hearth-brushes, an old hand screen, an asthmatic bellows, and a kettle-holder, sat the timid youth, "alone, but in a crowd." Not all the seductions of loo, limited to three pence, nor even that most appropriately designated game, beggar-my-neighbour—could withdraw him from his blest retreat. Like his countryman, St. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to the sounds of firing in the distance, the reports of many pieces coming reverberating out of the chasm-like rift leading south. Their eyes, too, were as much upon the alert as those of some timid animal whose life depends upon its watchfulness from day to day, existing, as it does, in the midst of numberless enemies, who look upon it as their ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... he would be so very angry, that Tom, who, you know, is timid and meek, would be dreadfully frightened," ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... profound reaction, too. Market Street and the Valley, each in its own way, felt the dreaded turmoil coming, knew what commercial disaster the struggle meant, but Market Street was timid and powerless and panic-stricken. Yet life went on. In the Valley there were births and deaths and marriages, and on the hill in Harvey, Mrs. Bedelia Nesbit was working out her plans to make over the Nesbit house, while ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... and pretty Lucy became a gentle, handsome woman—kindly, courteous, and beloved by all, timid, and shrinking only with Sir Hugh. Her husband, wearied and discontented, mixed himself fiercely in all the intrigues of the day—became a staunch partisan of the House of Stuart, and sought for excitement abroad in proportion as he missed congeniality of feeling at home. It was an unhappy ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... sprung up from a long slumber, and to be looking with wide happy eyes upon the fresh marvels Nature is preparing for it. Rather naked she stands as yet, rubbing her sleepy lids, having just cast from her her coat of snow, and feeling somewhat bare in the frail garment of bursting leaves and timid grass growths, that as yet is all she can find wherein to hide her charms; but half clothed as she ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... in every mouth did the work; but because our personal impressions of him do not correspond with our conceptions of a powerful man, we abate or withdraw our admiration, and attribute his success to lucky accident. This blear-eyed, taciturn, timid man, whose knowledge of many things is manifestly imperfect, whose inaptitude for many things is apparent, can HE be the creator of such glorious works? Can HE be the large and patient thinker, the delicate humourist, the impassioned poet? Nature seems ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... flatter the young girl, and to awaken that uneasy vanity which fills the mind with the consciousness of observation, and gives awkwardness to the timid, and affectation to the self-possessed. Seeing herself so different from those she loved the best, the fair Water-Lily often wished she could darken her skin and hair, that she might more resemble others. Nor think that Orikama was totally ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... theory requires no other refutation than what the theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity of a Marlborough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the "Fairy Queen," amidst the quickly-shifting scenes ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... power, they only carried to completion the work of conservation begun by the Sung emperors. In their contact with China they resembled timid pupils quite as much as conquerors. Once emperor of China, the Mongol Kublai Khan could not but remember his purely Chinese education. Moreover it was quite the Tartar custom to extend their conquests to administrative organization, by establishing a hierarchy of functionaries. The conception ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... after the leap of the stag, then a dozen times more as the wolves followed; then amidst the foam were visible the head of the stag, and those of the wolves who were pursuing him, howling with hunger, while the more timid ones ran along the banks uttering their lamentable howls. The stag had neared the island, when the wolves on the bank suddenly ceased their cries and ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the channels of his heart rolled, for an instant, the full tide of his once secretly nurtured affection for her. It was for an instant, however; for one look at the beautiful Kate convinced him that the love he once bore the gentle, timid girl at his side was nought, when compared with the deep, ardent affection which he now felt for his own cherished wife. "Fanny," said he, "I have wronged you in thought, but never in word or deed, to my knowledge. I was, however, grossly deceived, although ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... customary to call whales "fierce," "savage," "murderous," but this is rank libel, for the whale is timid and affectionate. Every family, however, has its black sheep. The Orca or Killer is the terror alike of sealing-rookeries, fish-schools, and whale bone whales. One Killer taken up here had in its stomach fourteen porpoises ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... that out of the conflict of opinions the truth is usually reached. Before even the fiery congress of 1812 had taken up the subject of hostilities, the legislatures of the several States, urged by their farmer constituency, had by concurrent resolutions declared in favor of war; but the timid president, influenced by his own convictions and the opinions of his cabinet, still hesitated. Finally a committee of Democrats waited on Mr. Madison and told him plainly, in substance, that the supporters of his administration had determined upon war ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... brethren, here is a gift offered for us all, a gift which our feebleness sorely needs, a gift for every timid nature, for every weak will, for every man, woman, and child beset with snares and fighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a reinforcement as real and as sure to bring victory as when, on that day when the fate of Europe was determined, after ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... at themselves, then young persons, who are in search of personnel happiness, will stand aghast at the ever-increasing wretchedness of their life, which is plainly leading them to destruction; conscientious people will be shocked at the cruelty and the illegality of their life; and timid people will be terrified by the danger of their mode ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... give in easily. She made feeble tentative attempts to share his author's rapture. She asked him timid little questions, to which he gave smilingly vague answers; and once she even suggested that he should read to her the chapters he ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... eye, Eileen Aroon! Is it the timid sigh, Eileen Aroon! Is it the tender tone, Soft as the stringed harp's moan? O, it ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... much power over others and the shorter the "little finger" is, the more timid and sensitive they are in the presence of strangers. If this finger is crooked, then these weaknesses are all the more emphasised, but if formed crooked and long the power of eloquence is also crooked. Such people will tell any "fairy tale" to suit ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... a choregraphic love-story, the two dancers representing an enamoured swain and his mistress. It is the old theme—'the quarrel of lovers is the renewal of love.' Enraptured gaze, coy side-look, gallant advance, timid retrocession, impassioned declaration, supercilious rejection, piteous supplication, softening hesitation; worldly goods oblation, gracious acceptation; frantic jubilation, maidenly resignation. Petting, wooing, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... overheard the Queen declare that she had resolved to give her consent to the assassination of her husband. The vulgar believed, and the highest magistrates pretended to believe, even such fictions as these. The chief judges of the realm were corrupt, cruel, and timid. The leaders of the Country Party encouraged the prevailing delusion. The most respectable among them, indeed, were themselves so far deluded as to believe the greater part of the evidence of the plot to be true. Such men as Shaftesbury and Buckingham doubtless ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a very small animal, with pointed nose and long tail. It has large bright eyes, large ears, strong sharp teeth, and is very timid. ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... replied the Turk gravely. "Is it not given to man to be calm and confident, and to walk bravely on, in such places as this? He can train himself to go through what is dangerous to the timid without risk. Look at the young effendi!" he added in a whisper; "he sees no danger ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... thousand clansmen left him; Colkitto went away to harry Kintyre. Aboyne and the Gordons rode home on some private pique; and Montrose relied on men whom he had already proved to be broken reeds, the Homes and Kers (Roxburgh) of the Border, and the futile and timid Traquair. When he came among them they forsook him and fled; on September 10, at Kelso, Sir Robert Spottiswoode recognised the desertion ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... world is so made that no sister can make a brother suffer as David had evidently suffered—and then there was the revolver! About this last, after one or two restless movements of search, which Mr. Ancrum interpreted, David had never asked, and the minister, timid man of peace that he was, had resold ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sparrows and the rustle of the wind in the trees, Rafael could hear the sound of a piano—the keys barely touched by the player's fingers—and a soft, timid voice, as if the song were meant ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the neutral nations. The cause itself is so admirable that it deserves wide support. It gives an outlet for the ethical feelings of our people, feelings that have been unnaturally dammed for nearly two years by the cold and timid policy of ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... his fist upon the deal table with a bang that produced a most unpleasant effect upon poor Hans's nerves, and a cold gleam of sudden ferocity flickered in the small eyes, very discomforting for a timid man to behold, however innocent he knew ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... The strong pushing aside the weak, the cunning creeping past the foolish; those behind elbowing those before; those in front kicking, as they run, at those behind. Look close and see the flitting show. Here is an old man panting for breath, and there a timid maiden driven by a hard and sharp-faced matron; here is a studious youth, reading "How to Get On in the World" and letting everybody pass him as he stumbles along with his eyes on his book; here is a bored-looking man, with a fashionably dressed woman jogging his elbow; here ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to myself and my recollections, but to all of us who teach and all of you who listen, whether experts in our specialties or aliens to their mysteries, or timid neophytes just entering the portals of the hall of science. Look in with me, then, while I attempt to throw some rays into its interior, which shall illuminate a few of its pillars and cornices, and show at the same time how many niches and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... were expected to make for peace, and which I prophesied would not make for peace, have failed to work for peace. Few publicists anticipated that the millions of German Social Democrats would behave as timid henchmen of the Prussian Junker, and my friend Vandervelde, leader of the International Social Democracy and now Belgian Minister of State, indignantly repudiated my reflections on his German comrades. Alas! the Gospel ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... spirituality. To nations which had attained a higher faith, that of Babylon appeared to be an idolatrous worship of many gods. That is a harsh judgment. This religion also had life in it and advanced from a lower to a higher stage; from a timid trafficking with spirits to a service of gods who were ideal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men. It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and Assyria ceased ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... fluttered amongst the beautiful trees of the island, all recalled to the memory the landscapes of Castille, and for this reason Columbus named it Hispaniola, or Spanish Island. The inhabitants were extremely timid and distrustful; they fled away into the interior and no communication could be held with them. Some sailors, however, succeeded in capturing a young woman, whom they carried on board with them. She was young and rather pretty. The admiral gave her, besides rings and beads, some clothing, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... in them, certain it is that in no other region in Europe has Mother Church laid such a heavy ban upon all the things of faery as in this strange and isolated peninsula. A more tolerant ecclesiastical rule might have weaned them to a timid friendship, but all overtures have been discouraged, and to-day they are enemies, active, malignant, swift to inflict evil upon the pious peasant because he is pious and on the energetic because ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... follows: the fifty daughters of Danaus (who are the chorus), betrothed by the fiat of Aegyptus (their father's brother) to his fifty sons, flee with Danaus to Argos, to escape the marriage which they abhor. They claim the protection of the Argive king, Pelasgus, who is kind but timid; and he (by a pleasing anachronism) refers the matter to the people, who agree to protect the fugitives. The pursuing fleet of suitors is seen approaching; the herald arrives (with a company of followers), blusters, threatens, orders off the cowering Danaids to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hammered to pieces by heavy guns brought up from the rear. "But he had to go!" Westerling exclaimed doggedly; for he could not resist this tribute, in turn, to his own success in making an example for timid brigade commanders in the future by driving in more reserves until ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the cause of the evil, by changing popular tumults into civil wars. Faction was unavoidable in Rome; its warriors, so fierce, so proud, so terrible abroad, would not be moderate at home. To expect in a free state men at once bold in war, and timid in peace, is to look for an impossibility. It may be assumed as a fixed principle, that wherever you see every one tranquil in a state which bears the name of a republic, liberty there has been long since ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... a district in Ugogo must be very remunerative, besides being a delightful sinecure, so long as the Sultan has to deal with timid Arab merchants who fear to exhibit anything approaching to independence and self-reliance, lest they might be mulcted in cloth. In one day from one camp the sultan received forty-seven doti, consisting of Merikani, Kaniki, Barsati, and Dabwani, equal to $35.25, besides seven doti of superior ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... deep leather chairs on each side of the fireplace, broad tables carrying only the essential lamps and ashtrays, a shabby desk where Richard kept personal papers, and bookshelves crammed with novels. Harriet, making a timid round, saw Balzac and Dickens, Dumas and Fielding, several Shakespeares and a complete Meredith, jostling elbows with modern novels in bright jackets, and yellow French romances ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... perceptibly. Bitter words were tossed about. Something novel and stirring was wafted from all quarters; every proclamation evoked lively discussions in the market place, in the shops, among servants, among workingmen. Every arrest aroused a timid, uncomprehending, and sometimes unconscious sympathy when judgment regarding the causes of the arrest was expressed. She heard the words that had once frightened her—riot, socialism, politics—uttered more and more ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... Tricomie. The good abbe did not, however, long enjoy his honours, but ended his career in 1774. This conversation had been repeated to me; and, on my side, I left no means untried of preventing Louis XV from placing further confidence in his minister; but, feeble and timid, he knew not on what to determine, contenting himself with treating the duke coolly; he sought, by continual rebuffs and denials to his slightest request, to compel him to demand that dismissal he had not the courage to give. Whilst these things were in agitation, madame ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says—rather timid, because he see Tom was getting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... even in the darkness. No painter of his century approached him in animated grouping and powerful physiognomizing. Dignified, noble, powerful, and natural, he is the exact counterpart of Fra Angelico, among the Quattrocentisti. Two great, distinct systems,—the shallow, shrinking, timid, but rapturously devotional, piously sentimental school, of which Beato Angelico was facile princeps, painfully adventuring out of the close atmosphere of the miniatori into the broader light and more gairish colors of the actual, and falling back, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw in the open space beyond a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested the "hour-glass" to his timid observers—if this were the person whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he silently gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead of ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the Queen," the little circle of those who would hear the last note moved off, there was a clattering of shutters, a shining of lights through casement-windows, and soon the only sound to be heard was the rough voice of some villager, who would have been too timid to adventure anything by daylight, but now sang boldly out ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter but at once resolved, at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the Union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said, before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, that we had seen the last President of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, "Let the Union slide." Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... they there remain. A louder chorus of horrid sounds reached them, which seemed to tell of their triumph at having struck the warm scent of their victims. These dreadful howlings were too much for the timid deer, and so with a rush they were off with the speed of the wind, running directly toward the point where Mustagan had placed the two boys and the Indians. It was very fortunate for them that in this hour of peril they had the cool- headed ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... formidable person; but that I was of a timid nature, afraid to hurt, and the peacefulest ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... sweet, Guide in my wanderings, spurs unto my feet, How often you have met me on the way, And turned me from the path that led astray; Teaching that fault and folly, sin and fall, Need not the weary pilgrim's heart appall; Yea more, instructing how to snatch the sting From timid conscience, how to stretch the wing From the low plane, the level dead of sin, And mount immortal, mystic joys to win. One hour with Jesus! How its peace outweighs The ravishment of earthly love and praise; How dearer far, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... nonsense. They are weary of their monotonous, inactive, inglorious life. Thousands are the women in easy circumstances who feel thus. They would be glad to lift up their hands and do something, but the chains of custom and fashion are upon them. A false social position has made them timid and fearful. I know that many noble women are weary of such a life. They are tired of being dolls. They would be glad to be women and fill the places of ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... the ecclesiastical habit excel in, or whether merely as the result of sheer stupidity—a stupidity admirably adapted to further their designs—the old nun rendered formidable aid to the conspirator. They had thought her timid; she proved herself bold, talkative, bigoted. She was not troubled by the ins and outs of casuistry; her doctrines were as iron bars; her faith knew no doubt; her conscience no scruples. She looked on Abraham's sacrifice as natural enough, for she herself would not have hesitated to kill both father ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... de Spain, bending over her as if he were afraid she might escape, and putting his face close to hers, "some mildly curious person, some idle devil, Nan, that wanted to see what two timid men would look like, mixed up in a real fight over the one girl in the mountains both are trying to marry ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... jauntily placed on one side, and beneath it, of course, the everlasting black silk handkerchief, with the corners dangling over the neck behind. Following him was his servant, in slouched hat and spangled garters, carrying an old Spanish musket over his shoulder, and casting somewhat timid looks at the motley assemblage of Indians and trappers, who every now and then jostled against him. Beyond these, there were a score or two of go-ahead Yankees—"gentlemen traders," I suppose they called themselves—with a few pretty Californian women, who are ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... fitting and warning as this to keep him out of trouble, Marcello was to face life: with his saintly mother's timid allusions to its wickedness, with Corbario's tempting suggestions of harmless dissipation, with an unlettered peasant's sour reflections on the world in general and ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... steeple; there they are met at a fitting rendezvous, where a retired coachman, with one leg, keeps an hotel and a bowling-green. I think I now see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though it lasts only for a day. There's Cribb, the champion of England, and perhaps the best man in England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger, not the mighty ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the hand, and led her away from the coach, a ragged lantern-bearer preceding. Beverly's little right hand was rigidly clutching the revolver in her pocket. It was a capacious pocket, and the muzzle of the weapon bored defiantly into a timid powder-rag that lay on the bottom. The little leather purse from which it escaped had its silver lips opened as if in a broad grin of derision, reveling in the plight of the chamois. The guide's hand was at once firm and ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... closest associates insists that his impulsive judgment was bad, and he probably thought so himself. It will be seen later that the most momentous utterance he ever made was kept back through the whole space of two years of crisis at the instance of timid friends. It required not less courage and was certainly more effective when at last it did come out. The same great capacity for waiting marks any steps that he took for his own advancement. Indeed it was a happy thing for him and for his country ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... weather came on, Ralph had been tempted to wander over to his old stamping-grounds, not to set traps as of yore or shoot any of the timid woods' animals for the sake of their warm coats, but just ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... greengrocer. His proverbial virtue had been the delight of Gisors for several years, and served as an entertaining theme of conversation in the town, and of amusement to the young girls who loved to tease him. He was past twenty-one, was tall, awkward, slow and timid; helped his mother in the business, and spent his days picking over fruit and vegetables, seated on a chair ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in the field," she said, her eyes nearly starting out of her head with fear, for she was always very timid. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... him with downcast eyes, but in them was a humid gleam that showed her heart was with him. She had no prudery in her nature; and she had not been sufficiently in society to acquire it. She loved him with all the absence of worldliness of a genuine woman; and, amidst timid smiles and blushes, he drew from her a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the day some thought brought her suddenly to mind, he would stop short in whatever he was doing, and remember her little timid upglancing look as she hazarded, at breakfast, some question about his work, or remember her enthusiasm, on a country tramp, for the chance meal at some wayside restaurant, and sheer love of her would overwhelm him, and he would find his ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... bending down beneath the shrine as it passes; cripples, they are, all three have beautiful faces, the one who is apparently the worst cripple of the three, (his legs and feet are horribly twisted), has especially a wonderfully delicate face, timid and shrinking, though faithful: behind the shrine come the people, walking slowly together with reverent faces; a woman with a little child holding her hand are the last figures in this history of St. Honore: they both have their faces ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... about it," said Don Jose. "The difficulty is to catch them first. But, small as they are, they are in no degree timid; and if you could take some of them young, you would find that they would willingly feed off your hand; but, bold and brave, they love freedom, and will not consent to live in captivity. Perhaps Isoro may catch some for you. He knows all the birds and beasts of this region, and trees and herbs, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... having made sure of him, David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors. He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of "Neck or Nothing" Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... that her glances seemed furtive. Robin guessed that she admired him but was too humble to be at ease when he was near her. More than once she had started and turned red and pale when she saw him approaching, which had caused Robin to wonder if she herself would feel as timid and overpowered by her superiors, if she became a governess. Clearly, a man like Count von Hillern would then be counted among her superiors, and she must conduct herself becomingly, even if it led to her looking almost stealthy. She had, on several occasions, asked Fraulein certain questions about ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pulled ashore by the oarsmen. In smooth weather this is very easily done. But in rough weather, when both steamer and boat are pitching and tossing violently up and down upon the waves, it is not very easy or agreeable, especially for timid ladies. ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... to the present, are the only prophecies known to us that deserve any particular attention. The prediction in both is timid and laconic; but, in those regions where the least gleam of light assumes extraordinary importance, it is not to be neglected. I admit, for the rest, that there has so far been no time to carry out a serious enquiry on this point, but I should be greatly surprised ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Sergeant Masson stopped at a small house in a quiet street and mounted to the third floor. There he hesitated. The wife of the chief was known for her sharp temper. However, there was nothing to be done but ring, and this he did in a timid manner. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... do?" inquired one or two of the timid members, who thought they might be obliged to answer whether they wanted ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... soft, but clear and penetrating, as he read the eternal story of the angels and the shepherds and the Babe. And as he read, a slight motion of the hand or a glance of an eye made us see, as he was seeing, that whole radiant drama. The wonder, the timid joy, the tenderness, the mystery of it all, were borne in upon us with overpowering effect. He closed the book, and in the same low, clear voice went on to tell us how, in his home years ago, he used to stand on Christmas Eve listening in thrilling ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... the rain grows less violent; the thunder-cloud begins to disperse; light appears in the place where the sun should be, and a scrap of clear azure is almost visible through the grayish-white edges of the cloud. A moment more, and a timid ray of sunlight gleams in the pools along the road, upon the sheets of fine, perpendicular rain which fall as if through a sieve, and upon the shining, newly washed verdure of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... said the captain, soon after replying to Harry's rather frightened observation, the mulatto being very timid and of a cowardly nature, as the fact of his fainting when the cow invaded the cabin would readily tell—"I say, Mr Marline, I think it's time for us to give that joker down there a ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... forced to come to this conclusion, especially after reading the Scriptures, which in our judgment but confirm it, and give it the sanction of Divine authority, who can, even then, with his human heart silence a "timid voice which asks in whispers" many questions suggestive of what would appear to be the brighter hope? "Who can limit" (in some such form might those questionings be put) "the resources of God's infinite love and wisdom? May there not be found means, though yet to us unknown, and as ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... determined by circumstances outside of the Constitution. We contend that circumstances at present point to the complete extinguishment of slavery as the political necessity of the period. The time for timid counsels is past. The day of tenderness for Southern ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mistrustful. This same false position was the cause of an utter inconsistency, which permeated his whole being. He was fastidiously accurate and horribly squeamish, tried to be cynical and coarse in his speech, but was an idealist by nature. He was passionate and pure-minded, bold and timid at the same time, and, like a repentant sinner, ashamed of his sins; he was ashamed alike of his timidity and his purity, and considered it his duty to scoff at all idealism. He had an affectionate heart, but held himself aloof from everybody, was easily exasperated, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... possessions south of the Sutlej, fled thither and asked the protection of the British Government. He returned however to Kapurthala in 1827, and the Maharaja never pushed matters with Fateh Singh to extremities. The latter died in 1836. His successor, Nihal Singh, was a timid man, and his failure to support the British in 1845 led to the loss of his Cis-Sutlej estates. In 1849 he took the English side and was given the title of Raja. Randhir Singh succeeded in 1852. His conspicuous services in the Mutiny were rewarded with the grant of estates ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... Pao-yue in eyes and eyebrows, (good looks), which were so clear and well-defined, in white complexion and in ruddy lips, as well as graceful appearance and pleasing manners. He was however bashful and timid, like a girl. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... must do something, my boy. I can't accept so great a kindness— unless," said Graham with a timid flash of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Queen puts every one at ease, but there is always a feeling that you may do something dreadful—such as drop a spoon or have your mouth full just at the moment when her Majesty addresses a remark to you. At the Queen Mother's Court things are more formal—more ceremonious. I always feel timid before I go. And yet no sovereign could be more gracious, and her memory is extraordinary. She forgets nothing. Yesterday she asked me how the baby was. She knew his age, even his name and all about him. She asked me if he had recovered from the bronchitis he was subject ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... urge that the women and children sleep there at night. My advice was only partly followed. As the golden October days passed, with no fresh alarm from the Sacandaga, their apathetic fatalism turned to a timid confidence that their homes and lands might yet ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... There are no large mammals in all this extensive region except the Cetacea and a species of the Phocidae of southern waters. Neither are there any dangerous species of Carnivora, which are represented by the timid puma (Felis concolor), three species of wildcats, three of the fox, two of Conepatus, a weasel, sea-otter and six species of seal. The rodents are the most numerously represented order, which includes the coypu or nutria (Myopotamus coypus), the chinchilla (Chinchilla laniger), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... from my seat and hastened down the stairs. My heart beat fast, and I trembled. I was frightened like a child, like a timid overgrown boy, who is called to the table to sit beside a girl whom he slyly worships; and I ran away—down the path to the spring. I heard her calling me, and I stood there trembling, waiting for ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... your Highness does not know. She runs our risks,—the risk of capture, the risk of the night, the storm, the snow, she a woman by nature timid and frail,—yet with never in all her life so great a reason for timidity, or so much frailty of health as now. We venture our lives, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... broadness; and, beyond yon western woods, which embower the peaceful hamlet, are seen the "everlasting hills," across which the enterprising Romans constructed their road. I next passed the boundaries of Newby Park, the property of Lord Grantham. Here beneath enormous beeches were clustering the timid deer, "in sunshine remote;" and the matin songs of birds were sounding from the countless clumps which skirt this retreat. Within that solitude had I enjoyed the society of a brother, alas, now no more! and yet the landscape wore the same sunny ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... king, thus spake unto Damayanti, "O faultless one, they through whose anger I have been despoiled of my kingdom, they through whose influence distressed and afflicted with hunger, I am unable to procure sustenance, they for whom the Nishadhas offered me not any hospitality, they, O timid one, are carrying off my cloth, assuming the form of birds. Fallen into this dire disaster, I am afflicted with grief and deprived of my senses, I am thy lord, do thou, therefore, listen to the words I speak for thy good. These many roads lead to the southern country, passing by (the city ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... silent, interior doings, these are the chief part of us; for out of these come most of our outward acts, and all of their color. As is the preponderance of the man, will be this inward brood. The timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man troubles, the hopeful man successes, the avaricious man accumulations, the ambitious possession of power; and the poetic man will imagine all sorts of perfections, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... and they didn't look like it. They were too large and coarse, and took up far too much room. There they sat, six big creatures in one pew, all restless, all with big chins, hard eyes, jutting eyebrows, and a dreadful look as if they were buccaneering. As a matter of fact they all felt rather timid and flat, and meant to behave beautifully, though Sir Peter needn't have blown his nose like a trumpet and stamped simultaneously just as ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... A timid creature would have rested content with this, but Margery had had too many dealings with the other sex to put undue confidence in any concession so vaguely expressed, so grudgingly admitted. It was rather a hard thing ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... the same result. In fact, he seemed to entertain a bitter dislike for the beautiful and delicate boy whom fortune had sent him as an heir, and treated him with such brutal severity that the unhappy child grew timid and fearful of his presence. This the harsh old despot ascribed to cowardice, and became ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... his new-born lines among the dreamy Adirondack lakes or the frowning Sierras; or that might have sought out our Browning in his grocery store and built him a modest retreat among the Thousand Islands. If not too thoughtless to act thus, we have been too timid. We have been too much afraid of encouraging weaklings by mistake. We have been, in fact, more afraid of encouraging a single mediocre poet than of neglecting a score of Shelleys. But we should remember that even if the weak are encouraged with the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... youthful sailor whom they sought, with his body rolled in the shaggy covering, extended at his length along the naked boards, and buried in a deep sleep. So timid were the steps of his visitors, and so noiseless was their entrance, that they approached even to his side without disturbing his slumbers. The head of the prisoner lay rudely pillowed on a billet of wood, one hand protecting his face from its rough surface, and the other thrust in his bosom, where ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ally, Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon, returned to his diocese. The dauphin left Paris and went a trip into some of the provinces, halting at the principal towns, such as Rouen and Chartres, and everywhere, with intelligent but timid discretion, making his presence and his will felt, not very successfully, however, as regarded the re-establishment of some kind of order on his route in the name of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... possible, conciliate all it could, and take ground which at the time seemed likely to rally the largest number of the people to its support? There were men then, warm friends of the administration, and still warmer friends of their country, who believed that a bolder, a less timid, a less cautious policy would have been wiser, that in revolutionary times boldness, what in other times would be rashness, is the highest prudence, on the side of the government as well as on the side of the revolution; that when once it has shown itself, the rebellion that hesitates, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... question of half-breed rights, said to me: "The Duck Lake fight was worth while, because Gabriel Dumont's wound, which I saw later when he took off his hat to make an affidavit, cooled his ardour to such an extent that he was timid for the rest of the campaign, or the rebellion might have lasted much longer." Goulet's theory possibly accounts for the fact that Dumont, whose judgment was for a night attack on Middleton's camp at Fish Creek, gave up the idea ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the soul of Jeremiah with grief and indignation, but gave to him a courage foreign to his timid and shrinking nature. In the presence of the king, the princes, and priests he was defiant, immovable, and fearless, uttering his solemn warnings from day to day with noble fidelity. All classes turned against him; the nobles were furious at his exposure of their license and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... foolish, but when the senior clerk called him into his office to do some work, he was always seized with a sort of stammering and shaking of the limbs. A person so imposing as M. Batifol was not calculated to give him assurance. Amedee was timid, too, like his father, and while the child, frightened by the resemblance of the sphere to M. Batifol's bald head, was already trembling, M. Violette, much agitated, was trying to think of something to say, consequently, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the less dangerous of the rulers. If Pompeius acknowledged the oligarchic constitution and offered to fight for it against Caesar, the republican opposition might and must recognize him as its general, and in alliance with him compel the timid majority to a declaration of war. That Pompeius was not quite in earnest with his fidelity to the constitution, could indeed escape nobody; but, undecided as he was in everything, he had by no means arrived like Caesar at a clear and firm conviction that it must be the first business ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "Oh, how funny you are, darling! But go on. I don't mind it, now. And you may be glad you've got off so easily. Only now if there are any more bath-robes—" A timid rap is heard at the door. "Come in, Maggie!" The door is slowly set ajar, then flung suddenly wide open, and Jim and Susy in their night-gowns rush ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... he was obliged to announce his presence, and, with a timid "It is I, Wolf," he approached the little bow-windowed room and hesitatingly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the machos (he-mules). The postillion, having only the care of the foremost span, is a silent man, but he has contracted a habit of sleeping in the saddle, which I mention for the benefit of timid travellers, as it adds to the interest ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... "You, madam!" he cried, starting back—with fear, you would have said, and yet a timid joy. "You! yourself, you bid ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the room and stood near to the door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness in her big eyes. She had the look of a deer. It seemed to Dick that at one abrupt movement ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... of his caste—not that the best of jackals are good for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a criminal—a cleaner-up of village rubbish-heaps, desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly hungry, and full of cunning that never did ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... which, here was onlie mine Aunt; a slow, timid, uncertayn Soule, who proved but a broken Reed ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... dear lady," he cried, his eyes so intent upon her that her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second later, she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of Jean Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the grass where he had flung it, even as he flung himself upon his knees before her. "You may take it indeed ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... That timid and harmless animal, the hare, was, singularly enough, an object of superstitious reverence and fear in Europe, Asia, and America. The ancient Irish killed all the hares they found on May-day among their cattle, believing them to ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... waters her goats at our spring, came to me the first thing in the morning and again about two hours ago; she asked after Hermas, and then offered of her own accord to fetch water for me so long as he was away. She is as timid as a bird, and flew off as soon as she had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... misfortune. His innocence, indeed, may at length shine out like the sun, yet for a moment it is under a cloud; his honor is in abeyance, his estimation is suspended, and he stands, as it were, a doubtful person in the eyes of all human society. In that situation, not a timid, not an abject, but undoubtedly a modest behavior, would become a person even of the most exalted dignity and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wished to harangue, but I could not find utterance, for the very excess of thoughts. At that moment I would not be put down; I grinned defiance in the face of my late scorners; I was drunk with the exciting draught of contention. The timid gave me their fireworks, the brave applauded my resolution, and, as I went from one party to another, exhorting more by gesture than by speech, I was at length rewarded by hearing the approving shout ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... first time he came, I did not notice him very much. It was not unusual for Uncle Leonard to be accompanied by some gentleman who talked business with him during dinner; and being naturally shy, and moreover, on this occasion, in the middle of a very interesting book, at once timid and indifferent, I slipped away from the table the moment that I could. But upon the third or fourth occasion of his being there, I became interested, finding often a pair of handsome eyes fixed on me, and being occasionally addressed and made a partner in the conversation. Uncle Leonard ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... rolls between— A timid pilgrim, I; But grace shall order all the scene, And Christ himself ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Bernard, "as I say, I am more timid than I was, and I did n't venture to interpret that as a sign ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... nomination for mayor; for the village has just been converted into a city by charter. Tom skulks out of challenging the twins. Judge Driscoll thereupon challenges Angelo (accused by Tom of doing the kicking); he declines, but Luigi accepts in his place against Angelo's timid protest. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the memory of this poor, timid creature for saving that dear remembrance of "Matchless Mitchel." How many, like him, have thought they were preaching a new gospel, when they were only reaffirming the principles which underlie ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... by her elder sister to get The Dixonary from the cupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from the receptacle in question. When Miss Pinkerton had finished the inscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid air ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... find it very uninteresting, for I am going to visit some poor cottages," persisted Miss Amelyn, with a certain timid ingenuousness of manner which, however, was as distinct as Miss Desborough's bolder frankness. "I promised the rector's daughter ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... rag-time tunes; no one tried to make jokes, except the very timid, and they giggled ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... reply, and there was another moment of silence. Neeld wore a restless, timid, uneasy air, in strong contrast to the resolute intensity of Mina's manner; she seemed to have taken and to keep ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... tenderness. We exalt the love of the mother and the stability of the home, but in regard to those difficult years between childhood and maturity we beg the question and unless we repress, we do nothing. We are so timid and inconsistent that although we declare the home to be the foundation of society, we do nothing to direct the force upon which the continuity of the home depends. And yet to one who has lived for years in a crowded quarter where men, women and children constantly jostle ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... he said smiling. "Why should I now? Am I not the accepted son-in-law of the house, you silly timid little thing? What a happy thought it was of yours to let the cat out of the bag. Come, let me give you another kiss for it—Oh, I really must. You deserve it, and whatever it costs me you shall be rewarded. There! Now, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sort of craft from the palm trees, and it is quite likely he would have succeeded in making something that could be utilized. But the awful blotting out of the Coral, before their eyes, had alarmed both, and made them more timid than they otherwise would ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... to master Phonography and typewriting, knew in part the advantages to be gained after the top was reached, but we did not know by actual experience what breakers were ahead in the accomplishment of the work before us; for the timid ones this very ignorance proved a great blessing,—conquering one difficulty at a time, with the greater ones in the shadow, was not as disheartening as having the ...
— Silver Links • Various
... men; - Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed By light from her, born of the love of her, Their lordship the illumined brain rejects For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her other name. So spake she in their heart, Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, Confidently to cling. And when brown corn Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss; When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; When ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would ensue, provoking him to such a degree that he would instantly contradict himself with much bitterness, leaving poor Mrs. M'Kay in much perplexity. Such a shot as this generally reduced her to timid silence. As a rule, he always discouraged any topic at his house which was likely to serve as an occasion for showing his wife's dependence on him. He designedly talked about her household affairs, asked her whether she had mended ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... He himself, very timid and conscious of his awkwardness, sat near, trying barrenly to get some of his thoughts out of his ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... became his goddess. If a day passed without his seeing her, he was dejected. When she was behind her time, he was restless, anxious, and his work distasteful; and then, when she came out at last, he thrilled all over, and the lawn, ay, the world itself, seemed to fill with sunshine. His adoration, timid by its own nature, was doubly so by reason of his fallen and hopeless condition. He cut nosegays for her; but gave them to her maid Wilson for her. He had not the courage to offer ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... so that gradually, as the years went by, it had become a habit of his mind to think of the days to come, when they would be married. Then he had gone away to a little college. When he returned for the holidays he always saw her again, but when he spoke of marrying her she blushed, and was timid, for she was passing away from childhood. In later days he saw less of her, but he always wrote long letters to his little comrade. After a few years he went abroad to study, but they corresponded often, telling of their plans and ambitions. One ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... sought amongst the jungles, and dens of tigers, a refuge from the tyranny of Warren Hastings. Not able long to exist here, pressed at once by wild beasts and famine, the same despair drove them back; and seeking their last resource in arms, the most quiet, the most passive, the most timid of the human race rose up in an universal insurrection; and, what will always happen in popular tumults, the effects of the fury of the people fell on the meaner and sometimes the reluctant instruments of the tyranny, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this point are seconded and sustained, and there seems to be but one opinion on the subject among those who happen to have that castle in possession; at least the timid owner of it does not feel himself in a position to make any forcible resistance to the orders which his illustrious guests, who have 'taken from him the use of his own house,' have seen fit to issue in it. 'Shut up ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... He went on, passing through a vast and silent cathedral of spruce and cedar so dense that the sky was hidden, and came then to higher ground, where the evergreen was sprinkled with birch and poplar. About him was an invisible choir of voices, the low twittering of timid little gray-backs, the song of hidden—warblers, the scolding of distant jays. Big-eyed moose-birds stared at him as he passed, fluttering so close to his face that they almost touched his shoulders in their foolish inquisitiveness. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... us—many of them coming in carts early in the morning, and moving in a dense phalanx, indistinguishable from the Covent Garden Market waggons; others pouring down our coal-chute during the working hours of the day; and others again being slipped surreptitiously into our letter-box by pale, timid girls, scarcely more than children, after nightfall (in fact many of them came in their night-gowns),—this manuscript alone was the sole one—in fact the only one—to receive the prize of a cheque ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... the same tune. The Queen Bee recommended our foreigner to read a work on 'Bees and Wasps,' with a few minor details relating to Ants, by Sir John Lubbock, in the International Scientific Series. She was not, indeed quite so timid about her reputation as the ant, and even volunteered to give her visitor an account of the formation of hexagonal cells by Natural Selection, culled from the pages of the 'Origin of Species'; but she observed that, though her brain might be smaller in proportion than ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... provided I kept out of mischief. And what mischief could a fellow get into in the midst of those grand primeval forests where perhaps the woodsman has never dared to lay his axe to the heart of the sturdy oak, and where the timid deer, in fancied freedom, ambles through the darkening ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... has given her a most wonderfully strong and valiant spirit: she was once timid; now she tramples on all the evil spirits. She has put far away from herself all the littleness and silliness of women; she is singularly free from scruples, and ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... expiring throb of a person dying by violence haunted me, which it did at times, if possible, with more overwhelming force than ever. This was the more unaccountable to me, for I am naturally of a humane and benevolent disposition; and, when not overpowered by a gust of passion, timid and averse to acts of strife and violence of any kind—shuddering and becoming faint at the sight of blood. My mental sufferings, from these conflicts between my natural turn of mind and its morbid state, became so great, that life grew a burden more than I could long endure. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add that I myself had the privilege of hearing at first hand the narrator's own account of this incident, which was much emphasized by his gestures and tones. Wordsworth's unexpected sally was in reply to a timid question by the late Professor Bonamy Price, then a young man, concerning the exact meaning of the lines in his famous "Ode to Immortality," "not for these I raise the song of praise; but for those obstinate questionings of sense and outward ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... not, even James found, be carried out all at once. The Lords Justices were next dismissed, and his own brother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, sent over as Lord-Lieutenant. He in turn proving too timid, or too constitutional, his place was before long filled by Richard Talbot, a fervent Catholic, but a man of indifferent public honour and more than indifferent private character. Talbot was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and arrived in 1686 avowedly to ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... economists saw in the days preceding civil strife that the workingman of the North could ill afford to compete with slave labor at the South. Permit me to say to you that the half-slave, the political slave, made timid by an environment that tends to crush his spirit and dwarf his energies, is a menace to you, holding the white labor of the South down and ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... was young, and tender and timid. The stories she had heard along the road had filled her with apprehension, not more for herself than for her husband; for though she had been married almost a month, she still loved him almost to idolatry. When she reached Terracina the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... step—her ears were very quick now. Did she turn, and think to see her lover of old—so little loved? Alas! without lifting her eyes, she felt the presence was no longer that of her timid young ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... there was in Farrel's black eyes no hint of recognition, for he possessed in full measure all of the modesty and timidity of the most modest and timid race on earth where women are concerned—the Irish—tempered with the exquisite courtesy of that race for whom courtesy and gallantry toward woman are a tradition—the Spanish of that all but extinct Californian caste known as ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... animals constantly around our country habitations, of underground and nocturnal habits, some of which become torpid in winter. All are timid and unobtrusive, and yet have great influence upon our welfare; for they check the rapid increase of those worms and insects which live and breed beneath the soil, and would destroy the crops which ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... its simple charms before them, and burst asunder the beautiful garlands which summer had woven around their path. The melody of nature was hushed at their approach; the birds nestled in their leafy coverts; the timid hare bounded before their steps, and the squirrel looked down in silence from his airy height, as they passed on, and disturbed the solitude of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... indicated, I had fought but one man in all my life. Nor yet am I of those who are said to know no fear under any circumstances. Such men are not truly brave; they are stupid and unimaginative, in proof of which I will advance the fact that you may incite a timid man to deeds of reckless valour by drugging him with wine. But this is by the way. It may be that the very regular fencing practice that in Paris I was wont to take may so have ordered my mind that the fact of meeting unbaited steel had little ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... not timid with animals, whatever might be true of me in other relations. My first comfort was finding that I did not fall off; then I took heart and settled myself in the saddle more securely, gave myself to the motion, and ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... nobles of the time to us, and that was the one which the old philosopher declared to be at the bottom of every case—a woman. In this particular instance the prestige was heightened by the fact that she was also a queen. Marie Antoinette was then at the zenith of her beauty and power. The timid, shrinking dauphiness, forced to the arms of an unwilling husband, himself a mere cipher, had expanded into a fascinating woman, reigning triumphantly over the court and the affections of her vacillating spouse. The birth, after years of wedlock, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... appearances, for example, in the heavens, possesses the minds of people unacquainted with their causes, eager for the supernatural, and excitable through an inexperience which the knowledge of natural causes removes, replacing wild and timid superstition by the good hope and assurance of an ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... only a few wigwams were erected. Soon a large log structure was thrown up and used as a church. Then followed a school, a mill, and a workshop. The verdant fields were cultivated and surrounded by rail fences. Horses and cattle grazed with the timid deer ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Luther's declaration. We have already seen (S328) that since the Wars of the Roses had destroyed the power of the barons, there was no effectual check on the despotic will of the sovereign. The new nobility were the creatures of the Crown, hence bound to support it; the clergy were timid, the Commons anything but bold, so that Parliament gradually became the servile echo and ready instrument ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. We must acquire proficiency in defense and display stamina ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... to carry out with his timid pupils, of which he gathered a goodly number, with the assistance of Ned and Alick, long before sunset came round again. The trainer explained his proposed code of education still more fully as he and the hungry boys sat enjoying the picnic repast they had brought ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... with a simplicity that was touching, looking at me at the same time with something strange and timid in his eye, half-ashamed, half-sorry, like a good child who knows he should be beaten. You would have said he recognised a destiny to which he was born, and accepted the consequences mildly. Like the merchant Abudah, he was at the same time fleeing from his destiny ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that my youngest brother was with us in the work, he did not take a very active part. There were several reasons for this. Before leaving home he was nearly broken down through overwork. Besides, like almost all young workers, he was timid and backward, and needed encouragement and support. When the battle was strong, he would not be able to bear much responsibility. I would doubtless have been tempted in regard to my brother's condition had not God made me to know that I must be patient ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... they sin. There is indeed one type, the perfect manhood of Jesus, but it is all comprehensive, and each variety of our fragmentary manhood finds its own perfecting, and not its transmutation to another fashion of man, in being conformed to Him. Some of us are naturally fainthearted, timid, sceptical of any success, grave, melancholy, or hard to stir to any emotion. To such there will be an added difficulty in making quiet confident joy any very familiar guest in their home or in their place of prayer. But even such should remember that the 'powers of the world to come,' the energies ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tattiana was her name, Nor by her sister's brilliancy Nor by her beauty she became The cynosure of every eye. Shy, silent did the maid appear As in the timid forest deer, Even beneath her parents' roof Stood as estranged from all aloof, Nearest and dearest knew not how To fawn upon and love express; A child devoid of childishness To romp and play she ne'er would go: ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... to the Liberals as even to weaken the position of the Labour Party itself to say nothing of the still greater inconsistency of such compromises with anything approaching Socialism. Mr. Barnes and Mr. Hardie pointed out that the timid tactics pursued had endangered not only the fight against the House of Lords, but also the effort to keep down the naval budget and the proposed solution of the unemployment question that was to have acknowledged "the right to ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... blame for this war, and only a handful of old women and young officers brought about this mischief. The visit of the Emperor Alexander is the cause of the events which have proved so disastrous to Prussia; and next, the change which that visit produced in the feelings of the queen, who, from a timid and modest lady, was quickly transformed into a restless and warlike Amazon. She suddenly insisted on having a regiment of her own, and on being present at the meetings of the council of state; she directed the affairs of the government so skilfully as to bring it in a few days to the verge ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... this was too much. The beast in him roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both, and Spitz particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own only because of his great ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... working out of the principles of the Gospel in institutions and forms, which partakes of the transiency of the men from whom it has come. In such a time as this, when everything is going into the melting-pot, and a great many timid people are trembling for the Ark of God, quite unnecessarily as it seems to me, it is of prime importance for the calmness and the wisdom and the courage of Christian people, that they should grasp firmly the distinction between the divine treasure which is committed to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... concerning the divorce, of the learned doctors and bishops and others, being at last collected, and being generally in the King's favour, were forwarded to the Pope, with an entreaty that he would now grant it. The unfortunate Pope, who was a timid man, was half distracted between his fear of his authority being set aside in England if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of offending the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Catherine's nephew. In this state of mind he still ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... to call the dog off the trail. That camp scavenger, the American skunk, is the mildest mannered little creature in the world—providing he is left strictly alone. Being timid and otherwise defenseless, God has given him a ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... scenes in Paris was appalling beyond imagination. There was no recognized law in the metropolis. A population of a million and a half of people was in the streets. The timid and the virtuous were terror-stricken. The drunken, the degraded, the ferocious held the city at their mercy. Radical as was the party which had assembled at the Hotel de Ville, there was another party, composed ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... you, papa," said Mary; "I hope you have heard nothing unpleasant; I am not very timid, but when a whole country is in such a state of disturbance, one may ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... flirtation with Socialism, and the Marconi business, that made me strongly opposed to Mr. Asquith's pre-War administration. I greatly disliked the foreign policy of the Liberal Government. It was a weak and timid compromise between half-hearted pacificism and inadequate preparation. I was confident, as must have been anyone who kept his eyes open, that Germany was preparing for war with this country as part of her world-policy, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... certain, and that is, that the cobra is a timid snake, that it is not at all inclined to bite, and unless assailed and so infuriated, will not bite, even if trodden on by accident, as long as the snake is not hurt, which, of course, it would not be if trodden upon by the bare foot, and that is why, I feel sure, I have ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... light was burning before him; the winter evening was cold; and to-day he wished for the presence of his fellow-traveller, though at other times wont rather to avoid his society: for on this evening he was about to disclose a secret to him, and beg for his advice. The timid, shy Emilius found in every business and accident of life so many difficulties, such insurmountable hindrances, that it might seem to have been an ironical whim of his destiny which brought him and Roderick together, Roderick being in everything the reverse of his friend. Inconstant, flighty, always ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... remained on the porch save Telie, the girl of the loom, who, too humble or too timid to seek the acquaintance of the stranger lady, like the others, had been overlooked in the bustle, and now pursued her labour with but little ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Walker, a timid villain, was unprepared for the burst of savage exultation from brutus and Black Will that followed this intelligence. These two, by an instinct quick as lightning, saw the means of gratifying at one blow their cupidity and hate. Crawley had already told ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... cannot leave the Crown Prince?" She shrugged her shoulders. "You, too! Never have I seen so many faint hearts, such rolling eyes, such shaking knees! And for what! Because a few timid souls see a danger ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... modern spirit, perfectly emancipated from prejudice and commonplace, regarding the ideal side of things in all its efforts for change, passionately despising half-measures and condescension to human folly and obstinacy,—with a bewildered, timid, torpid multitude behind,—conducts a country to the government of Herr von Bismarck. A nation regarding the practical side of things in its efforts for change, attacking not what is irrational, but what is pressingly inconvenient, and ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... country town, they were to a certain extent drawn together. But Mrs. Symons always treated Henrietta de haut en bas, and snubbed her when she thought necessary, as if she had been a child of ten, so that Henrietta was constrained and a little timid with her. There was the suggestion of a feeling that Mrs. Symons was to be pitied for having Henrietta still on her hands. If Henrietta had refused to be snubbed, there would have been none of that suggestion. Evelyn was still away at school. There were a ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... which would otherwise have brought to the mind only a sense of forsakenness and desolation. Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain. They were of a different nationality from those with the expedition, and their language seemed but a musical, meaningless jargon. They were a timid, gentle race, but ignorant, and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods. The expedition detailed a great detachment of missionaries to teach them the true religion, and in a week's time a precious work had been wrought among those darkened creatures, not three families being by that time ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the little band, thus left in an uninhabited island in the midst of the ocean. The blow fell most severely on the timid and repentant bride. She reproached herself with being the cause of all their misfortunes, and, from the first, had been haunted by dismal forebodings. She now considered them about to be accomplished, and her horror was so great as to deprive her of speech; she expired in three days ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... to starvation. One by one strong men dropped exhausted by the way, and were left unburied, while the others crept feebly on; stout Jonathan Dickenson taking as his charge the old man, now almost a helpless burden. Mary, who, underneath her gentle, timid ways, seems to have had a gallant heart in her little body, carried her baby to the last, until the milk in her breast was quite dried and her eyes grew blind, and she too fell one day beside a poor negress who, with her unborn child, lay frozen and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... check them in time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of Grillyer's carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was remarkable: the first thing he said was, "Do ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... the world Of infinite mourning, and along the mount From whose fair height my lady's eyes did lift me, And after through this heav'n from light to light, Have I learnt that, which if I tell again, It may with many woefully disrelish; And, if I am a timid friend to truth, I fear my life may perish among those, To whom these days shall be of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... miss Gifford," said Miss Deborah, who had gone out into the hall to put on her overshoes. "He was such a useful child." Lois came to help her, for Mr. Denner was far too timid to offer assistance, and the rector too stout, and Mr. Dale too absent-minded. As for Mr. Forsythe, he did not notice how Miss Deborah was occupied, until Lois had joined her; and then his offer was not accepted, for Miss Deborah felt shy about ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... is a discreet Marat, of a timid temperament, anxious,[31151] keeping his thoughts to himself, made for a school-master or a pleader, but not for taking the lead or for governing, always acting hesitatingly, and ambitious to be rather the pope, than the dictator of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he was with his money; at one time he would contemptuously defy the poisoned arrows that were darted at him, and when beset by the sullen storm-cloud of scandal, he let fly with red-hot courage and audaciously upheld his honour: at another time he was timid, vacillating, and ridiculous in his attempts to avert the public eye from his love affair and its consequence. People who knew him intimately were aware that Horatia was his daughter, and in order to throw them off ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... you any limitless confidence, but I can promise that no timid caution, no haughty dread shall prevent my telling you the truth of my thoughts on any subject we may have in common. Will this satisfy you? Oh let it! suffer me ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mixed-up mess 'the Street' has ever wrestled with," I replied, "but one thing is clear: no one will dare to sell much until he receives notice of just what he has been allotted, and then most will be timid about selling until they have received the receipts. I don't see how, if nothing definite leaks out, there can be much danger until after they get their hands on the receipts, and by that time, of course, you will have a fine market organized to ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... office Policeman Hogan walks drearily up and down his beat. The damp misery of Hogan is intense. A belated gentleman in clerical attire, returning home from a bed of sickness, gives him a side-look of timid pity and shivers past. Hogan follows the retreating figure with his eye; then draws forth a notebook and sits down on the steps of The Eclipse building to write in the light of the gas lamp. Gentlemen of nocturnal habits ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... are not British, were there ever two jollier, happier small creatures? Did Leech, or Mr. Du Maurier, or Andrea della Robbia ever present a more delightful view of innocent, well-pleased childhood? Well, these Japanese children, if they are in the least inclined to be timid or nervous, must have an awful time of it at night in the dark, and when they make that eerie "northwest passage" bedwards through the darkling house of which Mr. Stevenson sings the perils and the emotions. All of us who did not suffer under parents ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... of a single officer, denominated the Captain. Such also appears to have continued the case, except during the reign of Louis XI. when one Raymond d'Argeau is recorded to have been the Garde particulier du Donjon. The timid policy of a suspicious prince might naturally suggest the idea of greater safety, in not allowing the power over so important a fortress to be vested in ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... all that passed, and the scene at first had pressed upon her feeble mind in a way to paralyze it entirely; but, by this time she had rallied, and was growing indignant at the unmerited suffering the Indians were inflicting on her friend. Though timid, and shy as the young of the deer on so many occasions, this right-feeling girl was always intrepid in the cause of humanity; the lessons of her mother, and the impulses of her own heart—perhaps we might say the promptings of that unseen and pure spirit that seemed ever to watch over and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... neither men nor dogs noticed them. But there were sacred geese kept in the temple of Juno, which in other times were fed without stint, but which then, as there was scarcely food enough for the men, were somewhat neglected. These birds are naturally quick of hearing and timid, and now being rendered wakeful and wild by hunger, quickly perceived the Gauls climbing up, and rushing noisily to the place woke the garrison, while the Gauls feeling that they were discovered no longer preserved ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... rectitude. After having gone to bed the previous night he lay awake for a considerable time debating with himself the purport of his visit, pro and con, without after all, being able to accomplish a determination on the subject. He was timid, cunning, shrewd, avaricious, and possessed, besides, a large portion of that peculiar superstition which does not restrain from iniquity, although it renders the mind anxious and apprehensive of the consequences. Now the honest fellow with whom ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Lille, and penetrate by the northern frontier into the heart of France. An expedition fitted out in England was to co-operate on the coast. But the design of penetrating direct into France seemed too bold even to Eugene, and, of course, encouraged strong opposition from a government so timid and vacillating as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... so old and gray Hastened the children on their way, Nor offered a helping hand to her, So meek, so timid, afraid to stir, Lest the carriage wheels or the horses' feet Should crowd her down ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... of the stairway Archie collided full tilt with two men who were engaged in intimate conversation as they passed the door. The one was George Rumm, skipper of the Black Eagle—a timid, weak-mouthed, shifty-eyed man, with an obsequious drawl in his voice, a diffident manner, and, altogether, a loose, weak way. The other was old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Archie leaped back with an apology to Skipper George. The boy had no word to say to Tom ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan which the great leader was conducting, but a far nobler manifestation of divinity was that when "the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... retrospect of early Melbourne. They have nearly all disappeared since with the growth of town and population. Some who preceded me saw the kangaroo sporting over the site of Melbourne—a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fled almost at once with the first colonizing inroad. I have spoken of the little bell bird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in those earlier years amongst the acacias on the banks of the Yarra close to Melbourne, but which has ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... by peach trees in full bloom were found here. The Indians here are Pimas, who, in their general characteristics, resemble the Tarahumare, although they impress you as being less timid and suspicious, and more energetic, perhaps also more intelligent, than the latter. We had no difficulty in taking some photographs. Among those who agreed to have their pictures taken was a dignified, courteous old man, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... with some dozen others, either anxious to spare their horses or too timid to take the hedges in the valley, had kept the cross-road to New-Garden, whence a lane along the top of the southern hill led them into the Avondale Woods. They soon emerged, shouting ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... back is a needless throwing away of a valuable life,' I began, with a timid hope beginning to grow in my heart—'I will chloroform him and have him ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... you've done that," said Eleanor. "I don't think I'm the ordinary type of timid woman, but I must confess that all these things worry me, and I'll feel a lot safer if I know that we are not entirely at the mercy of any trick they try to play on us to-night. They seem to be getting bolder, all ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... looking at her kindly. At least Lydia was sure he was, because his voice sounded so dear. She could not know his eyes were full of an adoring gentleness over her who seemed to him half child, half maiden, and tumultuously compassionate. She made a little timid gesture of the hand over the small area ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... maiden was a good creature to look upon, full-breasted and strong, with spring to her step and light in her eyes. But her task was yet before her. The light in her eyes brightened, her step quickened, she was now bold with the young men, now timid, and she gave them of her own unrest. And ever she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon, till some hunter, able no longer to withhold himself, took her to his lodge to cook and toil for him and to become the mother of his children. And with the coming of her offspring her looks left her. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... he's a killer jest the same. It's frequent that a-way. I'm never much afraid of one of your cold game gents like Cherokee Hall; you can gamble the limit they'll never put a six-shooter in play till it's shorely come their turn. But timid, feverish, locoed people, whose jedgment is bad an' who's prone to feel themse'fs in peril; they're the kind who kills. For myse'f I shuns all sech. I won't say them erratic, quick-to-kill sports don't have courage; ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... said, "There is yet a little word about which you have not scolded." He felt what a reproof lay in the remark of the child; he looked ashamed and kissed the little one. All this wounded me; but I had, since my school-days, become somewhat timid, and that caused me to take it all quietly: I was morbidly sensitive, and I was good-natured to a fault. Everybody knew it, and some were on that account almost cruel to me. Everybody wished to teach me; almost everybody said that I was spoiled by praise, and therefore ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... already commencing; the timid rabbit was lurking about the dew-spangled leaves; the linnets were hopping about from branch to branch, and the wheels of some market carts were ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... end by throwing over duty altogether, in sheer disgust at the whole one-sided business. Mrs. Jordan bristled, and launched herself upon a long and virtuous sentence. Her daughter Marion looked up sharply when Madame Bertaux spoke. Then a timid, cautious glance fell on her mother. Marion had lost her freshness and her exquisite aetherial quality; otherwise there was little change in her appearance. Hadria was struck by the way in which she had looked at Madame Bertaux, and it occurred to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... cedars rise, High o'er the clouds, and emulate the skies! Here the winged crowds, that skim the air, with artful toil, their little dams prepare, Here, hatch their young, and nurse their rising care! Up the steep-hill ascends the nimble doe, While timid conies scour the plains below; Or in the pendent rocks elude the scenting foe. He bade the silver majesty of night, Revolve her circle, and increase her light. But if one moment thou thy face should'st hide, Thy glory clouded, or thy smiles denied, Then widow'd nature veils her mournful ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... am beautiful past all The timid tumult of thy mood, And thou returning not must still ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... that you will see him, or some one else clothed with authority. You may be requested to state the nature of your business, in which case you will make the nature of your business as vague and enticing as possible. Possibly the editor, if he is timid, will invent the story that he is engaged; possibly he may really be engaged; in either case you will ask for an appointment, or wait; a personal interview is worth waiting for. If you are refused an ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... as every right-minded and reasonable reader will admit. But this is not the place for the end of the story, being but little beyond the hither side of the middle. And at first the miracles worked by Mr. Fotheringay were timid little miracles—little things with the cups and parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles of Theosophists, and, feeble as they were, they were received with awe by his collaborator. He would have preferred to settle the Winch ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... It was my first hearing of God, and made a great impression on my mind. I remember better than anything that certain ecstatic sensations of joy used to get hold of me, and that I used to creep into corners to think out my thoughts by myself. I was, however, extremely timid, and easily overawed by fear. We had a lofty nursery with a bow-window that overlooked the river. My brother and I were constantly wondering at this river. The coming up of the tides, and the ships, and the jolly ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... keys; the words fell into the sweetness of the air, that seemed laden with the morning murmur of bees and blossoms; it was but a verse or two, with a refrain that went repeating all the honeyed burden, till Luigi's face fairly burned with pleasure, where he stood at timid distance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... first gate that was not locked, and felt a delightful sense of privacy in creeping along by the hedgerows, after her recent humiliating encounter. She was used to wandering about the fields by herself, and was less timid there than on the highroad. Sometimes she had to climb over high gates, but that was a small evil; she was getting out of reach very fast, and she would probably soon come within sight of Dunlow Common, or at least of some other common, for she had heard her father ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Garrison County learned something of Barclay as well. He and Bemis went over the county together,—the little fox and the old coyote, the people called them,—and where men were for sale, Bemis bought them, and where they were timid, John threatened them, and where they were neither, both John and Bemis fought with a ferocity that made men hate but respect the pair. And so though the Fifth Parallel Railroad never came to the Ridge, its successor, the Corn Belt Road, did come, and in '74 John spoke in every ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... before you, And the glad festival held through the length and breadth of the country Will henceforward to me be a glad anniversary also! But I am grieved to observe that the youth, who is always so active When he is here at home, abroad is so slow and so timid. Little at any time cares he to mix with the rest of the people; Yes, he even avoids young maidens' society ever, And the frolicsome dance, that ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... rather different. The stone column was used there, but used in a timid and hesitating fashion. It never reached the freedom and independence that would have characterized it had it arisen naturally from ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Europe and Asia were multiplied by Justinian; but the repetition of those timid and fruitless precautions exposes, to a philosophic eye, the debility of the empire. [111] From Belgrade to the Euxine, from the conflux of the Save to the mouth of the Danube, a chain of above fourscore fortified places was extended along the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... a little bachelor lawyer, whose face has "a pinched, wistful look" under the curls of his brown wig. He lives in a dreary house, with a testy housekeeper, and a timid little nephew-ward, and spends many of his lonely hours in trying to decide if he loves Miss Deborah Woodhouse the utilitarian, or aesthetic Miss Ruth. On his death-bed, he gives an old daguerreotype of himself to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... his objurgations against this piece of servitorial defiance by his daughter Dorothy's timid appeal for permission to come in. Sewis left the room. Presently the squire descended, fully clad, and breathing sharply from his nostrils. Servants were warned off out of hearing; none but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... One voice is timid and hesitating; that is his wife. The other is fearlessly raised; that is her majesty, the queen who rules the kitchen, and from it ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... afternoon at the beginning of November. His method and aims were very characteristic of himself, since he was one of that numerous class of persons who, interiorly possessing their full share of proper pride, wear exteriorly an appearance of extreme and almost timid humility. The aims of his visiting were, though he was quite unaware of the fact, directed towards encouraging people to hold fast to their proper position in life (for this, after all, is only another name for one's ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... sort of peopled and agitated chapter of life, in which the figures are submissive pictorial notes. These notes are all there in their beauty and heterogeneity, and if the abundance is of a kind to make the principle of selection seem in comparison timid, yet the sense of "composition" in the spectator—if it happen to exist—reaches out to the painter in peculiar sympathy. Dull must be the spirit of the worker tormented in any field of art with that particular question who is not moved ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... dark night, and Spring hovered about outside, and lounged with her elbows on the sill, and looked in. He constantly saw something pale and elusive against the blackness, for there was no moon, but he thought it only the timid irradiation with which his tallow dip suffused the blossoming wands of an azalea, growing lithe and tall hard by. With this witness only he wrote the letter—an anonymous letter, and therefore he was indifferent to the inadequacies of his penmanship and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... do anything more, with any chance of good coming of it? She thought and thought; and resolved that she must try. It did not look hopeful; there was little she could urge to lure Mr. Mathieson from his drinking companions; nothing, except her own timid affection, and the one other thing it was possible to offer him,—a good supper. How to get that was not so easy; but she consulted ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
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