"Secretiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not a place—it was something on the map. Perhaps she had never imaginatively realized that actual people did in fact go to South Africa. "But this is the first I have heard of this!" she said. Julian's extraordinary secretiveness always disturbed her. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... marshal who felt regrets at mention of his name, and that farther north were other men who had a superstitious dread of undersized cow-men with spectacles. There were also stories of lonesome "run-ins," which, owing to Willie's secretiveness and the permanent silence of the other participants, never became more than intangible rumors. But he was a good ranchman, attended to his business, and the sheriff's office was remote, so Willie had ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... in medical terms," said the Minister for Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent. If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and secretiveness—strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving for—unusual food. When it becomes ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... proportion constitutes will, and without will life languishes and projects die a-borning. But mixed up with this religious obstinacy is a goodly jigger of secretiveness, and in order to gain his own point the religion of the owner does not prevent him from prevarication. In "Margaret Ogilvie," that exquisite tribute to his mother by Barrie, the author shows us a most religious woman who was well up to the head of the Sapphira class. The old lady had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... secrets of his mind, but not its strength. The instant Ellen met his gaze she sensed a power in him that she instinctively opposed. Colter had not been so bold nor so rude as Daggs, but he was the same kind of man, perhaps the more dangerous for his secretiveness, his cool, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... not open his own letters. He seemed to be interested in the conversation of these ladies. He was not a reserved man, but a secretive, which is quite a different thing. Reserve is natural—it comes unbidden, and often unwelcome. Secretiveness is born of circumstances. Some men find it imperative to cultivate it, although their soul revolts within them. In professional or social matters it is often merely an expediency—in some cases it almost feels like a crime. There ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... was no conclusive evidence of any criminal act. The patient might be a confirmed opium-eater, and the symptoms heightened by deliberate deception. The cunning of these unfortunates is proverbial and is only equalled by their secretiveness and mendacity. It would be quite possible for this man to feign profound stupor so long as he was watched, and then, when left alone for a few minutes, to nip out of bed and help himself from some secret store of the drug. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... will be fit and well clothed. He will not be too busy to read and think, though he may be too busy to rush about to get ignorantly and blatantly rich. It follows that, since he will have a mind exercised finely and flexible and alert, he will not be a secretive man. Secretiveness and secret planning are vulgarity; men and women need to be educated, and he will be educated out of these vices. He will be intensely truthful, not simply in the vulgar sense of not misstating facts when pressed, but truthful in the manner ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... at his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to associate with him, he would disappear entirely from them ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... disposition, not of the best, but of the worst, of its members shall have become sensibly improved; for occasional unintentional leakage, by well-meaning officials possessing more information than native secretiveness, cannot be wholly obviated, and must be accepted, practically, as one of the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... the era of timidity, instead of secretiveness, spoke out. "He," indicating his brother, "wanted ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, 'you are amiable to the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... was the remarkable group of blacks on whom had fallen Vesey's choice. And did they not present an assemblage of high and striking qualities? Here were coolness in action, calculation, foresight, plausibility in address, fidelity to engagements, secretiveness, intrepid courage, nerves of iron in the presence of danger, inflexible purpose, unbending will, and last though not least in its relations to the whole, superstition incarnate in the character of the Negro conjurer. Masterly was indeed the combination, and he had ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... with a sudden rush of blood. "Peter hates to have any one else know a thing before he does!" Alix explained this later. But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with Martin, and was presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness in his old, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... his days of preparation upon the hills of Twin Islands would return: the ill temper and cunning and evil secretiveness, joined now with the hang-dog air he habitually wore in the city. And these distressful appearances would by day and night increase, as we passed the Funks, came to Bonavist' Bay, left the Bacalieu light ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... than secretiveness in its reaction from the large rhetorical forms of revolutionary Socialism. There arose even a repudiation of "principles" of action, and a type of worker which proclaimed itself "Opportunist-Socialist." ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... life which fosters a reticence that is almost secretiveness; and this becomes a code, a religion; yet Stewart found himself seized with an intense longing to confide in someone. And at that moment, from under the wide archway leading into the quadrangle, appeared the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... comparatively harmless lying is the instinct for secretiveness. Children just love to have secrets, and if there are none on hand, they have to be invented. A child will tell another a secret on condition that it be kept a secret; but when the secret is told it turns out to be a falsehood—perhaps ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the day I listened eagerly to the talk of my customers in Yiddish—a language of which I was supposed to be entirely ignorant. But I learned nothing. Either the fugitives were unknown, or the natural secretiveness of an alien people forbade any reference to them, even among themselves; and meanwhile, as I have said, I tramped the streets nightly into the small hours ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... manage a friendly interview as a general would manage a campaign; and if they make their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us after their kind. No man can be treated frankly in this world unless he himself be frank. If we would win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which stands ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... love of fun, neighborliness, love of frontier life, love of travel and of adventure. The same may be said of immoral traits, such as criminality, pauperism, delinquency, irascibility, lying, truancy, superstition, clannishness, secretiveness, despondency, slyness, exclusiveness, vanity, cunning, cruelty, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... although singularly attractive, of a moody, fitful, unrestful nature,—eager, earnest, but unsteady,—with varying phases of imprudent frankness and of the most stubborn and unfathomable secretiveness. He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as full of hitches as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar beauty, and a certain electrical power of attraction, seemed to form a constant circle ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... He was sure that Gaspare either knew or suspected what had happened, yet meant to conceal his knowledge despite his obvious hatred for the fisherman. Was the boy's reason for this strange caution, this strange secretiveness, akin to his—Artois's—desire? Was the boy trying to protect his padrona or the memory of his padrone? Artois wondered. Then ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... scientific man has seldom relished martyrdom, and Galileo's experience as late as 1633 shows what risks men of science ran who even indirectly attacked the vested interests of the Church. After the middle of the thirteenth century the danger was real enough to account for any degree of secretiveness, and a striking case of this timidity is related by Bacon himself. No one knows even the name of the man to whom Bacon referred as "Master Peter," but according to Bacon, "Master Peter" was the greatest and most original genius of the age, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... opera with a person of the opposite sex, seemed to him a singularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a careless avowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at the moment from his thoughts. But the very secretiveness of her manner—the suggestion of a hidden motive which dwelt in her nervous movements and even quivered in the little scintillating aigrette on her blonde head—aroused in him if not a positive distrust, still a bewildering and decidedly unpleasant confusion of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... save one, just like other boys. But, in one matter, he had a peculiarity about which there could be no mistake. That was in the matter of music. So, after questioning the Professor about various indifferent points, moral and intellectual, such as reverence, combativeness, secretiveness, language, ideality, etc., I asked incidentally something also about tune and music. The answer was such as might be safely given in regard to ninety-nine out of every hundred persons—some vague, indefinite ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... secretiveness has set many a scandal afloat; and much as is said about women who tell too much, they are a great deal better off than the woman who ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... and more of their drug to produce the desired effect until they at last take enough daily to kill several normal men. Sometimes they are able to keep everybody in ignorance of what they are doing for years. They develop slyness and secretiveness. They become very suspicious. They are nearly always untruthful, and those who deal with them are surprised and wonder why those who used to be open and above-board now are furtive and dishonest. They often lie when there is not the slightest excuse for ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... be, that he has more sense in the aggregate than either, but it is not the same kind of sense. Other things being equal, the man with large Acquisitiveness will exhibit more sense in acquiring property, and the man with large Caution and Secretiveness more sense in economizing, than those having these organs small. It is curious to observe the different phases of financial sense in different individuals. One man will be a miser, eager to get and anxious to hold property; another will be close ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... the insanity of her jealousy, and with a secretiveness only possible to the morally insane, Sybil completely concealed her suspicions and her sufferings from her husband and her guest. She was affectionate with Lyon, pleasant with Rosa, and confiding in her manners ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... indicated the steamer long before her masts and funnels became visible. He saw no soul except the solitary boatman of the little "plunger," who landed his weekly provisions at a small cove hard by. The boatman thought his secretiveness and reticence only the surliness of his nation, and cared little for a man who never asked for the news, and to whom he brought no letters. The long nights which wrapped the cabin in sea-fog, and at first seemed to heighten the exile's sense of security, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... acts as a medicine man, for he is reputed to have certain magic powers both for good and for evil. The natural secretiveness of the bagni made it difficult for me to secure much information on this point, but his power of harming at a distance and of making himself invisible are matters of general belief. In his character as a priest, he performs ceremonies for the cure ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... no man in his employ, so what was a man doing in his house? There was no secretiveness about the stranger's movements; on the contrary, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... his own aspirations—which seem to him for the most part an altogether new phenomenon in the world—and at the same time realizes the wide degree in which they deviate from those of the rest of mankind, his natural secretiveness is still further reinforced. He stands alone. His most sacred ideals are for all those around him a childish absurdity, or a disgusting obscenity, possibly a matter calling for the intervention of the policeman. We have forgotten that all these impulses which to us seem so unnatural—this adoration ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... little chair with her face turned towards the wall, she often sat curving her small long fingers backward and talking to herself about Aunt Hester. But this—as well as many other things—was true. It was not secretiveness which caused the child to refrain from speaking of certain things. She herself could not have explained the reasons for her silence; also it had never occurred to her that explanation and reasons were ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... kingdoms." It tends—in advance even of the City of London—to the nurture and improvement of individualism, to that desirable "I'll see you d—-d" state of mind which is the proud objective of every Englishman, and especially of every country gentleman. In a word—a mother to the self-reliant secretiveness which defies intrusion and forms an integral part in the Christianity of this country—Newmarket Heath is beyond all others the happy hunting-ground ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... came, however, to study the hostile Indians that flocked to the village, any conclusive delineation of character, or any satisfactory analysis of their mental state in regard to the paleface religion, eluded him. Their passive, silent, sphinx-like secretiveness was baffling. Glickhican had taught him how to propitiate the friendly braves, and with these he was successful. Little he learned, however, from the unfriendly ones. When making gifts to these redmen he could never be certain that his offerings ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... curiosity of other children soon taught Athalie to be on her guard. She learned that embarrassed reserve which tended toward secretiveness and untruth before she ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... a confession, but a very dear confession: I burn to tell it honestly, yet know not how. To withhold it from you would be to admit a secretiveness that our relationship has never known—out it must, and to you. I may, perhaps, borrow—who can limit the sharing powers of twin brothers like ourselves?—some of the skill your own work spills so prodigally, crumbs ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... expressly for his small, aristocratic hand, and when he took one glove off I was astonished at the thinness of his pale fingers. His gait was careless and indolent, but I noticed that he did not swing his arms—a sure sign of a certain secretiveness of character. These remarks, however, are the result of my own observations, and I have not the least desire to make you blindly believe in them. When he was in the act of seating himself on the bench his upright figure bent as if there was not a single bone ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... slow reply as he gave his head a nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, "since I have given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all there is to say ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... same dark gray as the hair. The most cursory observer could not but recognize power and character in the head; yet one would scarcely have guessed it to be the power of a poet, the character of a prophet. Misled, perhaps, by the ribbon at the buttonhole, and by an expression of reserve, almost of secretiveness, in the lines of the tight-shut mouth, one would rather have supposed one's self face to face with an eminent statesman ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... directness and promptness. No one, in watching her while she was writing a letter, ever saw her pause to think what she should say next or how she should express the thought. When she came to that point, the "M.M." was instantly added. She had no secretiveness, and in looking over her letters it has been almost impossible to find one which did not contain too much that was personal, either about herself or others, to make it proper; especially as she herself would be very unwilling to make the affairs of ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Benjamin, in the immorality of his life, and the baseness of his ends, attained by as base means. He is rather a good-looking man, short, with snowy-white hair and red face, his countenance indicative of the secretiveness and cunning of his character. He was rather the caucus adviser and manager than one of the orators of his party; seldom speaking, and never except briefly and to the point. Imagination in him has been warped and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Thalassa, who accompanied the family everywhere. She loved her mother, but her love was embittered by her helplessness to mitigate her mother's unhappy lot. Thalassa was a savage old pagan whose habitual watchful secretiveness relaxed into roaring melody in his occasional cups; in neither aspect could he be considered a suitable companion for the budding mind of a girl, but he loomed in her thoughts as a figure of greater import than her father or mother. Her father was a ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... distrust than in the false good-humour which curved his handsome mouth into that smile of the fickle, which, responding to mirth but not to affection, is often lighted and never warmed. It is true that in that set pressure of her lip there might be cruelty, and, still more, the secretiveness which can harbour deceit; and yet, by the nervous workings of that lip, when relieved from such pressure, you would judge the woman to be rather by natural temperament passionate and impulsive than systematically cruel or deliberately-false,—false ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... evident that he did not realize that practically every word he had spoken had reached the ears of the three in hiding and that his final precaution as he divulged the information to the girl was prompted by an excess of timidity and secretiveness. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no manifest change in his character, nor was there any relaxing of the iron hand of authority with which his father sought to hold him back from evil. It is no matter of wonder that he grew hardened and reckless as he grew older; nor that, to avoid punishment, he sought refuge in lying, secretiveness, and deceit. ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... expedients may be reckoned the oath or promise of secrecy, exacted for no sufficient reason, and kept in defiance of common sense and common humanity. Lord Windermere's conduct in Oscar Wilde's play is a case in point, though he has not even an oath to excuse his insensate secretiveness. A still clearer instance is afforded by Clyde Fitch's play The Girl with the Green Eyes. In other respects a very able play, it is vitiated by the certainty that Austin ought to have, and would have, told the truth ten times over, rather than subject his ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... as time went on, the story of the Varona treasure was forgotten, or at least put down as legendary. Only Isabel, who, in spite of her husband's secretiveness, learned much, and Pancho Cueto, who kept his own account of the annual income from the business, held the matter in serious remembrance. The overseer was a patient man; he watched with interest the growing discord at the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the few friends who knew her intimately. But it was not in her nature to open her heart to any one; her large organ of "secretiveness" was her bane; she knew it and deplored it; it was the origin of that misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... you expect of a girl who was a child like that?" said Risley. "Mind you, in a way I don't like it. This power for secretiveness and this rigidity of pride in a girl of that age strike me rather unpleasantly. Of course she was too proud to tell Cynthia the true reason, and very likely thought they would blame her father, or Cynthia might feel that ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of that, you dear old Gracious, but if you should say secretiveness, I might be willing to stop," said Kate, boldly, yet hardly daring to look ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... also what perception implies—consciousness—and this indicates the possession, in some degree, of reason. Compound reflex action extends into the domain of thought. Simple reflex action, or instinct, answers to the animal faculties, such as acquisitiveness, secretiveness, selfishness, reproductiveness, etc., and accomplishes two important purposes; self-preservation and the reproduction of the specie. With many persons, these appear to be ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... of a best seller which I have read to him in large doses, I resume my correspondence with you, and, incidentally, my study of man. He is really very interesting, Aunt Jennie, with the tiniest bit of secretiveness as to his own purposes in life which, of course, makes one more curious about him. In a frock coat, with gardenia in his button hole, he would make an ideal usher at a fashionable wedding. A few days ago, when we ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... His secretiveness and his unpopularity point to one of the most important functions of the municipal and state "Bosses," to which as yet only incidental reference has been made. The "Boss" became the man who negotiated with the corporations, and through ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Of his secretiveness for his wife's sake I had a touching little instance after luncheon. We had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. The car was already in attendance, and Peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection of it. Pethel had given me a cigar, and his wife presently noticed ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... road. But in this last chapter Sheridan must take rank as one of the finest military men of our century. The battle of "Five Forks" was, perhaps, the most ingeniously conceived and skilfully executed that we have ever had on this continent. It matches in secretiveness and shrewdness the cleverest efforts of Napoleon, and shows also much of that soldier's broadness of intellect and capacity ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... adjacent social sentiments indicated by the translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by the opacity in the regions of Religion, Hope, Reverence, Love, Conscientiousness, Industry, Cheerfulness, Love of Approbation, Sense of Honor, and Self-respect. Secretiveness shows opacity, while Combativeness shows intense activity which extends into ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... her eyes to detect anyone who might be coming along the street; and before reaching the Frys' she crossed over to avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy she felt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animal secretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passed unnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white front glimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong of light on the lower floor. She had supposed that the lamp was in Miss Hatchard's sitting-room; ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... their memory. But they would easily explain it to themselves by saying that his face had a naturally melancholy cast—a sort of accident that had happened to him in the beginning! He had a considerable reputation, of which he was imperfectly aware, for secretiveness, timidity, gentleness, and intellectual superiority. Sundry young women thought of him wistfully when smiling upon quite other young men, and would even kiss him while kissing them, according to the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... attitude towards me. For a month we had been, I suppose, the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was curiously incomplete. With all his charming frankness, there was in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible enough to be very irritating. He had the instinctive secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make mysteries of matters of common concern; for example, I never knew how or where he disposed of the Bond Street jewels, on the proceeds of which we were both ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... not to like Zavier? Why? Why? Susan found her thoughts trailing off into a perspective of questions that brought up against a wall of incomprehension above which Lucy's clear eyes looked at her with baffling secretiveness. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... not tell. He drew away and looked at the man with that scrappy grin. Silence, secretiveness where grown people were, had been beaten into his small brain. Out behind the house, the conference finished, Tommy reassured his guest again and again, sometimes laughing, ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... tried friend—he thought he could have put things before her, so as to influence without offending her. But he suffered—had always suffered—from the jealous reserve which underlay her charm, her inborn tendency to secretiveness and intrigue. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might be named, all small: the Lord knows here are enough. The Angevin cat-and-dog nature was fairly divided between these two. Richard had the sufficiency of the cat, John the dependence of a dog; John had the cat's secretiveness, Richard the dog's dash. At heart John ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... make your meaning clear. It's all part of the secretiveness of men. They tell one nothing and then they're offended if we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... open and frank honesty. When the thought is turned to an endeavor to secure a dollar that is not earned, there is secretiveness of purpose and inward guile. No person doing business on borrowed capital advertises the number and amount of his loans nor does he welcome inquiry by others. In a column of advertisements by money lenders in a newspaper ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... not; at his meals only Beaumaroy, and perhaps their servant, would be present. But he seemed to wear it whenever he went abroad, whenever he was exposed to the scrutiny of strangers. That indicated secretiveness, perhaps fear, the apprehension of something. The caution bred by that might give way under the influence of great cerebral excitement. Unquestionably Mr. Saffron had been very excited when he waved the sheet of hieroglyphics and shouted to Beaumaroy about Morocco. But ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... sheep-dogs interested Pete. They seemed so alert, and yet so quietly satisfied with their lot. The last thing the old Mexican did was to ask for a few cartridges. Pete did not understand just what kind he wanted. With a secretiveness which thrilled Pete clear to the toes, the old herder, in the shadowy rear of the store, drew a heavy six-shooter from under his arm and passed it stealthily to Pete, who recognized the caliber and found cartridges for it. Pete's manner was equally stealthy. This smacked of adventure! Cattlemen ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... broaching the subject uppermost in her thoughts—Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness that was part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject so closely concerned this girl for whom she felt such ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and close observation. When he asserts (contrary to the old metaphysics) the existence of such instincts as fear, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play (or, properly, playfulness), curiosity, sociability, shyness, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, coyness or personal isolation, jealousy, parental love, etc., he shows the spirit of science. But is it not self-evident, Mr. James, to a man of your fine intelligence, that all strong impulses (or instincts, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... feeling has been generated in him by the deep and awful respect for navigation that the layman has seen displayed by navigators. I have known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men, open as the day, to learn navigation and at once betray secretiveness, reserve, and self-importance as if they had achieved some tremendous intellectual attainment. The average navigator impresses the layman as a priest of some holy rite. With bated breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator invites one in to look at his chronometer. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the anticipation of leaving it? Watch American business men together, and if you are a European you will clearly perceive that they are devotees. They are open with one another, as intimates are. Jealousy and secretiveness are much rarer among them than in Europe. They show off their respective organizations with pride and with candor. They admire one another enormously. Hear one of them say enthusiastically of another: "It was a great idea he had—connecting his New York and his Philadelphia ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... is all a humbug, and the biggest humbug is the best man. That 's the Yankee doctrine, and that 's the reason the Yankees get along so well. You have no organ of secretiveness. You have a window in your breast that every one can look into and see what you are thinking about. You must shut that window up, like I do. No one can tell from my talk or looks ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Not until the door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so sensitive and free from secretiveness, had ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... ineradicable evil. It spreads, too, as specks in a garnered fruit. We are startled by seeing it in children by the time they can lisp a lie, and we note in them, with a sickening at heart, the father's or grandfather's tendency to secretiveness or deceit, or the mother's penchant for false excuses. We can scarcely bequeath a greater sorrow to our offspring than to curse them before their birth with this hereditary taint, which is, perhaps, one of the hardest of all evils ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... a work-horse does at its yoke-mate. Even when he sat opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head a little toward the clock or the stove and look at me from the side, but with frankness and good-nature. This trick did not suggest duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long habit, as with ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Secretiveness repels as much as frankness attracts. There is something about the very inclination to conceal or cover up which arouses suspicion and distrust. We cannot have the same confidence in people who possess this trait, no matter how good they may seem to be, as in frank, sunny natures. Dealing with ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... on. The word fermenting aptly describes the process begun, suggesting as it does something closed up, away from air and sunlight, continually working in secret, engendering forces that fascinated, yet inspired me with fear. Undoubtedly this secretiveness of our elders was due to the pernicious dualism of their orthodox Christianity, in which love was carnal and therefore evil, and the flesh not the gracious soil of the spirit, but something to be deplored ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this—nobody but you and I. Preston has assured me that the success of our efforts to run the leaders of this gang to ground—he tells me he is sure there is a gang working together and playing into one another's hands very cleverly—will largely depend upon our discreetness and our secretiveness, also upon our tact and our knowledge of when to act. So not a word, mind; not a syllable even to Dulcie Challoner—have I ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... (himself, I must repeat, not a bad man, though the advocate of a bad cause) had darkly stigmatized Protestants in general, and myself by inference, with strange names, had ascribed to us strange "isms;" Monsieur Emanuel revealed all this in his frank fashion, which knew not secretiveness, looking at me as he spoke with a kind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should be truth in the charges. Pere Silas, it seems, had closely watched me, had ascertained that I went by turns, and indiscriminately, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... been told, you who belong to the 'peers,' practise stealing from your boyhood up; and it is no disgrace but honourable rather to steal, except such things as the law forbids; and in order, I presume, to stimulate your sense of secretiveness, and to make you master thieves, it is lawful for you further to get a whipping if you are caught. Now then you have a fine opportunity of displaying your training. But take care we are not caught stealing over the mountain, or ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... were concerned; and the impulsiveness and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified each other. But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally its conscious motives, some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from this point of view it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more expansive quality. He never, however, intentionally ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... longer accountable through eternity for the employment of time. The azure light was even more vivid in certain organs useful to the conservation of existence, as in those organs I had observed it more vivid among some of the inferior animals than it is in man,—secretiveness, destructiveness, and the ready perception of things immediate to the wants of the day; and the azure light was brilliant in cerebral cells, where before it had been dark, such as those which harbour mirthfulness ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what used to be called a "self-made" man. He began his business life in Cleveland as a clerk at an extremely modest salary. Capacity for details and for shrewd bargaining, patience, frugality, seriousness, secretiveness, caution, an instinctive sense for business openings, self-control—all these were characteristic both of the Cleveland clerk and the later oil-refiner. In the bigger field he developed a daring caution, a quick understanding of the value of ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... adequate answer to our antagonists to say, indeed it is a mere tu quoque to say, that the existing system does not present such a correlation, that it puts a premium on secretiveness and self-seeking and a discount on many most necessary forms of social service. That is a mere temporary argument for ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... into this next gully to talk it over, Buck," he suggested with an air of secretiveness that fired the Kid's imagination. "They started out to follow me, and I don't want 'em to see me ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... had made. His encomiums resemble the evening talk of lovers, being low, sweet, and trembling. Were we to speak of Addison phrenologically, we should say that, next to veneration, wit, and ideality, his principal faculties were caution and secretiveness. He was cautious to the brink of cowardice. We fancy him in a considerable fright in the storm on the Ligurian Gulf, amidst the exhalations of the unhealthy Campagna, and while the avalanches of the Alps—"the thunderbolts of snow"—were falling around him. ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... a sort of permanent opposition. He would not have admitted that he saw such a vision, for he was utterly loyal to his wife; but it was there. This unconfessed vision was one of several causes which had contributed to intensify his inherent tendency towards Machiavellianism and secretiveness. He said nothing to Constance, nothing to Cyril; but, happening to encounter Amy in the showroom, he was inspired to interrogate her sharply. The result was that they descended to the cellar together, Amy weeping. Amy was commanded to hold her tongue. And as she went in mortal ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... by her mother and aunts as an undesirable scholar for her, and that his sister's remonstrances ought not to have been scouted. She had done the thing in her simplicity, but it was through her own wilful secretiveness that her ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But here occurred one of those surprising inconsistencies known only to children. As Uncle Ben turned his small gray eyes upon him in a half astonished, half questioning manner, the potent spirit of childish secretiveness suddenly took possession of the boy. Wild horses could not now have torn from him that question which only a moment before ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... I have given her an official position here in the Club. She is staunch and faithful and true; I know it, I feel it; and she is too high-principled to pass under any name not her own. I know and am heartily in sympathy with the reason for her secretiveness. You know that I trust you implicitly, but I know you would not have me go back on my word when once ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... whose head was as thick as his heart was kind, never let a week pass without some allusion to Chardon senior's unlucky secretiveness as to that discovery, words that Lucien felt ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... steadfast ideas of every one had in time produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions, though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept secret she would do her utmost to make them ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... store was empty! Out in the open air, under the warm summons of the sun, there passed a merry, laughing group of negroes, happy, care-free, each humming the burden of some simple song, each slouching across the road, as though ease and the warm sun filled all his soul! Dissimulation and secretiveness, seeded in savagery, nourished in oppression, ingrained in the soul for generations, are part of a nature as opaque to the average Caucasian eye as is the sable skin ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... piazza, talking and laughing, begging to see the manuscript, teasing Theodora about her secretiveness, and congratulating her again and again. It was an attractive group, Theodora in the midst, a tall, handsome girl in the full ripeness of her maidenly beauty, her arm linked in that of her twin brother, while pretty Hope stood facing them, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... I can't abide, it is secretiveness," said Mrs. Bonner, as she watched him up the road ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... same time he lost no sound from the river. The voices were silent, and the dip, dip, dip of paddles was approaching softly and with extreme caution. At last he could barely hear the trickle of them, yet he knew the canoe was coming steadily nearer. There was a suspicious secretiveness in its approach. Perhaps the lady with the beautiful eyes and the glistening hair had changed her mind again and was returning to put ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... friends, long life—everything that was needed to give his work solidity. All that he had was a creative, though undisciplined imagination, together with an astonishing industry, persistence, and secretiveness. Yet with all his disadvantages, his work, with all its imperfections, is far more striking than the imitative verse of the Wartons, or the thin, diffused medievalism of Walpole and Clara Reeve. It is the product of a more original mind ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Lucilla, to feel greatly surprised at any proof of tenderness from Constance. Thus, too proud to speak—to hint a complaint, Constance was nevertheless perpetually wounded, and by degrees (although not loving her husband less) she taught that love to be more concealed. Oh, that accursed secretiveness in women, which makes ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He certainly did not take it if it did not suit him; and if it was not likely to suit him, he was in no hurry to ask for it. It was in his own fertile brain, not in the suggestions of others, that important measures had their birth. That trait in his character which phrenologists have named secretiveness largely governed his actions. It was natural for him to bring things about quietly and skillfully by setting others to do what he wanted done, without himself being seen, though sometimes there was no other motive than the mere gratification ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... of cavalry were still occasionally drafted from Glasgow and Carlisle to override the moors. But the lack of any local intelligencer of the calibre of Eben McClure, the natural secretiveness of the people as to "lads among the heather" and all folk in trouble, caused the search to be spun out so long, that the general opinion was that Julian Wemyss had escaped in an emigrant ship ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... all manner of cleaning operations going on in full view of anybody and everybody who might be interested enough to look. For there is no streak of mean secretiveness in Green ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... for although lightened at times by the readiness of the Indians to impart their knowledge, it more often required days and weeks of patient endeavor before my assistants and I succeeded in overcoming the deep-rooted superstition, conservatism, and secretiveness so characteristic of primitive people, who are ever loath to afford a glimpse of their inner life to those who are not of their own. Once the confidence of the Indians gained, the way led gradually through the difficulties, but long and serious study was necessary before knowledge ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... deferred holiday in Scotland, besides enabling him to play more regularly for Middlesex in the ensuing summer than had been the case for several seasons. In fine, this particular exploit entirely justified itself in my eyes, in spite of the superfluous (but invariable) secretiveness which I could seldom help resenting in my heart I never thought less of it than in the present instance; and my one mild reproach was on the subject of the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... were current among the trading class and which were accepted as shrewdness and were inseparably associated with legitimate business methods. In giving one of his captains instructions he wrote, as was his invariable policy, the most explicit directions to exercise secretiveness and cunning in his purchases of coffee at Batavia. Be cautious and prudent, was his admonition. Keep to yourself the intention of the voyage and the amount of specie that you have on board. To satisfy the curious, throw them off the ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... down to military brevity, and the line of mouth below it was eloquent of rough power. The steady grey eyes, seemingly smaller yet more conspicuous than before, revealed in their glance new elements of secretiveness, of strategy supported by abundant and confident ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... conscientious information, Steve Brown looked in vain for any allusion to her secretiveness of the night before. In her bearing there was not the least vestige of arts and airs, nor any little intimation of mutual understanding; she simply looked up with wide-open eyes and told it to him. This honesty, ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... as close her eyes," announced Melvina to Lucy the next morning, while the two sat at breakfast. Nevertheless, although she advanced this information, with characteristic secretiveness she said nothing of the happenings of ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Coleridge's references to himself in his later years are shrouded in a double obscurity. One veil is thrown over them by his deliberate preference for abstract and mystical forms of expression, and another perhaps by that kind of shameful secretiveness which grows upon all men who become the slaves of concealed indulgences, and which often displays itself on occasions when it has no real object to gain ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... by a devious route, to Paris in July. By this time Kleist had become clearly conscious of his vocation; the strong creative impulse that had hitherto bewildered him now found its proper vent in poetic expression, and he felt himself dedicated to a literary career. With characteristic secretiveness he kept hidden, even from his sister, the drama at which he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... us to understand the vagueness and mistiness of savage and unwritten creeds, as to penetrate into the modus agendi of animal instinct. And there is yet another obstacle in dealing with such people, their intense and childish sensitiveness and secretiveness. They are not, as some have foolishly supposed, ashamed of their tenets or their practices, but they are unwilling to speak about them. They fear the intentions of the cross-questioner, and they hold themselves safest behind a crooked answer. Moreover, every Mpongwe is his own "pontifex ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... trust him with the secret of Miss Margaret's letters? The habit of secretiveness was too strong upon her. "There is no one here to help me—unless YOU would ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... positively forbade it. He said it was a painter's prerogative to warn even—love from that holy of holies. I often wonder what was behind the curtain. I realized from that moment that if you want to see a great artist's best work, you must override his modesty and secretiveness—and tear the ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... splendour of living: he comes into his birthright of beauty and ecstacy, and understands how the greatest happiness is to be found in doing everything for the service of another. There is something very loathsome about the spying, and secretiveness, the jokes and unclean hintings which, in the majority of schools, make such a friendship appear a thing to be ashamed rather than proud of, and often in the end actually render it shameful. Given a clean ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... of Buestom, but not half that could have been told and yet save one's reputation for veracity and secretiveness. Among the things he could not keep were his word and servants. Not even would a Chinaman attend his many wants. His last effort was a big Manchu from northern China; and he had no more than been installed and began his work with the usual celestial energy, till in rushed "Bues," ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... her gear. Now I believe that Posh tells the truth when he says that in the first instance there was no mention of any such charge. And he was not a business man enough to see the reasonableness of FitzGerald's demand. He was, moreover, urged by the secretiveness of his race, the love of keeping private affairs from outsiders, and he bitterly resented the proposition. Indeed, during the early months of 1868, there were constant semi-quarrels, which were as constantly patched up. FitzGerald loved the man too well to quarrel with him definitely. Besides, Posh ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... of the austerity of Claude Frollo's life, pious people suspected him of magic. His silence and secretiveness encouraged this feeling. He was known to be at work in the long hours of the night in his cell in Notre Dame, and he wandered about the streets like ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... socially, he yielded to her shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells |
