"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... use explaining my motives—you wouldn't understand them. Still, in future, don't set down every man commonly honest as an uncommon fool. If I ever had much money, which is hardly likely, I should fight extremely shy of any investments recommended ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... kept is this beautiful Cantal cow, a small, red, glossy-coated breed, very gentle, and very shy. The enormous quantities of milk afforded by these dairy farms are sold in part at Aurillac for home consumption. By far the larger proportion is used in the cheese- makers' huts, or 'burons,' on the surrounding ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... have been broken up by hammocks than by all the Sunday schools in the world, and no girl who is bow-legged, or has an ankle like a rutabaga, should ever trust herself in a hammock, even though it is held by half a dozen friends, as the hammock will shy at a piece of paper as quick as a skittish horse, and in such a moment as ye think not you are on all fours, your head dizzy, and if there is a hole in your stocking as small as a Democrat's hope of election, it will look to outsiders as big as the gate to ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... it would be but an imperfect sketch. She must be young, fair, gentle, pure, tender of heart, noble in soul, with a kind of shy, sweet grace; frank, yet not outspoken; free from all affectation, yet with nothing unwomanly; a mixture of child and woman. If I love an ideal, it is something ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... which she did beguile me of my tears, but the deuce a one did she shed. What do you think? She cajoled me out of my little Buonaparte as cleverly as possible, in manner and form following. She was shy the Saturday and Sunday (the day of my departure) so I got in dudgeon, and began to rip up grievances. I asked her how she came to admit me to such extreme familiarities, the first week I entered the house. "If ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... mathematics; he did not, however, complete his course; not through laziness, but because, according to his notions, you could learn no more in the university than you could studying alone at home; and he did not go in for a diploma because he had no idea of entering the government service. He was shy with his fellow-students, made friends with scarcely any one, especially held aloof from women, and lived in great solitude, buried in books. He held aloof from women, though he had a heart of the tenderest, and was fascinated ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... shrivelled woman of the same age as her husband, with a face extraordinarily filled with deep wrinkles, and pale blue eyes. Her gray hair was arranged in ringlets according to the fashion of her youth. She wore a black dress, and her only ornament was a gold chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy manner and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... blow, alike to the affection and pride of Lord Fairfax, and wrought a change in both character and conduct. From that time he almost avoided the sex, and became shy and embarrassed in their society, excepting among those with whom he was connected or particularly intimate. This may have been among the reasons which ultimately induced him to abandon the gay world and bury himself in the wilds of America. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... friendliness was so much beyond my expectation that I at first feared treachery. However, treachery or not, I thought that while I was there I had better see and learn as much as I could. Women and men formed a ring round us, and the fair sex seemed less shy than the stronger in answering questions. I was particularly struck, not only in this encampment but in all the others, by the small number of women to be seen in Tibet. This is not because they are kept in seclusion; on the contrary, the ladies ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... men in those days, receiving regularly the poet's sunny recognition and the statesman's rather unsympathetic stare. Both men were overwhelmingly famous, but, touched simultaneously by warmth and frost, I, a shy youngster, could keep my balance in their presence. Sumner in those years was the especial bete noire of the South and the conservative North, and the idol of the radicals—at once the most banned and the most blessed of men. I had, besides, a personal reason ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... felt a little in awe of an Earl, as she had never met one before, and was about to make a shy response, when a slight movement of her head showed her her own reflection in ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... self-conscious attitude a thorough training in the dance is a most effective remedy. The shy, constrained, awkward boys and girls mingle with their companions on terms of ordered freedom and equality. They are taught grace of movement; the spontaneous expression of their individuality is modified by contact with their associates; they acquire ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... inhabited, and which they had in some degree fortified with a palisade, burnt and levelled with the ground; they found also some cloaks and clothing which the Indians had brought to throw upon the house. They observed too that the Indians who were seen near the spot, looked very shy, and dared not approach, but, on the contrary, fled from them. This appeared strange to us, for the Admiral had told us that in the former voyage, when he arrived at this place, so many came in canoes to see us, that there ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... As soon as the foremost rank saw them they fell back at once in great disorder, which alarmed those in the rear, who thought they had been fighting. There was then space and room enough for them to have passed forward, had they been willing so to do; some did so, but others remained shy. All the roads between Abbeville and Crecy were covered with common people, who, when they were come within three leagues of their enemies, drew their swords, bawling out, "Kill, kill," and with them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... game was good enough for me. I acted on my theory, and they got my money. Perhaps the theory of Bannerman was wrong. He claimed he knew just how the capitalists were robbing labor. Suppose we backed his theory with some money and got stung? I was now theory shy and I have stayed away from ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... mounted on a horse, who gallops in front, and while the animal pursues him, the others rush in and hamstring him with their knives. Ostriches are caught by throwing down poison at the spots where they feed. The Somali also hunt them, on the backs of their hardy little ponies. The ostrich is a shy bird, and is so blind at night that it cannot feed. A Somali, knowing this, providing himself with provisions for two or three days, sets off in search of them; showing himself to the ostriches, he is discovered, but takes care to keep at a distance. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... those renegades or breeds that were of the wild. He had crossed the trails of others at rare intervals. Therefore he did not know dogs as allies of men and so enemies to himself; rather Shady seemed some extra-shy wolf creature yet with sufficient courage to range in close to men. She seemed a ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... to Roger in the end, and confessed that she had once followed Hester to the village and back by this road. Hester had never guessed it, never in fact turned her back when once started, and it had been easy to keep her in sight. At the edge of the town Margarita had felt a little shy and apprehensive of her fate if discovered, so she had sat by the wood-side till Hester appeared again and followed her ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... had been seen walking up and down the terrace a few times with Lieutenant R—, the pensioners, when I spoke to them, answered me readily, though at first rather shy of talking of themselves or their adventures. At length I fell in with a fine old man, and sitting down on one of the benches facing the river, I began to tell him how much I honoured and loved all sailors, and how I longed myself ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... to give Janie her music-lesson every Wednesday afternoon.—We couldn't do without Miss Lisle, could we, Janie?" The girl was shy and did not speak, but a broad smile overspread ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... a boyish individual Harmony had never met before. For the first time it struck her that Peter was young. He had always seemed rather old, solid and dependable, the fault of his elder brother attitude to her, no doubt. She was suddenly rather shy, a bit aloof. Peter felt the change and thought she was bored. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... attractive altogether. Doctor Brudenell liked them both, but he preferred the elder, as most people did. He enjoyed a visit to Petersham Villa—it was almost the only house with whose inhabitants he was upon really easy and familiar terms, for he was by nature a shy and retiring man. He had got into the habit of confiding in cheerful Mrs. Leslie, but he seldom talked to Kate, who was too diffident to make him forget that he also was inclined to be shy. Indeed he thought so little about her that he had not even a suspicion that in ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... New York. If he have the right stuff in him, a something will take possession of him that will grip him again every time he returns to the scene and will make him long and hunger for the place when he is away from it. Later, the lights in the busy streets will bewilder and entice him. He will feel shy and helpless amid the hurrying crowds. A new emotion will take his heart as the people hasten by him,—a feeling of loneliness, almost of grief, that with all of these souls about him he knows not one and not one of them cares for him. After a while he will find a place and give ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Years' War, and there has since been no demand for any. Austria has no fresh air at all—never did have any, and therefore has never felt the need of having any. Italy—the northern part of it anyhow—is also reasonably shy ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... fact, his daring prediction of twelve miles per hour struck the learned counsel with horror. They objected that horses would fly in terror from such a monster. He replied that horses had been known to shy at wheelbarrows. They tried to make him admit that the wheels would slip on the smooth rails, but he knew that they would bite without teeth. One of the committee said, "Suppose that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine; would not ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... invoked alive, Fairy clouds from hives of honey Like no angry human hive, Billows of brightness swift and sunny, Pattering, chuckling, panting haste, Rosy-shy—though never sweeter Than the three her arms embraced— Heaven's ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... It was a daisy-like charm differing in kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a violet or a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at last—for she had not a good feature—to the possession of a pair of very soft, and shy, brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable in conversation, which burgeoned out in song into the richest contralto imaginable, causing her to be known widely in society as "the Miss Masters who sings." Indeed, she had a wonderful ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... theirs, not yours: you cannot bear this in mind too diligently. All considerations of pleasantness of site must succumb to this. You must fix on such a situation as not to cut up the run, by splitting off a little corner too small to give the sheep free scope and room. They will fight rather shy of your homestead, you may be certain; so the homestead must be out of their way. You MUST, however, have water and firewood at hand, which is a great convenience, to say nothing of the saving of labour and expense. Therefore, if you can find a bush near a stream, make your ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... usual drawbacks of African travel. As the river pools were the only drinking-places for birds and game, the gun supplied not only my own party, but I had much to give away to the Arabs in exchange for goat's milk, the meal of the dome nuts, &c. Gazelles were exceedingly numerous, but shy, and so difficult to approach that they required most careful stalking. At this season of intense heat they drank twice a day—at about an hour after sunrise, and half an ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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: Oft staring through the window pane ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... gray skirts, silver hat with a single velvet rose on the brim to match the soft rose-bloom on her cheeks. Gila with eyes as wide and innocent as a baby's, cupid mouth curved sweetly in a gracious, shy smile, and dainty little prayer-book done in gray suede held devoutly ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... laugh is on an old boy with benevolent side-whiskers, who's sliding down the balusters, and a fat old party, who looks like a bishop, that's bumping his way down with his feet sticking out straight in front of him. Shy away from these things that end in an ism, my boy. From skepticism to rheumatism they've an ache or a pain in every ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... be left with himself; nevertheless, he had been well aware that these things were largely responsible for the hurry of the priest's departure. At first he had not been surprised at the silence of Peggy, for he had grown accustomed to the shy modesty of women who are Indian-bred. The women of Keewatin accept it as their fate that they are born to be subservient to men—to be their burden-bearers. But at the end of a few days, when her demeanour had shown ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... wanted during a year the sows should be put to the boar during the first heat after weaning. Many breeders do not like to pass periods of heat for fear that the sows may become "shy," and there is little reason why a sow should not have two litters a year. In any case, the sows should be carried on comparatively light feed until time to breed again, gaining a little in weight; and their treatment after breeding ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... conversation. But it seemed to her that she had lost her confidence. The freemasonry of old acquaintance which existed between all of them left her outside an invisible but very real circle. Words came to her with difficulty. She felt stupid, almost shy. When she made an effort to break through it she was acutely conscious of her failure. Her laugh was too hard, it lacked sincerity or restraint. The cigarette which she smoked out of bravado with her coffee, seemed somehow out of place. When at last luncheon was over Mannering left his ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Mary, with a shy look at Tom. "But wouldn't you just as soon sit on a bench in the garden? It's moonlight there, ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... the time was rather an experiment, only it answered, as many of Mr. Gray's deeds of daring did. It was curious how he was growing to be a kind of autocrat in the village; and how unconscious he was of it. He was as shy and awkward and nervous as ever in any affair that was not of some moral consequence to him. But as soon as he was convinced that a thing was right, he "shut his eyes and ran and butted at it like a ram," ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... law agin a woman's bein' minister, thet I ever heerd on. Howsomever, Mis' Kinney never'd hear to anythin' o' that kind. I don' no' for my part how she ever mustered up courage to do what she's done, so kind o' backward 'n' shy's she is for all her strength. But for my part, I wouldn't ask for no other preachin' all the rest o' my life, than jest to hear Mis' Kinney read one o' her ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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 where his horse was likely to shy, he gathered up these said reins and fixed himself as if he was going at a five-barred gate." None surely but the most superficial or most prejudiced observers could ever seriously found upon such indications of nervousness any conclusion against the real courage of him who was subject to them. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... replied, "but it isn't a case of rattles with me. I'm shy with the mazume, and it looks now as if that little trip to the minister's will have ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... angry man is as good as another One of her "I think it's sos" is worth the Bible-oath Outside observers see results; parents see processes Passive endurance is the hardest trial Priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of Shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy Slow to accept marvellous stories and many forms of superstition So long as a woman can talk, there is nothing she cannot bear Some people think that truth and gold are always ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... possibly keep aloof. For my part I feared her patronage. I remember when I was about seventeen - a self-conscious hobbledehoy - Mr. Ellice took me to one of her large receptions. She received her guests from a sort of elevated dais. When I came up - very shy - to make my salute, she asked me how old I was. 'Seventeen,' was the answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted. 'Come and give me a kiss, my dear.' I, a man! - a man whose voice was (sometimes) as gruff as hers! - a man who was beginning ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... at Picaninny Lahoo. Only one canoe has come off to us. The natives are shy of all strange vessels, in consequence of a French man-of-war having fired upon one of the neighboring towns, a few days since. It seems that a French merchant-barque was wrecked here, by running ashore. The master saved ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... theatre, for she had been preceded by some other enterprising actress, with whom the lessees had been less stringent, and who had come to grief, much to their disgust. The costumers and the printers, too, were shy of unknown dames with stage ambitions, and their co-operation was not to be obtained without a ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... tenement, a cripple from the mines to talk over his career, whether it should be pencils or shoe strings, or a hand organ, or some attempt at handicraft; the head of a local labor union paying some pittance to Laura, voted by the men to help her with her work; a shy foreign woman with a badly spelled note from her neighbor, asking for flower seeds and directions translated by Laura into the woman's own language telling how to plant the seeds; a belated working mother calling for the last little tot in the nursery and explaining her delay. Laura ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... on the estate had told him something of his father's highly-coloured histories of his feats of strength and his achievements by land and water, the boy began to feel a shy admiration for him, but at the same time he felt all the more strongly the intolerable yoke which he laid upon them—upon every living being on the estate. It became a secret religion with him to oppose his father and help his mother, for it was she who ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... its tall head on high; When the crimson-tinted evening fades From the glowing saffron sky; When the sun's last beams Light up woods and streams, And brighten the gloom below; And the deer springs by With his flashing eye, And the shy, swift-footed doe; And the sad winds chide In the branches wide, With ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... amusement in his face. He did not know whether he dared to laugh or not, and was too much afraid to try. The girl was aware of his embarrassment and became shy in her turn. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... shy of their camps. The laborers were mainly Irish, trans-shipped from steerage, dock, and Bowery, and imported from Western mining centers; turbulent in their relaxations and plentifully supplied with whiskey: companies, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... particularly new one, nor clean one, but her face, tear-stained, was pressed against it, and he understood her ancient and most honorable message. There was almost ecstasy in waking her and seeing her smile at him, shy but well aware of her own ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... miner, I heard that a man could make a good living, if he was any ways smart, at Ballarat, so I came here and done pretty well, until an unfortunate occurrence took place, which has been the means of making me fight shy ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Run away? Mebbe he would if he was a black. But he's a grizzly, and the boss of this country. He may fight shy of this valley for a while, but you can bet he ain't goin' to emigrate. The harder you hit a grizzly the madder he gets, an' if you keep on hittin' 'im he keeps on gettin' madder, until he drops dead. If you want that bear bad enough we can surely ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... her head a little on one side, as though she were trying to read his character. "You seemed shy, different from most men. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... me, Cecil,' he said in his most cheery tone—knowing that the lad usually formed one of the choir when at home, and thinking that his ill success at school had made him shy of facing the other choristers, who probably knew all ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... darting, scornful; it tosses its analogies in your face; humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart," says E. P. Whipple. "Wit is intellectual, humor is emotional; wit is perception of resemblance, humor of contrast—of contrast between ideal and fact, theory and practice, promise and performance," writes another authority. While yet another points out that ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... to keep my rooms for me till I comes back, slip out o' the 'ouse, and into the fust 'ansom I meets, and back to the Halbany. And a month arter that, I shall come into my chambers at the Halbany, fling Voltaire and Parini into the fire, shy me 'at at the bust of good old 'Omer, slip on my blue suit agen, and back to ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... Mary Grace on her visits from house to house. If it is remembered that I was only eight and a half when this scheme was carried into practice, it will surprise no one to hear that it was not crowned with success. I disliked extremely this visitation of the poor. I felt shy, I had nothing to say, with difficulty could I understand their soft Devonian patois, and most of all—a signal perhaps of my neurotic condition—I dreaded and loathed the smells of their cottages. One had to run over the whole gamut of odours, some so ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... included—and coming into office with a moderate mixed party. It will be a great evil if the Government is broken up just now, but it is quite clear that they cannot go on long; it is a question of months. The Duke of Wellington told me yesterday that he could do nothing, and he will be rather shy of giving to the world a second volume of that old business in which he got so bedevilled two ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... fast they are less in evidence, being naturally shy after years of persecution. In summer they keep mainly at the back of the willows, away from the river, so long as the latter ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Sylvia was gentle and good enough; but Philip wanted her to be shy and tender with him, and this she was not. She spoke to him, her pretty eyes looking straight and composedly at him. She consulted him like the family friend that he was: she met him quietly in all the arrangements for the time ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of Mr. Charles Fox, of whose abilities he thought highly, but observed, that he did not talk much at our CLUB. I have heard Mr. Gibbon remark, 'that Mr. Fox could not be afraid of Dr. Johnson; yet he certainly was very shy of saying any thing in Dr. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to incur the displeasure, or challenge the power, of the Lianhan Shee, by, driving its victim out of the parish. The opinion of these persons was, in its distinct unvarnished reality, that Father Felix absolutely showed the white feather on this critical occasion—that he became shy, and begged leave to decline being introduced to this intractable pair—seeming to intimate that he did not at all relish adding them to ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... the very man; and the best part of it was, he was shy of taking her at first. He talked a good deal about honour, and conscience, and deceiving some dear friend; but, ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... matter. "She must have clothes!" thought I, "and that's flat!" Perhaps not such as befitted her, but something immediate, and not in tatters—something stout that threatened not to part and leave her naked. For the brier-torn rags she wore scarce seemed to hold together; and her small, shy feet peeped through her ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... so shy, my pretty woman," said he, and then we could hear her struggling up and down the floor. I was climbing the ladder, in the midst of it, my face burning with anger, and D'ri was at my heels. As the door opened, I saw she had fallen. The trooper was bending to kiss her. I had him by the collar ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... And when th' manager fun it aat, he said if I'd gone soft o'er Betty, it were no reason why aw should go soft o'er mi wark, and he towd me to do mi courtin' i' th' fields and not i' th' factory. But it were yeasier said nor done, aw can tell yo', for Betty were a shy un, and bided a deal o' ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... kinder shy, kase me'n you's a visitin'. I 'low we's gotter move on, Miss Ann." The old man's face was drawn with woe. "I kinder felt it a bad sign when Marse Jeff Bucknor up'n took hisse'f off to Lou'ville, an' now this talk 'bout the fambly a goin' ter furren parts an' a shuttin' up Buck Hill. ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... pale and scared, gathered Aida into her arms. At the same time Ann removed herself from Jimmy's. She did not look at him. She was feeling oddly shy. Shyness had never been a failing of hers, but she would have given much ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of the r's that had probably been acquired abroad. And she lost no time in telling him, she was eager to tell him, that she had been waylaying him. "I did so want to talk to you some maw," she said. "I was shy last night and they we' all so noisy and eaga'. I p'ayed that you might come ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... shy of the questionings, and of course that was high testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out and prove it?—why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking her up out ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... with his eye, he must insinuate them into his auditory by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. He must be thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... didn't even mention Mrs. Saltram and the children. Late into the night we smoked and talked; old shames and old rigours fell away from us; I only let him see that I was conscious of what I owed him. He was as mild as contrition and as copious as faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this occasion as I had ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... was once a garden-ground Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound; And boldly whistles the shy quail Within the vacant ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... hit it that time in the bull's-eye, suh," admitted the Southern lad; "and I confess that I thought it half an hour later. I'm still some shy, it seems, on telling time by the ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... envious of riches, and so ashamed of their poverty, that they entertained no desire to avail themselves of the invitation. Others, what is more, fostered such a dislike for, and stood in such awe of, lady Feng that they felt bitter towards her and would not accept. Others again were timid and shy, and so little accustomed to seeing people, that they could not muster sufficient courage to come. Hence it was that despite the large number of female relatives in the clan, none came but Chia Lan's mother, ne Lou, who brought Chia Lan with her. In the way of men, there were only Chia ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... fantastic column, which affords him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he walks; he is conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to bear on a given point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures are quick and decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any one might have pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a prime minister. A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond the reach of his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted, generous, and enthusiastic; in short, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... and started and blushed when she saw him. She had been crying; there were red rings around her blue eyes, and her pretty lips were swollen. She tried to smile at Thomas's father, and she held out her hand with shy welcome. ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the children to send to ye. But we've always paid our share in keeping up the school for others that was more favored, and now it looks as if He had not forgotten us, and ez if"—with a significant, half-shy glance at her husband and a corroborating nod from that gentleman—"ez if, reelly, we might be reckonin' to send you ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Fitzjames Stephen[39] roused himself to thrash a big boy who had long bullied him, and became a fighter. In his sixteenth year, he grew nearly five inches, but was so shy and timid at Eton that he says, "I was like a sensible grown-up woman among a crowd of rough boys"; but in the reaction to the long abuse his mind was steeled against oppression, tyranny, and every kind ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... this is an island, there are not likely to be a great many, and once they are shot at they will become shy. See anything, my lad?" he cried to the man in the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... follies are all sweet-humoured, they smile. Its beauties are a quick and abundant shower. The delicate phrases are so mingled with the flagrant that it is difficult to quote them without rousing that general sense of humour of which any one may make a boast; and I am therefore shy even of citing the "brisk cherub" who has early sipped the Saint's tear: "Then to his music," in Crashaw's divinely simple phrase; and his singing "tastes of this breakfast all day long." Sorrow is a queen, he cries to the Weeper, and when sorrow would be ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... wanton, or I more shy, And after the bath I drew my garments close, Fearing thy soft persuasion amongst my hair When thou camest fresh with the ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... delicately fair skin, contrasted with braids of dark brown hair. She was rather above the ordinary height, slender, and graceful, and the childish beauty of the form or face and features surprised him; but to his mind the chief grace was the shy, sweet tenderness, happy and bright, but tremulous with the recent pain of the parting from home. With a kindly impulse, he said, 'You must tell me your name, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spires Of solemn cypress frame the descent Upon the blue, and open to sea— Here grew Ianthe maiden slim With none to spy but this gnarled man-brute; Most fair, most hid, like a wood-flower Slim for lack of light; so she grew In flowering line of limb And flower of face, retired and shy, Urged by the bland air; unknown, Lonely and lovely, husbanding Her great possessions—hers now, Another's when he cared to claim them. For thus went life: to lead the herds Of pricking deer she saw the great stags Battle in empty glades, then mate; Thus on the mountains chose the bears, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... up many factional differences from various causes, some personal, others political, and some, I regret to say, from downright moral obliquity—as, for example, those between Cortinas and Canales —who, though generally hostile to the Imperialists, were freebooters enough to take a shy at each other frequently, and now and then even to join forces against Escobedo, unless we prevented them by coaxing or threats. A general who could unite these several factions was therefore greatly needed, and on my return to New Orleans ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... officer of the regular army who had taken early advantage of the relaxation of the rule preventing such from accepting a volunteer appointment. A man of medium size, with light hair and sandy beard, his manner was rather diffident and shy, and his whole style quiet and reticent. His voice was light rather than heavy, and he was so laconic of speech that this, with his other characteristics, caused it to be commonly said of him that he had been so long fighting Indians on the frontier that he had acquired some of their traits ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... These require to be fed the same as turkeys. They are generally so shy, that they are seldom to be found for some days after hatching; and it is very wrong to pursue them, as many ignorant people do, under the idea of bringing them home. It only causes the hen to carry the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Why, Lila—" the old man looked up and saw the girl, "bless my eyes, child, how you do grow, and how pretty you look in your new ginghams—just like your mother, twenty years ago!" Amos Adams was talking to a shy young girl—blue-eyed and brown-haired, who was walking out of the store after buying a bottle of ink of Miss Calvin. Lila spoke to the old man and would have gone with him, but for the booming voice of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see you. Me? Says ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... assemblage in her own house; and if her choicest guests courted her notice as little as they would have done any where else, she was too much elated and flustered, and overheated to think about it. One of her principal concerns was to keep her eye on her husband, who, being a shy, timid man, with very little tact, was not much calculated for playing the host on such an occasion. He had, however, been doing better than she expected, when, a little before supper, he wandered through the crowd to where she was standing, for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... tombstones were crowded so thickly together that it seemed as if the dead must lie beneath them row on row. It was all in deep shadow, fallen slabs, rank periwinkle, dust and mould—no cheerful sunshine had ever penetrated through the spreading cedars overhead. Life was here, but it was the shy life of wild creatures, approaching man only when he had returned to earth. A mocking-bird purled a love note in the twilight of a great black cedar, a lizard glided like a gray shadow along one of the overturned slabs, and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Shy. Ho no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is a good man, is to haue you vnderstand me that he is sufficient, yet his meanes are in supposition: he hath an Argosie bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies, I vnderstand moreouer vpon the Ryalta, he hath a third at Mexico, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... quite sure that it isn't because she is my daughter that I think so. But, all the same, I'm afraid she'll never be as popular as Lucy is. She is so distant and overbearing to men that they are shy of her." ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the blindness of this insufferable ass? Don't you see, man—don't you see that she is waiting to throw herself into your arms? and you, you poor ninny, are giving yourself airs, and doing the grand heroic! And then the shy coquetry comes in again. The pathetic eyes are full of a grave compassion, if he must really never see her more. The cat plays with the poor mouse, and pretends that really the tender thing is gone away at last. He will take this half ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... anxious that it should reach you as soon as possible. If the obligations, Curio, had only been on your side, and as great as they are usually proclaimed by you rather than as valued by me, I should have been more shy of coming to you for any request of importance which I might have to make. For it is very disagreeable to a modest man to ask a great favour from one whom he thinks under an obligation to himself, lest he should seem rather to ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... shy on them right now," said Stubbs. "So you will have to do the best you can without 'em. If you are questioned, which I don't believe you will be, say that you have sold out; that you have thrown your baskets away and that you are going to try to get ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... up like a geranium and smiles shy, like he always does when he's kidded. "If you please, sir," says he, "it's only a lady; to see ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... its gray turrets and towers piercing the amber air, its ivied walls, and tall stacks of chimneys, Catheron Royals came in view at last. The fallow deer browsed undisturbed, gaudy peacocks strutted in the sun, a fawn lifted its shy wild eyes and fled away at their approach. Over ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... force my way past the edge of the mystery, the sinister shadow which wrapped her round, and penetrate to the heart of it? I recalled her beauty, childlike yet sullen; her eyes, so forthright at times and transparently innocent, yet at times so swiftly clouded with suspicion, not merely shy, but shy with terror, like the eyes of a wild creature entrapped; her bearing, by turns disdainful and defiant with a guarded shame. This turf, these boulders, had made her bower, these matted creepers her curtain. Here she had lived secure among savage men, each one of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... The slightest possible tinge of additional colour was in her cheeks. She was walking on the top of a green bank, with the wind blowing her skirts around her. The turn of her head was a little diffident, almost shy. Her eyes were asking him questions. At that moment she seemed to him, with her slim body, her gently parted lips and soft, tremulous eyes, almost like a child. He drew a little nearer ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... favoured region until he came upon the buffalo sign—"roads", "wallows", and "bois de vache;" and next morning he found himself in the midst of vast herds, roaming about like tame cattle, and browsing at their leisure. So little shy were they, they scarce deigned to ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... in silence, till we reached our journey's end,—I too tired, he too reserved, too preoccupied, or too shy, to speak again; but when, at last, we were seated with our cigars on the Deacon's door-step, he turned suddenly to me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four murders or three. Does it not come ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... touch of the fighting spirit in the trait called aggressiveness. He is rarely shy or retiring. To do well, he must be prepared for rebuffs, and he is possessed of a species of courage and resistance against refusal and humiliation. In the highest form the persuader is a teacher ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... droll way of answering: she was always so lively. It is really rather wonderful that I should come to hear so much about him, all through Mr. Hans knowing Rex, and then my having the pleasure of knowing you," Anna ended, looking at Mrs. Meyrick with a shy grace. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... knew it all; but she held her peace. The Bishop also had held his peace, and a little bit for the same reason that Catia had done. He knew the theological history of Scott Brenton; he knew that, like all half-broken colts, he easily might shy at first sight of the harness; yet, once with the harness on and fitted to his back, he would fall to work in earnest and pull steadily with the best of them. And it was the pulling that the Bishop wished, not the mere jingling of the farthingale. Under the last incumbent, Saint Peter's ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I was no longer shy. Nature prompted me to an act of gallantry that gratified the lady immensely. Falling on my knees, I glued my lips to the delicious spot, pushing my tongue in as far as I could, and sucked it. It was quite spunky; I had no doubt ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... girl who was standing out against her people, to a gathering that consisted of a very old lady with an extremely wrinkled skin and a deep voice who was wearing what appeared to Ann Veronica's inexperienced eye to be an antimacassar upon her head, a shy, blond young man with a narrow forehead and glasses, two undistinguished women in plain skirts and blouses, and a middle-aged couple, very fat and alike in black, Mr. and Mrs. Alderman Dunstable, of the Borough Council of Marylebone. These ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... starvation of thousands of Englishmen on the sands of Holland. If English policy was once more to become a real and serious thing, it was plain that the great need of the nation was the dismissal of Buckingham. But Charles clung to Buckingham more blindly than his father had done. The shy reserve, the slow stubborn temper of the new king found relief in the frank gaiety of the favourite, in his rapid suggestions, in the defiant daring with which he set aside all caution and opposition. James had looked on Buckingham as his pupil. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... entered without any definite design, further than, as Crozier said, to "have a shy at the tiger." Besides, as they have been told, a night in San Francisco would not be complete without a look in ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... can show. George! I tell you in confidence I don't like the looks of Mr. Sedley's affairs. My chief clerk, Mr. Chopper, does not like the looks of 'em, and he's an old file, and knows 'Change as well as any man in London. Hulker & Bullock are looking shy at him. He's been dabbling on his own account I fear. They say the Jeune Amelie was his, which was taken by the Yankee privateer Molasses. And that's flat—unless I see Amelia's ten thousand down you don't marry her. I'll have ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... still sat talking as if he forgot that he should have to go out in the rain. In the midst of a laugh which had prevented their hearing a premonitory knock, the door opened, and Mrs Grey's twin daughters entered, looking half-shy, half-eager. Never before had they been known to come out in heavy rain: but they were so very desirous to see cousin Margaret after she had been in the water!—and Sydney had held the great gig umbrella over himself and them, as papa would not hear of Sydney not coming:—he was ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... much was Norman, who continued to see many perfections in George, and contrived, by the force of his belief, to impress the same on the others, and to make them think his great talent for silence such a proof of his discretion, that they were not staggered, even by his shy blundering exclamation that his wedding would be a great nuisance—a phrase which, as Dr. May observed, was, to him, what Est-il-possible was to his namesake ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... of September came all too soon, and school began. Among the boys and girls who went trooping up to the "East Corner knowledge-box," as they called it, was our friend Ben, with a pile of neat books under his arm. He felt very strange, and decidedly shy; but put on a bold face, and let nobody guess that, though nearly thirteen, he had never been to school before. Miss Celia had told his story to Teacher, and she, being a kind little woman, with young brothers of her own, made things ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... wives and children—as Billy had. The other feeling, which came later on, and was a reaction in fact, was the feeling of a man who thinks he's been twisted round a woman's little finger for the benefit of somebody else. Billy said that he couldn't help being reminded by the shy, sweet smile and the shy, sweet "thank you" of the Pretty Girl in the Army, of the shy, sweet smile and the shy, sweet gratitude of a Sydney private barmaid, who had once roped him in, in the days before he was married. Then he'd ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... a great difference what kind of fox you use, however. I once had a fox on my Pumpkin Butte estates that lasted me three years, and I never knew him to shy or turn out of the road for anything but a loaded team. He was the best fox for hunting purposes that I ever had. Every spring I would sprinkle him with Scotch snuff and put him away in the bureau till fall. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye |
