"Bashfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... philosophical and religious studies. Once a year, says Horace Walpole, the good old man was carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious chef-d'oeuvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatler, refers to Wren's vexations, and attributes them to his modesty and bashfulness. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... being thus checked, overcome with grief, casting their eyes upon the ground, and betraying their bashfulness with blushing, went sadly away. But I, whose sight was dimmed with tears, so that I could not discern what this woman might be, so imperious, and of such authority, was astonished, and, fixing my countenance upon the earth, began to expect with silence what she would do afterward. Then she ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... finery which Drugget had supplied. His shop was often visited in a morning by ladies who left their coaches in the next street, and crept through the alley in linen gowns. Drugget knows the rank of his customers by their bashfulness; and, when he finds them unwilling to be seen, invites them up stairs, or retires with them ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... went home to my lodgings in a state of perfect ecstasy. The vague half presentiment, half suspicion, which had been arising within me, had vanished. The sudden constraint in Liza's manner towards me I ascribed to maidenly bashfulness, timidity.... Hadn't I read a thousand times over in many books that the first appearance of love always agitates and alarms a young girl? I felt supremely happy, and was already making all sorts of plans ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... had not counted on this. He felt an absurd bashfulness tying his tongue. At length he ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said the Master, "we have these results: for deferential demeanor, a worried one; for calm attentiveness, awkward bashfulness; for manly conduct, disorderliness; ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... America. Another passenger on the Mayflower was Priscilla Mullins, daughter of William Mullins, a maiden of unusual beauty, just blooming into womanhood. The gallant widower fell in love with Priscilla, but for some reason which does not clearly appear, but probably bashfulness, he sent another to do his courting. Standish himself was about thirty-seven years of age, and doubtless showed the effect of his hard service in the wars. Nevertheless, he might have won Priscilla had he gone for her in person, for, as the military leader of the colony, beset as ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... "I was," says he, "about seventeen, when I first came to town; an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings out of the country with one: however, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who used to resort thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... texture can exceed the satin smoothness of the fibres which line its heart. There are a class of people in New England who betray the uprising of the softer feelings of our nature only by an increase of outward asperity—a sort of bashfulness and shyness leaves them no power of expression for these unwonted guests of the heart—they hurry them into inner chambers and slam the doors upon them, as if they were vexed at ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... apartment. Lord Evandale and she met with mutual embarrassment, which Lady Margaret, who only knew in general that their union had been postponed by her granddaughter's indisposition, set down to the bashfulness of a bride and bridegroom, and, to place them at ease, began to talk to Lady Emily on indifferent topics. At this moment Edith, with a countenance as pale as death, muttered, rather than whispered, to Lord Evandale a request to speak with ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... side of the head we have Modesty and Reverence, the former running down into Bashfulness and the latter into Humility or Servility. Next to these we find Sublimity, which was correctly suggested by the Edinburgh phrenologists. It lies ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... character of an ambassador, and the negotiation would not be difficult except in the matter of keeping my countenance. It was all too extravagantly nonsensical, and I conceived that it would be best to compose for myself a grave demeanour. I practised this in my boat as I went along, but the bashfulness that came secretly upon me the moment I stepped on the deck of the Diana is inexplicable. As soon as we had exchanged greetings Hermann asked me eagerly if I knew whether Falk ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... no man from the moon could have been more an alien on those sidewalks. He was naturally diligent, active, quick-witted, and of good, though maybe a little too scholarly address; quick of temper, it is true, and uniting his quickness of temper with a certain bashfulness,—an unlucky combination, since, as a consequence, nobody had to get out of its way; but he was generous in fact and in speech, and never held malice a moment. But, besides the heavy odds which his small secret seemed to be against him, stopping him from accepting such valuable ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... absolutely that ever could occur to Barton, and it never had as yet, was the possibility of his being an object of interest personally to a woman, or to women. He was modest—almost to bashfulness; but as he never presumed, he was never snubbed; and now, on this summer afternoon, he had came upon a group of seven or eight of the most attractive girls of the neighborhood, accompanied by one or two strangers. There was Julia, never so lovely before, with a warm color on her cheek, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... people on that coast I never wish to meet. It was the caution of a child who had burnt his fingers, not once but many times. Had I known what I afterwards learned of Farmer Hosking's tribulations as landlord of a 'secluded country residence,' I should have approached him with the bashfulness proper to my suit and faltered as I undertook to prove the bright exception in a long line of painful experiences. He had bought the Tresillack estate twenty years before—on mortgage, I fancy—because the land adjoined his own ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off. Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to say a Frenchman has no word for home. But the conclusion that the man of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... admiration had, in reality, been addressed to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, her spirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it was,—the mere possibility that I, so very a child, should have called up the most transitory sense of bashfulness or confusion upon any female cheek, first,—and suddenly, as with a flash of lightning, penetrating some utter darkness, illuminated to my own startled consciousness, never again to be obscured, the pure and powerful ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... mother was inside it, by her shadow on its glass. Suddenly, just as Hugh was about to say she need not hurry in—whereupon she would have vanished like a light blown out—she faced him. "D'you ever suffer from bashfulness—diffidence?" ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... to the village, a straggling, picturesque place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met, carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good morning with the prettiest air of bashfulness and good humour imaginable. One of them, a rosy, beautiful child, who proudly informed us that she was six years old, put down her jug at a cottage-gate and ran on before to show us the way, delighted to be singled out from her ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... worst piece of the Hexameron creation.... This is the composition of some amorous person, who, animated with the same spirit and affection as I am, hath undertaken, and judged it his duty too, to satisfie you, and he hopes so far as to work upon you a persuasion that the modesty, bashfulness, debonairete and civility, together with all qualifications that adorn and beautifie the soul, are as exemplarily eminent in women of this age as ever they were in any of the former; and instruct you to set a value on their ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Bryan, inwardly highly amused at the girl's bashfulness in venturing in when she saw a ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... who said they did not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground, or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl—but ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... in her moan'd reply 'Favor from one so sad and so forlorn As I am!' half abash'd him; yet unask'd, His bashfulness and tenderness at war, He set himself ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... sorry the lot fell upon me; for I was always bashful, and never thought much of myself but once. I think my bashfulness was mostly owing to my knowing myself to be not very good-looking. I believe that I am not considered a bad-looking old man; indeed, people who remember me at twenty-five say that I have grown handsome every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... not know of Eudoxie's end. Lamuse said no more to any one of the ultimate and awful embrace in which he clasped her body. He regretted—I knew it—his whispered confidence to me that evening, and up to his death he kept the horrible affair sacred to himself, with tenacious bashfulness. So we see Farfadet continuing to live his airy existence with the living likeness of that fair hair, which he only leaves for the scarce monosyllables of his contact with us. Corporal Bertrand has still the same soldierly and serious ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and Lucilla grew up in beauty. The stranger traits of her character increased in strength, but perhaps in the natural bashfulness of maidenhood they became more latent. At the age of fifteen, her elastic shape had grown round and full, and the wild girl had already ripened to the woman. An expression of thought, when the play of her features was in repose, that dwelt upon her lip and forehead, gave her the ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the wife of To-jo. Among the Kro-lu she would find another mate after the manner of the strange Caspakian world; but she told me very frankly that whenever I returned, she would leave her mate and come to me, as she preferred me above all others. I was becoming a ladies' man after a lifetime of bashfulness! ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... got clear of the mouth of the river, we were tolerably well acquainted with each other. I made myself perfectly at home, and gained the friendship of all the passengers. I had none of that false shame or bashfulness about me which makes so many English boys appear to disadvantage among strangers, and prevents them from gaining the regard of their acquaintance, though I had perfect respect for my elders, and due deference for the opinions ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... but feebly carried on. The space was almost impracticably small; and the Irish wenches combined the extreme of bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence and roughness of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up its voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it and snapping fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she had ever seen him, and another gentleman, of whom her eye took in only the general outlines of fashion and comfortable circumstances, now too strange to it to go unnoted. In Fleda's usual mood her next movement would have been made with a demureness that would have looked like bashfulness. But the amusement and pleasure of the day just passed had for the moment set her spirits free from the burden that generally bound them down; and they were as elastic as her step, as she came forward and presented ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... natural timidity. This sentiment is especially strong in children. The sentiment of sexual modesty in man thus rests on timidity and on the fear of not doing as others do. It betrays itself toward women by awkwardness and bashfulness behind which eroticism is often ill concealed. The timid and bashful man carefully endeavors to hide his sexual feelings from others. The object of modesty is in itself immaterial to the psychology of this sentiment, and shame is sometimes inspired not only by very different ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... heart, the quick feelings, the earnestness, the modesty, the conscientiousness, the reverence for the good opinion of their fellow-men, which is the beginning of eternal life. Do you not see it in the young? Modesty, bashfulness, shame-facedness—as the good old English word was—that is the very beginning of all goodness in boys and girls. It is the very material out of which all other goodness is made; and those who laugh at, or torment, young people ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... fine instincts of women his infirmity was especially conspicuous, and he drifted into misogyny through bashfulness and pride; and yet misogyny was incompatible with his scheme of life and his ambition. He felt himself to be worthy of the full diapason of home life; he desired to be as other men were, besides ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... go his own way; and his only friend and protector had been Richard, whom, under the name of Fowen, he took for a genuine Englishman, and loved with all his heart. If anything would ever cure him of his wilful awkwardness and dogged bashfulness, it was likely to be the kindness of Richard—above all, in the absence of the tormentors, for Hamlyn de Valence alone of the other pages had been selected to attend upon the Prince in this expedition; and he, though scornful and peremptory, did not think the boy ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fail in its object. No flattery could ever prevail with him to listen to unjust petitions; and he held that to be overcome by the importunities of shameless and fawning entreaties, though some compliment it with the name of modesty and bashfulness, was the worst disgrace a great man could suffer. And he used to say, that he always felt as if they who could deny nothing could not have behaved well in the flower of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... neglect the reparation of the moral condition of the race? We have suffered, my brethren, in the whole domain of morals. We are still suffering as a race in this regard. Take the sanctity of marriage, the facility of divorce, the chastity of woman, the shame, modesty, and bashfulness of girlhood, the abhorrence of illegitimacy, and there is no people in this land who, in these regards, have received such deadly thrusts as this race of ours. And these qualities are the grandest ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... to expect that a much-heralded book will fail, when it does eventually appear, to fulfil the promise of its publishers, it is the more pleasant to find oneself agreeing with Messrs. HODDER AND STOUGHTON that bashfulness on their part would have been out of place in regard to Mr. JAMES W. GERARD'S memoirs, My Four Years in Germany. As read in their completed and collected form these papers are not only, as one could foresee, of historic importance, but they are moreover capital reading. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... a private audience then he kissed her hand, and those of the King and his saintly sister, Elizabeth, while the Queen gratefully expressed her thanks, and the King stood by, with tears in his eyes, but withheld by his awkward bashfulness from expressing the feelings ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to his fingers ends—a tear of sentimental bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle Toby—and a tear of sorrow for his brother's misfortunes, started into his eye, and ran sweetly down his cheek together; my uncle Toby's kindled as one lamp does at ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of bashfulness about it, but he followed his father, and in a few minutes more the rough, bearded, red-shirted fellows were giving him three of the most ringing cheers he had ever heard. Ha-ha-pah-no and Na-tee-kah looked at him with something that was half wonder. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... extended her hand. Scully, trembling, thrust forward one of his huge kid-gloves, and led her to the head of the country-dance. John Perkins—who I presume had been drinking pretty freely, so as to have forgotten his ordinary bashfulness—looked at the three Gorgons in blue, then at the pretty smiling one in white, and stepping up to her, without the smallest hesitation, asked her if ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Billy highly offended, "why at home my folks were thinking of having a doctor treat me for bashfulness I'm ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... which had all the airs and graces of a village coquette, together with the bashfulness of a school miss, seemed to Katie and Dolores, but especially Katie, a very rich and wondrous thing. She always knew that Mrs. Russell was a gushing, sentimental creature, but had never before seen her ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... think he'll get over his bashfulness, and so will some of the others," answered Songbird Powell. "And let me tell you one thing—when I first got here I thought the men were a pretty rough crowd, but the more I get to know them, the more I'm satisfied they're ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... unexpected by Blanche, but it was done with such a noble grace by the boy, and with an air of such delicate refinement, while a glow of boyish bashfulness swept over his fine face, that the most fastidious could not have found in it just cause for resentment, much less the guileless ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... the eastern country leaked out, and the consequence was, that he became a lion in Riverdale. The minister invited him to tea, as well as other prominent persons, for the sake of hearing his story; but Bobby declined the polite invitations from sheer bashfulness. He had not brass enough to make himself a hero; besides, the remembrance of his journey was anything but ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... — N. modesty; humility &c 879; diffidence, timidity; retiring disposition; unobtrusiveness; bashfulness &c adj.; mauvaise honte [Fr.]; blush, blushing; verecundity^; self-knowledge. reserve, constraint; demureness &c adj.; blushing honors [Henry VIII]. V. be modest &c adj.; retire, reserve oneself; give way to; draw in one's horns &c 879; hide ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... worthy for the press, were no other thing than wilfully to defraud yourself of an universal thank, your friends of their expectations, and sweet Gismund of a famous eternity, I will cease to doubt of any other pretence to cloak your bashfulness, hoping to read it in print (which lately lay neglected amongst your papers) at our ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... great conversational abilities and immense power of small talk, so that Verdant felt quite at ease in her society, and found his natural timidity and quiet bashfulness to be greatly diminished, even if they were not altogether put on one side. They were always such capital friends, and Miss Patty was so kind and thoughtful in making Verdant appear to the best advantage, and in looking over any little gaucheries to which his bashfulness ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... displeasure in the looks of both the mother and the son, yet, regardless of consequences, I ventured, uninvited, to enter the house. In order to shake off the restraint which I felt my society imposed, I found it absolutely necessary to divest myself of bashfulness, and to exert such conversational powers as I possessed. I succeeded so well that the discourse soon became lively and animated; and what chiefly delighted me was, that she, for whose sake I had committed my present rudeness, became radiant with smiles. I had been ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tall, spectacled man emerged from the crowd, and, beaming with a pleasing elderly bashfulness through his spectacles, gave it as his opinion that though gorsoon was a term usually applied to the male child, it was equally applicable to the female. "But, indeed," he concluded, "the Bench has as good Irish as ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the name of Reine Vincart had come to his lips, a feeling of bashfulness, in addition to his ordinary timidity, had prevented him from interrogating Claudet concerning the character of this mysterious queen of the woods. Like all novices in love-affairs Julien dreaded that his feelings should be divined, at the mere mention of the young girl's ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... which it was necessary that a gig should be hired all the way from Prestwick. Herriot had not been anxious to go over, alleging various excuses,—the absence of dress clothes, the calls of Stone and Toddy, his bashfulness, and the absurdity of paying fifteen shillings for a gig. But he went at last, constrained by his friend, and a very dull evening he passed. Lizzie was quite unlike her usual self,—was silent, grave, and solemnly courteous; Miss Macnulty had not a word to say for herself; and even ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... prey to the most thrilling terrors. You were a moving picture of tender masculinity in distress. You let bashfulness like a worm i' th' bud prey upon your damask cheek. Have you a damask cheek? Stand out! I wish to consider you impartially. YOU needn't look ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... downcast eyes - Our famous look of mild surprise (Which competition still defies) - Our celebrated "Sir!!!" Then all the crowd take down our looks In pocket memorandum books. To diagnose, Our modest pose The kodaks do their best: If evidence you would possess Of what is maiden bashfulness, You only need a button press - And WE do all ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... reputation of the profession in America far more than for our own, for we know better than the profession how very valuable publicity of the kind is to architects. The late Mr. Richardson, even to a comparatively late period in his professional career, was afflicted with the usual bashfulness about having his work published. We well remember the solicitations, the refusals, the renewed appeals, and, finally, the reluctant and conditional assent to have a single gelatine print from one of his perspectives published. This was ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... ladder I saw nothing save a young man with thick gauntlets standing guard over an iron wheel valve in a big pipe that ran along the deck. A stout, iron-grey man in uniform was leaning against the sky-light on the poop-deck as we came past the funnels. With a slight bashfulness Mr. Carville turned, and making a vague introductory gesture, pronounced our names. I caught the words "Chief Officer" and "come to have a look round!" There was a little further parley, in which the "Old Man," ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... discover the wounds of their souls to you, by appearing too rashly and too hastily severe. How enormous soever their sins may be, hear them, not only with patience, but with mildness; help out even their bashfulness, by testifying to them your compassion, and not seeming to be amazed at what you hear. Insinuate into them, that you have heard in confession sins of a much more crying nature: and, lest they should despair ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... mind. When he did publish the collection, nothing appeared in the style and form of the publication that indicated any arrogance of merit. On the contrary, it was brought forward with a degree of diffidence, which, if it did not deserve the epithet of modesty, could incur nothing harsher than that of bashfulness. It was printed at the obscure market-town press of Newark, was altogether a very homely, rustic work, and no attempt was made to bespeak for it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... affections, relating the impressions of the environment with one another and with our impulses in quite different ways from those mere associations of coexistence and succession which are practically all that pure empiricism can admit. Take the love of drunkenness; take bashfulness, the terror {187} of high places, the tendency to sea-sickness, to faint at the sight of blood, the susceptibility to musical sounds; take the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry, for mathematics, or for metaphysics,—no one ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... qualifications pointed out, integrity, and a gentle and humane disposition,—honesty, and a good heart;— are such as any one may boldly lay claim to, without fear of being taxed with vanity or ostentation.—And if individuals in private stations, on any occasion are called upon to lay aside their bashfulness and modest dissidence, and come forward into public view, it must surely be, when by their exertions they can essentially contribute to promote measures which are calculated to increase the ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... of thousands such as we are be a sacrifice for thee; May the wisdom of the creation be thy worthy portion; May thy dark narcissus-eye be ever full of modesty; May thy cheek be ever tinged with bashfulness! If it be necessary to learn the art of the magician, To sew up the eyes with the bands of enchantment, We will fly till we surpass the enchanter's bird, We will run like the deer in search of a remedy. Perchance we may draw the King nigh unto his moon, And ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... at the opening of 1833, provided unquestionably with, a large stock of schoolboy bashfulness. The first time that business required me to go to the arm of the chair to say something to the Speaker, Manners Sutton—the first of seven whose subject I have been—who was something of a Keate, I remember the revival in me bodily of the frame of mind in which a schoolboy stands before ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to remember hard, after dozens of fluent and delightful letters, that he must encounter the old bashfulness again.... Plainly the Captain showed the years. There was the dark dry look of some inner consuming, and the trembling mouth was lined and assertive where formerly it was unnoticed in the general cheer. There was a break in rotundity. Perhaps this, more than anything else, put a strange hush upon ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... now to where they were sitting, to select a flat boulder for spreading their table-cloth upon, and, amid the discussion on that subject, the matter pending between Knight and Elfride was shelved for a while. He read her refusal so certainly as the bashfulness of a girl in a novel position, that, upon the whole, he could tolerate such a beginning. Could Knight have been told that it was a sense of fidelity struggling against new love, whilst no less assuring as to his ultimate victory, it might have entirely abstracted the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the sound dying away, I made a full stop; while Narcissa, starting, blushed, and, with a timid accent answered, "Sir?" Confounded at this note of interrogation, I pronounced with the most sheepish bashfulness, "Madam!" To which she replied, "I beg pardon—I thought you had spoken to me." Another pause ensued—I made another effort, and, though my voice faltered very much at the beginning, made shift to express myself in this manner: "I say, madam, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... That glass of hot whiskey-and-water, though it enhanced the melancholy tenderness of the young man, robbed him of his bashfulness, and loosened the strings of his tongue. "For three years! And there was a time when she worshipped the very stool on which I sat at the office. I don't like ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... down, though he had not been invited to do so, as he was wont to do in the bygone happy days when they were official colleagues together. It was Meyer's custom never to look those whom he was addressing in the face, which bashfulness deprived him, of course, of the advantage of being able to read from their countenances what impression he was making upon them. He was therefore greatly surprised when, on finishing his speech, his Honour Judge Bordacsi roared ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... glowed with pleasure at this boyish praise of her sister, and stored it up to repeat to Meg. Both peeped and critisized and chatted till they felt like old acquaintances. Laurie's bashfulness soon wore off, for Jo's gentlemanly demeanor amused and set him at his ease, and Jo was her merry self again, because her dress was forgotten and nobody lifted their eyebrows at her. She liked the 'Laurence boy' better than ever and took several good looks at him, so that she ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... where you come?" she asked with sweet bashfulness, raising two eyes as soft as brown velvet. "You speak English so very well—one ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... faith! Have you no modesty, no maiden shame, No touch of bashfulness? What! will you tear Impatient answers from my gentle tongue? Fie, fie! ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their wonder, surprise, and bashfulness in brute silence. For that reason, where the Orangcayas govern (which are almost all villages of the Subanos or Indians of the mountain), there is scarce one who enjoys liberty. Those chiefs hold them so under ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... looked at me with timid surprise. She made no answer; though that earnest, yet timid gaze, long remained, and for that matter, still remains, vividly impressed upon my recollection. It seemed to express astonishment, startled sensibility, feminine bashfulness, and maiden coyness; but it did not appear to me that it expressed displeasure. There was no time, however, to ask for explanations, since the voices of Herman Mordaunt and Bulstrode were now heard at the very door, and, at the next ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... exceedingly genial soul, this young man, and wholly free of affectation. It seemed to Carrie he was as yet only overcoming the last traces of the bashfulness of youth. He did not seem apt at conversation, but he had the merit of being well dressed and wholly courageous. Carrie felt as if it were not going to be ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... his turn, not from bashfulness, but rather like a man who desires more carefully to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... temperate diet so helpful in preserving thy virginity uncontaminated. And where is now that grave deportment, and that modest mien, and that plain attire which so become a virgin, and that beautiful blush of bashfulness, and that comely paleness—the delicate bloom of abstinence and vigils, that outshines every ruddier glow. How often in prayer that thou mightest keep unspotted thy virginal purity hast thou poured forth thy tears! How many letters ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... little girls of heaven such as the little boys who die when seven years old have for eternal playmates in some nook of Paradise. But even at this early age he was self-contained; and full of the exquisite bashfulness of adolescence he grew up without betraying the secret of his religious love. Mary grew up with him, being invariably a year or two older than himself, as should always be the case with one's chiefest friend. When he was eighteen, she was twenty; she no ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... well of the violet for its humility, I see no reason why I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too, plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the only commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselves according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversity of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takes offense ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... the advice of Caius, sent his youngest son into the market-place, with a herald's rod in his hand. He, being a very handsome youth, and modestly addressing himself, with tears in his eyes and a becoming bashfulness, offered proposals of agreement to the consul and the whole senate. The greatest part of the assembly were inclinable to accept of the proposals; but Opimius said, that it did not become them to send messengers and capitulate with the senate, but to surrender ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the speaker who had addressed them on the Kohlmarkt, conscious of his pledges and of the reward promised to him, overcame his momentary bashfulness and stepped boldly into the ante-room, where the others, encouraged by his example, followed him ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... tempered their desires and restrained them with gentle remedies, he has given to boys the boon of plenty, to young men merriment, and to the old security. But now, Scipio, that I have come to touch on your merits, I fear lest either your own noble modesty or my own native bashfulness may close my mouth. But I cannot refrain from touching on a very few of the many virtues which we so justly admire in you. Citizens whom he has saved, show with me that you ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... and emphatic: "Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." The term [Greek: anaideian], translated "importunity," signifies freedom from the bashfulness which cannot ask a second time. The shamefacedness which prevents a modest man from importuning a fellow-creature for a gift, after the first request has been refused, is out of place in the intercourse between an empty but believing suppliant and the God of all grace. If this Jewish ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... on one occasion dragged him into a house of ill-fame, from which he made his escape, preserving himself for the woman whom he might fall in love with some day. A fortunate opportunity had never come to him, so that, what with bashfulness, limited means, obstinacy, the force of custom, at fifty-two years, and in spite of his residence in the capital, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... while to have suspended his poetry: but he was soon called back to labour by the death of the Chancellor, for his place then became vacant; and though the Lord Hardwicke delayed for some time to give it away, Thomson's bashfulness or pride, or some other motive perhaps not more laudable, withheld him from soliciting; and the new Chancellor would not give him what he would not ask. He now relapsed to his former indigence; but the Prince of Wales was at that time struggling for popularity, and by the influence ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... manner round the room to a dirge-like march scraped upon the violin, the boys taking the parts of ladies jibbing away from their partners in a highly unlady-like fashion, and the boy burdened with the companionship of the younger Miss Mutlow walking along in a very agony of bashfulness. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... little May, who did not know what bashfulness was, 'I wish I might go and see him, too. I should so like to know if he has ever seen the island where ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... asked Tom, with a courage at which he afterward rather wondered; but he was fast getting rid of his country bashfulness. ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... Betty with animation. "I adore bravery and shyness combined. Methinks 'twould be delightsome to be the woman who could teach him how to face such a battery. Thee didn't live up to thy opportunity, Peggy. It was thy duty to cure such a fine fellow of bashfulness. It was thy duty, I say. Would I could ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... goodness of heart, but the young women particularly were objects of attraction, being tall, robust, and beautifully formed, their faces beaming with smiles, and indicating unruffled good humour; while their manners and demeanour exhibited a degree of modesty and bashfulness, that would have done honour to the most virtuous and enlightened people on earth. Their teeth are described as beautifully white, like the finest ivory, and perfectly regular, without a single exception; and all ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... was his only official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work and its interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help when it was needed, and for bashfulness both when it was needed and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rayahs, impute it to no want of modesty that, for once, I sink the graceful bashfulness of the virgin, and assume the more forward deportment of the queen. When all appear to possess such merit, how can I slight all but one by my decision? Let me rather leave it to the immortal Vishnu to decide who is most worthy to reign over this our ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... make excuses when in good humour with ourselves for the perhaps not unwilful slights of those whose approbation we wish to engage; so my sister found out a reason much to Mr. Lovelace's advantage for his not improving the opportunity that was given him.—It was bashfulness, truly, in him. [Bashfulness in Mr. Lovelace, my dear!]—Indeed, gay and lively as he is, he has not the look of an impudent man. But, I fancy, it is many, many years ago ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... complexion so transparent, or an eye so expressive. Her vermeil-tinctured lips were new-blown roses that engrossed the sight, and seemed to solicit to be plucked. His heart was caught in the tangles of her hair. Such an unaffected bashfulness, and so modest a blush; such an harmonious and meaning tone of voice, that expressed in the softest accents, the most delicate sense and the most winning simplicity, could not but engage the attention of a swain so versed in the science of the fair ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Instincts.—Among these are placed such instinctive tendencies as bashfulness, sympathy, the gregarious instinct, or love of companionship, anger, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Then she turned about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance of timidity, drew near to the young man. He on his side continued to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness. At length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and she reached out both her hands ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... measures whatever to promote his own candidacy. While not assuming airs of reluctance or bashfulness, he discouraged on the part of strangers any suggestion as to his reelection. Among his friends he made no secret of his readiness to continue the work he was engaged in, if such should be the general wish. "A second term would be a great honor and a great labor, which together, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... come, Papa dear, because—because I wouldn't let him! He got caught in the trap of his own horrid bashfulness." ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... I was falling in love with a rich Jewish girl whose face had a bashful expression of a peculiar type. There are different sorts of bashfulness. This girl had the bashfulness of sin, as I put it to myself. She looked as if her mind harbored illicit thoughts which she was trying to conceal. Her blushes seemed to be full of sex and her eyes full of secrets. She was not a pretty girl at all, but her "guilty look" disturbed me as long ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... habit, Sir John Finett stood confessed before them. He knelt penitently before the king, humbly assuring his Majesty that he had been preparing this device, and many others, to please and surprise him; but that, through the bungling of some, and the bashfulness of others, he was obliged to enact the parts himself. This excuse the king was graciously pleased to accept, commending him for his great ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... discuss their works, or merits, seriatim, as the judges call it; for I feel overwhelmed at the stringing together of such trisyllabic names. These gentlemen, as well as almost every one of their predecessors, are strangers to me; and you know my bashfulness and confusion in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... upon the low ottoman directly before me; but from motives of bashfulness I had kept my eyes averted during the time I was speaking. She heard me without interruption, and I ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... thing I had not bargained for. I felt very lonely. Yet I could no more have proposed to the landlord and landlady to admit me to their society (though I should have liked it—very much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate. Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be observed. Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were bashful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... glanced up at Sergius and smiled tauntingly; and another who turned her face away, and seemed to be trying to hide it in the close inspection of a great bunch of fleece. But both the forwardness of the one and the bashfulness of the other were wasted upon the visitor. As a matter of fact, he was so lost in wonder at his courage and self-control as to be well past observing the idiosyncrasies of slaves; and, if his own attitude was acceptable, even to himself, his admiration for that of his hostess amounted to ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... is bashfulness. One who is bashful finds in his intercourse with his fellows many worries. His hands and feet are too large, he blushes at a word, he doesn't know what to say or how, he is confused if attention is directed his way, his thoughts fly to the ends of the earth the moment he is addressed, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... began the girl, in great confusion. "I know—I only want one thing—to be of use to the people, and I can do nothing because I know nothing—" Her eyes were so truthful, so kind, and her expression of resoluteness and yet bashfulness was so touching, that Nekhludoff, as it often happened to him, suddenly felt as if he were in ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... borroweth no counterfeitures of other tongues to attire herself withal, but useth plainly her own with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and following of other excellent doth lead her unto, and if she want at any time (as being imperfect she must) yet let her borrow with such bashfulness that it may appear, that if either the mould of our own tongue could serve us to fashion a word of our own, or if the old denizened words could content and ease this need we would not ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that sort of thing," he replied. "Afraid of the place getting frippery. I've heard them talking about it in the car. And as they own every blessed cottage in the place...." He left the deduction to my imagination, and continued with the least touch of bashfulness, "You wouldn't care to come to us, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... referred her to Count Rechberg, the aide-de-camp on duty. With him Lola had more success. Boldness conquered where bashfulness would have failed. After a single swift glance, Count Rechberg decided that the applicant was eligible for admission to the "Presence," and reported ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... beside him. He gave her a smile of welcome, and explained to her, in his low voice, how it had happened that they had lost the track and the dog had not scented the animal till they were almost upon it. By this time she had forgotten her tears and her bashfulness, and he had drawn his knife to skin the bear on the spot. The flesh was of no value at this time; he meant to bury the carcass and take only the skin. So she held, and he skinned; then she ran down to the soeter for an axe and a spade; and although ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... seems strange, but it is so, I fancy, with the best of our young women. Her feeling of modesty—of bashfulness if you will—is outraged by being told that she is to admit this man as her lover. She won't make the worse wife on that account, when he gets ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... But when, as was often the case, the sensitive person was encouraged to openness by Fitzjames's downright ways, the implied compliment would be fully recognised. Lord Lytton, as an accomplished man of the world, was of course free from any awkward bashfulness; and at the very first interview was ready to meet Fitzjames half-way. His enthusiasm accordingly met with a rapid return. One of Fitzjames's favourite assertions was that nobody but a humbug could deny the pleasantness of flattery; and, in fact, I ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... sir, for I can't account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to me, solemn-like, 'Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus to make you whole?' I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say: 'Then you ought to be at school,' says he. I said nothing, because I couldn't. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand. And I ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... with an inward burst. "A bashful, ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is all very well—nobody likes a little of it better than I do; but there is no use running it ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... cup of coffee, Mr. O'Malley?" said the youth, with an air of almost timid bashfulness. "The doctor, I know, breakfasts at ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in him an air of great superiority that is very satisfactory. He lives with his college set, ... and has the air of one who is accustomed to be petted and indulged by those he lives with. Take away Hawthorne's bashfulness, and let him talk easily and fast, and you would have a pretty good Tennyson. I told him that his friends and I were persuaded that it was important to his health to make an instant visit to Paris, and that I was to go on Monday if he was ready. He was very good-humored, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... etc. A PERSON EMBARRASSED BY HIS BODY is the image suggested to us in all these examples. The reason that excessive stoutness is laughable is probably because it calls up an image of the same kind. I almost think that this too is what sometime makes bashfulness somewhat ridiculous. The bashful man rather gives the impression of a person embarrassed by his body, looking round for some convenient cloak-room in which to ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... folly hath wrought! Of a truth there's no call to complain of blindness in thy speech now, Master Alden. But still I have noted that if thou canst drive a bashful youth out of his bashfulness, there are no ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... business on his side and mixed business and sentiment on Mrs. Halligan's, Sylvester did not once look the landlady in the eye. His own eyes skipped hers, now across, now under, now over. There are some philanthropists who are overcome with such bashfulness in the face of their own good deeds. But, sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way to the station to buy Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his emerald rapidly about on his finger and whistled to himself. And cryptically he expressed ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... as other men do, I should sooner have learned the pleasures and pains of passion, the germ of which I carried in myself; but everything in me assumed an extraordinary character. The warmth of imagination, my bashfulness and solitude, caused me to turn back upon myself. For want of a real object, by the power of my vague desires, I evoked a phantom which never quitted me more. I know not whether the history of the human heart furnishes ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... after a few courteous words, came back to the blue eyes and brown hair; still he kept his look fixed upon her, and his tones grew sweeter and lower as he became more interested in talk, until this poor, dear Helen, what with surprise, and the bashfulness natural to one who had seen little of the gay world, and the stirring of deep, confused sympathies with this suffering father, whose heart seemed so full of kindness, felt her cheeks glowing with unwonted flame, and betrayed the pleasing trouble of her situation by looking so sweetly as to arrest ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of the meal, to which Sam, despite his bashfulness, did full justice, Mr. Chester opened his pocket-book and produced ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... few city absconders, to keep them company; but there was only good-fellowship between them. The enthusiasm increased with each orator's efforts, until the surveyor made in his own brusque fashion, which was marked by true Western absence of bashfulness, the speech of the evening. Some one who had once served the English press sent a report to a Victoria journal, of which I have a copy, but no print could reproduce the essence of the man's vigorous personality which vibrated ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the love is occasionally on the man's side; perhaps on the lady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken insensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity for sweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan. Perhaps some beloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory of her imagination; admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshipped his selfishness as manly superiority; treated his stupidity ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... once expressed her opinion that a young member would be better to sit in silence at least for one session, he was not driven to the mortification of feeling that he was incurring her contempt by his bashfulness. As regarded the men among whom he lived, I think he was almost annoyed at finding that no one seemed to expect that he should speak. Barrington Erle, when he had first talked of sending Phineas down to Loughshane, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... 'high life,' was an alarming ordeal for the country youth, who made prodigious preparations, drove to the house in a state of abject terror, and in five minutes was sitting on an ottoman, talking to Lady Beaumont, and more at ease than he had ever been in his life. In truth, bashfulness was ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... What are painted pots? They are little dabs of wretched clay, but painted in beautiful colors; they are just what naivete, bashfulness, modesty, and darned socks like them would be to-day ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made his way across the room to meet her with a quite youthful bashfulness, cannoning apologetically against Romeos and Marguerites, hoping that she would ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... among "sins of daily committal, to which we all are liable," the "sin" of "lying, from bashfulness [or modesty], or 'necessity.'"[1] Origen also speaks of the frequency of "lying, or of idle talking;"[2] as if possibly its frequency were in some sense an excuse for it. And Origen specifically claimed that the apostles Peter and Paul agreed together to deceive their hearers at Antioch ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... Miss Sydney, they says so," replied the lad, whose condition as the father of a family seemed to cast him into depths of bashfulness. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... bashfulness with a courageous effort, she advanced toward the officer, who was still turning his back ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Dick to congratulate him and examine the piece, he stood with a mingled feeling of bashfulness and delight at his unexpected good fortune. Recovering himself suddenly, he seized his old rifle, and dropping quietly to the outskirts of the crowd, while the men were still busy handling and discussing the merits of the prize, went up, unobserved, to a boy of about thirteen years of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... knowing it, initiated them into spiritual things? At such a time we would throw ourselves at the feet of this father, would tell him in burning words of our admiration and gratitude. We cannot do it, for the soul has its own bashfulness; but who knows that our disquietude and embarrassment do not betray us, and unveil, better than words could do, the depths of our heart? The air they breathed at Portiuncula was all impregnated with ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... doth not proceed from any malitious ill-natur'd Coyness, as some imagine, but from an ingenuous modesty and bashfulness, which usually accompanies, and is a proof of Simplicity: Tis very rare, says Pliny, to find a man so exquisitely skillful, as to be able to show those Features in a Picture which he hides, and I think it to be so difficult a task, that none ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... deep that, as the letter dropped from my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farm boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumb tentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red hands, while she, beside me, made canvas ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... a blind and misplaced passion. He was indeed utterly incapable of availing himself of the opportunities afforded by his situation, to involve his pupil in the toils of a mutual passion. Honour and gratitude alike forbade such a line of conduct, even had it been consistent with the natural bashfulness, simplicity, and innocence of his disposition. To sigh and suffer in secret, to form resolutions of separating himself from a situation so fraught with danger, and to postpone from day to day the accomplishment ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott |
