"Reticent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manifestation in human form of Him who afterwards became flesh and dwelt among us, or some other supernatural embodiment, for that one purpose, of the divine presence,—any of these hypotheses is consistent with the intentionally reticent text. What it leaves unspoken, we shall wisely leave undetermined. God acts and speaks through 'the man.' That is all we can ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... near the middle of the afternoon, when Waukko, who was the leader of the little group, suddenly showed great excitement, which speedily communicated itself to his companions. All three of these scamps were sullen and reticent, frequently riding for hours at a time without exchanging a word, so that this excitement meant something. The three halted simultaneously, and talked loudly and excitedly, so that Fred suspected that some cause for a quarrel ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... for God and the church, and his lips were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. He was animated enough when drawn out in discussion religious, educational, or political, but he had great powers of silence. I once took him to see General Grant, our reticent President. On that occasion they both seemed to do their best in the art of quietude. The great military President with his closed lips on one side of me, and my brother with his closed lips on the other ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... of in the Essays, with an equal persistence and an equal wealth of illustration, is Montaigne himself. The least reticent of writers, he furnishes his readers with every conceivable piece of information concerning his history, his character, his appearance, his health, his habits and his tastes. Here lies the peculiar charm of his book—the endless garrulity of its confidences, which, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... in: khaki-clad, vigorous, and gay as ever; and when he heard the news he was less reticent, and exclaimed outright, "But what do you want to go away for? Why, it will be quite a treat for you to have ladies there; and who knows, one of the heiresses may be very charming—charming enough ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... before where she was to go with Aunt Victoria. It was the habit of the family to conceal all such arrangements from the children, and indeed from each other as much as possible. Aunt Victoria observed that Caroline was singularly reticent, and Mrs. Caldwell complained that Aunt Victoria made a mystery of everything. It was a hard habit, which robbed Beth of what would have been so much to her, something to look forward to. Since she knew that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... knitted for me. Harton came into my cabin in the morning, and we had a cigar together. He says that he remembers having seen Goring in Cleveland, Ohio, in '69. He was, it appears, a mystery then as now, wandering about without any visible employment, and extremely reticent on his own affairs. The man interests me as a psychological study. At breakfast this morning I suddenly had that vague feeling of uneasiness which comes over some people when closely stared at, and, looking quickly up, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her shy, secluded girlhood, to the years of her married life, and to the way in which she had been living since she and her husband parted. She reflected with a smile, half pity, half contempt, of the proud, reticent girl who had pored over books and drawings in the musty, deserted library at home, almost wondering if she were the same being. She looked from the Joy Street mall across the hollow which holds the Frog Pond, the most charming view on the Common, yet not even the ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... everything was of the best, and when three or four of the elder man's friends would come to dine, as happened occasionally, the contents of the cellar made them look at each other over their glasses. Mr. Lenox was very reticent in all matters relating to himself, and in his talks with his son, which were mostly at the table, rarely spoke of business matters in general, and almost never of his own. He had read well, and was fond of talking of his reading ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... their level is not more impossible than for these aborigines to be perfectly open, as children are, towards the white. Whatever subject the stranger within their gates exhibits an interest in, that they will be reticent about; and their reticence, which conceals itself under easily invented lies or an affected stupidity, invariably increases with his desire for information. It was plain to them that some very unusual interest took me to the wood; consequently I could not expect that they would ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... the woman was not at all reticent, that she had been a low comedian and a dancer at Drury Lane Theatre, and like most comedians, high tragedy was her passion, and had been ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... five, two were English: Lieutenant Thackeray, a civilly reticent gentleman whose right arm rested in a black silk sling, making a flying trip to visit a married sister in New York; Archer Bartholomew, Esq., solicitor, a red-cheeked, bright-eyed, white-haired, brisk little Cockney, beyond ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... is full and varied and brilliant. But it is pre-eminently the seraphic sweetness of Franck's style that distinguishes his music and sets it over against this other that is so hard of edge and thin of substance. Over it there plays a light and luminous tenderness, an almost naive and reticent and virginal quality. The music of "Psyche" is executed with the lightest of musical brushes. It is as sweet and lucent and gracious as a fresco of Raphael's. The lightest, the silkiest of veils floats in the section marked "Le Sommeil de Psyche"; the gentlest of zephyrs carries the maiden to ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... full of sensibility and expression, and that she was a person of singular purity of mind. Hawthorne's father, whom my friend knew well, she describes as a warm-hearted and kindly man, very fond of children. He was somewhat inclined to melancholy, and of a reticent disposition. He was a great reader, employing all his leisure time at ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... all in an instant. 'They, too, are on the watch,' she thought to herself bitterly. The strong reticent nature was outraged by the perception that she had been for days the unconscious actor in a drama of which her sisters and Mrs. Thornburgh had been the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more clear-headed group of enemies the Puritan is to be censured chiefly for the rigidity of his conscience. He will not let us enjoy such "natural" pleasures as mirth, love, drinking, and idleness without a bitter antidote of remorse. He keeps books dull and reticent, makes plays virtuously didactic, and irritates all but the meek and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... you only want to entertain people in order that they may see you do it, and not because you want to see them. It's vulgar, somehow—that's what I suspect our nation of being. Our inability to speak frankly of money is another sign. We do money too much honour by being so reticent about it. The fact is that it is the one sacred subject among us. People are reticent about religion and books and art, because they are not sure that other people are interested in them. But they are reticent about money as a matter of duty, because ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Soothly, who can say? Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way, Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute. But the belts of all of them simply bulge ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Hunter and Dyer and two staff captains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the empty chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword contrasting with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crape on his arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar just apparent above his velvet tips, and now and then he speaks to ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... athlete, and his medical ability, which was given gratuitously to all. He was said to have been concerned in some of the many South American revolutions, but although we were friendly from this time until his death, he never alluded to such an occurrence. I realised, however, that he was very reticent as to his early life, and the gossip may have had ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... protesting Mac received a good thumping, and I doubted not in the least that he deserved it. The wonder of the affair, however, was the fact that no one appeared to know what had made the Rube so furious. The porter would not tell, and Mac was strangely reticent, though his smile was one to make a fellow exceedingly sure something out of the ordinary had befallen. It was not until I was having breakfast in Providence that I learned the true cause of Rube's conduct, and Milly confided it to me, insisting ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... utterly impossible, not to be prolonged. It was the strong, cool determination inherited from Thomas Rose that held Flavia equal to the demands of her mother's bequeathment of reticent pride. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... infinitely astonished, for Maxwell, my companion on our bicycling and walking tour, was a quiet, somewhat dour but devout Scot, a history scholar of Balliol College, and usually most reticent of emotion. I talked of Border ballads and Lord Wardens of the marches, and endeavoured to draw him on the subject, but he made ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... religious; and they sought entertainment with such of the passengers as were congenial, though in this Isaac Hecker was more ready than his companions. Father Walworth tells an incident characteristic of both himself and his transcendental companion. He was admonishing young Hecker to be more reticent among the crew and was asked why. "You wouldn't like to kneel down and kiss the deck before all those sailors," said Walworth. "Why not?" was the reply. "Then do it." And down dropped Hecker to the deck and kissed it in ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... was not reticent about "J. Rodney Potts, that gallant old war-horse." Across the top of its front page each week stood ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... evil temper with Montgomery. He took not the slightest notice of either of us. We dined with him in a sulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk. It struck me too that the men regarded my companion and his animals in a singularly unfriendly manner. I found Montgomery very reticent about his purpose with these creatures, and about his destination; and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity as to both, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... might hate this house, considering all that's happened here. But I, too ..." She spoke in the slightly disagreeable tone that a reticent nature assumes when it is obliged to confess to strong feeling. "Yes, I ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... touched me. Harshness roused first incredulous wonder, then a storm of indignant tears, and after a time a proud, defiant resistance, cold and hard as iron. The easy-going, sunshiny, enthusiastic girl changed—and changed pretty rapidly—into a grave, proud, reticent woman, burying deep in her own heart all her hopes, her fears, and her disillusions. I must have been a very unsatisfactory wife from the beginning, though I think other treatment might gradually have turned me into a fair imitation ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... more. Nothing more was said. Perhaps this reticent lady disliked looking back through a long interval of years, or perhaps she had her reasons for leaving Mountjoy's guess at the truth still lost in doubt. In either case, she deliberately dropped the subject. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... other hand, I succeeded in calling into life an entirely new element such as probably had never been seen in opera! I had watched the young baritone Mitterwurzer with great interest in some of his parts—he was a strangely reticent man, and not at all sociably inclined, and I had noticed that his delightfully mellow voice possessed the rare quality of bringing out the inner note of the soul. To him I entrusted Wolfram, and I had every reason to be satisfied with his zeal and with the success of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... wife, but this before him was associated with something beyond love, which tended to increase rather than diminish it. When at last they left the room he did what was very unusual with him. He was reticent, like the ordinary middle-aged New-Englander. He took his wife's little, thin, veinous hand and clasped it tenderly. Her bony fingers ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he was generally reticent, but not so excessively secretive, for Frank Bruner was well-informed of the extent of his master's treasures, although he was not fully aware of the amount he ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... he was thus amusing himself, the stone was struck by fifteen English bullets, and he did not calculate on waiting to see what effect number sixteen would have, so he left that stone. The Boers are always very reticent where the number of their killed is concerned. In English circles it is jocularly asserted that only one Boer was killed at Majuba, and all the other Boers went into mourning for him. It is not known, and ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... from informing its readers that the American Woman Suffrage Association, representing thirteen organized State societies, has held for the first time a Convention in Washington, solely to urge the claim of woman to legal and political equality. We wait to see whether the Tribune will be equally reticent, hereafter. But neither the silence nor the misrepresentations of our opponents will check the steady growth and progress of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... instinct awakens, and the mental, like the physical, changes are profound. There is great general instability, the child, at one time shy and reticent, is at ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... into Hannah Sawyer's kindly eyes. These two had been stanch friends since the days when they had sat together in school and shared dinner-pails. Only to this old comrade did Harriet Munn's reticent tongue speak out the deep thoughts of her heart. She laid her hand on ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... nations become illustrious. His home was singular, and singularly calculated to nurture into greatness any child born as John Herschel was with natural gifts, capable of wide development. At the head of the house there was the aged, observant, reticent philosopher, and rarely far away his devoted sister, Caroline Herschel, whose labours and whose fame are still cognisable as a beneficent satellite to the brighter light of her illustrious brother. It was in the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... to be particularly reticent, he told him to hold his tongue. Peter understood, and held it, and finished packing the satchel, ordered the carriage for the eleven o'clock train, and saw his master off, without knowing where he was going, except that his ticket was for ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... or Irishman excels the average Englishman, German or American in courtesy and ease of manner, simply because it is his nature. They are more social and less self-dependent than men of Teutonic origin, more demonstrative and less reticent; they are more communicative, conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; while men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the mother following with the impetuosity and abandon of maternal love, and the father with stronger and stranger emotions than he had ever known, but restrained in a manner natural to a quiet, reticent man. They were about to greet one on whom they had once centred their chief hopes and affection, yet long mourned as dead. It is hard to imagine the wild tumult of their feelings. Not merely by words, but chiefly by impulse, immediate action, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... some useful work. He has resided in the Valley for more than twenty summers, and has also been a resident during many winters, and his descriptions of the Valley, when wrapped in snow and ice, are intensely interesting. Though always ready to give information, he is naturally reticent, and never forces his stories or reminiscences upon visitors; indeed it requires some persuasion to hear him talk about himself at all. For some years Mr. Clark was postmaster of Yosemite; and he has made many trips on foot, ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... time reticent, and his statements are contradictory. No wonder he declines to tell what has occurred, so compromising to himself! But when the lariat is at length noosed around his neck, the loose end of it ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... were scatteringly grouped in and about the narrow road near the March residence. One was Garnet, one was Ravenel, two others John and his father, and two were strangers in Dixie. One of these was a very refined-looking man, gray, slender, and with a reticent, purposeful mouth. His traveling suit was too warm for the latitude, and his silk hat slightly neglected. The other was fat and large, and stayed in the carryall in which Garnet had driven them up from Rosemont. He was of looser stuff than his senior. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... thought, in a man nearly forty years of age being in love with a girl of twenty. He had gone on reasoning through all the days of his manhood on the idea of a staid, noble-minded wife, grave and sedate, the fit companion in experience of her husband. He had spoken with admiration of reticent characters, full of self-control and dignity; and he hoped—he trusted, that all this time he had not been allowing himself unconsciously to fall in love with a wild-hearted, impetuous girl, who knew nothing of life beyond her ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... small, stout youth, was not disposed to be reticent. The gist of his rambling statement was as follows. Rich uncle. Impecunious nephew. Visit of former to latter. Handsome tip, one sovereign. Impecunious nephew ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... more vindictive than men in more peaceable circumstances. Forget that you have helped me to mine, do not ask what form that revenge is to take. I may some day help you to yours and be as secret and reticent." ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... SARK savagely repeated. "That's the ineffective heading in the newspapers. In order to keep up their circulation in parsonages, board-rooms of directors, and suchlike fastidious quarters they are reticent with adjectives. It's only Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL who could select the appropriate one and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... then, in the young is restricted in scope, their experience of life being small; in women it is quicker than in men, but shallower; in the Scotch it is reticent, in the Irish voluble and refined, but cold. But wherever it is found free from counterfeit, wholesome and contagious, it is the offspring of man's heaven-bestowed power of seeing in the meannesses of earth the true presence ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be open until the afternoon. From a drugstore ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... knowledge, before venturing upon new things. In art the difficulty is, when one has learnt everything, to forget,—that is, to appear to forget, so as to create one's own style, and this apparent forgetting cloaks an amalgamation of science with mind. And Degas is one of those patient and reticent men who spend years in arriving at this; he has much in common with Hokusai, the old man "mad with painting," who at the close of his prodigious life invented arbitrary forms, after having given immortal examples of his interpretation ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... Elliot, who afterwards became the first Countess Russell, was destined to a long, eventful life. As a girl she lived among those directing the changes of those times; as the wife of a Prime Minister of England unusually reticent in superficial relations but open in intimacy, in whom the qualities of administrator and politician overlay the detachment of sensitive reflection, she came to judge men and events by principles drawn from deep feelings and wide surveys; and in the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... as being remarkably frank, and yet I think it will be found that she is peculiarly reticent in regard to herself," remarked Van Berg musingly. "Well, it's not often I take people on trust, but I have given this lady ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... took part in general conversation and was so reticent concerning every phase of sentiment, that Grimm was for the moment almost as astounded as though one of his own bulbs had burst ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... portieres, the rest of us heard all that passed; and, indeed, the captain was not reticent,—it was not in his nature to be,—and he would have been quite as garrulous in the presence of an audience of any size, provided he knew all his hearers to be friends. And not even the gravity of his errand, or the subject ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... have facts, you don't need a detective. I'd rather have a suspect talk freely and never tell the truth than have him be reticent and stick to a ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... add to the above improbable story, that there was nothing in the young man's appearance or manners to justify it. Grave, reticent, and handsome, devoted to his newly found parent, he assumed the emoluments and responsibilities of his new condition with a certain serious ease that more nearly approached that which San Francisco society lacked, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... He is usually reticent in his manner with strangers, (but this is readily explained by his imperfect command of English, and his reluctance to expose his deficiency) though voluble to the last degree when he falls ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... himself, in that she had kept from him her knowledge of this affair;—for, when he came to turn the matter over in his mind, he did believe Tregear's statement as to her encouragement. Then, too, he had been proud of his daughter. He was a man so reticent and undemonstrative in his manner that he had never known how to make confidential friends of his children. In his sons hitherto he had not taken pride. They were gallant, well-grown, handsome boys, with a certain dash of cleverness,—more like their mother than ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they subdued their insurgent thoughts—and what that sacrifice meant to them in the lonely night watches I have been ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... of these strange travelers, and was attracted especially by one, a reticent man of perhaps sixty odd years, in Western garb, full of beard and with long hair reaching to his shoulders. He had the face of an old Teuton war chief I had once seen depicted in a canvas showing a raid in some European forest in years long before a Christian civilization was known—a face ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... he began to ask questions rapidly. He was eager for news from home—from his people—from old friends. However he did not inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked unremittingly for an hour, before she satisfied his hunger. But when her turn came to ask questions she found him reticent. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... me, as I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his dearest see ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... of the wharves and the river banks knew nothing of his ancestors or relations. Nickie was naturally reticent about his own business; On the point of family connections he was dumb. It was assumed that he had had a father and mother at some stage of his career, but the evolution of Nickie the Kid from a schoolboy, with shining morning face, to a homeless ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... recognised wherever he goes," continued Herr Carovius, "and if he lays the purple aside he stands at once in need of reticent friends. I am reserved." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... her eyes she met him with her perfect mouth, and gave herself to him in a kiss. He understood a spirit so passionately reticent that it denied to itself its own inward motions. The wilfulness of a solitary exalted nature melted in that kiss. All the soft curves of her face concealed and belied the woman who opened "her wild blue eyes and looked at him, passionately adoring, fierce for her ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the landlords who have been so cruelly robbed and ruined are weak-voiced and reticent compared to the loudly crying advocates for the peasantry. English tourists run over for a fortnight to Ireland, talk to the jarvies, listen to the peasants themselves, forbear to go near any educated ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... thought themselves sick, and to get the largest possible fees for his, services. A great deal came under his observation that he did not care to see, and of which he saw as little as possible. From policy he had learned to be reticent. He held family secrets enough to make, in the hands of a skillful writer, more than a dozen romances of the saddest and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... representative of New York's oldest family, have wanted in this nest of infamy? What errand of hope, fear, despair, avarice or revenge, could have brought this superior gentleman with his refined tastes and proudly reticent manners, so many miles from home, to the forsaken den of a brace of hardy villains whose name for two years now, had stood as the type of all that was bold, bad and lawless, and for whom during the last six weeks the prison had ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... than are ours by walls of brick or stone. What we call "society" does not exist there. Her people, though smiling and courteous, surround themselves by an atmosphere of reserve, centuries of despotic government having rendered them suspicious and reticent. True, when a foreigner of importance visits Japan—some British M.P., perhaps, whose name figures often in the newspapers, or an American editor, or the president of a great American college—this personage is charmingly received. But he is never left ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... Laurence owned himself puzzled again and again. He might be about his own age or he might be a great deal older, that is, anything from forty to sixty. But whatever his age, whatever his past, the man was always the same, dark, self-possessed, coldly reticent, inscrutable, somewhat ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... ordinarily a reticent and a quiet man, but this possibility awoke him into action. He pleaded so long and so hard, and so determinedly that he overbore the other man, and finally wrung from him a ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was very frank in stating his desire to learn everything possible about American methods of business while he remained in New York, and he asked a few questions of Mr. Hatch, but never pressed a point when the gentleman seemed reticent over it. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... and smiled; as a gentleman, and a rather reticent one, it had never occurred to him to parade his family connections. His smile might mean anything. It made the good committeeman, who was rich and full of power, feel a little uncomfortable, as he tried to cover his embarrassment with effusive cordiality. In the background stood Mr. Groper, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... as having been "a quiet, reticent man, of much intelligence and a keen perception of the ludicrous," while his wife was "well educated, with great sweetness of temper, and altogether highly prepossessing in appearance." There never was a more united and happy family. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... fencing wish to spare their adversaries, sometimes they find habit too strong for them, and lunge home in spite of themselves. Besides, he began to be really interested in Madame Lescande—in her coquettish ways, at once artful and simple, provoking and timid, suggestive and reticent—in ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... wearer's character. I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's." I tried to imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which provoked the wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It was reticent and unswerving in its upright fidelity, and at last ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... imagined he drank out of nothing smaller than a river, and picked the carcass of a whole buffalo as easily as a lady does the wing of a quail. Ten years later I made the acquaintance of the foremost frontiersman, and found him a delicate, reticent, under-sized, wiry man, as perfectly the opposite of the type my childish brain had created as ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... be happier away from her; in spite of her fresh colouring, he, Maurice, found her wanting in attraction, nothing that a woman ought to be. But her name was rarely mentioned between them; Krafft was, as a rule, reticent concerning her, and when he did speak of her, it was in a tone of such contempt that Maurice was glad ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... though she had been, Mr. Barrett never forgave her, held no communication with her even when she became a mother, and did not mention her in his will. It is needless to say anything more upon this subject. What Mr. and Mrs. Browning were invariably reticent upon can well be passed over with mere mention ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... hence, when the yearning tenderness shall have vanished from the corners of the lips; and the chin, in its broad curve, harmonizes with the square lines of the brow. Evidently a man whose youth has not been a holiday; who is reticent rather than demonstrative; who will be strong in his loves and long in his hates; and, without being of a despondent nature, can ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... slender, the intense, the reticent—with 'Thanase limping on rude but glorious crutches for four consecutive Saturdays and Sundays up and down in full sight of Zosephine, savior of her mother from widowhood, owner of two fine captured horses, and rewarded ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... daughter, and though he shared Marzio's opinions, he held his tongue in the house. He understood how necessary to him the mother's sympathy must be, and, with subtle intelligence, he knew how to create a contrast between himself and his master by being reticent at the right moment. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... kin; I am in a place that did not know me at birth. And so, when holidays come around, there is no place anywhere for me. I have friends, of course; I don't think I've been a very sulky, shut-in, reticent fellow; and there is many a board that has a place for me—but not at Christmastime. At Christmas, the dinner is a family gathering; and I've no family. There is such a gathering of kindred on this occasion, such a reunion ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... While reticent as to his part at Gettysburg, he spoke with feeling of what his corps had been through, and knowing that both Mr. May and I were Massachusetts men took an evident pleasure in commending the regiments from that State. Of the 2d Massachusetts he spoke with high appreciation; it was an ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... course of action. At last he said, with an attempt at a smile, "Business, I suppose;" but the other replied, "No, I should gather that it was principally upon private affairs that he has gone to England; but Mr. Davidson is a very reticent man, and he gave me no particulars. I represent him here until he returns, and beyond that it is really no business of mine; but I certainly received the impression that some ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... brow, seeking the subject of his thoughts rather than the cause of his illness. But he had to do with one of those faces peculiar to men who are successful with women, faces as hermetically sealed as the caskets with secret compartments which contain women's jewels and letters,—one of those reticent natures locked with a cold, limpid glance, a glance of steel against which the most perspicacious cunning ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... out around them with the reticent hush of interrupted consciousness. They seemed to be on the verge of further revelations, and were withheld from a last definite whisper only ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... evening went on, the general grew more and more affable and, if possible, less and less reticent. He had, he assured me, been the constant victim, either of men or of circumstances. At the military academy he had trained for the cavalry only to find himself assigned to the tank corps. He had reconciled himself, pursued his duties with ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... he writes:—" The ill-feeling and smothered rage against Sir Samuel Baker's interference nurtured by the higher authorities, breaks out very strongly amongst the less reticent lower officials. In Fashoda, and even in Khartoum, I heard complaints that we (the Franks) were the prime cause of all the trouble, and if it had not been for our eternal agitation with the Viceroy, such measures would never ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... dinner, for Nap was plainly upon his best behaviour. He seemed determined that Bertie should be on easy terms with him, and he was in a great measure successful. Though reticent, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.[1] In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably cautious, preferring ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... found the village quiet and very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his determination to win the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... by the wolves. The Indians at Tuscarora, Nevada, stated that when it was possible and that they should by chance meet the bony remains of any Shoshone, they would bury it, but in what manner I failed to discover as the were very reticent, and avoided giving any information regarding the dead. One corpse was found totally dried and shrivelled, owing to the dryness of ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... upon it. She saw a florid face, a woman, she knew casually—and there her eyes fastened, not for the woman's brilliant presence, but for what she saw directly in front of it, thrown into relief upon its background—a short and shabby figure, foreign, equivocal, reticent, the figure ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... she had not been reticent about her feelings made Tai-y unwittingly flush scarlet. Taking hold of her sleeve, she screened her face; and, turning her body round towards the inside, she pretended to be fast asleep. Pao-y drew near her. He was about to pull her round when he saw Tai-y's nurse enter the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... coin-robbery the older acquaintances of Mr. Mickley noticed a decided change in him. On the subject of coins, once so voluble, he grew very reticent. His business, which had for many years appeared rather a pastime than a task to him, grew irksome. After a period of uncertainty, he finally decided to close up his affairs and spend some years in foreign travel. In spite of advanced age, he was both physically and mentally well ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now once more in ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... matters much. In his letters to his two most intimate friends, he recalls her brilliant promise, her happy marriage, her] "faculty for art, which some of the best artists have told me amounted to genius." [But he was naturally reticent in these matters, and would hardly write of his own griefs unbidden even to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... any description of the dances and songs of the Paharias. Mr. Atkinson found the Malers extremely reticent on the subject, and with difficulty elicited that they had a dancing-place in every village, but it is only when under the influence of God Bacchus that they indulge in the amusement. All accounts agree in ascribing to the Paharias an immoderate ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... been with are all passing on by rail from Wady Haifa, and when we land there we go in the afternoon to see them off at the station. They are a keen, hard-bitten crew, and make us feel proud of our countrymen; they are reticent mostly, bearing the unmistakable stamp of responsibility. Men who "build the Empire" are little apt to "slop over" or demand sympathy. The boyish vigour remains with them later than with most men, but it is tempered by a certain hardness outside. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... cat is always very reticent, and would not ask to be let out. Her usual way of asking to have a door open is to tap upon it with her paw. She scarcely ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... far as Chicago, where, having business that would detain him for perhaps ten days, and warm weather having set in, he insisted that Sylvia should at once proceed eastward. At least that is what Miss Lavinia tells me; but she has suddenly turned quite reticent in everything that concerns the Lathams, which, together with Mrs. Jenks-Smith's random remarks, have inevitably ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... against him. He was notoriously reckless in his language. It had been remarked by Beaumont, the French Ambassador, in the previous May that he could scarcely mention Cecil without abusing him as a traitor. He was not likely to have been reticent on his relations with the Archduke's envoy. He was examined before the Privy Council several times at Richmond after July 15. On July 20 he confessed that he had asked Arenberg to procure five or six hundred thousand ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... gold was found than is generally supposed. I remember four very quiet, reticent men who worked out three and a half rather shallow claims just in front of what was known as the Middle Camp. They never spoke of what they were finding and it would have been a most serious breach of local etiquette to make any inquiry upon such a subject but upon leaving they authorized ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Mr Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people "hanging about" to pick up such tricks of the masters as ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... great Place has become more majestic, as well as more open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh still appeared when Scott himself ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... was drawing all London. Slightly more indecent than the Salome dance, a shade less reticent than ragtime, it had driven the tango out of existence. Nor, indeed, did anybody actually caoutchouc, for the national dance of Paranoya contained three hundred and fifteen recognized steps; but everybody tried to. A new revue, "Hullo, ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... me, draweth me, all the day. Once, when the season wooed me so, Lion Llewellyn, thou lovedst to go, Pacing before or close beside, Reticent, quaint, and dignified, Roaming with me, wandering wide; And if ever thy feet inclined, Weary with roving, to lag behind, When were my arms to aid thee slow? "Muver ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... know so little of the life of this Monsignor Perrelli. He is disappointingly reticent about himself. We learn that he was a native of the mainland; that he came here, as a youth, afflicted with rheumatic troubles; that these troubles were relived by an application of those health-giving waters which he lived to describe in one of the happiest sections of his work, and which were ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to show how reticent the Arcadia makes us. It happens that I have a connection with Nottingham, and whenever a man mentions Nottingham to me, with a certain gleam in his eye, I know that he wants to discuss the lace trade. But it is a curious fact that the aggressive ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... evening on which the name of Adelpha Leisler had been mentioned, Cora Waters had been strangely shy and reticent, so that Charles Stevens could not tell her of the interview with Mr. Parris, even if he would. Cora was a remarkable girl. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of earthly gifts—genius and beauty. No one possesses superior intellectual qualities without knowing it. The alliteration ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... from a boy of sixteen would scarcely give one the idea that Napoleon was the selfish and sullen youth that his enemies are forever picturing; they rather show him as he was,—quiet, reserved, reticent, but with a heart that could feel for others, and a sympathy that strove to lessen, for the mother he loved, the burden of ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... combination lunch and breakfast, the boys had to put up with comments from Jan and Barby. Dr. Miller had refrained from scolding them for foolhardiness, but the girls were not so reticent. The boys bore it stoically, but Rick resolved not to divulge their secret to Barby at any cost. Let her get a shock with the rest of the ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... husband of her sorrowful ward whom fear of disappointment still deterred from yielding to his newly-awakened hopes, was a quiet, reticent man, so the first messenger did not know whether he was among the liberated prisoners. But great excitement overpowered Milcah and, when Miriam bade her be patient, she hurried from one playmate to another assailing them with urgent questions. When even the last could give her no information concerning ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... characteristics of the mind, and doubtless many qualities of the thought and feeling of men and women owe their origin to the same source as brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late forties must probably be understood from this point of view. So, also, must the bold, swaggering, ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... up trying to call my Dinkie anything but Dinkie—came home two evenings ago with a discolored eye and a distinct air of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent. So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, who finally acknowledged, with awe in her voice, that Dinkie ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... during the parade season the corporal writes little, and articles by the regular staff, upon the height to which cantonment hedges should be allowed to grow, are apt to be dull. For news we depend on Tom. He appears reticent at first, but be patient. Let him put the soap on, and then ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... prominent Loyalists as to the necessity of an extraordinary exercise of authority in some way, both as a point of honor and as a measure of precaution for the future. On this point Hutchinson was as decided as Bernard, though he was reticent as to the precise shape it ought to take. It would not do, he said, to leave the Colonies to the loose principle, espoused by so many, that they were subject to laws that appeared to them equitable, and no other; nor would it do to drive the Colonies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... tell us, dear lady!' entreated Alice. It was not a reticent age. Malcolm Stewart had already avowed himself in his own estimation pledged to a monastic life, and Esclairmonde of Luxemburg had reasons for wishing her position and intentions to be distinctly understood by all with whom ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all self-command. In his ordinary temper the most humane of men, he simply raged at Gumbo. He would teach him, he said, to destroy his papers. And it appeared, from what we could piece together (for old Tom was very reticent and my father very incoherent), that he actually branded or tattooed a copy of what Gumbo had burnt ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... that a failure had occurred; the wrong microbe had obtained possession of the mug. In such cases Gram acted promptly and said little. She was always reticent concerning mug-bread. It had ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... is pardoned you, least of all a heart." What Levana says of the use and abuse of philology and about the study of history as a preparation for political action is no less significant. Goethe, who had been reticent of praise in regard to the novels, found in Levana "the boldest virtues ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... strange lady was residing at Beaumanoir. He was too thoroughly a libertine of the period to feel any moral compunction for any excess he committed. He was habitually more ready to glory over his conquests, than to deny or extenuate them. But in this case he had, to the surprise of Cadet, been very reticent, and shy of speaking of this ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the children in regard to the money. She was naturally reticent, and dreaded the gossip of the little town, which made a nine-days' wonder of every small happening; and had besides that self-respecting pride which dislikes to thrust its misfortunes on a careless world. But perhaps more ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... singulis sunt cantus, nec iidem omnibus, sed sui cuique. Certant inter se, palamque animosa contentio est: victa morte finit saepe vitam, spiritu prius deficiente quam captu. Meditantur iuveniores versusque quos imitentur accipiunt: audit discipula intentione magna et reddit vicibusque reticent; intelligitur emendatae correptio et ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... beyond anything I ever saw," he said. "I meant to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often about her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw the reason, and so you see I felt reticent on the subject." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister's strange ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from any desire to be reticent, but simply because the details appeared to him to be altogether uninteresting to ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... the hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian; and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent, without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage shortened ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the bright, sharp morning the whole of our passengers gathered in a clump aft, and desultory chat went on. Said Blair, "I notice that the professor's been rather reticent since we ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... reference to the men who have bequeathed to us the vast body of knowledge of which I have sought to give you some faint idea in these lectures. What was the motive that spurred them on? What urged them to those battles and those victories over reticent Nature, which have become the heritage of the human race? It is never to be forgotten that not one of those great investigators, from Aristotle down to Stokes and Kirchhoff, had any practical end in view, according to the ordinary definition of the word 'practical.' They did not propose to themselves ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... doubts that this sheeny panel on so many walls, with wary art slurring off its elusive gleam, could, at the one compelling word, paint again the reflections of all on which it silently dreams in its reticent heart,—the joy, the grief, the weeping face, the laughing lip, the lover's kiss, the tyrant's sneer, almost the crouched and bleeding soul on which that sneer descended, of which some wandering beam carried record? When we remember the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... admirable self-command, he recovered himself and became as tight-lipped and reticent ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... commonplace means. He had been long in the East, whence he had brought a cargo of half-scientific, half-superstitious fancies—belief in astrology, mesmerism, spiritualism, and cheiromancy the most prominent. He could cast a horoscope, summon departed spirits, heal the sick and read the reticent by mesmeric force, and explain the past as well as prophesy the future by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... are no more likely to have such a subject as Samuel Johnson than such a one as George Frederick Cooke; while both Boswell and Dunlap, had they written in our day, would probably have been much more reticent and much less amusing. We cannot therefore agree with Mr. Fitzgerald in thinking that the colorless character of the few theatrical biographies that have appeared in recent times is to be ascribed to the decay ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... modest as he was brave, reticent of his plans, not inclined to exploit his own merits, and he did not wear his heart or his mind upon his sleeve. His inmost thoughts were his own. What impressed us at this first sight of him was his calm, unruffled demeanor, his freedom from ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... all other problems the young man may have, for they must all shape themselves by this; and introduces something of artificial,—not properly of hypocritical, for that too is fatal if found out,—but of calculated, reticent, of half-sincere, on the Son's part: an inevitable feature, plentifully visible in their Correspondence now and henceforth. Corresponding with Papa and his Grumkow, and watched, at every step, by ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
