"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marvellous in the power he possessed of influencing others. He was by no means fluent of speech; his manners were shy, awkward, and retiring. He had little grace of person or ease in conversation, yet he somehow was more successful than most men of his time in winning friends, and obtaining aid for the great work he had set himself to accomplish. Probably his indomitable perseverance ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... rather than the grandeur of his station. If Louise had not seen him again the image of this young prince from fairyland might in time have faded from her mind, especially as an incipient love affair with a neighbor's son already existed. Some notes and occasional shy glances had been exchanged between Mademoiselle de La Valliere and young Bragelongne, who lived next door to the Saint-Remis at Blois, and had she not been suddenly carried off to court this nebulous romance might have materialized into a happy marriage, and a career more ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... in a warm strong pressure, but dropped it again and there was a quick cold withdrawing of his eyes that she did not understand. The old Mark Carter would never have looked at her coolly, impersonally like that. What was it, was he shy of her after the long separation? Four years was a long time, of course, but there had been occasional letters. He had always been away when she was at home, and she had been home very little between her school years. There had been summer sessions twice and once father and mother had come to ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... and made as sudden a retreat round the nearest corner as was possible. He said afterwards that he hadn't the courage to thank me. I brought him to bay at last, and came to know him very well; and then I discovered how the nervousness, the bashfulness, the mauvaise honte, which made him so shy and retiring in private, stood him in wonderful stead on the stage. The nervous man became the fretful and capricious tyrant of mock tragedy; the bashful man warmed at the foot-lights with passion and power. The manner which in society was a drawback and a defect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... to wear them," Anne said breathlessly. She gave Nancy a shy little kiss. "You were ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... is gun-shy," he said, "but I'll bet the rest of you I can drill a horn off that skull before ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... great Nevski was already there lying in a cathedral bearing his name, and the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul was ready to entomb the future Tsars. And Peter held his court, a poor imitation of Versailles, and gave great entertainments at which the shy and embarrassed ladies in their new costumes kept apart by themselves, and the attempt to introduce the European dances was a very sorry failure. In 1712 Peter planned a visit to Paris, with two ends in view—a political alliance and a matrimonial ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... hands with her than if she had been King George. The season at Grand Canary had not begun, and there were very few visitors at the hotel. Those who were there saw a frail nervous old lady, followed by a black girl who was too shy to raise her eyes. "We were certainly a frightened pair," Mary afterwards confessed. But the management attended to her as if she were a princess. "What love is wrapped round me!" she wrote. "All are kind,— the manager's family, the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... night she veiled the starlit sky, And walked beside the brook so shy; She took from out her beating bosom A lighted orchis—and passed ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... horses and the dogs, gave bread to the shy young gazelle that John was endeavouring to tame, to offer to his bride. Then he suddenly drew her aside, and while Mr. Ives and Mary Jones strolled onwards to the garden, he took a key from his pocket, and unlocked the door of a loose box which he had passed ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... open-air meetings that later became so important a feature of the campaign was held on the Common at Bedford. The speakers were Mrs. FitzGerald, Mrs. Leonora S. Little, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick and Mrs. Crowley. The attendance was small; people were shy at first of seeming to countenance such an innovation but the crowds grew as the meetings continued and it was found to be the best if not the only way to reach the mass of voters. A summer campaign of 97 open-air meetings was held, the speakers traveling ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... compared the grays to the disadvantage of the latter. But she was determined to be as sweet and polite and English as her mother would desire. For the first time in her whole existence she was feeling a little shy. She would have been thoroughly at home on a dog cart, or on her favorite outside car, or on the back of Black Bess, who would have carried her swift as the wind; but in the landau, with her uncle seated by her side, she was altogether at ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... gun-shy. And Uncle Eddy ate some, too, one time when he was little, because the colored stable boy told him it would make ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... France at the age of fifty-five. After various wanderings he is permitted to settle in Paris, where he lives with great frugality in a single room, poorly furnished,—supporting himself by again copying music, sought still in high society, yet shy, reserved, forlorn, bitter; occasionally making new friends, who are attracted by the infantine simplicity of his manners and apparent amiability, but losing them almost as soon as made by his petty jealousies and irritability, being "equally ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and shy, found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of admiration. A loitering gardener halted to do something unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... been there not long before, for their foe was still burning; yet we could see no people, nor any living creature, except a fowl called oxbird, being a grey sea-bird, in colour like a snipe, but different in the beak. Being by no means shy, we killed about eight dozen of them with small shot, and having spent the day fruitlessly, we went on board in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... importance, his aversion subsided, and he almost learnt to look forward to a chat with Mr. Nugent; or whether he looked forward to it or not, there could be no doubt that he enjoyed it. Though still shy, grave, silent, and inert, there was a great alteration in him since the time when he had had no friends, no interests, no pursuits beyond his study; and there was every reason to think that, in spite of the many severe shocks to his mauvaise honte, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scissors now, and trims his beard. Vain barge of a man; is he going to make himself handsome all at once, and cut away five years' growth of iron beard? He cuts and cuts away, looking at himself in his glass. He might have done all this at home, of course, but was shy of doing it before Oline; it was quite enough to stand there right in front of her nose and put on a red shirt. He cuts and cuts away, a certain amount of beard falls into his patent mirror. The horse grows impatient at last and ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a few yards of it and wait until the little hideling's shyness wore off, and he would come out and start reeling. Afterwards I always went straight to the same bush, because I thought the bird that used it as his singing-place appeared less shy than the others. One day I spent a long time listening to this favourite; delightedly watching him, perched on a low twig on a level with my sight, and not more than five yards from me; his body perfectly motionless, but the head and wide-open beak ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... with a shy hesitation that became her very well, and as she approached, their old understanding immediately arranged itself between them. "I should be perfectly justified in sulking," he declared gaily, disencumbering a chair of a battered tin box of empty twisted tubes for her, "and asking ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... soon chattering away to their pleasant hostess as freely as if they had known her for months; but the boys were still rather shy, and made Sancho the medium through which they addressed one another. The excellent beast behaved with wonderful propriety, sitting upon his cushion in an attitude of such dignity that it seemed almost a liberty to offer him food. A dish of thick sandwiches had been provided for his ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's feeling at the sight of him, but shy. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... yer?" The born poet had, after exhibiting signs of great distress, started to run. But Mr. McCorkle was down upon him instantly, seizing him by his long linen coat, and settled him back in his chair. "Tain't no use stampeding. Yer ye are and yer ye stays. For yer a borned poet,—ef ye are as shy as a jackass rabbit. Look ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... capital. He was entering Dresden on a late afternoon brown with German sunshine. The school year had begun, but a loitering summer-time brightened city and countryside. As he made his way slowly through the throng at the station, he gave evidence of a rather shy way of looking up and about, an apologetic readiness to step aside, to yield place, not characteristic of the speedy American in Europe. He had not, as we have said, come to Germany for adventure. He had not come ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... hotels, and they show themselves at such places without fear; at the same time that outside the Park (and when the early snow is on the ground their tracks are often observed going both out and in) these same beasts are very shy indeed. The hunter soon discovers that it is with the greatest difficulty that one ever sees them at all outside of the bounds of the Park. Bears, as well as deer, adapt themselves to the exigencies of ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... key. Horses must drink and they were creatures of habit, never ranging far from some one hole they had made their own. Trinfan blankets already flapped about the Pinto's chosen spring. They had seen the horses approach several times in the past two days and shy away from those flapping things ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... bon prince, adorning with skilful eloquent touches of description the glorious scene beneath his windows, the pageants at which he was an honoured spectator. Nothing could be more unlike the young, shy, proud, yet genial-hearted rustic, holding firmly by that magic wand of poetry which was his sole right to consideration, and facing the curious, puzzled, patronising world with a certain suspicion, a certain defiance, as of one whom ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... our study of this period, namely, the author himself, who in the Sketches already mentioned, and in his most noted work, The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, has told the story of these early years in considerable detail and with apparent sincerity. De Quincey was not a sturdy boy. Shy and dreamy, exquisitely sensitive to impressions of melancholy and mystery, he was endowed with an imagination abnormally active even for a child. It is customary to give prominence to De Quincey's pernicious habit of opium-eating, in attempting to ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... she was shown in, looking quite ordinary, and even a little shy, Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson rose to receive her with perfect ease, being supported by the consciousness that she was by far the more handsomely dressed of the two. In fact her greeting was so gracious as ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... a swift two days, gave half the time to Venice, But vows that she saw everything, although in awful haste; She's fond of dancing, but she seems to fight shy of lawn-tennis, Because it might endanger the proportions ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... they would be brought to church on the next christening Sunday, but their mother looked helpless and hopeless about getting them so far, and how was she to get gossips? Ethel began to grow very indignant, but she was always shy of finding fault with poor people to their faces when she would not have done so to persons in her own station, and so she was silent, while Richard hoped they would be able to manage, and said it would be better not to wait another month for still ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the Babe, in triumph. "Here's Jack Herring and here's Somerville. Do you know, I could hardly persuade them to come out and see you. Dear old Jack, he always was so shy." ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... Lydia. "Mr. Dunham hasn't arranged anything yet." Staniford thought this uncandid. It was fighting shy of Hicks, who was the person in his own mind; and it reawakened a suspicion which was lurking there. "Mr. Dunham seems to ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... is usually so shy with strangers, and I never saw him greet any one so rapturously except my late husband. It ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... stillness around the tents, and before those who had revelled and rejoiced were awake, and called Hagar and her child. Can we not see them in the gray of the morning? The father, the mother, the child,—the patriarch, aged, but not bowed by age, still retaining the vigour of manhood—the boy shy, yet half-defying—the mother! In such an hour, all distinctions of rank and station would be forgotten, and all the feelings of the woman be roused. Then and there Hagar might well forget that she was Sarah's bondmaid, and only remember that she had been Abraham's ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... few words—unheard-of courage! Such speech is usually brief and perhaps not ready, but it is likely to be cogent, because it is born of experience and "stops when through." County and perhaps State Granges add their experiences. And so on through the years these shy, reserved, possibly narrow, lives come to flower. And the Grange has furnished the dynamic. Strong leaders among farm women have been developed by the opportunities the Grange has afforded them. And thousands ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... the glories of some tropical bird. He is come for water to this little spring by the hillside,—water which even his long bill and slender head can hardly reach, so nearly do the fantastic forms of those garland-like icy margins meet over the tiny stream beneath. It is rarely that one sees the shy beauty so close or so long; and it is pleasant to see him in the grace and beauty of his natural liberty, the only way to look at a bird. We used, before we lived in a street, to fix a little board outside the parlour window, and cover it ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... mottled Deer Who made her home close by, Who at his call came without fear, Forgetting to be shy. ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... possibility and had made the hook to turn with him. With exemplary patience 'the grey one' would continue his twisting until he had been drawn right up to the side of the boat and a second hook made fast in him. His sea-green, light-shy, pig-like eyes would glare malevolently up at his tormentors, and in his maddened fury he would bite, snap and fight until he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... choked up with ashes. I can't tell exactly why, but the first thing I did that morning was to scrape out those ashes, and then I found some sticks and coals and built a fresh fire." Anthony flashed a glance at Betty out of his shy, almost frightened blue eyes. "I guess I was feeling kind of well disposed toward fires just then, camp fires anyhow. Then I was thinking that I would like to pay for my night's lodging in some way. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... these wild creatures are shy, and one may travel many days without adventure, and any sense of danger is soon lost in admiration of the beauties ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... joy of Pierre's father and mother on seeing the lad so soon returned was mingled with astonishment at seeing him arrive by water, and with a little English child in his care. The little one, with her exciting experiences behind her, did not dream of being shy, but was made happy at once with a kind welcome; while Pierre, the center of a wondering and exclaiming circle, narrated the wild adventures of the past few days, which had, indeed developed him all at once ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... slaughter-shop, Grim, and interview that Arab—Sidi bin Something-or-Other—forget his name—he lies in number nineteen cot on the left-hand side of the long ward, next to a Pathan who's shy both legs. You can't mistake him. I'll write out a medical certificate for Jeremy and follow. And say; wait a minute! What price the lot of you eating Mabel's chow tonight at our house? We don't keep a cook, so you won't get poisoned. That's settled; I'll ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... in the corn, in shy gazelles Running the sand where no man dwells; In horses scared at the prairie spring; In the dun deer noiseless, hurrying; In fish in the dimness scarcely seen, Save as shadows shooting in a shaking green; In birds ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... her with an embarrassed little laugh. Her question called up memories of shy glances, gifts of flowers and fruit, boyish confidences—all the things which fall to the lot of any teacher ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... agile cats among the green hedges, which were scented with the blossom of the olive, and the lion and the tiger were tame. The wild dove, glistening like a pearl, beat the lion's mane with his wings; and the antelope, otherwise so shy, stood by nodding, just as if he wanted to join ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... business into 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 and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... drink in his hall, Audunn ate his meal out of doors, as is the custom of Rome pilgrims, so long as they have not laid aside their staff and scrip. In the evening, when the King went to Vespers, Audunn intended to meet him, but shy as he was before, he was much more so now that the courtiers were merry with drink. As they were going back, the King noticed a man, and thought he could see that he had not the confidence to come forward and meet him. But as the courtiers walked in, the King ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... came to no good end; though to one that was great. Therefore do not say to me that I am pretty, though I am glad that you should think so who can compare me with so many whom you have known," and she dropped her eyes, looking a little shy. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... thank you." It was the shy little voice of Heart's Delight. A soft pink color had come into her round cheeks. Everybody looked at her in surprise, for how did Heart's Delight know that Chip had plenty of nuts? Then Terry ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... and called to her damsel to follow. Her varlet followed also, at a little distance behind. She found Elaine and a younger child waiting for her outside the gate. Elaine introduced her companion as her sister Annora. Annora proved much less shy than Elaine, and far more ready with her communications. But she was not asked many questions; for as they turned away from the convent gate, they were met by a monk in the Dominican habit, and Philippa knew directly the face ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... royal lovers. "My stay at Windsor was rather dull, but was a little enhanced by the loves of Prince Louis of Hesse and the Princess Alice. He had arrived the night before, almost a stranger to her" (a mistake), "but as her suitor. At first they were very shy, but they soon reminded me of Ferdinand and Miranda in the Tempest, and I looked on ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... little pang—with Lucille, and the head-waiter, with a low bow, ushered them to their table. Mr. Skinner saw the preparations for their repast, the oysters, the cocktails in tall glasses, the magnum of champagne in ice, and chuckled. To take supper with a duke was a novelty to him, but he was not shy. He sat down and tucked his serviette into his waistcoat, raised his glass, and ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have got him into a most unlordly scrape, from which they can only relieve him by treading back their steps. The more I consider their conduct, the more I am astonished at their impudence. A downright robbery is honourable to it. If you see Rogers, do not be shy to speak: he trembles at report, and here is ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... plants and trees, and beasts and fishes, and for flinging a kind of spiritual interest over these things, he did more than he perhaps intended toward consolidating the fame of his accidental human sojourn. He was as shy and ungregarious as Hawthorne; but he and the latter appear to have been sociably disposed towards each other, and there are some charming touches in the preface to the Mosses in regard to the hours they spent in boating ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... seemed a bit shy with him, as indeed Mick appeared to be with her, the two hardly exchanging a word; though I noticed that when Jack, the thrush, commenced calling out in his soft way, "Jenny! Jenny!" Mick flushed up ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... Perplexed in his shy, straightford nature, Hubert inquired if she took sugar in her tea. She said she did; stretched her feet to the fire, and lapsed into dream. She was one of the enigmas of Stageland. She supported herself, and went about by herself, looking a poor, lost little thing. She spoke with considerable freedom ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... long kiss a new love put forth its strength, not the pale beatitude of his dream, with its sweet wistfulness, its shy desires. That was large and vague and insubstantial, permeating like an odor the humdrum purlieus of the day. This was savage, triumphant, that leaped like flame from his heart to his mouth, that burned blood-red ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... receiving favors in a hospital is one thing, and an unknown discharged soldier asking them is quite another. The very thought of Quinby Graham presenting himself as a caller, and the comments that would follow made Eleanor shy away from ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... beat ther hides off'n 'em, neglect 'em, and when they're wore out turn 'em loose fer ther wolves. Second, they kin run off a bunch o' ponies in a hurry, but they balk some at rustlin' cattle because they move so slow. If we aire shy on beeves ther ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... to look upon. She had taken off her hat and coat in the little ante-room, and as she stood there in her black frock, with its demure little white turn-down collar, she looked very young, very shy, and if the truth must be told, very pretty. Whereupon Barry, who loved all pretty girls in a harmless, kindly fashion, rejoiced exceedingly; while even Owen, to whom things feminine were at present anathema, owned to himself that she was certainly ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... woman is the intelligent and modest attention she gives to serious discussions, and I always used to remind her of the comparison of a superior woman to a beautiful child with its great eyes full of feeling and sweetness and delicacy, with its shy questionings and its objections full of sense. I hoped that she would recognise herself in this portrait upon the text, and, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... resumed, "is beginning to make some rather shy, awkward advances, as if to secure my favor—a very futile endeavor as you can imagine. My views are changing in respect to remaining in his father's employ. The grasping old man would monopolize everything. I believe he would impoverish the ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the mountain side hid in a grassy nook Where door and windows open wide that friendly stars may look. The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free, Who throng around the ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... and I attended it. I sat near the head of the table, with Redpath between me and the chairman; a stranger sat on my other side. I tried several times to talk with the stranger, but he seemed to be out of words and I presently ceased from troubling him. He was manifestly a very shy man, and, moreover, he might have been losing ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... its tissue-paper nest in the upper tray of her trunk. Its daintiness comforted and cheered her, as a friend's face might have done, and under its impetus she found calm enough to rearrange her hair, and, with many a shy recoil and shy caress, to lay out John's evening things for him, as she had often laid out her father's. How surprised, she smiled, he would be. How delighted, when he came, to find everything so comfy and domestic. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... are, I'm tellin' you that Carlsen'll marry her if it suits his book. If it don't, he won't. An', if he wins out, he'll take her without botherin' about prayer-books an' ceremonies. I know his breed. All men are more or less selfish an' shy on morals, in streaks more or less wide, but that Carlsen's ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... it is an ideal shape, with no existence in space, only to be spoken of in figures and metaphors, makes it all the more important that in our thought it should be protected by no romantic scruple. Or perhaps it is not really the book that we are shy of, but a still more fugitive phantom—our pleasure in it. It spoils the fun of a novel to know how it is made—is this a reflection that lurks at the back of our minds? ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... have 'em do both," decided Joel. "Dave, pull this up, will you?" So little David ran and gave a lift on the other side of the big rocking chair, to haul it into place. "We'll run into somethin' an' th' horse'll shy, and that'll make the old stage-coach roll down hill. Gee-whickets!" he brought up, in ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... to sing," the boy began slowly. Now that the moment was at hand he felt suddenly shy at disclosing his errand. "I happened to think yesterday of the June Holiday Home down in Fair Harbor, and I wondered if you wouldn't rather go there and live ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... applying his plagiarized compliment. "Let's hurry or I'll be late for prayers. Would you like—will you come in to-day, as you are already up?" The color rose in Rose Mary's cheeks up under her long lashes and she gave him just one shy glance that had a tinge of roguishness ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... force. That is to say, the work of these undrilled, stupid, and not over-brave natives was scouting, a duty which while it is the most fascinating part of a soldier's life is also one of the most difficult. This then was an undertaking of which many a man might have felt shy, but Baden-Powell (the army is full of Baden-Powells) went at it cheerfully enough. On the arid desert outside the castle, which is called the parade ground, B.-P. and Captain Graham, D.S.O., taught these negroes, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... asleep," the girl answered briefly, and then, resting her chin upon her hands, she fixed her great dark eyes upon the glowing logs. She was Dan's foster-sister, eighteen years of age, though she looked hardly more than sixteen; a shy, slender, girl, lovely with a wild, unusual charm. To Tom she had always been a silent elfin creature, delightful as their playmate when a child, but now though still so familiar, she seemed in an odd ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... obediently towards the doorway. There she halted a moment, turned round, and looked timidly towards Kenelm. He had naturally risen from his seat as she rose, and advanced some paces as if to open the door for her. Thus their looks encountered. He could not interpret that shy gaze of hers: it was tender, it was deprecating, it was humble, it was pleading; a man accustomed to female conquests might have thought it was something more, something in which was the key to all. But that something more was an unknown tongue ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... again of the slight giddiness of fever, and they walked towards the house. Half way, Lucy said with sudden, shy energy— ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... travellers came to the house. They stopped at the door and asked for milk; the mother brought them brimming bowlsful, and the shy little girl crept up behind her mother with her birch-bark baskets of berries. The gentlemen took them and thanked her, and one told of his own little Mary at home, far away over the great sea. Jeannette often ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... but not much. They make the same signs of friendship, and their language seems to be one; but the others had proas, and these canoes. On the sides of some of these we saw the figures of several fish neatly cut, and these last were not so shy as ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... him also that he was diffident. Of course he was diffident. Was it not one and the same thing? The very pride of which he was accused was no more than that shrinking which comes from the want of trust in oneself. He was a shy man. All his friends and all his enemies knew that;—it was thus that he still discoursed with himself;—a shy, self-conscious, timid, shrinking, thin-skinned man! Of course he was diffident. Then why urge him on to tasks for which he ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... married or single, Irma liked best of all) there came in some shy old farmer from the uplands, or perhaps a herd, to whose boy or girl "out at service" the mistress of Heathknowes had brought home a Bible. These had come to thank Mary Lyon, but could not get a ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... themselves; and if good wishes brings good luck, that's what you have to thank for succeeding. But Celandine she's an ambitious girl, Mrs, Tarbell, and the long and the short of it is just this, that she's set her heart on being a lawyer, and she's either too shy or too proud, mebbe, to come here with me to speak to you, ma'am: so I just put on my bunnit the first day I could, rain or shine, and rain it's turned out to be, to say a word to you about her and just ask you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... was right as to the social side of the question, but I am convinced that The Fair Haven did him grave harm in the literary world. Reviewers fought shy of him for the rest of his life. They had been taken in once, and they took very good care that they should not be taken in again. The word went forth that Butler was not to be taken seriously, whatever he wrote, and the results of the decree were ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... only child of a wealthy merchant: she was but seventeen when he first saw her and fell in love with her. Few people knew whether the twelve short months of his married life were but as a dream to him now, eleven years later, or whether his scant allusions to that time came from a shy tenderness for a memory which was his dearest and most sacred possession. Alice Raymond was but little past eighteen when she died, and even the child she left behind her had never really belonged to Mr. Floyd, but had grown up at her grandfather's at The Headlands while ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... quite made up his mind as to what he would do. When the opportunity should come in his way he would simply remind her that the three months were passed. But he was shy of talking to her in the presence of Lady Mabel and his father. He was quite determined that the thing should be done at once, but he certainly wished that Lady Mabel had not been there. In what she had said to him at the dinner-table she had made him understand that she would be a trouble to him. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... the strange gentleman still remained standing by her side, and, raising her calm blue eyes, she looked fixedly at him. What followed was for her most unusual: she was obliged to withdraw her glance, for, contrary to her expectation, she did not find Mr. Johnsen shy, awkward, and impressed with the strange surroundings. It was plain, however, that he was conscious that his behaviour was unconventional, but he did not therefore desist. This caused Rachel to lose somewhat of ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, 50 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "Just one shy at him!" pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer Blaize's broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation of the advantages of light ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shy of speaking of himself, even before those who knew him best, and whom he loved the most; but at last it burst forth from him, and with a somewhat jerking eloquence he declared that he could not, would not, bear this misery ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... to make of that man a puppet for our amusement, because he was shy, and stupid, and slow? He was as true in his devotion, as honorable in all his wishes, as confident in his hopes till they were blasted, as any one that has gone a wooing since the first whisper of love was ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... of the joint note we had left for her. (I had removed all my belongings from No. 37 several days before.) But I thought she made a pretty little figure as a bride—gentle, clinging, tender, and no more than agreeably shy. And Heron, what a revelation to me his manner was! Throughout the evening there appeared not one faintest hint of his habitual acidulated brusqueness. Not one sharp word did he speak that night, and his manner toward my wife ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... your first shy at the government official, isn't it? They're not all as bad as that. At first I couldn't make out whether he was just fat and lazy. Now I know he's a grafter. He ought to get a nice neat 'For Sale' sign painted. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... soul, he cannot bear that that man's avarice should rob him of his beloved daughter, with whom he hoped to end in rest these last years of his failing age. In Naples we have no friends; for my father's disaster makes every one shy of us: our relatives are our enemies. Cornelia is kept in the house of my uncle's kinsman Giangiacopo Coscia, where no one is allowed to speak to ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wouldn't have shrunk from talking about Winn with Estelle. It was her right to talk about him, her splendid, perfect privilege. He supposed that she was a little shy, because she seemed to slip away from their obvious great topic; but he wished, if she wasn't going to talk about Winn, she would leave ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... crouching in an overhanging tree ready to drop into the procession at the right moment. Night and day, year after year, I see them going by, watched by the red fox and the comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black cat,—the innocent, the vicious, the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold, the chattering slanderer and the screaming prowler, the industrious and the peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter,—just as it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my species when I think of it. This charming society is nearly extinct now: of the larger animals there ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... girls conscious of faded muslins and cleaned gloves. It was pleasant to see stately Mrs Amy promenade on the arm of a tall country boy, with thick boots and a big forehead, or Mrs Jo dance like a girl with a shy fellow whose arms went like pump-handles, and whose face was scarlet with confusion and pride at the honour of treading on the toes of the president's wife. Mrs Meg always had room on her sofa for two or three girls, and Mr Laurie devoted himself to these plain, poorly dressed damsels with a kindly ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... So shy was Mr Toots on such occasions, and so flurried! But Lady Skettles entering at the moment, Mr Toots was suddenly seized with a passion for asking her how she did, and hoping she was very well; nor could Mr Toots by any possibility leave off shaking hands with her, until ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and he was awkwardly stammering for words, with her cool hand in his grasp. As long as his enthusiasm had lasted he had talked fluently and naturally, swept away from his self-consciousness; but with the return of the formal amenities he became as ill at ease and shy as a boy. "There ain't anything more except that we're building a railroad out there, and I'm going back to finish it next spring ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... him. "Come in and talk to me." He looked shy and surprised. I insisted. Then Tom's aunt called me and, drawing me hastily into a corner, demanded why I was inviting a ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... Lang of Hospital No. 1 on Bataan. Miller had tried to do what he could for Lang, but no one else in the detachment was willing to give him a break. He was an unlettered hillbilly and, being ashamed of his own ignorance, he was shy toward other men. The rest of the story is ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... what nonsense!" Mr. Matterson appeared to be a very shy gentleman, and only anxious to escape from the hall-door. But Mr. Grey remembered that in former days, before the coming of Mr. Juniper upon the scene, he had heard of a clerical admirer. He had been told that the gentleman's name was Matterson, that he was not ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... from whose breast water is flowing. This can hardly be, however, for not only are the markings unlike those of the water opossum, but the large canine tooth indicates a large carnivore. Moreover, the water opossum is a small animal, hardly as big as a rat, of shy and retiring habits, and so is unlikely to figure in ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... remainder of her life in strict seclusion, constantly grieving in her quiet way for her departed lord. Her son grew up to the age of ten in this sad and lonely house, passing four of the most susceptible years of his life in the society of his sorrowful mother. He became a shy boy, and avoided the company of other children. His health began to suffer from the effects of such an unnatural state of affairs, and at the age of ten he was sent to live on a farm belonging to the family, on the shore of Sebago Lake, in Maine. The active out-door life which ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... to spend the summer here, are you?" says I. "Besides, it'll do you good to learn not to shy at a man just because he's done time. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... find out anything more of this curious story I will let you know, but I doubt if I shall be able to do so. Although fifteen years or so have passed since Dingaan's death in 1840 the Kaffirs are very shy of talking about this poor lady, and, I think, only did so to me because I am neither an official nor a missionary, but one whom they look upon as a friend because I have doctored so many of them. When I asked the Indunas about her at first they pretended total ignorance, but ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Beautiful One to lie In the green peace within your gates, he came To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy, And, stricken as we were, we blessed his name: Yet, like the Creature of Light that had been ours, Soon of the sweet Earth disinherited, He too must join, even with the Year's old flowers, The unanswering generations of the Dead. So stand we friends ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... prowling tiger-cat than would otherwise be the case. Even the bright colours of many male birds cannot fail to make them conspicuous to their enemies of all kinds. Hence, as Mr. Gould has remarked, it probably is that such birds are generally of a shy disposition, as if conscious that their beauty was a source of danger, and are much more difficult to discover or approach, than the sombre coloured and comparatively tame females or than the young and as yet unadorned ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and, in riding, his preparation against accidents showed the same nervous and imaginative fearfulness. "His bridle," says the late Lord B——, who rode frequently with him at Genoa, "had, besides cavesson and martingale, various reins; and whenever he came near a place where his horse was likely to shy, he gathered up these said reins and fixed himself as if he was going at a five-barred gate." None surely but the most superficial or most prejudiced observers could ever seriously found upon such indications of nervousness any conclusion against ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... mere notion of going back (and as an officer, too), to be worried and bothered, and kept on the jump night and day by that brute, made me feel sick. But she wasn't a ship you could afford to fight shy of. Besides, the most genuine excuse could not be given without mortally offending Apse & Sons. The firm, and I believe the whole family down to the old unmarried aunts in Lancashire, had grown desperately touchy about that accursed ship's character. This was the case for answering 'Ready now' from ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the "week's wash" which had to be brought in before night fell and the mountain wind arose. It was strong at that altitude, and before this had ravished the clothes from the line, and scattered them along the highroad leading over the ridge, once even lashing the shy schoolmaster with a pair of Lanty's own stockings, and blinding the parson with a ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... neighborhood seemed to act shy of her. Even her old companions nodded very stiffly when they met her, and walked on the other side of the street ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Charles is shy and very modest, and no bigger than so many French youths—he is only twenty-two—with dark-brown hair and blue eyes with very black centres, and a moustache that never succeeds in looking more than three weeks old. Being, however, brave, he does ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... had approached from another lunar GO rocket, which had just appeared. He had a thin intellectual face, dark eyes, trap mouth, white hair, soft speech that was almost shy. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... height. Half of the first floor housed the kitchen and dining hall while the remainder of the building was given over to sleeping quarters, with the exception of a corner set apart as the battery office and supply room—a most business-like place, from which the soldier usually steered shy, unless he wanted something, or had a kick to register about serving as K. P., or on some other official detail when he remembered having done a turn at the said detail just a few ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... frightened Donna Juanita clasps her hands in the agony of prayer before the crucifix in the chapel. Beside her stands Dolores, now a budding beauty, in radiant womanhood. The dark-eyed young girl is mute. Her pathetic glances are as shy as a wounded deer's dying gaze. "The ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... was relieved for I was lonesome and a bit nervous, and when I discovered that she knew a little English I could have hugged her. We spread our cold supper on the top of my dress suit case, put our one candle in the center, and proceeded to feast. Little Miss Izy was not as shy as she looked, and what she lacked in vocabulary she made up in enthusiasm. We got into a gale of laughter over our efforts to understand each other, and she was as curious about my costume as I was about hers. She watched me undress with unfeigned amusement, ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... woes and discomfitures of sea-sickness at once, and if there were any need to communicate such secrets to the public, one might tell of much more good that the pleasant morning-watch effected; but there are a set of emotions about which a man had best be shy of talking lightly,—and the feelings excited by contemplating this vast, magnificent, harmonious Nature are among these. The view of it inspires a delight and ecstasy which is not only hard to describe, but which ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to argue, but placed his strong hands on either side of her slender waist and lifted her lightly to the homemade table, while she gasped and again the wonderful smile, more shy this time, transformed her tear-stained face. In silence, and with flying, experienced fingers, the physician applied a soothing salve to the blotchy red, fast-swelling burn on the ankle, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Boarder. A slender, shy slip of a girl had his arm, and he was gazing into her intent eyes with ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... his hair weak and thin, his manner diffident, awkward, almost ungainly, but that its thorough courtesy and good-nature were so obvious and unaffected. In general society people passed him over as a shy, harmless, unmeaning little man; but those who really knew him affirmed that his courage was not to be damped, nor his nerve shaken, by extremity of danger—that he was always ready with succour for the needy, with sympathy for the sorrowful. In short, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... unlike himself than the bold advertising-agent in this colloquy. He was subdued and shy; his usual racy and virile talk had given place to an insipid mildness. He seemed bent on showing that the graces of polite society were not so strange to him as one might suppose. But under Mrs. Damerel's interrogation a restiveness began to appear in ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... don't think so. If we take the boat, 'fore we've gone far they'll ketch sight of us aboard, and send another one to fetch us back, or else make a cock-shy of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... "Don't shy at you now! Well, I wonder at that," said Ike. "He's a wunner at shying. He can hit anything with a stone. I've seen him knock over a bird afore now, and when he gets off in the fields of an evening I've often knowed him bring back ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... best. Petie we called him; Peter Brand; he died long ago. He had been a comfort to my mother Marie, in days of sadness,—before my birth, for she was never sad after I came,—and she loved him, and he clung to her. He was a round-faced boy, with hair almost white; awkward and shy, but very good ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... disgusted to find that three of my shots had missed the target quite. To the captain, as he studied my target, I expressed my mortification. "What target were you shooting on?" he asked, in the lingo proper to our trade. I answered "Number Twelve." "Three shots shy," said the captain, "and here's Number Fourteen lacking two hits. Where's Number Thirteen?" "Here, sir," said Bannister, "and there's fifteen shots in my target." "Then three are mine," said I. "And two ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... true. But the result was that gossip spread wide about Anthony, and he was held in the town to be a very fearful person, who could do strange mischief if he had a mind to; Anthony never cared to walk abroad, for he was of a shy habit, and disliked to meet the eyes of his fellows; but if he did go about, men began to look curiously after him as he went by, shook their heads and talked together with a dark pleasure, while children fled ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stop singing?" asked the young lady in turn; this stiff, shy, proud creature, what flame might one soon see flaring out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... were of a very rich and delicate flavour. The nest was that of a wild pheasant, (Leipoa), a bird of the size of a hen pheasant of England, and greatly resembling it in appearance and plumage; these birds are very cautious and shy, and run rapidly through the underwood, rarely flying unless when closely pursued. The shell of the egg is thin and fragile, and the young are hatched entirely by the heat of the sun, scratching their way out as soon as they are born, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... of those despotic states of Italy, I find that several of them, at Florence as well as at Sienna, were considered as dangerous meetings, and in 1568 the Medici suddenly suppressed those of the "Insipids," the "Shy," the "Disheartened," and others, but more particularly the "Stunned," gli Intronati, which excited loud laments. We have also an account of an academy which called itself the Lanternists, from the circumstance that their first meetings were held ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... quadrupled or quintupled veils. However, the marriage was effected in a Christian way, and the next morning there came to me an invitation to call upon the bride. I found her to be the most beautiful Chinese girl I had ever seen, with manners all the more pleasing because so very shy. Her husband had prepared quarters for her which, as compared with the average Chinese home, were almost palatial, and everything seemed to promise a ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... the school feeling as if her reason were rocking. She had never imagined that anything so nice could happen to her. Since the loss of her parents life had not been too bright. Sometimes she almost dreaded the holidays at her aunt's. She was shy and sensitive, and the impression that she was not altogether welcome there was a bitter one. It is very hard for a girl when she has no home of her own, and no one whose special prerogative it is to love and encourage her. Though her ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... suede boots laced high to meet her brief gray skirts, silver hat with a single velvet rose on the brim to match the soft rose-bloom on her cheeks. Gila with eyes as wide and innocent as a baby's, cupid mouth curved sweetly in a gracious, shy smile, and dainty little prayer-book done in gray suede held devoutly in ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... go, mind your duty; this gentleman and I belong to the service; but be sure you look after that shy cock in the slouched hat that sits in the corner of the coach. I believe he's one of the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of Rip Van Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story of Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The under-graduates of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author when he appeared in the theatre to receive his complimentary degree perhaps understood this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich Knickerbocker," "Ichabod Crane," ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... Casa Guidi rooms the happiest days of both lives were spent, and many a time have the walls resounded to the great voice, laughing, praising or condemning, of Walter Savage Landor; while the shy Hawthorne has talked here too. Casa Guidi lodged not only the Brownings, but, at one time, Lowell, who was not, however, a very good Florentine. "As for pictures," I find him writing, in 1874, on a later visit, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... 'Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them—and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I'll go down and—no, I won't JUST yet,' she went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go down among them without a good long branch to brush them away—and what fun it'll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say—"Oh, I like it well enough—"' (here came the favourite little toss of the head), ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... but he is no coward," interrupted La Mothe hastily. He foresaw what was coming and had all a shy man's horror of being thanked. "He sat his horse like a little hero. There is no such courage as to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... the freshman prize given out. It was won by a shy-looking little girl with big, pleading, brown eyes. Grace watched her closely as she walked up to receive it and resolved to find out more ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... time have I wandered out In the youth of the opening year, When Nature's face was fair to my eye, And her voice was sweet to my ear! When I numbered the daisies, so few and shy, That I met in my lonely way; But never before to my heart or eye, Came there ever so sweet a May As this— Sweet May! ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... of him that will grip him again every time he returns to the scene and will make him long and hunger for the place when he is away from it. Later, the lights in the busy streets will bewilder and entice him. He will feel shy and helpless amid the hurrying crowds. A new emotion will take his heart as the people hasten by him,—a feeling of loneliness, almost of grief, that with all of these souls about him he knows not one and ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and some, I regret to say, from downright moral obliquity—as, for example, those between Cortinas and Canales —who, though generally hostile to the Imperialists, were freebooters enough to take a shy at each other frequently, and now and then even to join forces against Escobedo, unless we prevented them by coaxing or threats. A general who could unite these several factions was therefore greatly needed, and on my return to New Orleans I so telegraphed General Grant, and he, thinking ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... another, or judge a picture by the verdict of a colour-blind critic. The sensations of smell which cheer, inform, and broaden my life are not less pleasant merely because some critic who treads the wide, bright pathway of the eye has not cultivated his olfactive sense. Without the shy, fugitive, often unobserved sensations and the certainties which taste, smell, and touch give me, I should be obliged to take my conception of the universe wholly from others. I should lack the alchemy by which I now infuse into my world light, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... explicit orders) descended to a drawing-room already full of people. Carrol knew them all, even the famous new beauty; but Fitz—or James Holden, rather—had, except for the Carrols, but a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the men. He felt shy, and blushed very becomingly while trying to explain to Mrs. Carrol how he and Wilson happened to be so unfortunate ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... with good-natured interest, which was not far removed from indifference, to the contralto, the 'cellist, the violinist, only waking up to something like enthusiasm when the infant prodigy, a quaint, painfully shy little creature, who bobbed a side curtsey at the audience, and looked much too small to tackle the grand piano, appeared and proceeded to execute wonderful things with her ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... servant, stalked forward, booted and fully equipped, my travelling companion—if such a word can at all express the relation between the arrogant young blood, just fresh from assuming the toga virilis, and a modest child of profound sensibilities, but shy and reserved beyond even English reserve. The aged servant, with apparently constrained civility, presented my mother's compliments to him, with a request that he would take breakfast. This he hastily ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... trunks. Fountains threw their bright waters to the roof, and flocks of silver-winged birds flew singing among the flowers, or brooded lovingly above their nests. Doves with gentle eyes cooed among the green leaves, snow-white clouds floated in the sunny shy, and the golden light, brighter than before, shone ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... Boone's son, Daniel Boone, a Pennsylvania youth of English stock, Quaker persuasion, and Baptist proclivities. Seen through a glorifying halo after the lapse of a century and three quarters, he rises before us a romantic figure, poised and resolute, simple, benign—as naive and shy as some wild thing of the primeval forest—five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and shoulders, dark locks, genial blue eyes arched with fair eyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of slightly Roman cast, and fair, ruddy ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the Finances, for five years long? (Till May, 1781.) Without wages, for he refused such; cheered only by Public Opinion, and the ministering of his noble Wife. With many thoughts in him, it is hoped;—which, however, he is shy of uttering. His Compte Rendu, published by the royal permission, fresh sign of a New Era, shows wonders;—which what but the genius of some Atlas-Necker can prevent from becoming portents? In Necker's head too there is a whole pacific French Revolution, of its kind; and in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... on the estate had told him something of his father's highly-coloured histories of his feats of strength and his achievements by land and water, the boy began to feel a shy admiration for him, but at the same time he felt all the more strongly the intolerable yoke which he laid upon them—upon every living being on the estate. It became a secret religion with him to oppose his father ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... of the moment, after being knocked down by the shock, they may have suspected that we knew of their presence and were trying to encompass their destruction. But I am glad it happened that way. Perhaps they may have more respect for Uncle Sam's Flying Squadron after this, and fight shy of running their heads into trouble. I'll have the guards at the camp doubled at night time, and any straggler will be apt to find it pretty warm around there: I'd advise all persons who have no business at our headquarters to give the camp a wide berth, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... when we sympathise with a suffering friend. And yet it is something—oh yes, I have felt that! But you knew I must feel for you, if I teased you with words or not; and I, for my part, hearing of you from others, felt shy, as I say, till I heard you were better, of writing to you myself. And you are feeling better, Mrs. Jameson tells me, and are somewhat more cheerful about your state. I thank ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Birdalone silent, blushing and confused, but whiles casting shy glances at her own body, what she might see of it. At last she spake: Fair friend, I would do thy will, but I am not deft of speech; for I speak but little, save with the fowl and wild things, and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... me to have it confirmed by external evidence. Do not think our grief unreasonable. Of all human beings whom I ever knew, he was the man of the most rational desires, the most sedate habits, and the most perfect self-command. He was modest and gentle, and shy even to disease; but this was wearing off. In every thing his judgments were sound and original; his taste in all the arts, music and poetry in particular (for these he, of course, had had the best opportunities of being familiar with), was exquisite; and his eye for the beauties ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... sed ther mother, 'kiss the gentleman for the gift.' Would yer believe it, Jim, thet shy girl come and put her arms around my neck ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... they never shook hands with a lady, and that the poor man was very much embarrassed. He was very useful to W. as a political agent, as he was kind to the poor people and took small (or no) fees. They all loved him, and talked to him quite freely. His women-kind were very shy and provincial. I think our visits were a great trial to them. They always returned them most punctiliously, and came in all their best clothes. When we went to see them we generally found them in short black ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington |
