"Privacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and as a result of this precaution on his part her motherly queries seemed to be ignored, and she several times shed tears in the belief that Rosy had grown so patrician that she was capable of snubbing her mother in her resentment at feeling her privacy intruded upon and an ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... persons, on the most private business, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to be a place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged with people." The idea implied is, that this would in fact be the completest privacy they could have wished. "The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two were in the deepest solitude." This contradiction between the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Tonno said, the tone of his voice suddenly changing. "We can discuss the matter indoors in the privacy of my study." And he conducted Max to a room in the rear of ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... turn away, withdrawing my privacy from his fatuous, objectless attempts to test what sort of stuff it was made of, when he laid down his pipe in an extremely significant manner, you know, as if a critical moment had come, and leaned sideways over ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... followed Danglars sat down on a bench. The clerk continued to write for the next five minutes; the man preserved profound silence, and remained perfectly motionless. Then the pen of the clerk ceased to move over the paper; he raised his head, and appearing to be perfectly sure of privacy,—"Ah, ha," he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was what they were—they who had shared those flaming moments while Paula sang!—would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else, any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the privacy of her imagination she had worked the thing out in half a dozen ways, all ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... door but more or less Polydores fell in. They were at the left of us and at the right of us, with Diogenes always under foot. We had no privacy. I found myself waking suddenly in the night with the uncomfortable feeling that Ptolemy lurked in a dark corner or two ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... re-betrayal. For less than what a publisher of this day would call one fair-sized edition of "The Square of Sevens," printed for Antrobus by the great John Gowne, of The Mask book-shop, has ever appeared. And, to account for the semi-privacy surrounding the little work, must be set forth the dolesome incident of a printing-house fire burning, "all except about a dozen or so of copies," before there had been any "distribution of the Book" among the author's "Friends, Male or, Female, or to the Publick." By some sudden ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... entered are placed in two large rooms, but here every one has her own four walls—even if they are only made by linen curtains. When Elizabeth Fry first visited Kaiserswerth, among the arrangements that she at once recognized and commended was that by which each deaconess was given the privacy of her own apartment. In the deaconess houses that are so rapidly springing up in different parts of the United States this provision ought to be guarded with care, for a life that is so constantly drawn out in ministrations ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... period of gloom when domestic bereavement had forced Mr. Clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to only a very few of his closest friends. One old friend in New York, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you came down to stay with him, you felt all the time that he was doing it; you felt a sort of shame (a shame that he couldn't feel) in seeing that he did it so perpetually and so well. He had a way of making his privacy a public thing. There was something positively indecent in his detachment; it advertised him as no possible immersion could have done. I've seen him lying out on his moor basking all by himself in the sun; I've seen him meditating all by himself in his pinewood; I've seen ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... friends "naturally imagined" afforded him so much, was the controversies he had kindled, and the polemical battles he had raised about him. However boldly he attacked in return, his heart often sickened in privacy; for how often must he have beheld his noble and his whimsical edifices built on sands, which the waters ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... rather in another direction that groping mediaeval art reached its most congenial triumphs. That was an age, so to speak, of epidemic privacy; social contagion was irresistible, yet it served only to make each man's life no less hard, narrow, and visionary than that of every one else. Like bees in a hive, each soul worked in its separate cell by the same impulse as every other. Each was absorbed in saving ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... his arrival at Cephalonia, he had been living in the most comfortless manner, pent up with pigs and poultry, on board the vessel which brought him. Having now come, however, to the determination of prolonging his stay, he decided also upon fixing his abode on shore; and, for the sake of privacy, retired to a small village, called Metaxata, about seven miles from Argostoli, where he continued to reside during the remainder of his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to both daughters respiration was difficult on the cloudy heights of metaphysic. The situation would have been intolerable but for the fact that, while Phoebe and Laura were still at school, their father's fame had passed from the open ground of conjecture to the chill privacy of certitude. Dr. Anson had in fact achieved one of those anticipated immortalities not uncommon at a time when people were apt to base their literary judgments on their emotions, and when to affect plain food and despise England went a long way toward establishing ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... her impulse was to drive at once to his lodgings; but the infection of his own shyness restrained her. Dick's note gave no details; the illness was evidently grave, but might not Darrow regard her coming as an intrusion? To repair her negligence of yesterday by a sudden invasion of his privacy might be only a greater failure in tact; and after a moment of deliberation she resolved on sending to ask Dick if he wished her ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wasn't the place where they usually received—she liked to hear herself talk of "receiving"—she led the party up to her white-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: she liked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnut or a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of the dinner-hour, she sighed: "Well, I suppose you're so used to them—to the best—living so long over ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... with terror in her secret hiding-place she felt that she had played him false; that she had no right to save herself by the violation of a privacy she should have held in awe. She was paying for her temerity now, paying for it with every terrible moment that her suspense endured. The gasping, struggling men, the frantic negro, were in the next room ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... its consciousness?—an empire boundless as the West. What to him were huzzas? Why, my lord, from his privacy, the great and good Logodora sent liniment to the hoarse throats without. But what said Bardianna, when they dunned him for autographs?—'Who keeps the register of great men? who decides upon noble actions? and how long may ink last? Alas! Fame has dropped ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... could see the gate more plainly and what looked to be the end of a low-roofed brick building which had been erected against the wall. She craned her neck, looking left and right, but the bushes had been carefully planted to give the previous occupants of these two rooms greater privacy. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... are neat; for, besides the ornaments at top, I saw some with carved door-posts. Upon the whole, their houses are better calculated for a cold than a hot climate; and as there are no partitions in them, they can have little privacy. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... at my door, Betty runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly enquires if this was Dr. Partridge's? She taking him for some cautious city-patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews him into the dining room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to him, and was surprized to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... horse-hair sofa. He had given Mary the key then, and had asked her to fetch the bottle of brandy from one of the long divisions where it stood beside a big ledger. The little gentleman had hesitated to give trouble in asking to have it locked again, though that it should be open offended his ideas of privacy. Now he looked at it, and then let his eyes rest upon the ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... stood John Castell, a stout, dark-bearded man of between fifty and sixty years of age, with a clever, clean-cut face and piercing black eyes. Now, in the privacy of his home, he was very richly attired in a robe trimmed with the costliest fur, and fastened with a gold chain that had a jewel on its clasp. When Castell served in his shop or sat in his counting-house no merchant in London ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... relaxed, his jaw dropped, and he was too bewildered to reply to my salutation for some moments. As I turned a bend in the river I looked back, and saw him hastening away with great precipitation. I presume he had angled there for forty years without having his privacy thus intruded upon. I surprised hawks and herons and kingfishers. I came suddenly upon muskrats, and raced with them down the rifts, they having no time to take to their holes. At one point, as I rounded an elbow in the stream, a black eagle sprang from the top of a dead ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... attractive to a man like George Douglass, son of a village doctor, who had toiled from childhood to earn every dollar he spent. To ride in such swift and shining state with any one would have had extraordinary interest, and to sit beside Helen in the comparative privacy of the rear seat put a boyish glow of romance into his heart. Her buoyant and sunny spirit reacted on his moody and supersensitive nature till his face shone with pleasure. He forgot his bitter letter of the night before, and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... afraid I want a little privacy, and, if you will allow me to say so, a little civility. I am greatly obliged to you for bringing us safely off to-day when we were attacked. So far, you have carried out your contract. But since we have been your guests here, your tone and that ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... comes to inquire into the trivial consequences of Mr. Asquith's fall from power he will be forced, I think, to lift that veil which Mr. Asquith has so jealously drawn across the privacy of his domestic life. For although he ever lacked the essentials of greatness, Mr. Asquith once possessed nearly all those qualities which make for powerful leadership. Indeed it was said in the early months of the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... long and tiresome journeys, gloomy hotels and indifferent fare, curious people who desired to see the one-time fashionable belle; her portraits would be lithographed and hung in shop-windows, in questionable resorts, and the privacy so loved by gentlewomen gone; and perhaps there would be insults. And she was only on the threshold of the twenties, the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... of themselves than they had ever done before, and with exquisite work around; there were carved chests inlaid with ivory, and cushions, perfect marvels of needlework, as were the curtains and coverlets of the mighty bed, and the screens to be arranged for privacy. There were toilette vessels of beautifully shaped and brightly polished brass, and on a silver salver was a refection of manchet bread, comfits, dried ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indeed a rash individual who trespassed upon the privacy of that consecration, and dared to rally the Adjutant on the subject of marriage. Upon such a one she turned eyes in which there was neither anger nor amusement, but which regarded the trespasser in silence until he felt like a clumsy boy, who, unaware, had stumbled ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... spoke, humbly and sorrowfully, of his religious position as a thing so little known to the public that it could be entirely misunderstood by a portion of them, it is plain that no one who had seen him in the privacy of his life at home could have had any misunderstanding upon that subject. For years before his retirement from the law, it had been his custom, we are told, to spend "one hour every day ... in private devotion. His hour of prayer was the close of the day, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... distinguished general, whose name was the terror of all the foes, and the confidence of all the friends, of Italy-his eldest daughter; and with love approaching idolatry he cherished her. She was his confidant. In the privacy of her faithful heart he treasured all his plans and purposes. Of late, the peaceful security in which the nation dwelt gave him the opportunity of remaining at home, where, in the companionship of a wife he fondly loved, children he almost idolized, and friends whose friendship was not fictitious, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... fade further the green of the "cartridge" paper on the walls and the figures of the "art-square" that covered the floor, and to bring out with cruel distinctness the quantities of dust that Dora was allowed to disturb not more frequently than once a week. For the "study" was a place sacred to the privacy of each succeeding clergyman. And here, face to face, Alan Farvel and the bridegroom-to-be were ending a long, grave conversation—a prenuptial conversation invited by ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... and its fellow on the opposite side of the ladder, opened into the main cabin, which contained four berths, with curtains extending out in front, so as to form an enclosure for each occupant, securing entire privacy. Opening from the forward part of the cabin were two large and airy rooms, each having two berths, for the accommodation of Mr. Watson's family. They contained every convenience belonging to a first-class ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... designed by George Stephenson, ran from Liverpool to Manchester at a rate of nearly forty miles an hour, and the possibilities of the new method of transportation became manifest. But the jealousy of the landed interest, eager to maintain the beauty and the privacy of the countryside, retarded till the forties the growth of English railways. Meanwhile, by the use of railways the United States altered her whole economic life and outlook. In 1830 she had twenty-three miles of railway, five years later over ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... Navarre was to assist her in the capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Twenty-five members specially designated were to form the king's privy council. [Histoire des Etats generaux, by M. Picot, t. ii. p. 73.] And in the privacy of her motherly correspondence Catherine wrote to the Queen of Spain, her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., "Madame, my dear daughter, all I shall tell you is, not to be the least anxious, and to rest assured that I shall spare no pains ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Word. But it rarely happens that any unhallowed imaginations in which they have indulged awaken emotions of genuine sorrow. Now the thoughts are the guests we entertain—the company we receive into the innermost privacy of our bosoms. And just as a man is censurable who voluntarily and habitually consorts with corrupting company, so is he to be condemned who deliberately ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... better retire. Seemed on the whole the proceedings demanded privacy; but OLD MORALITY, catching sight of me, called out, "Come along, TOBY! Only our little game. Fall ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... from the crowds on the commons, the two Bird boys, accompanied by their friends, Larry, Elephant and Stuttering Nat, once again sought the privacy of their dear old workshop. Here they were sprawled, taking it as easy as possible, and resting their aching muscles, as they went over the stirring events of the accident again and again, when into the shop strode Mr. Marsh ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... battered tropes, constitute what he calls "plain English," and speech beyond these limits he seriously believes to be no more than the back-slang of the educated class, a mere elaboration and darkening of intercourse to secure privacy and distinction. No doubt there is justification enough for his suspicion in the exploits of pretentious and garrulous souls. But it is the superficial justification of a profound and disastrous error. A gap in a man's vocabulary is a hole and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... confess I love a cleanly and quiet privacy, above all the tumult and roar of fortune. What new book have you ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... were encamped to one side of the Mahratta troops in a small jungle of dhak and slim-growing bamboos that afforded them privacy. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... strawberries. One is neat in the strawberry bed, and the other is mashed on the plate. The first method generally requires us to take up a bent position under a net—in a hot sun very uncomfortable, and at any time fatal to the hair. The second method takes us into the privacy of the home, for it demands a dressing-gown and no spectators. For these reasons I think the strawberry an overrated fruit. Yet I must say that I like to see one floating in cider cup. It gives a note of richness ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... tall filbert tree, and a summer-house beneath it, and a row of beehives set beside a stream. The stream, I afterwards learned, came down from Miss Belcher's park, and was the real boundary of the garden: but Miss Belcher had allowed the Major to build a wall for privacy, on the far side of it, yet not so high as to shut off the sun from his bee-skeps; and had granted him a private entrance through it to the park—a narrow wooden door approached by a miniature bridge across ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... forming a space big enough for twenty people or so. A few strategically placed fluoros gave an eerie undersea light, just enough to see by—but no one could look in. A heavy curtain could be drawn if one wanted to be absolutely secluded. Privacy—uh-huh! ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... division of the great hall was collected a very different company. There were not more than fifty or sixty of these, so the wide arches of the surrounding cloisters gave them sufficient shelter and even privacy. With the exception of eight or ten men, all of them old, or well on in middle age, since the younger and more vigorous males had been carefully drafted to serve as gladiators, this little band was made ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... guiltless of glass, and are protected by iron bars. The accessories of our strange calling lend an interest to our domestic arrangements, and form a kind of free entertainment for the vulgar. To insure privacy, we have sometimes curtained the lower half of our enormous windows; but this contrivance has always proved ineffectual, for in the midst of our labour, the space above the curtains has been gradually eclipsed ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... remain all through the fall, winter, and spring. In the summer they go to the watering places, so that they pass their whole lives in hotels. They are mostly persons of wealth and fashion. As may be supposed, the atmosphere of a hotel is not very favorable to domestic privacy, and such establishments are vast manufactories of scandal. People imagine that they are living privately, but their every action is subject to the inspection and comment of the other inmates of the house. The hotels are not the safest places for the growth of the domestic virtues. Indeed, it may ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... King's playhouse, and there saw "The English Monsieur" [A Comedy by James Howard.] (sitting for privacy sake in an upper box): the play hath much mirth in it as to that particular humour. After the play done I down to Knipp, and did stay her undressing herself: and there saw the several players, men and women, go by; and pretty to see how strange they are all, one to another, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... that she had come to the parting of the ways, and in the prospect of a new life old interests lost their savour. Her mother seemed to share her restlessness, but while Claire preferred to stay indoors, in the privacy of her own room, Mrs Gifford seemed to find relief in action, and was often out for hours at a time, without vouchsafing any explanation of ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... always thinking of something unpleasant," he cried with aversion. "Tfoo! How vexed I am that when I was expounding our system, I referred prematurely to the question of personal privacy! It's always a stumbling-block to people like you, they turn it into ridicule before they understand it. And how proud they are of it, too! Tfoo! I've often maintained that that question should not be approached ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ring; he must get that off first. Here was an unhoped-for opportunity of accomplishing this in privacy, and at his leisure. Again approaching the figure, he tried to draw off the compromising circle; but it seemed tighter than ever, and he drew out a pair of scissors and, after a little hesitation, respectfully inserted it under the hoop and set to work to prize ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... then one or another of the blind keepers of the camp will come across to where you sit gossiping, tapping her way among the kitchen middens, guided by your voice that carries far in the clearness and stillness of mesa afternoons. But suppose you find Seyavi retired into the privacy of her blanket, you will get nothing for that day. There is no other privacy possible in a campoodie. All the processes of life are carried on out of doors or behind the thin, twig-woven walls of ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... his wife and children and des Lupeaulx, without the presence of servants. The morning meal affords the only moment of privacy which public men can snatch from the current of overwhelming business. Yet in spite of the precautions they take to keep this hour for private intimacies and affections, a good many great and little people manage to infringe upon it. Business itself will, as at this moment, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... late in the summer afternoon, and made his way through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. ...
— The American • Henry James
... pages from which I have quoted these passages is full of confidential information, and contains extracts from letters of leading statesmen. If its date had been 1762, I might feel authorized in disobeying its injunctions of privacy. I must quote one other sentence, as it shows his animus at that time towards a distinguished statesman of whom he was afterwards accused of speaking in very hard terms by an obscure writer whose intent was to harm him. In speaking of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Easter. So Jim and I made a special trip down to hear it, and, my dear! The hall was packed, the women went simply crazy over him, and he's really quite poetical looking, long hair and all that. And Sally—-I saw her at the hotel the next morning, and such a manner! Protecting the privacy of the genius, don't you know, and seeing reporters, and answering requests for autographs, and declining invitations, here, there, and everywhere! I think she has more fun than Keith does! He's quite helpless without her; won't see a manager or answer a note, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... privacy of our union would not affect them: one Confident we must unavoidably trust, and I would deposit in the hands of whatever person you would name, a bond by which I would engage myself to settle both ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... at a Hot Springs in the wintergreen heart of Virginia, and whatever Louis may have felt in his heart of his right to the privacy of these honeymoon days was carefully belied on his lips, and at Alma's depriving him now and then of his wife's company, packing her off to rest when he wanted a climb with her up a mountain slope or a drive over piny roads, he could still ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Wazir Ja'afar the Barmaki, whereof he had become brother-in-law. Now after some time Al-Rashid asked from Manjab a tale concerning the wiles of womankind, and when the youth hung his head groundwards and blushed before him, Harun said to him, "O Manjab, verily the place of the Kings in privacy is also the place for laying aside gravity." Said Manjab, "O Prince of True Believers, to-morrow night (Inshallah!) I will tell thee a tale in brief concerning the freaks of the gender feminine, and what things they do with their mates." Accordingly when night came on, the Caliph sent for and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... interval it took for a whispered colloquy in the bedroom, and for Mrs. Boyer to don her flannel wrapper, Peter suffered the tortures of the damned. Whatever Mrs. Boyer had meant to say by way of protest at the intrusion on the sacred privacy of eleven o'clock and bedtime died in her throat. Her plump and terraced chin shook with agitation, perhaps with guilt. Peter, however, had got himself in hand. He told a quiet story; Boyer listened; Mrs. Boyer, clutching her wrapper about her ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... idea amongst the young men who frequented the Back Kitchen, and made themselves merry with the society of Captain Costigan, that the Captain made a mystery regarding his lodgings for fear of duns, or from a desire of privacy, and lived in some wonderful place. Nor would the landlord of the premises, when questioned upon this subject, answer any inquiries; his maxim being that he only knew gentlemen who frequented that room, in that room; that ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... arise, and richly-tinted pavilions, with gilded summits, glitter in the sunbeams, while gaudy banners flutter in the air. Long lines of canvas sheets appear, and spacious enclosures formed of kanauts secure the utmost privacy to the dwellers of the populous camp; while the elephants, who have trodden out the ground, and smoothed it for the chief's or master's tent, retire to their bivouac. Not only comfort, but even elegance is imparted to these temporary abodes, fitted up with ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... was having her breakfast in her room, an unprecedented circumstance in the domestic economy. Then Jeremiah was summoned to distribute the much-belabeled trunks. Amzi's sensations during these unwonted excitements were, on the whole, not disagreeable. The invasion of his bachelor privacy was too complete for any minute analysis of what he liked or didn't like. It was a good deal of a joke,—this breakfasting in bed, this command of the resources of his establishment to scatter trunks about. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... machine was going to be a first-class dud. Maybe, he thought gloomily, Uncle Averill had simply not liked to be with people and had used the ruse of a bank-vault door and an empty steamer trunk to achieve privacy whenever he felt ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... which is easier to the cripple than to the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw the veil of privacy before the chamber where the birth which we call death, out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But this friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of his life was mainly in ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... opened upon a sandy street, beyond which was a tangled garden of cacti and hollyhock and sunflowers, with a great wall about it; but I could look over the wall and enjoy the privacy of that sweet haunt. In that cloistered garden grew the obese roses of the far West, that fairly burst upon their stem. Often did I exclaim: "O, for a delicate blossom, whose exquisite breath savors not of the mold, and whose ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... manner from some unexplored lower region. In fact, she was found to have slipped through a hole in the hay-mow into the nest of a very domestic sitting-hen, whose clamors at the invasion of her family privacy added no ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... eye Inward, and observe thy breast; There alone dwells solid Rest. Say not that this House is small, Girt up in a narrow wall: In a cleanly sober mind Heaven itself full room doth find. Here content make thine abode With thyself and with thy God. Here in this sweet privacy May'st thou with thyself agree, And keep House in peace, tho' ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... to a stage of complex perfection. To penetrate to the inside hut, the stranger reverently steps through a hole in the snow to the veranda, then by way of a vestibule with an inner and outer door he has invaded the privacy of the work-room, from which with fear and trembling he passes by a third door into the sanctum sanctorum. Later, when the snow-tunnel system came into vogue, the place became another Labyrinth ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... privacy of Adela's own room, something was said about George Bertram. "I am sure he does not ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... not but make the Association quite early decide that the one thing above all others needed was a new building with suites of rooms, where families could have the comforts and privacy of homes, which with a large kitchen, bakery, dining rooms, parlors, etc., would make a "unitary dwelling"; approximating to an apartment house of more modern days in many of its details, and improving on it as regards unitary cooking, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... drawn to this little girl who seemed so to want the privacy of a home life. She spoke to her very gently. "Yes, Vivian, we all go to school,—though I don't go to a regular school, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... shunning the society of all save his familiar friends and attendants, and with his face disfigured by an eruption of the skin of which he was painfully sensitive, that there took place an incident (which may or may not be true) mentioned by Suetonius. In the privacy of this villa Tiberius was one day surprised by an ingenious Capriote fisherman, who in ignorance or defiance of the Emperor's wishes had managed to scale with his naked feet the steep cliffs from the sea below, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... man possessing many excellent talents, and chiefly renowned as an admirable soldier. Brave, without being rash, quick to calculate his chances, he was able always to seize the advantage. On the other hand, however, he was so distrustful and timid in the privacy of his palace that he organised a guard of eight thousand armed slaves, one thousand of whom kept constant watch. He never spent the entire night in the same apartment or tent, and no one was ever permitted to know the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... that there would be hardly enough pleasant work, like hay-making and bridge-building and carpentering and paving, left to go round; and the picture of life which he draws, with its total lack of privacy, the shops where you may ask for anything that you want without having to pay, the guest-houses, with their straw-coloured wine in quaint carafes, the rich stews served in grey earthenware dishes streaked with blue, the ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... street far broader and finer than the Chandni Chouk—and into an hotel kept by a Parsee gentleman named Byramjee. Life at this hostelry is made of more than passing interest by the familiar manner in which frogs, lizards, and birds invade the privacy of one's apartments. Not one of these is harmful, but one naturally grows curious about whether a cobra or some other less desirable member of the reptile world is not likely at any time to join their interesting company. The ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to invade the privacy of that rear coach after the train had gotten under way were also denied. Meanwhile, the filibusters cast restraint aside, and for ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... is that for such a hero as my friend, whose whole soul is to be outraged by publicity and reclame, and much of whose dearly loved privacy is to be lost for ever, there ought to be a V.C. above and beyond the ordinary V.C.—a super V.C.; for he performed not one deed, but two: he not only destroyed the Zepp but he surrendered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... Over three hundred cards had been issued for the party, which was the absorbing topic of conversation in the whole town, and which brought white kids and white muslins into great requisition, while swallow-tails and non swallow-tails were discussed in the privacy of households, and discarded or decided upon according to the length of the masculine purse or the strength of the masculine resistance, for dress coats were not then the rule in Shannondale. It was said that Mr. St. Claire and Squire ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... placed a table, an ivory bundle chair and a gourd of water, and I am also treated to a calico tablecloth, and most thoughtfully screened off from the public gaze with more calico so that I can have my tea in privacy. After this meal, to my surprise Ndaka turns up. Certainly he is one of the very ugliest men—black or white—I have ever seen, and I fancy one of the best. He is now on a holiday from Kangwe, seeing to the settlement of his dead brother's affairs. The dead brother was a great ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... dread, in open sand stretches sometimes justified, of being over blown by the drift. It is hot, dry, fretful work, but by going along the ground with the wind behind, one may come upon strange things in its tumultuous privacy. I like these truces of wind and heat that the desert makes, otherwise I do not know how I should come by so many acquaintances with furtive folk. I like to see hawks sitting daunted in shallow holes, not daring to ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... what delicious precipitation the Misses Rushford, having read the note sent to them by Lord Vernon and having recovered somewhat from the paralysis of amazement into which it had thrown them, hurried up the stair and sought the privacy of their own apartment. Here, evidently, was a full-fledged mystery enacting under their very noses, no trumpery neighbourhood mystery, either, but one of national—aye, even international—importance! It made them gasp to think of it; they were even a little frightened. By ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... him which took hold of the business in man-fashion, and transacted it so efficiently as to leave no room for criticism, and nobody can produce voluntary effects without feeling in himself a reaction from them. He had occasion to look into the privacy of many human hearts, to pity them and advise them, and from such services and insights he no doubt obtained a residue of wisdom which might be applied to his own ulterior uses. These were indirect and incidental issues; ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... my best to arrange privacy for all of you; with so many ingenious idiots on board I'm not really surprised that they managed to circumvent me. I had to cheat and check that you really were on the list; and I knew that whoever backed out you'd still be ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... Arnold. "The name shall never pass my lips save in privacy, and indeed it is hardly likely that it will ever do so even then, for your habit of calling each other by your Christian names is too foreign ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... things jarred: the want of privacy, the common ways of his companions, the roughness of the food, and the annoyances—petty annoyances—he had to submit ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... beneath them to dine with the men. Broth, too, may be made in the kitchen and sent down to the bothy. At harvest time the workers take their food in the fields, when great quantities of milk are provided. There is very little beer drunk, and whiskey is only consumed in privacy. ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... the plainest English, even to young girls. The fancy that the Countess of Cornwall might not like her whole life, so far as it was known, laid bare to her new bower-woman was one which never troubled the mind of Dame La Theyn. Privacy, to any person of rank more especially, was an unknown thing in the ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... time a certain sense of shame has begun to invade the privacy of our brain. We feel that to answer that letter now would be an indelicacy. Better to pretend that we never got it. By and by Bill will write again and then we will answer promptly. We put the letter back in the middle of the heap and think ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... his best skill, and said that he would take him to see a certain house of his which no one yet had ever seen—not even his wife or any child of his. This house, which he had built, he would show him, if he cared to go with him to the place where in absolute privacy he works and paints and carves. He would show him the finest and prettiest place that he had ever seen. Cliges replies: "Let ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw the veil of privacy over the chamber where the birth which we call death, out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But this friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of his life was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... meeting and possessing one peculiar intimate person, one special exclusive lover who is their very own, and a third person of either sex cannot be associated with that couple without an intolerable sense of privacy and confidence and possession destroyed. It is difficult to imagine a second wife in a home who would not be and feel herself to be a rather excluded and inferior person. But that does not abolish ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Wooden Spoon Exhibition was written in the year 1851. Since then its privacy has been abolished, and its exercises are no longer forbidden by the Faculty. Tutors are now not unfrequently among the spectators at the presentation, and even ladies lend their presence, attention, and applause, to beautify, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... retired to write her letter to Bernard in the privacy of her own room, and Bessie, in radiant spirits, had gone off to dress for evening service, where she was to go escorted by Franky and Emily. Deleah was left in charge ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... to Harry that in the smoking-room there could be no privacy. Three or four men had already spoken to the count, showing that he was well known, giving notice, as it were, that Pateroff would become a public man when once he was placed in a public circle. To have given a dinner to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... gentleman, as he re-entered the luncheon-room and drew his host into the privacy of a bay-window, "I really am afraid I shall have to leave you this evening—if you won't think it rude of me ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... morsels fed, Whose Dam An orphan left him, lately dead. A Cat I keep, that plays about my house, Grown fat With eating many a miching** mouse. To these A Tracy*** I do keep, whereby I please The more my rural privacy, Which are But toys to give my heart some ease; Where care None is, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall |
