"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all neatly rebandaged, the boy caught at Miss Pinkerton with a shy hand. "Gracias—thank you," he said, "but why you take so long trouble for us, Lady, when we ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... said Arkwright. "I'm rather shy of matrimony. I don't hanker after the stupid joys of ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... one in which he came home from Africa. This would never do. It wasn't proper, it wasn't respectable. There was no choice but to borrow a shirt of Caesar's. Caesar's shirt was of ancient pattern, and Pete was shy of taking it. "Take it, or you'll have none," said Nancy, and she pushed him back into his room. When he emerged from it he walked with a stiff neck down the stairs in a collar that reached to his ears at either side, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... good society in Sydney, when my family first arrived there, was no easy matter. Not that there was any lack of it in the place, but the residents were, very properly, shy of strangers, unless provided with testimonials as to their respectability. Fortunately for us, a kind friend in Singapore, who had been in New South Wales, and knew the value of the favour he was conferring, supplied us with ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... with the elaborate courtesy which a Colonel shows to a subaltern and which makes the subaltern look and feel the size of the head of a pin. Naturally, Broussard hastened his leave-taking and received no invitation to remain, except from Anita's eyes, shy and long-lashed. ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... And on that Tuesday the little lord set foot in the castle; and my lady was down at the door-way to meet him, in a new velvet gown, with her wimple sewn in fine pearls, and my lord with her; but my two nurslings waxed shy at the last minute, and would not come down, but leaned and peered through the posts o' the stair-rail, and my little lady let fall one o' her shoes in her eagerness to glimpse at her new cousin. And straightway ran the lad and lifted the wee shoe, and looked upward, laughing, and my lord and ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... The wild shy things which roam The woods, and live in bough and tree and grot, Flutter and chirp unscared, they fear me not, For ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... while she sleeps. Strange to say, the men are represented as more modest than the women. When two maidens prepared a bath for Parzival, and proposed to bathe him, according to custom, the inexperienced young knight was shy, and would not enter the bath until they had gone; on another occasion, he jumped quickly into bed when the maidens entered the room. When Wolfdieterich was about to undress, he had to ask the ladies who pressed around him to leave ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the habit of making hideous grimaces before a looking-glass? Do you suppose I am given to over-indulgence in cod-liver oil and whatever the other beastliness was? Am I acrobatic in my calmer moments? Did you ever know me sing—with or without a broom? I'm a shy man by nature (pathetically), more shy than you think, perhaps,—and in my normal condition, I should be the last person to prance about in a gauze skirt for the amusement of a couple of hundred idiots? I don't believe ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... I close my eyes and see A strange procession passing me— The years before I saw your face Go by me with a wistful grace; They pass, the sensitive shy years, As one who strives to dance, half ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... wind and rain which had stamped such a gray fatigue on Alice Puttenham's cheeks. Amid the dusk, the fire-light touched her hair and her ungloved hand. She was a vision of youth and soft life; and her composure, her slight, shy smile, would ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the like, that undertaking, whatever it may be, is noted in the book which I have mentioned, and although years may pass before it can be fulfilled, is in due course carried out to the letter. Now, convicts are shy birds, who put little faith in promises. But when they find that these are always kept they gain confidence in the makers of them, and often learn ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing down their heads. But here all is different, in this so-called Bacchanal of Mantegna. This heavy Silenus is supine like a mass of marble; these fauns are shy and mute; these youths are grave and sombre; there is no wine in the cups, there are no lees in the vat, there is no life in these magnificent colossal forms; there is no blood in their grandly bent lips, no light in their wide-opened eyes; it is not the drowsiness ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... And thou art shy as she, But mortal, or I had not found thy shrine, To listen breathlessly If I may make thy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... little clergyman. I am Lady Ilbury now, happy in the affection of a beloved and noble-hearted husband. A tiny voice is calling "Mamma;" the shy, useless girl you have known is now a mother, thinking, and trembling while she smiles, how strong is love, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... "Margaret was shy and proud; I could never completely win her confidence; but I knew, I knew well at last, that her heart was mine. And a deep, tender, woman's heart it was, too, despite her reserve. Without many words, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... off,—a melancholy more common amongst very young men in such scenes than we are apt to suppose. Somehow or other, the pleasure was not congenial to him; he had no Mrs. M'Catchley to endear it; he knew very few people, he was shy, he felt his position with his uncle was equivocal, he had not the habit of society, he heard, incidentally, many an ill-natured remark upon his uncle and the entertainment, he felt indignant and mortified. He had been a great deal happier ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reached a small, evil-smelling street, leading from Leicester Square towards Holborn. I caught him by the shoulders and turned him round with his back against some church railings. I forget what I said. We are strange mixtures. I thought of the shy, backward boy I had coached and bullied at old Fauerberg's, of the laughing handsome lad I had watched grow into manhood. The very restaurant we had most frequented in his old Oxford days—where we had poured out our souls to one another, was in this very street ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... very glad to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor things.[36] I suppose the sister they are now anxious about is the one that would live by herself on the other side of the Lake, and study ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... to hint that there's one particular reason why I hated to leave El Placida. Oh, we'd played around some before that. Strictly off stage stuff, though; a little mandolin practice in the moonlight, a few fox trot lessons, and so on. But before the old man I'd let on to be skirt shy. It went big with him, I noticed. But there in the car I decides that the only way to keep in touch with the family check book is to make a quick bid for 'Chita. So I cut loose with the best Romeo lines ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... eyebrows and a graceful figure, always rosy and attractive-looking, but in her face and in her whole person there was not one striking feature, not one bold line to catch the eye, as though nature had lacked inspiration and confidence when creating her. Tatyana Ivanovna was shy, bashful, and modest in her behaviour; she moved softly and smoothly, said little, seldom laughed, and her whole life was as regular as her face and as flat as her smooth, tidy hair. My uncle screwed up his eyes looking after her, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said Arnobius; "I knew him at school. Boys differ; some are bold and open. They like to be men, and to dare the deeds of men; they talk freely, and take their swing in broad day. Others are shy, reserved, bashful, and are afraid to do what they love quite as much as the others. Agellius never could rub off this shame, and it has taken this turn. He's sure to outgrow it in a year or two. I should not wonder if, when once he had got ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... 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 ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... purblind chit, Of awkward and ill-judging wit, 10 If matches are not better made, At once I must forswear my trade. You send me such ill-coupled folks, That 'tis a shame to sell them yokes. They squabble for a pin, a feather, And wonder how they came together. The husband's sullen, dogged, shy; The wife grows flippant in reply: He loves command and due restriction, And she as well likes contradiction: 20 She never slavishly submits; She'll have her will, or have her fits. He this way tugs, she t'other draws: The man grows jealous, and with cause. ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... he; and then he took her hand; he held it, while he looked into her face. He had thought it changed when he had first seen her, but it was now almost the same to him as of yore. The sweet shy eyes, the indicated dimple in the cheek, and something of fever had brought a faint pink flush into her usually colourless cheeks. Married judge though he was, he was not sure if she had not more charms for him still in her sorrow ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the hall. She was not in any way shy. She seemed to rule all around her with a sort of high-bred dominance, all the more remarkable as she was greatly agitated and as pale as snow. In the great hall were several servants, the men standing together near the hall door, and the women clinging together in the further ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... feet, to give them the sympathetic courtesy which was their due. She never had tried her hand at flirting; but it was left for this season to stamp Miss Kennedy as 'the most unapproachable woman in town.' Which, however, unfortunately, made her more popular than ever. She was so lovely in her shy reserve; the hardwon favours were so delightful; the smiles so witching when they came; and nobody ever suspected that what she did with all her triumphs was to mentally bestow them on somebody else. They belonged to him, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... least. For of course it could not long be a mystery who had sent little Frank Hall his valentine; nor could his mother long entertain her hard manner towards one who had given her child a new pleasure. She was shy, and she was proud, and for some time she struggled against the natural desire of manifesting her gratitude; but one evening, when Libbie was returning home, with a bundle of work half as large as herself, as she dragged ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... be called a' accident. But she was too open; my own experience is 't bein' frank 'n' free is time throwed away on men. If anythin' serious is to be done with a man, it's got to be done from behind a woodpile. I had some little dealin's with men in the marryin' line once, 'n' I found 'em very shy; tamin' gophers is sleepin' in the sun beside grabbin' a man 's dead against bein' grabbed. I don't say 's it can't be done, but I will say 't it 's hard in the first 'n' harder in the last, when you 've got him 'n' he's got you, like ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Meat can be had almost every place. The kind of meat differs much in locality. Chickens can be obtained anywhere. The Indian cock is small of head and long of leg, shrill of voice and bold in spirit. The Indian hen is shy and wild, but gives plenty of small, delicately-flavored eggs. On the whole, aside from a few idiosyncrasies, the Indian fowl is ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... not impress him. Here was a quiet, motherly personality, a personality to grow upon one through months and years. At first meeting she seemed only a gray-haired, shy, silent sort of person, not to be spoken of by herself as Mrs. Lightener, but in the reflected rays of her husband, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Dulcie was shy and silent most of the time, her eyes were still red, she was still numb from her nerve-racking day before, still shamed by the fact that this queer little creature had given her her bed and slept in a chair beside her. Late ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... into his auditory by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. He must be thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... since which time, to this day, he has not been seen to approach the well, and it is with great difficulty he can be brought within sight of it. This fish lay in a dormant state for five months in the year, during which time she would eat nothing, and was likewise very shy."] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... praised Diana when he was fully informed by that not very shy young lady of the meaning of her conduct. For Helena's sake she had wished to expose Bertram's meanness, not only to the King, but to himself. His pride was now in shreds, and it is believed that he made a husband ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... not seen his old friends for many days, for Nannie was a good deal out with the basket now her mother was confined to the house, and, somehow, her manner toward him the last time he was there made him feel shy, as if he was not wanted there any more. Still the pail was filled as usual, and stood beside the door, with many a nice and pretty thing for the baby. Mrs. Bates wondered why she never heard him come up the stairs now, and if he ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... banks into hollow and hole; Sometimes afar, and sometimes a-near. All-marring 'ARRY'S exuberant voice, With music strange and manifold, Howling out choruses loud and bold As when Bank-holidayites rejoice With concertinas, and the many-holed Shrill whistle of tin, till the riot is rolled Through shy backwaters, where swan-nests are; And greasy scraps of the Echo or Star, Waifs from the cads' oleaginous feeds, Emitting odours reekingly rank, Drift under the clumps of the water-weeds, And broken bottles invade the reeds, And the wavy swell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... soul. I remember returning, shaken and uplifted, through the April air, to the house where my mother lay in death; and among my old papers lies a torn fragment of a letter thirty years old, which I began to write to Mr. Gladstone a few days later, and was too shy ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certainly, but when he did, everything was in the best possible style. He was very exclusive, and knew no man in college out of the fast set, and of these he addicted himself chiefly to the society of the rich freshmen, for somehow the men of his own standing seemed a little shy of him. But with the freshmen he was always hand and glove, lived in their rooms, and used their wines, horses, and other movable property as his own. Being a good whist and billiard player, and not a bad jockey, he managed in one way or another to make his young friends pay well for the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to 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 ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... and he kept it well, as we have seen before; and up to this point of time everything was set down with day and date. But now a change had clearly come over the habits of our little party. At first, as has been hitherto related, the old Captain was a little shy of the children, though he so much liked them; but now all formality was gone between them, and so down the children came to the Captain's cottage whenever they had a mind. The Captain was always glad to see them, be it morning, noon, or evening; and never ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... or even to see, it was too lonely a home for him. Not a bit of it! No child could have been happier. He did not want for company; his playfellows were the dogs and cats and chickens, and any creature in and about the house. But most of all he loved the little shy creatures that lived in the sunshine among the flowers—the small birds and butterflies, and little beasties and creeping things he was accustomed to see outside the gate among the tall, wild sunflowers. There were acres of these plants, and they were taller than Martin, ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... into eyes filled with shy pleading. He could not, would not, for all of the solar system, have committed the unpardonable affront of rejecting the love so frankly offered. And yet he did not know how to accept this miracle. He did it clumsily, haltingly disclosing the secret recesses of his own ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... upon such acquaintance as fit my liking, I throw myself with such violence upon them that I hardly fail to stick, and to make an impression where I hit; as I have often made happy proof. In ordinary friendships I am somewhat cold and shy, for my motion is not natural, if not with full sail: besides which, my fortune having in my youth given me a relish for one sole and perfect friendship, has, in truth, created in me a kind of distaste to others, and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... for the autumn, or of Dante and the discovery of his missing cantos, or else of how abominably Bob Townsend had treated Rosalind Jemmett, and they had almost reached the upper terrace—little Roger, indeed, his red head blazing in the sunlight, was already sidling by shy instalments toward them—when Patricia moaned inconsequently and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... partly because he was just so shy of letting his own handwriting be seen in the address, that he meant to avail himself of Marian's cover. Just as Marian had finished a note, too joyous to have any sense in it, and containing a promise to write more ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to his side, and removing his hands from his face, retained one of them as she said, gently, "Hobart, I am no longer a shy girl. I have suffered too deeply, I have learned too thoroughly how life may be robbed of happiness, and for a time, almost of hope, not to see the folly of letting the years slip away, unproductive of half what they might yield to you and me. I understand you; you do not understand ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... surprising manoeuvres around the room. It would jerk Mr. Potts high into the air and souse him down in an appalling manner, with one leg among Slugg's gouges and other instruments of torture, and with the other in the spittoon. Then it would rear him up against the chandelier three or four times, and shy across and drive Potts' head through the oil portrait of Slugg's father over the mantel-piece. After bumping him against Slugg's ancestor it would swirl Potts around among the crockery on the wash-stand and dance him ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... it was comical to note how shy the politicians fought of the women to whom they had promised assistance. Judge O. P. Mason, who had agreed to give ten lectures for the amendment, and whose advocacy would have had immense weight, engaged to speak for the Republican party, and at every place but one, the managers stipulated ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of Asia consist of two groups, the first of which have no cheek pouches, but always have very long tails, They are true forest monkeys, very active and of a shy disposition. The most remarkable of these is the long-nosed monkey of Borneo, which is very large, of a pale brown color, and distinguished by possessing a long, pointed, fleshy nose, totally unlike that of all other monkeys. Another interesting species ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... up in a hermitage are naturally shy and reserved; but for all that She did look towards me, though she quick withdrew Her stealthy glances when she met my gaze; She smiled upon me sweetly, but disguised With maiden grace the secret of her smiles. Coy love was half unveiled; then, sudden checked By modesty, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... suffered no less sharply than before. A place was got, it was lost in the old style; from the long-suffering of the keepers of restaurants he fell to more open charity upon the wayside; as time went on, good-nature became weary, and, after a repulse or two, Herrick became shy. There were women enough who would have supported a far worse and a far uglier man; Herrick never met or never knew them: or if he did both, some manlier feeling would revolt, and he preferred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... station, leaving Arthur in wonder. That was the very London editor himself. He had been into the country, and was taking Helstonleigh on his way back to town; had stayed in it a day or two for the purpose of seeing Martin Pope, who was an old friend, and of being introduced to Hamish Channing. That shy feeling of reticence, which is the characteristic of most persons whose genius is worth anything, had induced Hamish to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... means, "If I happen to be in the Humour." You must know that the feeling of being bound to an Engagement is the very thing that makes him wish to break it. Spedding once told me this was rather my case. I believe it, and am therefore shy of ever making an engagement. O si ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... industrial interests of America—promises to work a revolution; for notwithstanding the fact that, in many of the largest iron, steel, and glass factories in Pittsburg and its vicinity, natural gas has already been substituted for coal, the managers of some such works are shy of the new fuel, mainly for two reasons: 1. They doubt the continuity and regularity of its supply. 2. They do not deem the difference between the price of natural gas and coal sufficient as yet to justify the expenditure involved in the furnace changes necessary to the substitution ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Rome in 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
... member of the feathered tribe is two feet long; its plumage is white and black, and the male is ornamented with a gorgeous scarlet crest, which seemed especially brilliant against the winter snow. The birds go in pairs and are not very shy, but are difficult to kill and have to be shot with rifle. One of their peculiarities is that they feed on one tree for as long as a fortnight at a time, at last causing the decayed tree to fall. The birds are exceedingly rare in the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... watched in that swamp with the rifle, while Ned tramped in another direction carrying the shotgun, making maps of the country, and picking up occasionally a duck or Indian hen for dinner. Sometimes Dick got sight of a bear, but Bruin was shy and kept well out of range. One day, while sitting in some thick woods, hoping that a bear would wander near him, Dick heard a loud tearing sound that seemed to come from the top of a little group of young palmettos. He crept as slowly and silently as possible near the trees and ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... dull-witted, shy of society, sometimes bursting into tears when spoken to, George became "a lover of nooks and retired corners," {7e} where he would sit for hours at a time a prey to "a peculiar heaviness . . . and at times . . . ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... a qualm, along with the second attack group. We were under the command of a shy, tall man with spectacles who didn't look like much, he'd been a trapper before the war, though, and was one of the original guerrillas, for a wonder, and that meant he was probably a hell of a lot tougher ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... had felt him yielding to her fixed determination. Then, suddenly, her power had left her, and as she walked beside him, she knew that if she looked into his face she would blush and be confused like a shy girl. She almost wished that he would leave her without a word and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... himself bore a part; for when he came upon his shy, suspicious boy clasped in the kind arms of the woman whose brown eyes, once seen, had haunted his thoughts ever since, he gathered them both to him irresistibly. As he laid his cheek against hers, he felt that ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... since Philip had returned from India as a man of fifty, with the reasonable hope of enjoying his pensioned retirement. Philip had spent his energy freely in the Indian Civil Service, and the two middle-aged brothers, either too poor to marry, too shy, or both, determined to combine resources with companionship ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... thy boasted implements of art, And all thy well-cramm'd magazines of health? Nor hill nor vale, as far as ship could go, Nor margin of the gravel-bottom'd brook, Escaped thy rifling hand;—from stubborn shrubs Thou wrung'st their shy retiring virtues out, And vex'd them in the fire: nor fly, nor insect, Nor writhy snake, escaped thy deep research. 330 But why this apparatus Why this cost? Tell us, thou doughty keeper from the grave, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and that Mother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if they really knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believe Nicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about it because they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only gassing, or "making poetry"—as if poetry wasn't the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... the sexual instinct awakens, and the mental, like the physical, changes are profound. There is great general instability, the child, at one time shy and reticent, is at another, boisterous ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... axe had made for guidance. The vision of the slave was of supper at the quarters, of the scraping of the fiddle in the red firelight, of the dancing and the singing. The white man saw, at first, only a girl's face, shy and innocent,—the face of the woodland maid who had fired his fancy, who was drawing him through the wilderness back to the cabin in the valley. But after a while, in the gray stillness, he lost the face, and suddenly thought, instead, of the stone ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... who seems a wee bit shy, Or is it that a teardrop is trembling in her eye? Well, I am sure that you or I would make an awful fuss If we should have to have ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood
... Shy and reserved in temperament, he confided only in himself. None, not even his superiors at the bank or the Board of Management, knew how well off he had become. No one visited him at the flat which he ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... Homeburg man who has made good comes back to visit in the old town. We're aching to rush up and wring his arm off, but we want to know how he feels about it first. One or two experiences have made us gun-shy. We can't forget Lyla Enbright, who moved away with her family years ago and married a national bank or something of the kind in the East. She didn't come home for ten years, but finally the father died and Lyla came ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... springs, and they are said to be notable for their longevity, healthiness, and disinclination for excesses of all kinds. It is scarcely necessary to remark that a mother, however highly intelligent, is by no means an infallible judge as to the presence or absence in her children of so shy, subtle, and elusive an impulse as that of sex. At the same time I am by no means disposed to question the existence in individuals, and even in families or stocks, of a relatively weak sexual impulse, which, while still enabling procreation to take place, is accompanied by no strong attraction ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... suddenly we saw a female chamois, followed by her young, ascending a neighboring slope, and presently four or five more stretched their necks over a rock, as if to see what was going on. Breathless the wrestlers and the dancers paused, fearing to disturb by the slightest movement creatures so shy of human approach. They drew nearer until within easy gunshot distance, and then galloping along the opposite ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... on, hiding her face in Lois's skinny hand, until Sam Polston came in, when she grew quiet and shy. The poor deformed girl lay watching them, as they talked. Very pretty Jenny looked, with her blue eyes and damp pink cheeks; and it was a manly, grave love in Sam's face, when it turned to her. A different love from ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... dashed to and fro on military errands. I tried to imagine how very disagreeable the presence of a Southern army would be in a sober town of Massachusetts; and the thought considerably lessened my wonder at the cold and shy regards that are cast upon our troops, the gloom, the sullen demeanor, the declared or scarcely hidden sympathy with rebellion, which are so frequent here. It is a strange thing in human life, that the greatest errors both of men and women often spring from their ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to England, Gray lived for a short time at Stoke Poges, where he wrote his "Ode on Eton," and probably sketched his "Elegy," which, however, was not finished till 1750, eight years later. During the latter years of his shy and scholarly life he was Professor of Modern History and Languages at Cambridge, without any troublesome work of lecturing to students. Here he gave himself up to study and to poetry, varying his work by "prowlings" among the manuscripts of the new British Museum, and by his "Lilliputian" ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... A shy, impulsive smile played about her red lips for a second, lighting up the delicate face with a radiance that amazed him. Then the shutter was closed gently, quickly. His first feeling of elation was ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... them in? Come, don't be shy: You know I love to hear how Germans die, Downstairs in dug-outs. "Camerad!" they cry; Then squeal like stoats when bombs ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... naught: Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure; The pretty air, the childish grace untaught, The innocent wiles, And all the sunny smiles, The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure; The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high, The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye; Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined, And the gay impulse of her baby mind That none could tame, That sent her spinning round, A spirit of living flame Dancing in airy rapture o'er the ground— All these with that faint ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... dead, and she lived with her mother, a woman of low degree, who had been a cook before marrying her master. Either for this reason, or on account of the indisputable ugliness of her face, the Indians fought shy of her; although her exaggerated idea of her position exacted a certain respect in society. Her face was hideous, with irregular features, marked with erysipelas, and disfigured by red patches about the nostrils. She only retained ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... shy man we know—Lord Chesterfield said he was the most timid man he ever knew—and it speaks well for his resolution and strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... school of porpoise, trampling over the beds and crowding up to the fire and the wagon. They almost knocked down some of the boys, so sudden was their entrance. Then they set up a terrible nickering for mates. The boys went amongst them, and horses that were timid and shy almost caressed their riders, trembling in limb and muscle the while through fear, like a leaf. We concluded a bear had scented the camp, and in approaching it had circled round, and run amuck our saddle ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... you that after my Mother's death my naturally happy disposition completely changed. Instead of being lively and demonstrative as I had been, I became timid, shy, and extremely sensitive; a look was enough to make me burst into tears. I could not bear to be noticed or to meet strangers, and was only at ease in my own family circle. There I was always cherished ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... and nineteenth centuries, and the old bottles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, or even of the sixteenth and seventeenth, almost every one now perceives; it is no longer dangerous to affirm that this want of correspondence exists; people are even beginning to be shy of denying it. To remove this want of correspondence is beginning to be the settled endeavor of most persons of good sense. Dissolvents of the old European system of dominant ideas and facts we must all be, all of us ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... kidding, fellows!" said Nick, in disgust. "You know what I've been shy on all this blessed trip. A pair of wings; not angel wings, but canvas ones, to keep a new beginner swimmer from sinking. I tell you I'd never lost all this flesh with worry on this cranky, wobbly boat if I'd known I had those jolly things along. I do ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... the wrong way 'bout drawin' Mistu' Simpson out. He is shy an' has to be played fo' like a trout, an' heah you-all come at him like a cattle stampede." The big Texan leaned towards Simpson. "Now you-all watch my methods. Mistu' Simpson, seh, what du think of the prospects ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... any thing like interesting knowledge, until this author began to write, from the visiting eye of even learned curiosity. Nor this without a sufficient reason; since the mountains do, of themselves, shut in their inhabitants, and, for a stranger, the temper of the rugged mountaineer, at once shy and mailing himself in defiance, is, like the soil, inaccessible. To Ernst Willkomm this hinderance was none. He discloses to us the heart of the country, and that of the people which have born him, which have bred him up; and he will, if he is encouraged, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and fearless, that is true; and if you are told that he is shy and wary and inapproachable, that is also true. For he is never the same two days in succession. At once shy and bold, solitary and gregarious; restless as a cloud, yet clinging to his feeding grounds, spite of wolves and hunters, till he leaves them of his own free will; wild as Kakagos the raven, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... ways, and had followed the real leadings of his disposition, which his misdirected courtship had interrupted for the time, returning to the intellectual pursuits which were likely to be beneficial, not only as pleasures, but in an economical point of view; and he was half shy, half proud of the profits, such as they were, of a few poems and essays which he certainly had not had it in him to write before the ordeal he ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Constance herself had to hurry to the printers to order more. Samuel was put into a passion by this carelessness of the printers. He offered Cyril sixpence for every sheet of signatures which the boy would obtain. At first Cyril was too shy to canvass, but his father made him blush, and in a few hours Cyril had developed into an eager canvasser. One whole day he stayed away from school to canvas. Altogether he earned over fifteen shillings, quite honestly except that he got a companion to forge a couple ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... when the soil is warm with rain, And through the wood the shy wind steals, Rich with the pine and the poplar smell,— And the joyous soul like a dancer, reels Through ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... its colour, and brightened with its prettiest smile. Mr. Vimpany stood in a corner; his cigar went out: his own wife would hardly have known him again—he actually presented an appearance of embarrassment! Lord Harry burst out laughing: "Look at him Iris! The doctor is shy for the first time in his life." The Irish good-humour was irresistible. The young wife merrily echoed her husband's laugh. Mr. Vimpany, observing the friendly reception offered to Hugh, felt the necessity ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... have shown a genius for leaving us alone, after the first welcome, that is beautiful. They are so regardful of our privacy, in fact, that if it had not been for Aristides, who explained their ideal to me, I should have felt neglected sometimes, and should have been shy of letting them know that we would like their company. But he understood it, and I must say that I have never enjoyed people and their ways so much. Their hospitality is a sort of compromise between that of the English houses ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... is known, he never mentioned his disappointment to a soul. He might, perhaps, if he had been at Cambridge, but he was a shy and solitary youth, and just as likely he might not. Up in Lincolnshire, in the seventeenth century, who was there for him ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and forty. He had married young and had two children, of whom the eldest was a youth just one and twenty. Michael was called by his enemies Antinomian. He was fervently religious, upright, temperate, but given somewhat to moodiness and passion. He was singularly shy of talking about his own troubles, of which he had more than his share at home, but often strange clouds cast shadows upon him, and the reasons he gave for the change observable in him were curiously incompetent ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... nights spent in the jungle. But, exhausted as he was, he could not sleep at first. The strangeness of the adventure kept him awake. To find his presence accepted by this vast gathering of wild elephants, animals which are usually extremely shy of human beings, was in itself extraordinary. Much as he knew of the jungle he had never dreamt of this. In Central Indian villages he had been told legends of lost children being adopted by wolves. But for ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... sprang up many factional differences from various causes, some personal, others political, and some, I regret to say, from downright moral obliquity—as, for example, those between Cortinas and Canales —who, though generally hostile to the Imperialists, were freebooters enough to take a shy at each other frequently, and now and then even to join forces against Escobedo, unless we prevented them by coaxing or threats. A general who could unite these several factions was therefore greatly needed, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to be no reply to make. Lady Theobald had her granddaughter under excellent control. Under her rigorous rule, the girl—whose mother had died at her birth—had been brought up. At nineteen she was simple, sensitive, shy. She had been permitted to have no companions, and the greatest excitements of her life had been the Slowbridge tea-parties. Of the late Sir Gilbert Theobald, the less said the better. He had spent very little of his married life at Oldclough Hall, and upon his death his widow had found herself possessed ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not tell you the name of the party from whom I expect the proposal, honest Aby; because if he should be shy of speaking, as youngsters sometimes are, it might come to nothing; but I may hint to you, that you are well acquainted with his family; and I dare say you will not be sorry for the match, it being so agreeable to my daughter's inclination; though I grant it may not be so good a one as my sister ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Mr. Romanes is saying almost in my own words what less than three years ago he was very angry with me for saying. I do not think that under these circumstances much explanation is necessary as to the reasons which have led Mr. Romanes to fight so shy of any reference to Life and Habit, Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory—works in which, if I may venture to say so, the theory connecting the phenomena of heredity with memory has been not only "suggested," but so far established ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... ye peoples, still Ridden hard by a ruthless will! Militarism is mounted firm. The saddled slaves may shudder and squirm, The bridled brutes may shy and shrink, The road is long, and the gulf's black brink Seems distant yet, and is scarcely seen By the rival riders, whose pride and spleen Blind them—save to each other's glare, To the pace they make, and the weight they bear, Those hot-urged horses! Lash and goad, Rash riders!—but, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... perspective of houses declined and dwindled till they merged in the highway across the moor. The white riband of road disappeared over Grey's Bridge a quarter of a mile off, to plunge into innumerable rustic windings, shy shades, and solitary undulations up hill and down dale for one hundred and twenty miles till it exhibited itself at Hyde Park Corner as a smooth bland surface in touch with a busy and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... I had outward, cooped up with these two and a shy and profoundly depressed mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the rest of his leisure in lethargy, three and fifty days of life cooped up in a perpetual smell, in a persistent sick hunger that turned from the sight of food, in darkness, cold and wet, in a lightly ballasted ship ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... round his waist the vesture bound. Then quick the hero Lakshman too His garment from his shoulders threw, And, in the presence of his sire, Indued the ascetic's rough attire. But Sita, in her silks arrayed, Threw glances, trembling and afraid, On the bark coat she had to wear, Like a shy doe that eyes the snare. Ashamed and weeping for distress From the queen's hand she took the dress. The fair one, by her husband's side Who matched heaven's minstrel monarch,(312) cried: "How bind they on their woodland dress, Those hermits of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... self-imposed dualism rarely are, for the second nature they build up on the foundation of their own is never wholly artificial. The disposition to certain modes of thought and habits of bearing is really present, as is sufficiently proved by their admiration of both. Very shy persons, for instance, invariably admire very self-possessed ones, and in trying to imitate them occasionally exhibit a cold-blooded arrogance which is amazing. Timothy Titmouse secretly looks up to Don Juan as his ideal, and after half a lifetime of failure outdoes his model, to the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Ames was quite reserved in the presence of the young school teacher. Naturally reticent, he was more than ever shy in the company of an educated lady from the East. Rupert never saw her but he thought of the day of her arrival on Dry Bench and the time when he held her in his arms. Never had he referred to the latter part of the episode, though she often talked of her peculiar ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... a shy glance, which had yet the touch of impertinence that was ingrain in her, replied, "I was that the first time I met your Excellency, and have been ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Castlewood found the sad, lonely, little occupant of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid down when he was aware that a stranger was at hand. And, knowing who that person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy obeisance to the mistress ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... was ever so shy of his own kind actions that, when detected by chance or painfully tracked out in one, he kept always a quotation ready to justify what pure impulse had prompted. So now, as we hurried across the deserted Market Strand to catch up with the other three, he must needs brazen things out with ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... let her shy gaze fall, And smiling asked, "Is then my face a screed, My brow an open love-letter, where all The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... with Abinger Vennard, who was very rude to him, and succeeded in mortally insulting the feudal aristocrat. He appealed to the Prime Minister, and was warned off by a harassed private secretary. The handful of members of Parliament who make Indian grievances their stock-in-trade fought shy of him, for indeed Ram Singh's case had no sort of platform appeal in it, and his arguments were flagrantly undemocratic. But they sent him to Lord Caerlaverock, for the ex-viceroy loved to be treated as a kind ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Latin and a good deal of French, and he had read a good deal of English literature. He was certainly one of the most remarkable self-taught men I ever met, and I often regret that I did not see more of him...Scott's manner was shy and modest almost to being apologetic; and the condition of nervous tension in which he seemed to live was indicated by frequent nervous gestures with his hands and by the restless twisting of his long beard in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Niceness of Judgment which makes some Men write sence, makes them very often shy and unwilling ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... took great pleasure. They were chiefly Germans, and first among them was Niebuhr, who says of his first meeting with the poet: "Conceive of my astonishment when I saw standing before me in the poor little chamber a mere youth, pale and shy, frail in person, and obviously in ill health, who was by far the first, in fact the only, Greek philologist in Italy, the author of critical comments and observations which would have won honor for the first philologist in Germany, and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... distrust &c. (disbelieve) 485. hesitate &c. (be irresolute) 605; falter, funk, cower, crouch; skulk &c. (cowardice) 862; let " I dare not" wait upon "I would "; take fright, take alarm; start, wince, flinch, shy, shrink; fly &c. (avoid) 623. tremble, shake; shiver, shiver in one's shoes; shudder, flutter; shake like an aspen leaf, tremble like an aspen leaf, tremble all over; quake, quaver, quiver, quail. grow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... only a Duffer as a beginner. My great prototypes, J.J. ROUSSEAU, and MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF, never own to having been Social Duffers. But I cannot conceal the fact from my own introspective analysis. It is not only that I was always shy. Others have fled, and hidden themselves in the laurels, or the hedgerows, when they met a lady in the way—but they grew out of this cowardly practice. Often have I, in a frantic attempt to conceal myself behind a hedge, been betrayed by my fishing-rod, which stuck out over the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... something of a Herbert Spencer, who should see the fun of the thing. You are not bound, and no more is he, to place your faith in these brand-new opinions. But some of them are right enough, durable even for life; and the poorest serve for a cock-shy—as when idle people, after picnics, float a bottle on a pond and have an hour's diversion ere it sinks. Whichever they are, serious opinions or humours of the moment, he still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proportion, with an ease which communicated it to others; with all this, a man who never desired to show more wits than they with whom he conversed, who put himself within everybody's range without ever letting it be perceived, in such wise that nobody could drop him, or fight shy of him, or not want to see him again. It was this rare talent, which he possessed to the highest degree, that kept his friends so completely attached to him all his life, in spite of his downfall, and that, in their dispersion, brought them together to speak of him, to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... who shy at the tete-a-tete life which, for a long time, matrimony demands. As his wedding-day approached he grew fearful of the prolonged conversation which would stretch from the day of marriage, down the interminable vistas, to his death, and, more and more, he became doubtful of his ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... approval. I confidently promise them, however, that if they will attend the rite repeatedly now as in days of yore, if my old boon-companions will call to mind the revels that once we shared, not be too shy of satyrs and Silenuses, and drink deep of the bowl I bring, the frenzy shall take hold upon them too, till ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... I assure 'ee that this great hush is not what I wished for at all, or what either of us would have wished if it hadn't been for certain things that would make a gay wedding seem hardly the thing. Bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish shall not be in church, looking at her—she's shy-like and nervous about it, in fact—so I be doing this to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... paws and ears. His paws and ears were sort of rumpled. His eyes were gold and very sweet like keepsakes you must never spend. He had a sad tail. He was a setter dog. He was meant to hunt. But he couldn't hunt because he was so shy. It was guns that he ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... you are better, Ishmael?" faltered Phoebe. She had never before been in a young man's bedroom, even bereft of its tenant, and she felt shy and fluttered. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... company with the boys ever since she was six, and she 'spected she'd keep right on till she was sixty." It was not attention in the abstract that she objected to, it was rather the threatening of "a steady," and that steady, the big, awkward, shy Joe Ridder. With serpentine wisdom she ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... say as her bonnet and veil were still on when I left, for she seemed rather shy and ashamed to be seen at the Three ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind — the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk — the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg — the dead ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... ruled the world; that I Adored her; called her "Nan." She merely looked a little shy, And ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... and planted some flowers, and made some things for Miranda's baby, and then"—she hesitated, with an adorably shy look full of that pathos, which made so many of her simplest statements seem claims for protection, "and then I went ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... her slip, but she scorned to attempt any concealment. She explained dryly, with the shy, stiff embarrassment our country people have in speaking of private affairs: "Well, she is my Aunt Em'line, Mrs. Purdon is, though I don't hardly ever call her that. You see, Aunt Emma brought me up, and she and Aunt Em'line don't have anything to do with each other. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Jove, and my love was Juno. I looked at her athwart the misty clouds that issued from the hissing urn, and saw her beautified by a heightened bloom, and with a sweet, shy conscious look in her eyes which made ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reader of books from childhood up, and he was enabled to gratify this taste by means of a very small village library, which contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond. This boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar when his parents were ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... I mean the cherub?" murmured Nettie in so shy a tone that only her lips were seen moving, and Claude wished he were well enough acquainted to ask ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... with a few exceptions, of plain plumage. The result is that the great majority of them resemble one another so closely that it is as difficult to identify them when at large as it is to see through a brick wall. Small wonder, then, that field naturalists fight rather shy of this family. Of the 110 species of warbler which exist in India, I propose to deal with only one, and that favoured bird is Hodgson's grey-headed flycatcher-warbler (Cryptolopha xanthoschista). My reasons ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... time nearly forty years of age. He was a shy, quiet, dark person, with a pale, closely-shaven face, agreeably animated by large black eyes, set deep in their orbits. His mouth was perhaps his best feature; he had firm, well-shaped lips, which softened on rare occasions into a particularly ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... for only Boston skippers had the enterprise to venture so far—were for no one but herself. But his face was bony and freckled, and his figure less in height and vigor than her own. He was rich and well-born, but shy and very modest. Concha Arguello, La Favorita of California, was for some such dashing caballero as Don Antonio Castro of Monterey, or Ignacio Sal, the most adventurous rider of the north. Meanwhile he could look at her and adore her in secret, and Dona Rafaella ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get by you Nance—even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're joking—millionaires don't think about working ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and kissed her. Her lips were warm and comforting. Maggie, who had, when she was shy, something of the off-hand ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... twice a day, at least, in summer time. You can place the pans on the grass or path, where you can see them comfortably from the house, but not nearer than you can help, because the blackbirds are rather shy, and it would be a pity to make drinking too great ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... considerations of pleasantness of site must succumb to this. You must fix on such a situation as not to cut up the run, by splitting off a little corner too small to give the sheep free scope and room. They will fight rather shy of your homestead, you may be certain; so the homestead must be out of their way. You MUST, however, have water and firewood at hand, which is a great convenience, to say nothing of the saving of labour and expense. Therefore, if you can find a bush near a stream, make your homestead on the lee ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... Chatty, the simplest and youngest (she was older than Theo it was true, but that did not seem to count somehow now that Theo was a man and married), this beautiful lot was to come? She was very shy to accept the thought, holding back with a gentle modesty, trying not to see how Dick's thoughts and looks turned to her—an attitude that was perfect in its conformity with her nature and looks, and filled Dick with tender ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... crowd of children. Two boys had gone away. There remained two growing girls; a shy midget of eight; John, tall, awkward, and eighteen; Jim, younger, quicker, and better looking; and two babies of indefinite age. Then there was Josie herself. She seemed to be the center of the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... had been but a few of the emigrants near us. We were both dressed in buck-skin, and they did not know what to make of us. The young girls and some of the young men were very shy. They had never seen anyone dressed in buck-skin before. An elderly woman came to us and said, "Ain't you two men what they call mountaineers?" Jim answered, "Yes, marm, I reckon, ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... unfettered that every one involuntarily gave her way. Lastly, in her presence churls seemed to become confused and fall to silence, and even the roughest and most outspoken would lose their heads, and have not a word to say; whereas the shy man would find himself able to converse as never in his life before, and would feel, from the first, as though he had seen her and known her at some previous period—during the days of some unremembered childhood, when he was at home, and spending a ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... letter acquires a kind of historical value. As a child of fourteen I first made acquaintance with Oxford while my uncle was still Professor. I remember well some of his lectures, the crowded lecture-hall, the manner and personality of the speaker, and my own shy pride in him—from a great distance. For I was a self-conscious, bookish child, and my days of real friendship with him were still far ahead. But during the years that followed, the ten years that ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... except those renegades or breeds that were of the wild. He had crossed the trails of others at rare intervals. Therefore he did not know dogs as allies of men and so enemies to himself; rather Shady seemed some extra-shy wolf creature yet with sufficient courage to range in close to men. She seemed a daring ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... that J. Meredith seems to shy at the bubbly stuff, as if he was lettin' on he hated it. He makes a bluff or two; but all he does is wet his lips. At that Aunty gives ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... authors who have lived and written under an Italian sky, are reticent and shy in the foreign schoolroom. But if we transfer ourselves with them to the market and enter their families, then they grow confiding ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... came first, and the meeting was certainly very uncomfortable. Poor Mrs. Stanbury was shy, and could hardly speak a word. Miss Stanbury thought that her visitor was haughty, and, though she endeavoured to be gracious, did it with a struggle. They called each other ma'am, which made Dorothy uneasy. Each of them was so dear to her, that it was a pity that they should glower at ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... shall I know the difference between her and another bird? To let her fly now, what a pretty jest would that be!—How do I know, except I try, whether she may not be brought to sing me a fine song, and to be as well contented as I have brought other birds to be, and very shy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... of an experiment made in the year 1829, on some of the Duke of Buckleuch's hunters. A gentleman went toward them in the field, but they were shy of his approach, as he was a stranger, and slowly retreated, till he sounded a small musical instrument, called a mouth AEolian harp. On hearing this, they immediately erected their heads and turned round. On his ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie
... was the "good-night" to everyone and the fond kiss of the best of all mothers, the sinking into sleep that billowed and rocked the weary young spirit of him, crushed and bruised by the forces of the world, and finally the sweet shy smile of a young girl blushing and awkward, but flooding his soul with happiness and thrilling every fiber of him with her magic as she stood upon the hill crest, outlined against the sunset with a soft breeze blowing, kissing the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... th' polis station an' fed him th' best they knew how. An' he wint on a lecther tour, an' here he is. Be hivins, I think he's more iv a hero now thin iver he was. I'd stand up befure a cross-eyed Spanish gunner an' take his shootin' without a mask mesilf; but I'd shy hard if anny ol' heifer come up, ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either. I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of man, show no alarm at and hardly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... shy man, and asked me if I could arrange for his marriage to be held by the Registrar at the Court House on a Sunday evening. This I did, the wedding party arriving at the Court House by different routes to avoid publicity. The Registrar had only a candle, which did not give sufficient ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... listening. She was smiling affectionately at a point straight before her, and Felicia, turning to see to whom that smile was addressed, saw Paul de Gery replying to Mademoiselle Joyeuse's shy and blushing salutation. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... being Empire Day, and, marshalling us beneath it, Graham taught boys and girls how to "hurrah." He was in his element. Afterwards he gave the boys a lesson in skipping, and quite surprised me by his agility. One or two tried and much enjoyed it, but the rest were too shy. Later on William came to ask for another rope, and looking out of the passage window I saw a group of boys watching big Ben the crippled man who was skipping with intense enjoyment, and leaping about ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... nothing was the same as before the coming of Rosy's aunt. Rosy scarcely seemed to care to play with her at all. Her whole time, when not at her lessons, was spent in her aunt's room, generally with Nelson, who was never tired of amusing her and giving in to all her fancies. Bee grew silent and shy. She was losing her bright happy manner, and looked as if she no longer felt sure that she was a welcome little guest. Mrs. Vincent saw the change in her, but did not quite understand it, and felt almost inclined ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... see Dinah's great superiority over the best women of Sancerre; she was better dressed, her movements were graceful, her complexion was exquisitely white by candlelight—in short, she stood out against this background of old faces, shy and ill-dressed girls, like a queen in the midst of her court. Visions of Paris faded from his brain; Lousteau was accepting the provincial surroundings; and while he had too much imagination to remain unimpressed by the royal splendor of this chateau, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... dinner-party it is perfectly proper for those who have never been introduced to converse with each other without such formality. The roof under which they meet confers the privilege. Indeed, it is often the greatest kindness to speak to a shy person or one who evidently has few acquaintances present, relieving his embarrassment and putting him at ease. Not to reply courteously to such overtures is great rudeness. The story is told of a prominent society woman who addressed a stranger at such a function and actually received no reply. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... just as Chirpy Cricket had expected. Betsy Butterfly arrived at the party with her admirer, Joseph Bumble, buzzing close behind her. Although he had not been invited, he did not feel the least bit shy about coming. ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... religion, they're so uneven, That each man goes his own byway to heaven. Tenacious of mistakes to that degree, That ev'ry man pursues it sep'rately, And fancies none can find the way but he: So shy of one another they are grown, As if they strove to get to heaven alone. Rigid and zealous, positive and grave, And ev'ry grace, but charity, they have; This makes them so ill-natured and uncivil, That all men think an ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... buy and sell on speculation. The world, which is shy of new words, has not yet given it a name. I am a good deal at present in the South American trade." She listened, but received no glimmering of an idea from his words. "When we were engaged everything was as bright as roses ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of disappointment, he went to his room. Then he heard her, with her women, taking her morning plunge in the pool. The half hour before she made her appearance seemed a day to him. They met in the hallway, he glad and expectant, she shy and diffident. The red that burned in her cheeks turned to white when he kissed her, and her eyelids fell tremblingly with the proof positive that she had not dreamed the exquisite story of the ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... the water-lily have been almost wholly replaced by the similar, but smaller, leaves of the water-shield. More rarely seen is the slender Utricularia, a dainty maiden, whose light feet scarce touch the water,—with the still more delicate floating white Water-Ranunculus, and the shy Villarsia, whose submerged flowers merely peep one day above the surface and then close again forever. Then there are many humbler attendants, Potamogetons or pond-weeds. And here float little emissaries from the dominions of land; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the question to her in precise terms; but her conduct was narrowly observed, and the critics remarked, that to Adam Hartley her attentions were given more freely and frankly. She laughed with him, chatted with him, and danced with him; while to Dick Middlemas her conduct was more shy and distant. The premises seemed certain, but the public were divided in the conclusions which were ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... latter lady a keen glance. She saw that she was naturally extremely kind, but also shy and wanting in courage. ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... bell, and desired Pierre to request Miss Van Cortlandt to join him in the library. Grace entered blushing and shy, but with a countenance beaming with inward peace. Her uncle regarded her a moment intently, and a tear glistened in his eye, again, as he ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper |
