"Demureness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who were waddling ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... this characteristic paragraph, when O'Drive's knock, as usual, was heard, and in a few minutes the redoubted champion and challenger entered. There was a knavish demureness about him, and a kind of comic solemnity in his small, cunning gray eye, that ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... appearances she had spent a solid twenty minutes in putting on a tip-tilted hat which had been trimmed with bows of dainty flowered ribbon, on the principle of the more the merrier. Miss Briskett disapproved of the hat. It dipped over the forehead, giving an obviously artificial air of demureness to the features; it tilted up at the back, revealing the objectionable hair in all its wanton profusion. It looked—odd, and if there was one thing more than another to which Norton objected, it was a garment which differentiated itself from ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and foremost a woman, young and loving and passionate, needs must she weep over him a little and stoop to cherish his golden head on her bosom, and holding it thus sweetly pillowed, to kiss him full oft and thereafter loose him and blush and sigh and turn from his regard, all sweet and shy demureness like the very ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... once," said Ruth, so soon as she knew what was required of her. "I'll just tell father, and then I'll put on my hat and be ready in a minute. Will you "—with an exquisite demureness and simplicity—"will you ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... brought a letter of introduction to him from an acquaintance in New York. He was a man between forty and fifty, with scanty black hair, grey at the temples, and a sharp-featured, thin face. His eyes had a twinkle in them and his large horn spectacles gave him a demureness which was not a little diverting. He was tall rather than otherwise and very spare. He was born in Honolulu and his father had a large store which sold hosiery and all such goods, from tennis racquets ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... attempting to suppress it. A man and a woman get out in the middle of the floor and dance opposite one another without touching at all. The moccasined toes of an expert man in this dance move with surprising rapidity, the woman, with eyes downcast, the picture of demureness, sways slightly from side to side and moves on her toes in rhythm to the man's movement. Presently another man jumps up and the first man yields his place; then another woman comes forward and the first woman yields her place, and so the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... I say, greatly tempted am I to dwell and enlarge upon these swift-flying, halcyon days whose memory Time cannot wither; I would paint you her changing moods, her sweet gravity, her tender seriousness, her pretty rogueries, her demureness, her thousand winsome tricks of gesture and expression, the vital ring of her sweet voice, her long-lashed eyes, the dimple in her chin, and all the constant charm and wonder of her. But what pen could ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... were transferred to one of the towers of the castle. She has always, I know not with what justice, enjoyed a fairer fame than most ladies who have occupied her position, and this fairness is expressed in the delicate statue that surmounts her tomb. It represents her lying there in lovely demureness, her hands folded with the best modesty, a little kneeling angel at either side of her head, and her feet, hidden in the folds of her decent robe, resting upon a pair of couchant lambs, innocent reminders of her name. Agnes, however, was not lamb-like, inasmuch ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... not you boast you were "very persevering in your resistance to gay young men," and had been "several times obliged to ring the bell?" Did you always ring it? Or did you get into these dilemmas that made it necessary, merely by the demureness of your looks and ways? Or had nothing else passed? Or have you two characters, one that you palm off upon me, and another, your natural one, that you resume when you get out of the room, like an actress ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... terror. She held him in abject subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "Oui, Monsieur" and "Non, Monsieur," in a crescendo of maddening demureness. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... call, an enchanting little girl In a shabby smock had come in, a little girl all dimples, demureness, and untouched babyish beauty. She had said that "Anne wath mad wiv her, and that Alix—" she managed to lisp the name, "wath ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... through the leaves of the ash-trees growing in the hedge, and I thought I must be confusing the figures, or mistaken: that man still looked like a very powerful labourer, and had none of the precise demureness of appearance which I had always imagined was the characteristic of a minister. It was the Reverend Ebenezer Holman, however. He gave us a nod as we entered the stubble-field; and I think he would have come to meet us but that he was in the middle ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... present position. She had lost ground, and some of her victories were invented. Nellie Cavendish had a sharp tongue, and that helped May; but Nellie was less coarsely confident than May, and annexed the boys by means of her demureness in face of double meanings. May could not refrain from turning away to hide a burst of laughter. That gave Nellie an advantage, and May secretly longed to hunt once more with Sally. When the old times could not be recaptured, May ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... not, of course, the sole outsider in these things; sprinkled through the College were various others, older, too, than she, who by reason of demureness of temperament, or immersion in their work, stood aloof. But they were lost in the majority, and, as it chanced, none of them belonged to Laura's circle. Except Chinky—and Chinky did not count. So, half-fascinated, half-repelled, Laura set to studying ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... moments she was watching another face that had now a stronger fascination for her than ever—Katie's. How lovely she looked. Her demureness was giving way under the assaults that fate was making upon it, and she was becoming more and more like her old self—with a difference, however, toward Elizabeth, if toward no one else. It was true, she had greeted her with effusive warmth, but even ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... eyes—emerged, and was instantly gone again to the obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise—and no perplexity—there was a touch of demureness in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... two fair daughters play at the knees of Blanche, or creep round the footstool of Austin, waiting patiently for the expected kiss when he looks up from the Great Book, now drawing fast to its close; or if Roland enter the room, forget all their sober demureness, and unawed by the terrible Papoe! run clamorous for the promised swing in the orchard, or the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... maladie [Fr.]; despondency, slough of Despond; disconsolateness &c adj.; hope deferred, blank despondency; voiceless woe. prostration of soul; broken heart; despair &c 859; cave of despair, cave of Trophonius demureness &c adj.; gravity, solemnity; long face, grave face. hypochondriac, seek sorrow, self-tormentor, heautontimorumenos^, malade imaginaire [Fr.], medecin tant pis [Fr.]; croaker, pessimist; mope, mopus^. [Cause ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... doing honour to the young Queen of England and her husband, both looking juvenile in their turn—all the more so for a certain antiquated cut in their garments at this date, a formality in his hat and neckerchief, a demureness in her close bonnet, and a pretty show of youthful matronliness in the little lace cap which, if we mistake not, she ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... no sign of perturbation as she answered: "Not so weary as busy. The duties of an amanuensis leave one small time for recreation." Her face was demureness itself. ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough |
