"Secretiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she talked, with directness and promptness. No one, in watching her while she was writing a letter, ever saw her pause to think what she should say next or how she should express the thought. When she came to that point, the "M.M." was instantly added. She had no secretiveness, and in looking over her letters it has been almost impossible to find one which did not contain too much that was personal, either about herself or others, to make it proper; especially as she herself would be very unwilling to make the affairs ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... at his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to associate with him, he would disappear entirely from them for months ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... went on, the story of the Varona treasure was forgotten, or at least put down as legendary. Only Isabel, who, in spite of her husband's secretiveness, learned much, and Pancho Cueto, who kept his own account of the annual income from the business, held the matter in serious remembrance. The overseer was a patient man; he watched with interest the growing discord at the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... much above them socially, he yielded to her shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his money and his business associations authorized them ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... and frank honesty. When the thought is turned to an endeavor to secure a dollar that is not earned, there is secretiveness of purpose and inward guile. No person doing business on borrowed capital advertises the number and amount of his loans nor does he welcome inquiry by others. In a column of advertisements by money ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... all a humbug, and the biggest humbug is the best man. That 's the Yankee doctrine, and that 's the reason the Yankees get along so well. You have no organ of secretiveness. You have a window in your breast that every one can look into and see what you are thinking about. You must shut that window up, like I do. No one can tell from my talk or looks ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... when he sat opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head a little toward the clock or the stove and look at me from the side, but with frankness and good-nature. This trick did not suggest duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... that there was much in the paper which he could not have derived from that original, and that, therefore, unless he invented a great deal, he must have had other authorities at hand. I failed at the time to discover what these other authorities were,—De Quincey having had a habit of secretiveness in such matters; but since then an incidental reference of his own, in his Homer and the Homeridae,[11] has given me the clue. The author from whom he chiefly drew such of his materials as were not supplied by the French edition of Kien Long's narrative, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... there was a limping marshal who felt regrets at mention of his name, and that farther north were other men who had a superstitious dread of undersized cow-men with spectacles. There were also stories of lonesome "run-ins," which, owing to Willie's secretiveness and the permanent silence of the other participants, never became more than intangible rumors. But he was a good ranchman, attended to his business, and the sheriff's office was remote, so ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... Cape Horn. He knew the faint line of haze that indicated the steamer long before her masts and funnels became visible. He saw no soul except the solitary boatman of the little "plunger," who landed his weekly provisions at a small cove hard by. The boatman thought his secretiveness and reticence only the surliness of his nation, and cared little for a man who never asked for the news, and to whom he brought no letters. The long nights which wrapped the cabin in sea-fog, and at first seemed to heighten the exile's sense of security, by degrees, however, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... determination never to see Logan again. The beautiful Lady Fastcastle never allows her photograph to appear in the illustrated weekly papers. Logan, or rather Fastcastle, does not unto this day, know the secret of the Emu's feathers, though, later, he sorely tried the secretiveness of Merton, as shall be shown in the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... compared with Scott's. He lacked knowledge, leisure, friends, long life—everything that was needed to give his work solidity. All that he had was a creative, though undisciplined imagination, together with an astonishing industry, persistence, and secretiveness. Yet with all his disadvantages, his work, with all its imperfections, is far more striking than the imitative verse of the Wartons, or the thin, diffused medievalism of Walpole and Clara Reeve. It is the product of a more original mind and a more ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... even though they may be ambitious for commercial success, they are utterly unqualified for it; that, although they may wish to do something in the way of production or selling, they have neither talent, courage, secretiveness, persistence, nor other qualities necessary for a success in these lines. They are too credulous. They are too impractical. They are too lacking in fighting qualities, and, therefore, too easily imposed upon. They are usually lazy physically and find ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... leaf. Particularly when they love one another and the cause they have at heart is common to them in equal measure, the uses of a cordial familiarity forbid reserves upon important matters between them, as we think; not thinking of an imposed secretiveness, beneath the false external of submissiveness, which comes of an experience of repeated inefficiency to maintain a case in opposition, on the part of the loquently weaker of the pair. In Constitutional Kingdoms a powerful Government needs not to be tyrannical to lean oppressively; it is more ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Utterly devoid of moral principle, he resembles his late colleague, Benjamin, in the immorality of his life, and the baseness of his ends, attained by as base means. He is rather a good-looking man, short, with snowy-white hair and red face, his countenance indicative of the secretiveness and cunning of his character. He was rather the caucus adviser and manager than one of the orators of his party; seldom speaking, and never except briefly and to the point. Imagination in him has been warped and made torpid by a life of dissipation, as well as by his practical tendencies. He is, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... store was empty! Out in the open air, under the warm summons of the sun, there passed a merry, laughing group of negroes, happy, care-free, each humming the burden of some simple song, each slouching across the road, as though ease and the warm sun filled all his soul! Dissimulation and secretiveness, seeded in savagery, nourished in oppression, ingrained in the soul for generations, are part of a nature as opaque to the average Caucasian eye as is the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... doorway and watched him pack. The two sharp-nosed sheep-dogs interested Pete. They seemed so alert, and yet so quietly satisfied with their lot. The last thing the old Mexican did was to ask for a few cartridges. Pete did not understand just what kind he wanted. With a secretiveness which thrilled Pete clear to the toes, the old herder, in the shadowy rear of the store, drew a heavy six-shooter from under his arm and passed it stealthily to Pete, who recognized the caliber and found cartridges for it. Pete's manner was equally ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... I said, a confession, but a very dear confession: I burn to tell it honestly, yet know not how. To withhold it from you would be to admit a secretiveness that our relationship has never known—out it must, and to you. I may, perhaps, borrow—who can limit the sharing powers of twin brothers like ourselves?—some of the skill your own work spills so prodigally, crumbs from your writing-table, so to speak; and ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... I set forth on a voyage of exploration, impelled by sheer restlessness; and during the day I listened eagerly to the talk of my customers in Yiddish—a language of which I was supposed to be entirely ignorant. But I learned nothing. Either the fugitives were unknown, or the natural secretiveness of an alien people forbade any reference to them, even among themselves; and meanwhile, as I have said, I tramped the streets nightly into the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... employed with Pierre and Paul. Much disposed as each feels to seek personal safety in charging guilt upon Dodge, neither knows what the other has divulged. Natural secretiveness and craft make each alertly suspicious. Neither Lanier suspects the other of double dealing as to interests of either. Both take refuge in ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... your meaning clear. It's all part of the secretiveness of men. They tell one nothing and then they're offended if we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... in his employ, so what was a man doing in his house? There was no secretiveness about the stranger's movements; on the contrary, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Of his secretiveness for his wife's sake I had a touching little instance after luncheon. We had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. The car was already in attendance, and Peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection of it. Pethel had given me a cigar, and his wife presently ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... and the moment she was certain that New Caledonia was to be the Bella Cuba's destination she realized that an attempt would be made to save Maxime Dalahaide. She had been anxious to earn the other half of the Marchese Loria's money, and at the same time to pay Virginia and George Trent for their secretiveness, by letting Loria hear of their arrival, at least, even if she could tell him no more. That desire had been thwarted by Dr. Grayle, but Kate considered the act merely postponed. Next time they coaled—since they must coal somewhere before long—she would certainly find a way of wiring to Loria, ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... his slow reply as he gave his head a nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, "since I have given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all there is to ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... was like dear Clayton, Natalie reflected bitterly. He had told her nothing. In her heart she added secretiveness to the long list of ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... London, and yet our intimacy was curiously incomplete. With all his charming frankness, there was in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible enough to be very irritating. He had the instinctive secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make mysteries of matters of common concern; for example, I never knew how or where he disposed of the Bond Street jewels, on the proceeds of which we were both still leading the outward lives of hundreds ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of the austerity of Claude Frollo's life, pious people suspected him of magic. His silence and secretiveness encouraged this feeling. He was known to be at work in the long hours of the night in his cell in Notre Dame, and he wandered about the streets ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... persisted in their memory. But they would easily explain it to themselves by saying that his face had a naturally melancholy cast—a sort of accident that had happened to him in the beginning! He had a considerable reputation, of which he was imperfectly aware, for secretiveness, timidity, gentleness, and intellectual superiority. Sundry young women thought of him wistfully when smiling upon quite other young men, and would even kiss him while kissing them, according to the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Friday Mallinson was confronted by Conway and had Mrs. Willoughby upon his right. Mallinson liked Mrs. Willoughby, the widow of the black hair and blue eyes, now in the mauve stage of widowhood. She drew him out of the secretiveness within which he habitually barred himself, and he felt thankful to her for his prisoner's hour of mid-day airing. Mrs. Willoughby spoke to Clarice, mentioning a private view of an exhibition of pictures at which ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... encomiums resemble the evening talk of lovers, being low, sweet, and trembling. Were we to speak of Addison phrenologically, we should say that, next to veneration, wit, and ideality, his principal faculties were caution and secretiveness. He was cautious to the brink of cowardice. We fancy him in a considerable fright in the storm on the Ligurian Gulf, amidst the exhalations of the unhealthy Campagna, and while the avalanches of the Alps—"the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the energy of unsophisticated female nature. She replied coldly and loftily that the matter, of course, was done with; that it interested her no more; but that she could not help regretting an instance of secretiveness such as she had never before discovered in her husband. Surely he had put himself in a much sillier position, as things turned out, than if he had followed ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... that in this particular, their minds are better balanced than are those of men. I was told, at any rate, that but few women apply to the Suicide Bureau of the Army for help in this temptation; though, perhaps, that may be due to the greater secretiveness of the sex. ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... in the grey evening of a grey day, had a stark and sinister aspect, an atmosphere of mystery and secretiveness, an air of solitary aloofness in the dreary marshes, standing half shrouded in the night mists which were sluggishly crawling across the oozing flats from the sea. It was not a place where people could be happy—this battered abode of ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... this that at this particular age the child tends to conceal its fondness from others, and perhaps even from the person beloved; hence it is difficult during these years to observe the phenomena. According to this view, the difference is apparent merely, and depends only upon greater secretiveness. It may, indeed, be regarded as proved that in the course of development, especially in the case of boys, there are certain years during which children are less inclined to seek the company of those of the opposite sex than either before or afterwards. This occurs especially during the period of ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... as if words were traps; and pitfalls who manage a friendly interview as a general would manage a campaign; and if they make their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us after their kind. No man can be treated frankly in this world unless he himself be frank. If we would win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which stands ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... months since Jack Witherspoon's departure had changed the frank young fellow into a taciturn man of feline secretiveness. The discovery of Worthington's treachery, the knowledge of the dogging spies at his heels, had been a suddenly transforming influence. He now ardently burned for the return of his one confidant, for the annual election was but ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... in one matter, he had a peculiarity about which there could be no mistake. That was in the matter of music. So, after questioning the Professor about various indifferent points, moral and intellectual, such as reverence, combativeness, secretiveness, language, ideality, etc., I asked incidentally something also about tune and music. The answer was such as might be safely given in regard to ninety-nine out of every hundred persons—some vague, indefinite epithet that would ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... acts as a medicine man, for he is reputed to have certain magic powers both for good and for evil. The natural secretiveness of the bagni made it difficult for me to secure much information on this point, but his power of harming at a distance and of making himself invisible are matters of general belief. In his character as a priest, he performs ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... of Buestom, but not half that could have been told and yet save one's reputation for veracity and secretiveness. Among the things he could not keep were his word and servants. Not even would a Chinaman attend his many wants. His last effort was a big Manchu from northern China; and he had no more than been installed and began his work with the usual celestial energy, ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... of preparation upon the hills of Twin Islands would return: the ill temper and cunning and evil secretiveness, joined now with the hang-dog air he habitually wore in the city. And these distressful appearances would by day and night increase, as we passed the Funks, came to Bonavist' Bay, left the Bacalieu ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... exact centre, their soft eye only one degree firmer than those of their sisters', while their beautiful, long side-whiskers are wonderful to behold. The Spanish gentlemen one recognizes by their close-shorn black heads and smooth faces, all courtesy, inevitable pride and secretiveness, eyes that, like those of their women, betray a hundred intrigues, because they seek to conceal so much. The exquisite politeness of the South Americans make you wonder if you rally can be dust and ashes after this perfect deference, and their manners are marked by more vivacity than those of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... sex, seemed to him a singularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a careless avowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at the moment from his thoughts. But the very secretiveness of her manner—the suggestion of a hidden motive which dwelt in her nervous movements and even quivered in the little scintillating aigrette on her blonde head—aroused in him if not a positive distrust, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... not open his own letters. He seemed to be interested in the conversation of these ladies. He was not a reserved man, but a secretive, which is quite a different thing. Reserve is natural—it comes unbidden, and often unwelcome. Secretiveness is born of circumstances. Some men find it imperative to cultivate it, although their soul revolts within them. In professional or social matters it is often merely an expediency—in some cases it almost ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... adjacent social sentiments indicated by the translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by the opacity in the regions of Religion, Hope, Reverence, Love, Conscientiousness, Industry, Cheerfulness, Love of Approbation, Sense of Honor, and Self-respect. Secretiveness shows opacity, while Combativeness shows intense activity which extends into ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... were, somehow, connected. He was sure that Gaspare either knew or suspected what had happened, yet meant to conceal his knowledge despite his obvious hatred for the fisherman. Was the boy's reason for this strange caution, this strange secretiveness, akin to his—Artois's—desire? Was the boy trying to protect his padrona or the memory of his padrone? Artois wondered. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... it seemed that Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid, fatalistic side of her nature asserted itself. Pride, too, helped her instinctive feminine secretiveness. She lived for months in her father's house without giving those that were dear to her any occasion for suspicion. In order to preserve the secrecy Boyce was bound to continue his visits to Wellings Park. Now ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... college life which fosters a reticence that is almost secretiveness; and this becomes a code, a religion; yet Stewart found himself seized with an intense longing to confide in someone. And at that moment, from under the wide archway leading into the quadrangle, appeared the Master of Durham. The Master was in cap and gown, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, 'you are amiable to the law in not ...
— Options • O. Henry
... body, will be fit and well clothed. He will not be too busy to read and think, though he may be too busy to rush about to get ignorantly and blatantly rich. It follows that, since he will have a mind exercised finely and flexible and alert, he will not be a secretive man. Secretiveness and secret planning are vulgarity; men and women need to be educated, and he will be educated out of these vices. He will be intensely truthful, not simply in the vulgar sense of not misstating facts when pressed, but truthful in the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... With the secretiveness that tyranny had taught her, Alice hid her treasure; and with the inborn honest pride which had, under Smith's dominion, cost her so much suffering, she swore to herself that they should go to Eustace to wipe out the fraud against his father. She had sought ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mice, in the strictest incognito, could not have performed these operations with a greater amount of secretiveness. On opening the door they stood ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Secretiveness repels as much as frankness attracts. There is something about the very inclination to conceal or cover up which arouses suspicion and distrust. We cannot have the same confidence in people who possess this trait, no matter how good they ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... observation. When he asserts (contrary to the old metaphysics) the existence of such instincts as fear, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play (or, properly, playfulness), curiosity, sociability, shyness, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, coyness or personal isolation, jealousy, parental love, etc., he shows the spirit of science. But is it not self-evident, Mr. James, to a man of your fine intelligence, that ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... however, to study the hostile Indians that flocked to the village, any conclusive delineation of character, or any satisfactory analysis of their mental state in regard to the paleface religion, eluded him. Their passive, silent, sphinx-like secretiveness was baffling. Glickhican had taught him how to propitiate the friendly braves, and with these he was successful. Little he learned, however, from the unfriendly ones. When making gifts to these redmen he could never be certain that his ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... having perception have also what perception implies—consciousness—and this indicates the possession, in some degree, of reason. Compound reflex action extends into the domain of thought. Simple reflex action, or instinct, answers to the animal faculties, such as acquisitiveness, secretiveness, selfishness, reproductiveness, etc., and accomplishes two important purposes; self-preservation and the reproduction of the specie. With many persons, these appear to be ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the environment if while he was in it the one idea at the back of his head was the anticipation of leaving it? Watch American business men together, and if you are a European you will clearly perceive that they are devotees. They are open with one another, as intimates are. Jealousy and secretiveness are much rarer among them than in Europe. They show off their respective organizations with pride and with candor. They admire one another enormously. Hear one of them say enthusiastically of another: "It was a great idea he had—connecting his New York ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... expressly for his small, aristocratic hand, and when he took one glove off I was astonished at the thinness of his pale fingers. His gait was careless and indolent, but I noticed that he did not swing his arms—a sure sign of a certain secretiveness of character. These remarks, however, are the result of my own observations, and I have not the least desire to make you blindly believe in them. When he was in the act of seating himself on the bench his upright figure bent as if there was not a single bone in his ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... or no control of himself, yet it was evident that he did not realize that practically every word he had spoken had reached the ears of the three in hiding and that his final precaution as he divulged the information to the girl was prompted by an excess of timidity and secretiveness. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... apple-hoards. There was a delightful proprietary sense in the idea of owning one. It stimulated some latent propensity to secretiveness, as also the inclination to play the freebooter in a ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... information, Steve Brown looked in vain for any allusion to her secretiveness of the night before. In her bearing there was not the least vestige of arts and airs, nor any little intimation of mutual understanding; she simply looked up with wide-open eyes and told it to him. This honesty, quite as if she owed it, gave Steve a new experience in life; and he gazed ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... man next to him dropped his robe from about his body and with fierce visage spoke excitedly, for it was his first confession, and his Indian secretiveness was straining under the ordeal. It was mostly about gallantries and dreams—all made like the confessions which followed. They were the deeds and thoughts common to young Indian men. They ministered to the curiosity of people ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... piazza, talking and laughing, begging to see the manuscript, teasing Theodora about her secretiveness, and congratulating her again and again. It was an attractive group, Theodora in the midst, a tall, handsome girl in the full ripeness of her maidenly beauty, her arm linked in that of her twin brother, while pretty Hope stood facing them, with ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... fun, neighborliness, love of frontier life, love of travel and of adventure. The same may be said of immoral traits, such as criminality, pauperism, delinquency, irascibility, lying, truancy, superstition, clannishness, secretiveness, despondency, slyness, exclusiveness, vanity, cunning, cruelty, quickness to anger, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... wound up, "Fynes was a crank, when all's said and done. We are all cranks, more or less,—all got our weak spot, I mean. It was secretiveness with our unfortunate friend. He liked to play at being a big personage in a mysterious sort of way, and the poor chap's paid for it," he ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tried to make Britt's reasons for the request seem convincing, could not help feeling that the financier's natural secretiveness in matters of personal business was stretched somewhat in this instance. But he gulped back any hesitation and offered to go on ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... expect of a girl who was a child like that?" said Risley. "Mind you, in a way I don't like it. This power for secretiveness and this rigidity of pride in a girl of that age strike me rather unpleasantly. Of course she was too proud to tell Cynthia the true reason, and very likely thought they would blame her father, or Cynthia ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... painter's prerogative to warn even—love from that holy of holies. I often wonder what was behind the curtain. I realized from that moment that if you want to see a great artist's best work, you must override his modesty and secretiveness—and tear the screen ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... confidence and scorn. "You were n't such a little fool as to suppose I intended to stand on the back of a street-car all my life, were you? Five years of that sort of thing is about enough for me, and I 've worked it for all it was worth." A desire to impress her overcame his innate secretiveness. "There 's more in that job than the measly salary the company pays; and a man 's entitled to take something of what would be his by rights if things were as they should be in this world. There 's a higher law than the law made by the privileged few for their own enriching, and sometimes ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... swore to myself that when I found you I would never leave you, save at your own command. I go now, only because you bid me go. When we meet again, there must be no more parting; and you shall hear a story stranger than the wildest fiction—the story of your father's life. Despite your mother's secretiveness regarding this portion of her history, the knowledge has come to me in the most unexpected manner, from the ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... from childhood, although singularly attractive, of a moody, fitful, unrestful nature,—eager, earnest, but unsteady,—with varying phases of imprudent frankness and of the most stubborn and unfathomable secretiveness. He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as full of hitches as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar beauty, and a certain electrical power of attraction, seemed to form a constant circle ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... realizes his own aspirations—which seem to him for the most part an altogether new phenomenon in the world—and at the same time realizes the wide degree in which they deviate from those of the rest of mankind, his natural secretiveness is still further reinforced. He stands alone. His most sacred ideals are for all those around him a childish absurdity, or a disgusting obscenity, possibly a matter calling for the intervention of the policeman. We have forgotten that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... reckoned the oath or promise of secrecy, exacted for no sufficient reason, and kept in defiance of common sense and common humanity. Lord Windermere's conduct in Oscar Wilde's play is a case in point, though he has not even an oath to excuse his insensate secretiveness. A still clearer instance is afforded by Clyde Fitch's play The Girl with the Green Eyes. In other respects a very able play, it is vitiated by the certainty that Austin ought to have, and would ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... themselves. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, and are childlike in the frank recitals of all they were and are and hope to be. This covers up also a good deal of business acumen, shrewdness, and secretiveness which is not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to be called a "self-made" man. He began his business life in Cleveland as a clerk at an extremely modest salary. Capacity for details and for shrewd bargaining, patience, frugality, seriousness, secretiveness, caution, an instinctive sense for business openings, self-control—all these were characteristic both of the Cleveland clerk and the later oil-refiner. In the bigger field he developed a daring caution, a quick understanding of the value of new inventions, a capacity for organization, quick ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley |
