"Bashful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both of them had been not a little grieved that their former conversation had been interrupted. The truth is, however, that very interruption had rendered the conversation difficult to renew; for love—sometimes the most impudent of all powers—is at other times the most shy and bashful. Wilton, however, found that he must not let the silence go on much longer, and he gently took Laura's hand in his, saying, perhaps ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... a man, O'er the top of their fan Till his heart's in a flame, till his heart's in a flame But though bashful and shy, They've a look in their eye That just comes to the same, just comes to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... store nigh us, clerked in Darley before he went in on his own hook out here, an' I've heard 'im tell of a lot o' pranks that they had over thar. He said thar was an old bachelor that, kept a dry-goods store who never had had much to do with women. He was bashful-like, but thar was one young woman that he had his eye on, an' now an' then he'd spruce up an' go to see 'er or take 'er out to meetin', but Jeff said he was too weak-kneed to pop the question, an' the gal went off on a visit ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... plume oneself comes nearest to it; but the word cannot be given, even by equivalents, in English; nor can it be naturalised, because, in fact, we have not the feeling. An Englishman is too proud to boast—too bashful to strut; if ever he peacocks himself, it is in a moment of anger, not in display. The language of every country," continued he, raising his voice, in order to reach Lady Davenant, who just then returned to the room, as he did not wish to waste a philosophical observation on Lady Cecilia,—"the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... for most Men to be inclinable to love Lac'd Mutton, I think it is their Duty to resent the Affront with us so much, as to Satyrize the Author of the Fifteen Comforts of Whoring, who without is some young bashful Effeminate Fool or another, that knows not how to say Boh to a Goose; or some old suffocated old Wretch so far pass'd his Labour, that he scolds for Madness that he cannot give a buxom young Lass her Benevolence; or else he may an hundred to one be one of Captain Risby's Fraternity, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... yellow-haired boy, rosy cheeked and good-natured, but not a little bashful. As Madge, his sister, was a year and a half older than Bob she often treated him like a ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... "Don't be bashful!" said Macloud. "Davila and I were occupying similar positions at Ashburton, a short time ago. Weren't we, little girl?" as he made a motion to ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... his incandescent lamps, enabled me to read his thoughts. I immediately understood that he must be won over, and my combative instinct had recourse to all my powers of fascination in order to vanquish this delightful but bashful savant. I made such an effort, and succeeded so well that half an hour later we were ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... you mean you'd have put on your Sunday clothes. Well, I'm glad you didn't. You see, I haven't got on my regimentals, and if you'd been on dress parade I might have felt bashful. Ho, ho! I don't wonder you are surprised. This is a pretty swell neighborhood, ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fortune to mingle for many summers with these kindly folk, and particularly with a little group of gentle, rather bashful and silent men forming a crew, with their captain, of one of the United ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... comfort, it falls out to-day, We've a young author and his first-born play; So, standing only on his good behaviour, He's very civil, and entreats your favour. Not but the man has malice, would he show it, But on my conscience he's a bashful poet; You think that strange—no matter, he'll outgrow it. Well, I'm his advocate: by me he prays you (I don't know whether I shall speak to please you), He prays—O bless me! what shall I do now? Hang me if I know what he prays, or how! And ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... character of an advocate. This delicate, courageous, high-minded woman appeared before Judge Hale, who was much affected with her earnest pleading for one so dear to her, and whose life was so valuable to his children. It was the triumph of love, duty, and piety, over bashful timidity. Her energetic appeals were in vain. She returned to the prison with a heavy heart, to inform her husband that, while felons, malefactors, and men guilty of misdemeanours were, without any recantation or promise of amendment, to be let loose upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the ravine. Each balanced a skin of water on his head. The little line obsequiously curved outward to let the nobleman pass, and one by one the sturdy children turned their luminous eyes up to him, some with a flash of white teeth, some with a downward dip of a bashful head. One of them disengaged a hand from his burden and swept a tangle of moist black curls away from his eyes. The sun of the desert had not penetrated that pretty thatch and the forehead was as fair ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... elders; in spite of which, and the general admiration they excited (especially when seen together), perhaps indeed from some uncomfortable consciousness of their personal advantages, they were both of them shamefaced and bashful ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... I beseech you, good my Sergius," answered his wife, with a painfully simulated smile; "you know how over-timid she is and bashful; she had determined not to appear at dinner, had I not laid my commands on her. Her very hair, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... poor Billings, who, thanks to the doctor's daily visits and his daughter's patient nursing, was growing steadily stronger. Elizabeth brought along a guitar, which she played daintily, singing the choruses of all the popular songs the boys could ask for by name. After a little bashful hesitation, Dave chimed in, while the rest of the boys lay back and listened ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... our first and most considerable expectation; for he was richer than the chambermaid, and older than the squire. He was so awkward and bashful among women, that we concluded him secure from matrimony; and the noisy fondness with which he used to welcome me to his house, made us imagine that he would look out for no other heir, and that we had nothing to do but wait patiently for his death. But in the midst of our triumph, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... fell suddenly into a fit of shame and bashful embarrassment. The assurance that I had gained at Court forsook me, and I was ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Rube was painfully bashful of this newly-arrived stranger, whom he regarded merely as a traveller passing along the Salt Lake Trail. Yet he was curiously fascinated by the man who owned such a beautiful horse and who knew his way so unerringly ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... go alone," said his partner; "Smith's a very shy man—painfully shy. I've run across him once or twice before. He's almost as bashful and ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... ugly word! He is old, and he limps, and I—well, I was never a very bashful person. He was beautifully polite, but he wouldn't have anything to ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to think I loved Philander would have covered my face with shame, and to have spoke it would have filled me with confusion—have made me tremble, blush, and bend my guilty eyes to earth, not daring to behold my charming conqueror, while I made that bashful confession—though now I am grown bold in love, yet I have known the time, when being at Court, and coming from the Presence, being offered some officious hand to lead me to my coach, I have shrunk back ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... round me, that desire's sweet glow Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. And though she steps as one in manner born To tread the forests of fair Paradise, Dark memory's wood she chooses to adorn. Here with bowed head, bashful with half-desire She glides into my yesterday's deep dream, All glowing by the misty ferny cliff Beside the far forbidden thundering stream. Within my dream I shake with the old flood. I fear its going, ere the spring days go. Yet pray the glory may have deathless ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... mem. But gin that wasna a quean, ye canna deny but she luikit unco like ane, and no a blate (bashful) ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... "Oh, woman, woman, whosoever you are, save me, I implore you, from this man," and with the words she sprang towards the door; but the churlish giant, guessing her intention, intercepted, and bore her back, saying "Keep quiet, gentle lady; have patience, bashful beauty; sit down, sit down; come pet, come." And he made as if to approach her; when, forgetting the hazard of her position, and inspired with returning native courage, with her heart swelling with womanly indignation, and looking the vast figure in the face, she cried with an utterance ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... love-stories are not to be depended upon for accuracy in the depiction of passion. Diggs gave her an entirely new idea of manly devotion. Instead of adhering to the well-known and well-preserved formulas set down by the fictionists he behaved in a perfectly astonishing manner. He became acutely bashful and apprehensive, so much so, in fact, that for a while Melissa imagined that Mr. Bingle had given him notice because of the mistletoe episode on Christmas Eve. The poor fellow seemed to be dodging her all the time. And when she came upon him suddenly or unexpectedly ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... and to put them between my teeth without passing them through his own. From the softness of the bits of bread, and my having seen my poet come out of the monastery, I surmised that his muse, like that of many of his brethren, was a bashful beggar. He walked into the city, and I followed him, intending to take him for my master if he would let me, thinking that the crumbs from his table might serve to support me, since there is no better or ampler purse than charity, whose ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... himself from boyhood, by compelling him to dwell in solitude—the mother of great thoughts—had left him the beautiful beliefs which grace the early days of life. His adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand bashful emotions by which a young man is a being apart, whose heart abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, puerile in the eyes of men of the world, but ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... to corrupt me and now you deign to leave me. That is all. And your vows of 'faithfulness till death'—they too are cancelled. There is no need for you to grieve at this parting, but since I see you so sad and can give you no other comfort—you once praised my harp-playing; but I was bashful and would not play to you. Now I am bolder, and if you choose, I will play ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... my mind I've thrown off this disjointed chatter, But more because I'm disinclined To enter on a painful matter: Once I was bashful; I'll allow I've blushed for words untimely spoken; I still am rather shy, and now... And now the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Naturally bashful, and conscious of my inferior position, I hardly knew whether I was asleep or awake; but was soon restored to my senses by Captain Thompson, who said, in an off-hand manner, "Hawser, these gentlemen are anxious to hear you read Cochran's pamphlet, which tells about the judgment ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Black-bonnet, the Presbyterian elder. Black-nebbit, black-beaked. Blad, v. blaud. Blae, blue, livid. Blastet, blastit, blasted. Blastie, a blasted (i.e., damned) creature; a little wretch. Blate, modest, bashful. Blather, bladder. Blaud, a large quantity. Blaud, to slap, pelt. Blaw, blow. Blaw, to brag. Blawing, blowing. Blawn, blown. Bleer, to blear. Bleer't, bleared. Bleeze, blaze. Blellum, a babbler; a railer; a blusterer. Blether, blethers, nonsense. Blether, to ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse, would like to have more, was a person better worth knowing. His name reads like the title of some old-fashioned novel—"Timothy Winn, or the Memoirs of a Bashful Gentleman." He came to Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of the last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry Street what was called "a piece goods store." He was the third Timothy in his monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he inscribed on the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Stubbs, "and that will answer just as well, so come along, and don't be bashful. I'm about as hungry as a bear, and I ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... your work that I at once felt one thing distinctly, viz., that in something so encouraging and deeply touching I could not myself collaborate. I felt as shy and bashful as possible when I thought of writing with my own hand the praise which you dictated to me in your extremely brilliant article. I hesitated and wavered, and did not know how to begin. Then my young friend Ritter came to my aid, and asked me to let him do the translation. I consented, and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... elegant though private, had not prepared her for the splendour or the diversity of a London assembly, they yet, by initiating her in the practical rules of good breeding, had taught her to subdue the timid fears of total inexperience, and to repress the bashful feelings of shamefaced awkwardness; fears and feelings which rather call for compassion than admiration, and which, except in extreme youth, serve but to degrade ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... breakfast-table comfortably laid for two, with a supplementary tray upon it laid for one. The young woman, disappearing for a few moments, returned to say that she was to please to take a chair by the fire, and to take off her bonnet and make herself at home. But Little Dorrit, being bashful, and not used to make herself at home on such occasions, felt at a loss how to do it; so she was still sitting near the door with her bonnet on, when Flora came in in a hurry half an ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... her guests, but are supposed (though they too often fail in this) to mingle with the company, seeing that strangers and timid or non-attractive girls are not allowed to remain wall-flowers for any length of time. Bashful men, too, must not be left without partners, and all should be ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... with an inward burst. "A bashful, ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is all very well—nobody likes a little of it better than I do; but there is no use running it ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... from a bad attack of that most unpleasant malady "stage fright." She would have given worlds for a trapdoor in the platform to open, and allow her to subside out of sight. No such convenient arrangement, however, had been provided for the use of bashful performers, the planks were solid, and guaranteed not to give way under any circumstances. There was nothing for it but to take her seat in full view of the audience. There were slightly over two hundred girls in the room, but to Winona's fevered imagination there appeared ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... riches, and in fame: Though there the fair Egyptian heifer fed, And there deluded Argus slept and bled: Though there the brazen tower was storm'd of old, When Jove descended in almighty gold! Yet I can pardon those obscurer rapes, Those bashful crimes disguised in borrow'd shapes; But Thebes, where, shining in celestial charms, 360 Thou cam'st triumphant to a mortal's arms, When all my glories o'er her limbs were spread, And blazing lightnings danced around her bed; Cursed Thebes the vengeance it deserves may prove— Ah! why should Argos ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... he speak well there? Mir. O, admirably; But hee's to bashful too behold a woman, There's none that sees him, nor he ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... murmured. "She did n't even stop a minute. Maybe she's sort of bashful, now. I should n't wonder a ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... contrary, he is so charmed with what he hears that he makes some flimsy excuse to get into that room behind the bar whence the silvery voice proceeds. There he first meets Nance, surrounded by what audience we know not, and is struck dumb at the lovely figure standing out in bashful relief, as it were, against a background of wine bottles and ale tankards. There is an awkward pause, no doubt, and if the girl of fifteen comes to a sudden stop in her recital, Farquhar is no less embarrassed on ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond very close to her, she felt something like bashful timidity before a superior, in the presence of this self-forgetful ardor. She said, with blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... civilian amount to? Just a dummy. [Silence] I wonder why it is that so many ladies sit down with their feet under their chairs. There's positively no difficulty in learning how! Although I was a little bashful before the teacher, I learned how to do it perfectly in twenty lessons. Why not learn how to dance? It's only a superstition not to. Here mamma sometimes gets angry because the teacher is always grabbing at my knees. All that comes from ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... intimately acquainted with the circumstances of all his parishioners; for I heard him inquire after one man's youngest child, another man's wife, and so forth; and that he was fond of his joke, I discovered from overhearing him ask a stout, fresh-coloured young fellow, with a very pretty bashful-looking girl on his arm, 'when those banns were to be put up?'—an inquiry which made the young fellow more fresh-coloured, and the girl more bashful, and which, strange to say, caused a great many other girls who were standing round, to colour up also, and look anywhere ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... was over I was slinking away without speaking to him. I suppose that I was bashful and a bit afraid of the grave 'Doctor Marx,' the great man. But he saw me going out and shouted my name. 'Wait a minute, Hans Fritzsche,' he cried, and came running to me with outstretched hands. Then he insisted upon ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... soon follows. Then the people separate. Before the priest leaves he says the office of the dead over a grave made, it may be, many weeks ago, he baptizes children born since his last visit, and perhaps marries one or more bashful couples. "How beautiful upon the mountains," says a Canadian historian of the work of these devoted men, "are the feet of those who bring the gospel of peace."[29] Such a scene we may be sure was enacted many a time for the benefit ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... fifteen when I first saw her. A slender, golden-haired, shy and quiet girl, much in bashful and sensitive demeanour like her romantic namesake of "the untrodden ways." It is quite true that she had no Whyte blood in her veins, and Mrs. Rowe could most conscientiously declare that there was not the least resemblance between them. The Whyte features were of a type which none would envy ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... to the army "Willie" Smith had been a bashful boy who blushed when the guests spoke to him, but he faced them now with the assurance of a vaudeville entertainer as he introduced ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... of a sudden rather bashful; for it was not often that he talked about himself or his own doings. He was rather the odd one of the family—Norah and Dan being such very great friends, and having so many little plays and fancies together in which he had no share; and Philip and the elder girls being rather inclined to class ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... letters are important things. Like time and tide they wait for no man. Somebody might be dead or dying. So summoning all her courage, she cleared her throat. Then she gave a bashful little cough. Betty looked up with an absent-minded stare. She had been so busy polishing a figure of speech to her satisfaction that she had forgotten where she was. For an instant the preoccupied little ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... SQUARE IN VENICE. This picture, from the first, had singularly taken little Tony's fancy. His unformulated criticism on the others was that they lacked action. True, in the view of St. Peter's an experienced-looking gentleman in a full-bottomed wig was pointing out the fairly obvious monument to a bashful companion, who had presumably not ventured to raise his eyes to it; while, at the doors of the Seraglio, a group of turbaned infidels observed with less hesitancy the approach of a veiled lady on a camel. But in Venice so many things were happening at once—more, Tony was sure, than had ever ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... an' her house air jest over thar beyond ourn. Yo' guessed rightly, she air one er my flower children, ain't ye, honey-sweet?" Rose dropped to her knees in the wet grass, and gathered the bashful child against her tenderly. The baby buried her face in her friend's neck without speaking, and in a moment Rose stood up, saying, "We-all thinks a ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she looks as quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her—she was sitting stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... mind with all wise and generous sentiments; but his widowed mother lived in such complete seclusion that he had rarely entered the society of any of his own age, and was consequently timid and bashful. Meeting sometimes with Julian, he had conceived a warm admiration for his genius and character, and at one time had earnestly wished to join him at Harton. But his mother was so distressed at the proposition that he at once abandoned ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter of Peneus, was amusing herself with a bow and arrows in a forest of Thessaly, she was surprised by a rude musician named Phoebus. Timid and bashful, as most young ladies are, she turned and fled as fast as her [Greek: skelae] could carry her. After running, closely pursued by the eager Delphian, for several miles, and becoming very much fatigued, she felt inclined to yield: but wishing to faint in a reputable manner, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... head on David's shoulder and went on sobbing. David felt quite bashful. There was nothing for it but to take out his big and not too clean handkerchief and ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... fascinating illusion to the game of Monte, hung unlighted in the broad hall, where a few other bizarre and public articles were relegated. A long red sofa or bench, which had done duty beside a billiard-table found a place here also. Indeed, it is to be feared that some of the more rustic and bashful youths of Devil's Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon them to pay their respects to the new-comers, were more at ease in this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose glories they could see through the open door. To others, it represented a recognized ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether Thou shouldst be seen in such a company Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps. But yet I may not, chide: fall to thy books, Fall to immediately without complaint— ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... atmosphere of Rome a refreshing antidote to the romantic miasma which he hated. Nor did he derive much profit from the men of letters whom he visited in various places, such as Fouque, Chamisso, and Heine. He dined with Goethe, but was too bashful to accept an indirect invitation to spend an evening with Goethe alone. He paid his respects to Uhland, whom he esteemed as the greatest German poet of that time (1837); but Uhland was then no longer productive and was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... why no fellow ever marries them!" said Quimby, with a glance of bashful admiration at ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... and he had fully made up his mind that he would be back in the Green Forest before Mr. Sun had climbed very far up in the blue, blue sky. You see, big as he is and strong as he is, Buster Bear is very shy and bashful, and he has no desire to meet Farmer Brown, or Farmer Brown's boy, or any other of those two-legged creatures called men. It seems funny but he actually is afraid of them. And he had a feeling that he was a great deal more likely to meet one of them in the Old Pasture ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... the great draper's shops. The brother and sister went into the ante-room, a murmur of voices was heard, and a sound uncommonly like suppressed sobs. When Sabine returned her eyes were very red, but she looked happy and bashful. When the cousin went into the ante-room on some pretext or other, the great parcel was lying on a chair; and as she touched it—of course accidentally—and the paper was not tied up, it came to pass that she beheld its contents—a variety of exquisite dresses, and one ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... us in all these examples. The reason that excessive stoutness is laughable is probably because it calls up an image of the same kind. I almost think that this too is what sometime makes bashfulness somewhat ridiculous. The bashful man rather gives the impression of a person embarrassed by his body, looking round for some convenient cloak-room in ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... quite ready to converse about their deeds in the past, which they recounted with the half-bashful pride of men who had done good and unselfish service for the community. They were reticent, however, as to the immediate job ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coldly, and then, more and more softly, said, with a sigh, "I will prove all I say." And as she spoke she removed the mask: and the Countess de St. Alyre, smiling, confused, bashful, more beautiful ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... kettle aforesaid was, as the hostess very properly observed, beside him, yet the fact that in complying with the demand, it was necessary for the bashful youth to leave the recess he occupied, and, with the kettle, proceed to walk half across the room—there to perform certain manual operations requiring skill and presence of mind, before a large and crowded assembly—was horror to the mind of the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... continued, unnoticing; 'got plenty money, habee heap house—one in 'Flisco, one in San Looey, one here in this city. He want get mallied; lovee gal, 'flaid tell her. 'Flaid makee mad. Ah Moy bashful!' ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... signified their acknowledgment, the company rose as the general made his last flourish and wiped the sweat from his brow, and all adjourned in the very happiest phase of good humor. Smooth being somewhat modest, and always bashful when in the presence of ladies, did not make his speech until they had left. It may be well to say that Mr. Smooth's speech was gracefully responded to by Citizen Peabody, who expressed himself delighted, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... herself at any moment naked in an empty house. In a hurry to find a son-in-law, she had at once cast her eye upon Monsieur de Montragoux, whom she summed up as being simple-minded, easy to deceive, extremely mild, and quick to fall in love under his rude and bashful exterior. Her two daughters entered into her plans, and every time they met him, riddled poor Bluebeard with glances which pierced him to the depths of his heart. He soon fell a victim to the potent charms of the two Demoiselles de Lespoisse. ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... but did not seem to be as strong as he. Evidently the lad had starved a good deal on the voyage, for he looked haggard and wan. Also he was dressed quite poorly. The visit to the minister had, no doubt, been a great strain on him. He was timid and bashful, and as the Governor addressed him, his cheeks ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... and cities find their income insufficient to meet their expenditures, they raise money by selling bonds. Sam would gladly have resorted to this device, or any other likely to replenish his empty treasury; but his credit was not good. He felt rather bashful about applying to his roommate for money, being already his debtor, and, in his emergency, thought of the senior ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... said, to carry them, according to his contract, to the Manathans, though we understood well why it was. The Indians came on board, and we looked upon them with wonder. They are dull of comprehension, slow of speech, bashful but otherwise bold of person, and red of skin. They wear something in front, over the thighs, and a piece of duffels, like a blanket, around the body, and this is all the clothing they have. Their hair hangs down from their heads in ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... and was staying at H- 's hotel. He had heard that I was starting for the Dead Sea, and had called to ask if I objected to his joining me. He had found himself, he said, very lonely; and as he had heard that I also was alone, he had ventured to call and make his proposition. He seemed to be very bashful, and half ashamed of what he was doing; and when he had done speaking he declared himself conscious that he was intruding, and expressed a hope that I would not hesitate to say so if his suggestion were from ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... neighborhood come here to drink, and the rattlesnakes come here to catch them." I then began to cast my eye along the channel, perhaps instinctively feeling a snaky atmosphere, and finally discovered one rattler between my feet. But there was a bashful look in his eye, and a withdrawing, deprecating kink in his neck that showed plainly as words could tell that he would not strike, and only wished to be let alone. I therefore passed on, lifting my foot ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... husbands were away in the militia; others whose husbands had wandered away in search of work weeks ago, and had never been heard of, since. There were a few very fine, intelligent countenances among them. There were many of all ages, clean in person, and bashful in manner, with their poor clothing put into the tidiest possible trim; others were dirty, and sluttish, and noisy of speech, as in the case of one woman, who, after receiving her ticket for relief, partly in money and partly in kind, whipped a ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... little, could not conceal his surprise. The lady, too, though more prepared, was not without confusion. Coningsby recalled at that moment the beautiful, bashful countenance that had so charmed him at Millbank; but two years had effected a wonderful change, and transformed the silent, embarrassed girl into a woman of surpassing beauty. That night the image of Edith Millbank was the last thought of Coningsby as he sank into an agitated slumber. In the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... he killed when he was fighting Indians; and, would you believe it? his wife is a plain, little, quiet woman, who lives in some part of the hotel where nobody ever sees her, because she is rather bashful ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... wonderful!" she murmured, casting a bashful glance at Mrs. Marteen; then she added with simple gratefulness: "I'm glad you're friends." In her child's fashion she had looked him over ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... held out to her, hanging her head on one side, and smiling her tremorous, bashful smile. The other two, Kate and Mary, came forward, affectionate, but more self-contained. Anne realised with a curious surprise that she was coming back to a household that she knew, that knew her and loved her. In the last week ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... gentleman driving with us," and he covered his nose with his sleeve as though he were bashful. "What a grand driver! Stay with us and you shall drive ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... His ardent soul with full delight. Always together, eventide Found them in darkness side by side, At morn, hand clasped in hand, they rove Around the meadow and the grove. And what resulted? Drunk with love, But with confused and bashful air, Lenski at intervals would dare, If Olga smilingly approve, Dally with a dishevelled tress Or kiss the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... came down stairs Mary, who had slipped timidly away, edged into the room, bashful and adorned. She had put on her best dress, and her lustrous hair was braided and coiled on her head, after the instruction of one of her fashion plates. As the visitor saw her he once more checked his inclination to laugh, for the marvelous mismated eyes were fixed on his face and they ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... national costume, which reminded them both of the years of their youth and of their loves of long ago: so almost with tears they gathered around the table and gazed eagerly upon her. Some asked Zosia to raise her head and show her eyes; others begged her to be so kind as to turn around—the bashful girl turned around, but covered her eyes with her hands. Thaddeus looked on gaily ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... weary smile and swollowed a few drops of sherry wine. It is fairly decent he replied with a bashful glance at Ethel after our repast I will show ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... in mere uxoriousness. And this she gathered from the people's eyes: This too the women who attired her head, To please her, dwelling on his boundless love, Told Enid, and they saddened her the more: And day by day she thought to tell Geraint, But could not out of bashful delicacy; While he that watched her sadden, was the more Suspicious that her nature ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... facts. We gentlemen of England who live at home at ease have, I suspect, very insufficient ideas on the subject. All the world over, people are stowing away in coal-holes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea, appearing again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The career of these sea-tramps partakes largely of the adventurous. They may be poisoned by coal-gas, or die by starvation in their place of concealment; or when found they may be clapped at once and ignominiously into irons, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He was thirty years of age and a bachelor. He too had no friends in the village but Mr. Winston, so he was constantly at "Beach Dale." He was very fond of Helen and had often attempted to make love to her, but she was so completely innocent of his intentions that he felt quite bashful ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... him:—"The first time I was introduced to him was at a party at his mother's, when he was so shy that she was forced to send for him three times before she could persuade him to come into the drawing-room, to play with the young people at a round game. He was then a fat bashful boy, with his hair combed straight over his forehead, and extremely like a miniature picture that his mother had painted by M. de Chambruland. The next morning Mrs. Byron brought him to call at our house, when he still continued shy and formal in his manner. The conversation ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... out of her way, then. If she tries to do any missionary work among my chickens, I'll tell her a few home truths her husband's too bashful to tell her. It's my opinion she's got ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... came stealing from the ground; You scarcely saw its silvery gleam Among the herbs that hung around The borders of the winding stream, The pretty stream, the placid stream, The softly-gliding, bashful stream. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... or in the mist that the whole herd is safe whenever he can get a glimpse of a single ox. It is also the cause of great inconvenience to the traveller in ox-waggons, who constantly feels himself in a position towards his oxen like that of a host to a company of bashful gentlemen at the time when he is trying to get them to move from the drawing-room to the dinner-table, and no one will go first, but every one backs and gives place to his neighbour. The traveller finds great difficulty ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... proposal with the deepest anxiety, for she knew that she might, by opposition, determine her husband irrevocably upon following out the enterprise. She stood therefore with a timid and bashful look, strange in a person whose bearing was generally so dauntless, and prudently left it to the uninfluenced mind of Count Robert to form the resolution which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of kith and kin, She laid her hand in mine: What more could ask the bashful boy Who fed her ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... twenty-three years of age, a pure and bashful middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the charm of recalcitrant virtue, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the world was young, there lived a very bashful young man. Not far from his house there lived the most beautiful young woman in the world. The young woman had many suitors but rejected all, wishing only for the love of the bashful young man. He in his turn ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... 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 going to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... man can prize, If a fool he be or wise? Yet, though lonely seem the wood, Therein may lurk the beast of blood; Often bashful looks conceal Tongue of fire and heart of steel; And deem not thou in forest gray, Every dappled skin thy prey, Lest thou rouse, with luckless spear, The tiger for the fallow-deer! The Gulistan. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... slightly and doubled his hand into a fist, but he immediately calmed himself and assumed a nonchalant air. As a matter of fact, Mr. Enderbury led a dog's life. For years he had loved Syrilla devotedly, but he was so bashful he had never dared to confess his love to her, and year after year he saw her smile upon one thin man after another. Now it was Mr. Lonergan; again it was Mr. Winterberry—or it was Mr. Gubb, or Smith, or Jones, or Doe; but for Mr. Enderbury she seemed to have nothing but contempt. Mr. Enderbury ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... soul began to expand, and fresh revelations of glory and majesty to take possession of him. He was a very different person from the rough, awkward lad of eight years back. He still had the somewhat loutish figure which, in his mother's family, was the shell of fine-looking men, and he was shy and bashful, but Eton polish had taken away the rude gruffness, and made his manners and bearing gentlemanly. His face was honest and intelligent, and he had a thoroughly good, conscientious disposition; his character stood high, and he was the only ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you some notion about these things," said Fred Borders, who had been quietly listening all the time, but never putting in a word, for, as I have said, Fred was a modest bashful man and seldom spoke much. But we had all come to notice that when Fred spoke, he had always something to say worth hearing; and when he did speak he spoke out boldly enough. We had come to have feelings of respect for our ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... long been a subject of almost timid veneration to the maiden, and she obeyed the summons with more bashful awe than she had ever felt before; and with much fear lest the two elders might have been combining to make an appeal to her to give up her betrothal, for ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prominent collar bones. The first thing you saw about her were her eyes, large, clear, and girlish, but the eyes of a depraved girl, in which a licentious expression flickered, without, however, hurting their pure surface. She moved like an overgrown school-girl, arms akimbo, bashful and blushing and in this position she sang in a thin, high voice, obscene verses which contrasted strangely with her apparent timidity. This was her charm and the audience received her atrocious words with roars of delight, contenting themselves with this, without demanding that ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... saw the man yet who was too bashful to propose to the right woman." And a great deal of decision went into the churning ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... motives are inexcusable; but the very modesty of women makes against their happiness in this point, by giving them a kind of bashful fear of objecting to such persons as their parents recommend as proper objects ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... all very well," replied Tayu, "but the Princess is not exactly so placed that any one can make himself quite at ease with her. As I told you before she is very bashful and reserved; but yet is perhaps more desirable for this very reason," and she detailed many more particulars about her. This enabled Genji to fully picture the general bearing of the Princess's character; and he thought, "Perhaps her mind is not one of brilliant activity, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... time, George Griswold, the only son before referred to, returned to his native village, after having completed his theological studies at a neighboring institution. It is interesting to mark the gradual development of mind and heart, from the time that the white-headed, bashful boy quits the country village for college, to the period when he returns, a formed and matured man, to notice how gradually the rust of early prejudices begins to cleave from him—how his opinions, like his handwriting, pass from the cramped and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mother-in-law joined me heartily and appeared to me so much changed. I could not but be both surprised and overjoyed at it. We distributed at the house ninety-six dozen loaves of bread every week, but private charities to the bashful poor were much greater. I kept poor boys and girls employed. The Lord gave such blessings to my alms, that I did not find that my family lost anything by it. Before the death of my husband, my mother-in-law told him that I would ruin him with my charities, though he himself ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... When I came out of the hut, the morning sun was just getting the better of the mist, and spreading a cheery light over the square, which had looked dismal enough under a grey, rainy sky. I made all the women gather on the outskirts of the square to be measured and photographed. They were very bashful, and I almost pitied them, for the whole male population sat around making cruel remarks about them; indeed, if it had not been for the chiefs explicit orders, they would all have run away. They were not a very pleasant spectacle, on the whole. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... At this the bashful merman began to blubber. Some of the mergirls put their hands over their mouths to hide their laughing, while they winked at each other and their eyes showed how they enjoyed the fun. To have a merman among ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... gold as much as hath been spent, bought, and sold in Paris, since its first foundations were laid, to this hour; all of it valued at the price, sale, and rate of the dearest year in all that space of time. Do you think the fellow was bashful? Had he eaten sour plums unpeeled? Were his teeth on edge, I pray you? The other wished Our Lady's Church brimful of steel needles, from the floor to the top of the roof, and to have as many ducats as might be crammed into as many ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sitting up with sparkling eyes eating devilled bread and butter and drinking champagne daintily while Mr. Peters sat beaming and bashful and inexpressibly silly on a camp-stool in the alley-way, and the bedroom steward wondered what on earth he would do when the officers came along ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... keep him in a cage, but he goes all over the house, and does just as he pleases. He has had plenty of chances to fly out, but seems to be happy and contented, and makes himself perfectly at home. When we are eating, he helps himself to anything he wants, and is not a bit bashful. He loves honey, and will eat all he wants, and then wipe his bill on any one's dress or on the table-cloth. He will jump on papa's whiskers, and pull mamma's hair-pins out of her hair, steal her needle, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to call and see me some time or other in California, which, I regret to add, caused him to look both alarmed and embarrassed. A queer, shy man was this pastor—a sort of living mummy, dried up and bleached by Icelandic snows. His manner was singularly bashful. There was something of the recluse in it—a mixture of shyness, awkwardness, and intelligence, as if his life had been spent chiefly among sheep and books, which very likely was the case. All the time I was trying to say something agreeable he was looking about ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... took long pretend-journeys upon them—every detail of which she carefully carried out. The companions selected were those smiling friends that appeared at neighboring windows; or she chose hearty, happy laundresses from the roofs; adding, by way of variety, some small, bashful acquaintances made at the dancing-school ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... other passengers that petted her a great deal, or would have done so, if Fleda's very timid, retiring nature had not stood in the way. She was never bashful, nor awkward; but yet it was only a very peculiar sympathetic style of address that could get within the wall of reserve which, in general, hid her from other people. Hid what it could: for through that reserve a ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... resolution to be grave, will find this evening ample food for mirth. Johnson, who understands what he does as well as any man, exposes the impertinence of an old fellow who has lost his senses, still pursuing pleasures with great mastery. The ingenious Mr. Pinkethman is a bashful rake, and is sheepish, without having modesty with great success. Mr. Bullock succeeds Nokes in the part of Bubble, and, in my opinion, is not much below him, for he does excellently that kind of folly we call absurdity, which is the very contrary of wit; but next to that is, of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... came forward with a bashful confidence, expecting that he would receive commendation for his great diligence. But he was the most surprised "helper" in six counties when the minister struck at him suddenly with his stick, and abruptly ordered him out of the school and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... their evening fire; Bless'd that abode, where want and pain repair, And every stranger finds a ready chair: Bless'd be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale; Or press the bashful stranger to his food, And learn ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... deuce ails you?" he repeated, no one replying, and all hands looking bashful and crest-fallen. "Are you all drunk? or what is the matter? I asked ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... person much caressed by the opposers of the Queen and ministry, having been first drawn into their party by his indifference to any principles, and afterwards kept steady by the loss of his place. His bold, forward countenance, altogether a stranger to that infirmity which makes men bashful, joined to a readiness of speaking in public, hath justly entitled him, among those of his faction, to be a sort of leader of the second form. The reader must excuse me for being so particular about one, who ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... change in their household, as will be seen presently), and in due time the latter went into partnership with his friend the notary, on which occasion there was a dinner, and a ball, and great extent of dissipation. Unto this ball there happened to be invited the most bashful young lady that was ever seen, with whom Mr Abel happened to fall in love. HOW it happened, or how they found it out, or which of them first communicated the discovery to the other, nobody knows. But certain it is that in course of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... his glittering head He shakes his streamy locks, and fast and far Sheds showers of splendor; and his blushing bride, Recumbent on her grassy couch, scarce opes Her bashful eyes to meet his ardent gaze. While at the advent of her lord, the Earth, Marking his shining footsteps, with a smile Remembers the espousals of her youth, When morning stars rang out the nuptial song[4] In jubilant chorus; on her ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... not particularly bashful; but he certainly felt something like it, as he walked up to the cashier's desk. A man stood behind it, rather stout, and on the whole not benevolent in his looks. There was no softness about his ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... truth," returned his friend, "to say that you're so bashful you don't give her half a chance to make known what ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... part of his subordinates, the slightest frown on the faces of his patrons. There was scarcely a person lunching there who did not feel that he himself was receiving some part of Louis' personal attention. One saw him in the distance, suggesting with his easy smile a suitable luncheon to some bashful youth; or found him, a moment or two later, comparing reminiscences of some wonderful sauce with a bon viveur, an habitue of the place. Such a man, I thought, was wasted as a maitre d'hotel. He had the gifts of a diplomatist, the presence ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a ring around her. Several songs are then sung with reference to the genital organs. The girl is then stripped and made to go through the mimic performance of sexual intercourse, and if the movements are not enacted properly, as is often the case when the girl is timid and bashful, one of the older women will take her place and show her how she is to perform. Many songs about the relation between men and women are sung, and the girl is instructed as to all her duties when she becomes a wife. She is also ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to-night she seemed thoroughly bent on doing her utmost to please. The boy, though mystified at this sudden change in his fashionable sister, obeyed her command, and stood erect before her, feeling perhaps a little bashful, but never flinching under ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... as he wandered thus in deep darkness, a glimmer of light came to him from some other cranny. He passed thus his days in sapping and counter-sapping. The most impudent deceit had become natural to him, and was concealed under an air that was simple, upright, sincere, often bashful. He would have spoken with grace and forcibly, if, fearful of saying more than he wished, he had not accustomed himself to a fictitious hesitation, a stuttering—which disfigured his speech, and which, redoubled when important things were in question, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to meet each other, red in the face and bashful of eye. The encounter at the door had been so momentary that she had hardly had time to recognise the pale face with the deep blue eyes, but for him the first note of her voice ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... but what chiefly disfigured her was, that her hair, after being stiffened with lard, flour, and pins, had been swept back from her forehead and piled up at the top of her head in a mound, on the summit of which lay the bridal chaplet. She smiled, and seemed glad at heart, but was bashful ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... tell you the truth, Miss Jane?" asked Jack Carew, turning to Miss Inchly with a frank but bashful smile. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris |
