"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same kind of plant in Botany Bay. Among the shoals and sandbanks we saw many large birds, some in particular of the same kind that we had seen in Botany Bay, much bigger than swans, which we judged to be pelicans; but they were so shy that we could not get within gun-shot of them. Upon the shore we saw a species of the bustard, one of which we shot; it was as large as a turkey, and weighed seventeen pounds and a half. We all agreed that this was the best bird we had eaten since we left England; and in honour of it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... secure admiration as a woman of singular penetration. She had the gift of being able to listen with apparent interest to a conversation, throwing in the necessary question here and there. When it was necessary to talk, she could change her tactics and make conversation for the shy, reserved man. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... occasions, where they met with any of that incivility or ingratitude, which few persons of eminent worth fail to experience in the world. That the Duke of Marlborough should have come forward, and welcomed the hero to Blenheim, cannot well be disputed; but his grace, who is said to be of a shy and retiring disposition, could not, it seems probable, prevail on himself to forego the ceremonials of introductory etiquette, and might thus give considerable offence to his lordship and friends, without intending them ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... girls, half hid among the whortleberry bushes growing luxuriantly around the smaller wigwams of the camp, were dividing their attention between the stately captives and weaving the gaudy wampums to be bestowed, with the shy little weavers themselves, upon such young braves as should be deemed worthy by the great council. Their stolen glances of admiration and pity, however, were intercepted by the young brave who brought home and so suspiciously guarded the prisoners. He was a fierce, wicked ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... Duke was a typical figure of the old-time cow-puncher such as one never meets in these times around the stockyards of the Middle West. There are still cow-punchers, but they are mainly mail-order ones who would shy from a gun such as pulled down on Lambert's belt ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... cuffless hand, lank and long, hangs down inert, the other sleeve falls loose; he is one-armed. His attitude and gait express his defrauded existence. Cotton clings to his clothes; his shoes, nearly falling off his feet, are red with clay stains. I greet him; he is shy and surprised, but returns the salutation and keeps step with me. He is "from the hills," an orphan, perfectly friendless. He boards with a lot of men; evidently their companionship has not been any solace to him, for, as he is alone this day, I see ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... jaw tightened stubbornly. "He can't get nothin' on me," he stated. "It's this way. When help begun to get shy a couple of months ago—that's when he started his business of gittin' rid of the men one way or another—Tex must of hinted around to Miss Mary that I was goin' to quit, for she up an' asked me one day if it was true, an' said she hoped me an' Rick ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Clarence Cook, Lyman Abbott, John Fiske, John Bigelow, teaching botany and charming the young ladies because he was "so handsome," and Elihu Root, then a youth fresh from college. To quote from Miss Henderson: "Miss Boorman has often told me of the amusement that the shy theological students and other young teachers afforded the girls in their classes, and how delighted these used to be to see instructors fall into a trap which was unconsciously prepared for them. The room in which the lectures were given had two doors, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... are all the same, blaspheme and jeer At any mystery beyond your sphere Of beer, and beef, and beer, and beef, and beer. Now you have frightened the shy god! ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... and said, in a tone of virtuous indignation against all dealers in insecure mortgages, "For my own part, I am very shy of mortgages altogether, and such as are in the market are not fit for the baron, of course. You must apply to a trustworthy man; your own lawyer, for instance, may be able to procure ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... creator poured into its pages a tide of passion unknown to his frigid and stilted predecessors, and dared to depict Nature as she really is, not as she was misrepresented by the modish authors and artists of the age. Some persons seem shy of owning an acquaintance with this work; indeed, it has been made the butt of ridicule by the disciples of a decadent school. Its faults and its beauties are on the surface; Rousseau's own estimate is freely expressed at the beginning of the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... showed up like four aces and a king with the entire company standin' pat. Scraggsy, you're a hero, and what you propose proves that you're considerable of a singed cat—better'n you look. We'll go freebootin' down on the Gold Coast. There's war, red war, breakin' loose down there, and we'll shy in our horseshoe with the strongest side and pry loose a fortune somewhere. I'm for a life of wild adventure, and now that we've got the ship and the funds and the crew, let's go to it. There's a deal of fine liquor in the wardroom, and I suggest that we nominate Phineas Scraggs, late master of ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... rudiments of religion. Orders are easily made, but they do not execute themselves. They say their catechism, at stated times, under an able master. But this able master was, I think, not elected before last February; and my visit happened, if I mistake not, in November. The children were shy, when interrogated by a stranger. This may be true, but the same shiness I do not remember to have hindered them from answering other questions; and I wonder, why children, so much accustomed to new spectators, should ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... model, which grew under his masterly strokes, now hard, now light: the enchanting girl who sat to him, and seemed on fire with curiosity and innocent admiration: and the simple rural beauty, that plied the needle, and beamed mildly with demure happiness, and shot a shy glance ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... The sight of these animals filled the hearts of the shipwrecked men with joy. It was to them a proof of civilization. New hopes, new joys, new strength came with the sight of these animals; and they advanced cautiously toward them. But the animals were shy, and scampered away up the hill at the ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... garments, which revealed the delicate contours of her figure and gave her an unexpected air of distinction. Yet, though charmed, the caution of pride—which, in his case, was also the caution of modesty—made him a trifle shy in addressing her. He paused before speaking, and then said, with ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... yere, an' woan't be yere. He allers fights shy. An' 'twouldn't be uv no use. He's made up his mind to hev th' gal, an' hev har he will. He's come all th' way from Orleans ter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... task of managing her was consigned by common consent. The marquis, who, though he was, as he said, much in love, was not very delicate as to the possession of the lady's affections, wondered that any one going to be married to the Marquis of Twickenham could be so shy and so melancholy; but her confidantes assured him that it was all uncommon refinement and sensibility, which was their sweetest Maria's only fault. Excellent claret, and a moderately good opinion of himself, persuaded the marquis of the truth of all which the Miss Falconers pleased to say, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual [v]alacrity, and relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... beautiful and extraordinary. In some respects this toy is a costume model, for it imitates exactly the real coiffure of Japanese maidens and brides. But the expression of the face of the beppin is, I think, the great attraction of the toy; there is a shy, plaintive sweetness about it impossible to describe, but deliciously suggestive of a real Japanese type of girl-beauty. Yet the whole thing is made out of a little crumpled paper, coloured with a few dashes of the brush by an expert hand. There are no two O-Hina-San exactly alike out of millions; ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... by the architect (J. P. Seddon). A delightful stroll may be taken from the village, westwards to Wheathampstead or Lamer Park, or northwards to Codicote or Kimpton. Nightingales are plentiful in the neighbourhood; the numerous thickets, dense and secluded, affording excellent shelter to this shy songster. ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... from Toplitz, as if by accident, he met the Princess Mary out on a hunting party. The princess was on horseback; but she rode awkwardly, and her demeanor was shy and ungraceful. She well knew the object of this casual meeting, and when the King of Rome approached to greet her, she turned pale and trembled as she felt the gaze of his large blue eyes. Her paleness did not increase her beauty, nor did her shyness contribute ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... lightly across the stony, clover-set ground to where the little girl roamed along the old snake fence, picking berries sometimes, sometimes watching the sportsmen out of shy, golden-grey eyes. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... father was dead, and she lived with her mother, a woman of low degree, who had been a cook before marrying her master. Either for this reason, or on account of the indisputable ugliness of her face, the Indians fought shy of her; although her exaggerated idea of her position exacted a certain respect in society. Her face was hideous, with irregular features, marked with erysipelas, and disfigured by red patches about the nostrils. She only retained one feminine taste, and that was for dancing, which was a real ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... invasion of the wild mountain-region lying north of Quebec, towards the head-waters of the Saguenay,—a district seldom disturbed by the presence of civilized man, but abandoned to the semi-barbarous hunter and trapper, and frequented much by that prince of roving bucks, the shy but stately caribou. I need not go into the details of my two-months' hunt. It was like any other expedition of the sort, about which so much information has already been given to the world in the pleasant narratives of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... sketches and studies scattered over the walls, Joseph managed to keep his head sufficiently to go through the necessary preliminaries with his Excellency, who, a trifle nervous about his situation, and convinced that no danger to his possession could possibly accrue through this shy and boyish young artist, so plainly in the throes of poverty, was much relieved when the matter of size and price had been settled and he could take his departure, leaving Irina ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... that they were total strangers in the country. There was something so peculiar in their looks, air, and manner, that she was uneasy in their company. They would not come near the fire; they sat in a remote part of the lodge, were shy and taciturn, and drew their garments about them in such a manner as nearly to hide their faces. So far as she could judge, they were pale, hollow-eyed, and long-visaged, very thin and emaciated. There was but little light in the lodge, as the fire was low, and served by its fitful ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... where I had never been before and crowded with the troops of three nations. I was also made the shepherd of all these sheep, who were commanded to keep their eyes upon me and not to go astray but to follow where I led. It was a most ridiculous position for a London journalist of a shy and retiring nature, especially as some of the nurses were getting out of hand and indulging in private adventures. One of them, a most buxom and jolly soul, who, as she confided to me, "didn't care a damn," had established friendly relations ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... himself shot a fugitive or two,—it was to no purpose; they wavered worse at every new shock; and at length a shock came (sixth it was, as the reporter counts) which shook them all into the wind. Decidedly shy of the Prussians with their new manoeuvres, and terrible way of coming on, as if sure of beating. In the Saxon quarter, certain Austrian regiments of horse would not charge at all; merely kept firing from their carbines, and when the time ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... differing in kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a violet or a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at last—for she had not a good feature—to the possession of a pair of very soft, and shy, brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable in conversation, which burgeoned out in song into the richest contralto imaginable, causing her to be known widely in society as "the Miss Masters who ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... dinner without changing—wouldn't you? It matters ever so much more than the soup. (It's odd how things like that do matter so much more than what's generally supposed to matter. I'd rather have my head cut off than wear flannel next the skin.) Then there's a nice shy girl—poor thing—I wish one could rake her out before it's too late. She has quite nice eyes and hair, only, of course, she'll get funny too. We ought to start a society for broadening the minds of the young—much more useful than missionaries, Hester! Oh, I'd forgotten there's a dreadful ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... about I do not know, but my whole story rushed to my lips, and I told her all of it with quivering voice. I cannot imagine what possessed me to make her my confidante. Shy, reserved, and proud, I would have died rather than have breathed a syllable of my secret if I had been in my ordinary humour, but her soft, sweet ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... rejoicing—my babe. Thee will set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him—God will not pass him by. He will take him by the hand and lead him home." The old man had thought her touched by delirium then, though her words were but the parable of a mind fed by the poetry of life, by a shy spirit, to which meditation gave fancy and farseeing. David had come by his idealism honestly. The half-mystical spirit of his Uncle Benn had flowed on to another generation through the filter of a woman's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... features and brow; and would have been very handsome, but for the bad complexion which at his age so often accompanies a sedentary life, and a melancholic temper. One glance at his face was sufficient to tell that he was moody, shy, restless, perhaps discontented, perhaps ambitious and vain. He held in his hand a volume of Percy's Reliques, which he had just taken down from Thurnall's shelves; yet he was looking not at it, but at the landscape. Nevertheless, as ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... always respect a lady if she don't care who she shoots," Larry cried, enthusiastically. "Wish you'd get my wife to learn how to shoot. She's gun shy!" ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... chaaete poor prisoners where he can. At eleven o'clock we march upstairs To hear the parson read the prayers. Then we are locked into a pen— It's almost like a lion's den. There's iron bars big round as your thigh, To make you of a prison shy. At twelve o'clock the turnkey come; The locks and bolts sound like a drum. If you be ever so full of game, The traaedin' mill it will you tame. At one you mount the mill again, That is labour all in vain If that be ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... appears in the countries watered by the Amoor about May, and departs again at the end of August; at this season it is always met with in small or large flocks, which are so extremely shy that they rarely come within gunshot. Whilst on the wing these parties crowd closely together in front, the birds in the rear occupying a comparatively ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... this approach. Nor did he shy at her outstretched hand. Under her gentle caresses he stood very still, and when she stooped before him, as she did presently, bringing her eyes upon a level with his own, he gazed into them very frankly and earnestly, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... To a shy disposition, such as Byron's was in his youth—and such as, to a certain degree, it continued all his life—the transition from a quiet establishment, like that of Dulwich Grove, to the bustle of a great public school was sufficiently trying. Accordingly, we find from his own account, that, for ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... conduct, has been the fundamental element in the acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me, considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance. One cannot notice even the dress of a woman much given to blushing without causing her face to crimson. It is sufficient to stare hard at some persons to make them, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the end of the explanation. He hurried out of the room and sprang up the stairs. He had arranged purposely for the young Prince to come to the house a day before term began. He was likely to be shy, ill-at-ease and homesick, among so many strange faces and unfamiliar ways. Moreover, Mr. Pollard wished to become better acquainted with the boy than would be easily possible once the term was in full swing. For he was something ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... when I had an invitation to go to Carlsruhe to visit a schoolfellow, of whom I had been very fond. Babette was all for my going; I don't think I wanted to leave home, and yet I had been very fond of Sophie Rupprecht. But I was always shy among strangers. Somehow the affair was settled for me, but not until both Fritz and my father had made inquiries as to the character and position of the Rupprechts. They learned that the father had held some kind of inferior position about the Grand-duke's ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... durned," the evangelist continued, "you air tough cases. That's what's the matter with you; you are shy on faith. You fellers has got to be saved, an' to be saved you got to believe, an' believe hard, an' I'm agoin' to make you. Now hear me, an' mind you don' forget it's Clay Allison talkin' to you: I tells you that when that thar fish had done swallerin' ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... to smoke and be a man's pal), the moonlight shining on his face, showing his eyes half shut, and talking in his quietest way, as if he were dreaming it all over again, or speaking to himself! I hardly breathed, till he broke off suddenly and laughed in quite a shy sort of way, ashamed of being 'egotistical,' though he hadn't praised himself at all. The flowery things I've said are mine. He even apologized! I felt I'd never had so great a compliment in my life. It seemed too good to be true that such a man should have opened his heart to me. But when his ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... It would have been cheek to tell you—the second time we met—that your eyes looked at me just as they did when you were a little child. I should have had to be decently careful because you might have felt shy. You don't feel shy now, do you? No, you don't," in ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cannot guess what unpleasant tidings he may have heard to-day; but I know that I have heard little else from him this many a day. Tell Mr. Norton to see about the bills I gave him, and have them cashed as soon as possible. If not, curse me, I'll shy a decanter at ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he is thirty now, and will be settling down into a confirmed old bachelor before long. It's the greatest kindness we could do him, to take Minnie on board; and I am sure he is the sort of man any girl might fall in love with when she gets to know him. The fact is, he's shy! He never had any sisters, and spends all his time in winter at that horrid club; so that really he has never had any women's society, and even with us he will never come unless he knows we are alone. I call it a great pity, for I don't know a pleasanter fellow ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... attention to the very shy and timid efforts to maintain peace by the London Secretary of State, even where these were concerned in the attempt to change the position ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... girl was silent. His voice both thrilled and fascinated her. Partly proud, partly shy, like the bird who shuns the snare set for it, only fluttering its wings over the spot for an instant, and then flying to a greater distance, Adele bestirred her powers and resolved not to suffer herself to be drawn into the meshes. She felt a new, strange influence ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... to get my face cool before I arrived. Father met me at the station, and we spanked up together in the dog-cart. That was scrumptious. I do love rushing through the air behind a horse like Firefly, and father is such an old love, and always understands how you feel. He is very quiet and shy, and when anyone else is there he hardly speaks a word, but we chatter like anything when we are together. I have a kind of idea that he likes me best, though Spencer and Vere are the show members of the family. Spencer is the heir, and is ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... will, that's any more to him than a lady's bonnet-ribbon. He got a good name for his jumping as a steeple-chaser; but when he'd been the death of three jocks and two gentlemen riders, folks began to get rather shy of him and his jumping; and then Captain Chesterly come and planted him on my guv'nor, which more fool my governor to take him at any price, says I. And now, sir, I've stood your friend, and give ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Perplexed in his shy, straightford nature, Hubert inquired if she took sugar in her tea. She said she did; stretched her feet to the fire, and lapsed into dream. She was one of the enigmas of Stageland. She supported herself, and went about by herself, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... to live, and then, mirabile dictu! the knight errant is discovered to be no less a personage than one Rodney Allison. Excuse me, Auntie, if I express the opinion that you've not brought him up right; he's too shy and actually had to be urged to call on his old playmate. Seriously, I would have seen him before he fled, had I known he was there. Aunt Betty didn't tell me. You don't know what a shock it was to papa and me, the ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... rude, Miss Goff; but I find you very shy. You want to run away and hide from new faces and new surroundings." Alice, who was self-possessed and even overbearing in Wiltstoken society, felt that she was misunderstood, but did not know how to vindicate herself. Lydia resumed, "I have formed my habits in the course of my travels, and ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... faileth, She moaneth not but with fond wiles Her pain in smiles she veileth; So sings she through the live-long night, Till hope's bright light appeareth, Which glittering like a radiant eye, Through dawn's shy lashes peereth. ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... shy little innocent? Doesn't she like to have her wicked little plans exposed?" said ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the peace. Though determined to keep his word to Jean Myles liberally, Aaron had never liked Tommy, and Tommy's avoidance of him is easily accounted for; he knew that Aaron did not admire him, and unless you admired Tommy he was always a boor in your presence, shy and self-distrustful. Especially was this so if you were a lady (how amazingly he got on in after years with some of you, what agony others endured till he went away!), and it is the chief reason why there are such contradictory accounts ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... made her timid again; she was no more the imperious goddess of the night. It was a shy and tender little maiden who nestled into the protecting strong ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... shy, Morocco clad from head to heel; Shakspearian quartos; Comedy As first she flashed from Richard Steele; And quaint De Foe on Mrs. Veal; And, lord of landing net and line, Old Izaak with his fishing creel,— The Books that never can ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Frenchman would be allowed to come to him, and adds that "his mother hated the French." He was enraged at the report spread by a fussy French Admiral named M. la Touche-Treville, who was in command at Toulon. It was said that he was sent to beat Nelson as he had done at Boulogne. But he was shy about coming out and trying a tussle. Nelson said he was a miscreant, a poltroon, and a liar. The Frenchman had boasted in a publication that he had put the British fleet to flight. The British ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... same excessive duty tends to diminish the consumption of our fruits from year to year. Our oil has alone been able to find vent by favour of the double duty imposed till now upon Sicilian, superior to ours in quality. But the English speculators are already shy of purchasing, in the expectation of an assimilation of duties on oils of whatever origin." The Ayuntamiento proceeds to urge the necessity of a "beneficial compensation" to British manufactures in the tariff of Spain, without which, "the flattering perspective" of prosperous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... children playing a game known as "Tailor, lend me the scissors." She was much pleased at the sight of them, as they ran from tree to tree and laughed. She would have been only too happy to join them, but no one thought of asking the pale, shy little creature to take part. Philippina, seeing her, rushed out like a fury, and cried in her very meanest voice: "You come back here in the house, or I'll maul you until your teeth will rattle in your mouth for three days ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... lasted, two or three shy sidelong glances passed between him and Jane. So extremely modest was the young man that, from an apprehension lest these glances might have been noticed, his pale face became lit up with a faint blush, in which state of confusion he ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a book one day; She brought it back; I laid it by: 'Twas little either had to say,— She was so strange, and I so shy. ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... oysters or muscles, and there not more than half a dozen. Fish-bones were not found at all, which seems to prove, that in their journies inland these people do not carry with them any provisions of that kind. Kanguroos were frequently seen, but were so shy that it was very difficult to shoot them. With respect to these animals, it is rather an extraordinary circumstance, that, notwithstanding their great shyness, and notwithstanding they are daily shot at, more of them ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... stood by Drusy's side, and they talked in a low, interested tone. She never talked to him in that way, never listened to what he had to say with such half-shy, half-coquettish attention. But she would not dance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... in, looking quite ordinary, and even a little shy, Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson rose to receive her with perfect ease, being supported by the consciousness that she was by far the more handsomely dressed of the two. In fact her greeting was so gracious as ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... "Let's see, supper was a dollar an' four bits, drinks two dollars, an' two dollars for this bottle of prune-juice that's about gone already, an'—Hey, Bat, you're four bits shy! Frisk yourself an' I'll play you a showdown for them four bits." The other grinned and held a silver half dollar ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... sleep: very hardy both for diet and weather, very proud and self conceited. They take something after the Bramines, with whom they scruple not both to marry and eat. In both which otherwise they are exceeding shy and cautious. For there being many Ranks or Casts among them, they will not match with any Inferiour to themselves; nor eat meat dressed in any house, but in those only that are of as good a Cast or Race as themselves: and that which any one hath left, none but those that are near of ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... beam of a sooty ceiling. A congregation of longshoremen, visible in the blue mist and smoky light chiefly because of their pink masks, was packed on benches round the walls. They laughed aloud again as I went in. They were regarding with indulgent interest and a little shy respect an elegant figure overlooking them, and posed negligently against the bar, on the other side of which rested the large bust of a laughing barmaid. She was as amused as the men. The figure turned to me as I entered, and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... but that every unmarried man—and some who were both husbands and fathers—kept a deeply interested eye upon her daily motion, and certain shameless ones openly boasted among their fellows of their intention to win her favor, while the shy ones reveled in secret exultation over every chance meeting with her. She was the topic of every lumber-camp, and the shining lure of every dance to which the ranch hands often rode over long ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... listening, smiled. During the winter of '64-65 he had been in command of the first battalion of his regiment, but, on a theory of education, had enlisted after the war. This being known, held the men more shy of him than was ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... for the command in the autumn of 1915, but ill-health prevented him from taking it up, and in February 1916 General Smuts arrived at Mombasa to conduct the campaign. Experience had made us shy of enforced landings from the sea; and rejecting the idea of seizing as bases Tanga or Dar-es-Salaam, which would have given him shorter lines of communication with the Cape, Smuts adopted the more circuitous route by the railway ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... diagnosis, from a physiologico-chemical point of view seems rather to point to a meaning which he has missed—to indicate a latent, more remote possibility behind the shy bacillus, as the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... you pardoner or cheat, Or cogger keen, or mumper shy, You'll burn your fingers at the feat, And howl like other folks that fry. All evil folks that love a lie! And where goes gain that greed amasses, By wile, and guile, and thievery? 'Tis all to taverns and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... peculiar smile on the girl's lips as she said this that disconcerted him. We have said that he was naturally shy. He had intended to follow up his first question by asking if her father was descended from the Incas, but the peculiar smile checked him. He bade her good-night, and turned ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Goldsmith's school-life could not have been altogether a pleasant time for him. We hear, indeed, of his being concerned in a good many frolics—robbing orchards, and the like; and it is said that he attained proficiency in the game of fives. But a shy and sensitive lad like Goldsmith, who was eagerly desirous of being thought well of, and whose appearance only invited the thoughtless but cruel ridicule of his schoolmates, must have suffered a good deal. He ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... chaw me up. So I'm goin' to mosey over Bull Head t'-morrer. You-all 'll go 'long, nice an' peaceable—er ye'll be drug." He spoke with a snarl now. "Ye'll know hit, when I once git ye cross the state line—cuss ye! Ye'll find I hain't so damned shy, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... power to visualize the young creature as Angela had once seen her: pretty as the flower whose name she bore, a little shy thing with ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... ain't plannin' to spend the summer here, are you?" says I. "Besides, it'll do you good to learn not to shy at a man just because he's done time. Show us ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... are famous, and a hand well over the crops raised under such shrewd, experienced management as that of Colonel Beverage is a stroke of policy. Therefore, as the bankers and jewelers have been polite, so now the cotton-merchants are civil; but the colonel is shy—an old bird and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... older if she had wished to escape she would not have dared, would not have known how; for she was shy outside the family circle, and could hardly move or talk; people thought her insignificant. This she knew; it wounded her self-respect, and therefore she went out as little as possible, preferring to stay at home, where ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... like a good place to start in," he announced. "I believe I'll go a little way up stream, and then whip down past this pool and below. Now, talk only in whispers, if you can remember, fellows. Trout are shy creatures. Has either of you ever ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... had never appeared so daintily bewitching to John; no, not even on that memorable first day at school. Her long, graceful curls were caught in a big, blue silk bow which matched her dress, and her eyes were a-dance with the excitement of her first party. She greeted the company with a shy, quick smile and sat down in the chair nearest her exultant worshiper. A constrained silence took possession of the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... stone Clustered like stars some few, but single most, And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, Or glancing at each other cheerful looks Like separated stars with ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... ardent lover was not the Jarvis she had known, the Jarvis who had been her master, and a despotic one at that. Frightened, shy, bewildered, she fled away from all her dearest joys, and stayed by herself in the flower-room with the bar across the door, only emerging timidly at mealtimes and stealing into the long room like a little ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... places are the altitudes at all impressive. It is a smiling island. It has been said, too, that everything in it is friendly to man: the people are amiable, warm-hearted; the very animals and insects are harmless. Cuban cattle are shy, but trusting; Cuban horses are patient and affectionate; the serpents have no poison, and although the spiders and the scorpions grow large and forbidding, their sting is ineffective. But here in the Cubitas range all was different. The land was stern and forbidding: ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... are shy and wary little creatures, and possess an abnormal sense of smell that makes it absolutely necessary for hunters to move cautiously to leeward the instant they discover them. It is always an easy matter to find a little ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... twenty yards away—I had a regular attack of buck ague and I couldn't have hit the side of a house even if I'd been inside it. Now I can look at one, point a stick at him and say bang, with my nerves just as quiet as if it were a cow. I have seen a few bears, but they are very shy. We'll turn loose on them, too, when we get round to hunting, but in the mean time we are sticking to our timber job for all there ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... unformed beauty—and I almost doubt whether she can read or spell properly. She is modest and good, I grant, and I never heard one syllable against her. Ronald, let me appeal to your better judgment—are a moderate amount of rustic prettiness and shy modesty sufficient qualifications for your wife, who will have to take ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... instead of overalls; always a gentleman, even when he tried to appear a workman. He pretended to be enthusiastic about the lunch-wagon, and never referred to his three generations of army officers. But most of the others were shy of him, and Jack Ryan, the "school grouch," was always trying to ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... in one of the very first and perhaps one of the most picturesque of all the facts that are recorded or reported of him. As a youth, tall, very shy and quiet, he was only notable for intellectual interests of the soberest and most methodical sort, especially for the close study of mathematics. This also, incidentally, was typical enough, for his work ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... and slept that night as we stood. I had the Boer 100 lb. 6" shell (which had fallen close to us without bursting) carried up the hill to show the Commander-in-Chief and Staff; they were all interested but rather shy of it, but one of them took a photo. We picked up many fragments of shells which had fallen close to us during the day and from which all of us had narrow escapes, for we were in a warm corner. General Hildyard and Staff who ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... without answering; there was a flush on her pale cheeks under the shadow of the heavy waves of hair, a smile in her eyes as she looked at him with one of her old, shy, childish glances, as if not quite sure how he would take her apology. He could not help smiling in answer, then laughed outright, and turned ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Catriona, when she came back from washing her face. "Here, kid," she muttered sheepishly, pushing the money into the little girl's hand. Catriona, pale and dazed, looked up at her—looked at the money, with a shy excitement and happiness dawning in her eyes. Then she cried again with excitement and joy, and every one laughed, and sent her off again ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... shy hare the tortoise smiling spoke, When he about her feet began to joke: "I'll pass thee by, though fleeter than the gale." "Pooh!" said the hare, "I don't believe thy tale. Try but one course, and thou my speed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... streams; and Fairfield, in its noble curve, still girdles the deep valley where these children played: the valley of Wordsworth and Arnold—the valley where Arnold's poet-son rambled as a boy—where, for me, the shy and passionate ghost of Charlotte Bronte still haunts the open door-way of Fox How—where poetry and generous life and ranging thought still dwell, and bring their benediction to the passers-by. "Aunt Emma" in her beautiful home, ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was reading in a quiet corner of the Club. That is to say, he had the appearance of one reading. As a matter of fact, he had been watching Eddie's shy, uncertain evolutions for half an hour or more, and he chuckled inwardly. As many as ten times the victim strolled through the reading room, on the pretext of looking for some one. Something told the General that he was ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... tumultuous, riotous intoxication: that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing down their heads. But here all is different, in this so-called Bacchanal of Mantegna. This heavy Silenus is supine like a mass of marble; these fauns are shy and mute; these youths are grave and sombre; there is no wine in the cups, there are no lees in the vat, there is no life in these magnificent colossal forms; there is no blood in their grandly bent lips, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... would lose half its summer charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying time the metallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of scythe-whet. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If anybody had ooelogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair in my garden ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... ardent reader of books from childhood up, and he was enabled to gratify this taste by means of a very small village library, which contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond. This boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar when his parents ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... the change in her name, though she was by no means indifferent to the rank. As Lady Glencora she had made a reputation which might very possibly fall away from her as Duchess of Omnium. Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes. As Lady Glencora Palliser she was known to every one, and had always done exactly as she had pleased. The world in which she lived had submitted to her fantasies, and had placed ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Andrew. She was very shy of him at first, but he coaxed her to look at a bird's nest with its small, blue-speckled eggs. And there were the chickens that, as they grew larger, followed her about. Andrew found the first ripe early pear for her, and the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... seemed to be no reply to make. Lady Theobald had her granddaughter under excellent control. Under her rigorous rule, the girl—whose mother had died at her birth—had been brought up. At nineteen she was simple, sensitive, shy. She had been permitted to have no companions, and the greatest excitements of her life had been the Slowbridge tea-parties. Of the late Sir Gilbert Theobald, the less said the better. He had spent very little of his married life at Oldclough Hall, and upon his death his widow ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... again, thridding the resinous woods to track the shy Naiads hiding in their coverts. Over the brown spines of the pines, soft and perfumed, we loiter, following leisurely the faint warble of waters, till we come to the boiling rapids, where the stream comes hurrying down, and with sudden pique ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... looked as if she were going to box her ears. Perhaps she was. Her trick of pretending things was the joy of her life. She never spoke of it to girls she was not fond of. Her new "pretend" about being a princess was very near to her heart, and she was shy and sensitive about it. She had meant it to be rather a secret, and here was Lavinia deriding it before nearly all the school. She felt the blood rush up into her face and tingle in her ears. She only just saved herself. If you were a princess, you did not fly into rages. ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of some four or five minutes, I can tell you, and I got a lesson about time better than anything Kant and all the rest of them have to say of it. After I had been there about an ordinary lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... better pleased than she to work under her own young ladies, and to have so peaceful a home for her little daughters. She was introduced to her future scholars on Sunday in the wash-house, and very shy and awkward did they look, nor were the numbers ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gun-shy. And Uncle Eddy ate some, too, one time when he was little, because the colored stable boy told him it would ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and had grown quite hopeless about seeing his kind again. When there was a gap in the mountains, he could hear the querulous, senseless love-quarrel of flickers going on below him; passing a deep ravine, the note of the wood-thrush—that shy lyrist of the hills—might rise to him from a dense covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!" And, quite still, she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his essay in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Hilary was very shy of parading her happiness; she disliked any demonstrations thereof, even before Johanna. And when Miss Balquidder, who had, of course, been told of the engagement, came down one day expressly to see her ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Humdrum's grand-daughter, of whom I will say nothing, for I have never seen her, and know nothing about her, except that my father found her a sweet-looking girl, of graceful figure and very attractive expression. He was quite happy about her, but she was too young and shy to make it possible for him to do more than admire her appearance, and take Yram's word for it that she was as ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Measure off one and one-fourth inches, and construct a line parallel to the back edge. Measure one inch and draw a line parallel to this. Measure off two and one-sixteenth inches (shy) and draw a third parallel line. Measure one inch again and draw a fourth line parallel to the other three. Score and fold on these lines. Lap the space at the back edge over the space at the front edge until they form a rectangle ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... respectful, but her eyes riveted upon him as if she would pluck from him all the secrets of existence. The priest was conscious, a little uneasy, and a little amused, at this abnormal scrutiny. Some shuffling sounded outside the house as if a drove of shy animals had come down from the mountain and approached the dwelling. Presently the door creaked. I looked at it uneasily. The atmosphere of the place, the fumes of the poteen in my head, the heat of the fire, had given ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... she has not seen me this morning, no doubt; but is too shy to say she wonders. Repeated What's the matter, however, as Dorcas runs up and down stairs by her door, bring on, O Madam! my master! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... one had told Paul this was going to happen to him, this experience, he would have laughed them to scorn. To begin with, he was rather shy with ladies as a rule, and had not learnt a trick of entreprenance. It took him quite a while to know one well enough to even talk at ease. And yet here he was, embarked upon an adventure which savoured ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... moving back to safer quarters. "There's a fly in every hointment. An' we're as apt to 'it each other as a woman at a cokernut shy." ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... speak? In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek— The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender And unnamed light that floods the world with splendor; In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace In all fair things to one beloved face; In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble; In looks and lips that can no more dissemble— Thus ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... eating. Sabine-like invasion leaves to tribe but a few old squaws. "Startlingly unsophisticated state of almost entire nudity". Their filthy habits. Papooses fastened in framework of light wood. Indian modes of fishing. A handsome but shy young buck. Classic gracefulness of folds of white-sheet robe of Indian. Light and airy step of the Indians something superhuman. Miserably brutish and degraded. Their vocabulary of about twenty words. Their love of gambling, and its frightful consequences. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... art. Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, "She wouldn't luff up in time, somehow. What's the matter with her?" ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... disapprobation; the visible happiness of the persons chiefly concerned pleaded yet more persuasively. What harm, after all, was done, except for a little trouble and a little gossip? To these Mary and John were utterly indifferent. At first they had been rather shy in referring, before one another, to their loves, but custom taught them to mention the names without confusion, and ere long they had exchanged confidences as to their future plans. John's arrangement was obviously the more prudent and ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... stream? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool Gentle ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... full and Change of the Moon about 11 o'Clock. We met with no fresh water, or any other kind of refreshments whatever; we saw 2 Turtle, but caught none, nor no sort of Fish or wild fowl, except a few small land birds. Here are the same sort of Water Fowl as we saw in Botany Bay, and like them, so shy that it is hardly possible to get within shott of them. No signs of Fertility is to be seen upon the Land; the Soil of the up lands is mostly a hard, redish Clay, and produceth several sorts of Trees, such as we have seen before, and some others, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... at being a good deal noticed by the company as so unlike the others. She was not shy and frightened like Rusha, who hung her head and had not a word to say for herself, but chattered away to the young Rivetts, showing them the kid, the calves, and the lambs, taking Mistress Alice to the biggest ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He has twice been ploughed, Yet he intends to have another shy, Hoping to pass (as he says) in a crowd. Sanguine is James, but not so sanguine I. If you demand my reason, I reply: Because he reads no Greek without a key And spells Thucydides c-i-d-y; Yet James is going ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... my friend Sledge, but that shy young person behaved most nonchalantly. He whistled and offered Jenkins a cigar. It was accepted. I was disgusted, and then they all fell to quarreling over ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to make of that man a puppet for our amusement, because he was shy, and stupid, and slow? He was as true in his devotion, as honorable in all his wishes, as confident in his hopes till they were blasted, as any one that has gone a wooing since the first whisper of love was heard in Eden. If his despair was ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out and prove it?—why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking her up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... placed at right angles to a window looking straight out to sea. Her short, narrow, dark blue skirt and long blue silk jersey silhouetted her slender figure, the figure which remained so supple, so—so girlish, in spite of her nine-year-old daughters. There was something shy and wild, untamed and yet beckoning, in the oval face now drawn with pain and sleeplessness, in the grey, almond-shaped eyes reddened with secret tears, and in the firm, delicately ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... shy of their camps. The laborers were mainly Irish, trans-shipped from steerage, dock, and Bowery, and imported from Western mining centers; turbulent in their relaxations and plentifully supplied with ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... of her father and then there was a collapse of which she fought shy. Lady Harman was too delicate to press her to talk ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells |
