"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see their forms again, God help 'em, should they find the strife! For they are strong and fearless men, And make no coward terms for life; They'll fight as long as Marion bids, And when he speaks the word to shy, Then, not till then, they turn their steeds, Through thickening shade ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... ill wind that blows nobody some good," reflected the jailer complacently. "I'm gettin' a dollar a day because you coveted your neighbor's tomatoes and then had no more sense than to shy one at him. Missed ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... us, and as the days went by, we had the odd sense of threading uncharted seas; we found it more and more difficult to believe that this empty, lonesome ocean was the Atlantic in the twentieth century. Once we saw a four-master; once a shy, silent steamer avoided us, westward bound; and once in mid-ocean, tossed on a sea sun-silvered under a rack of clouds, we overtook a gallant little schooner out of New Bedford or Gloucester—a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and that on a slice of Father Tom's territory, which the Bishop lopped off to form a new parish. Father Ilwin was young. He had no rich brogue on his tongue to charm you into looking at his coat in expectation of seeing his big heart burst out to welcome you. He was thoughtful-looking and shy, so he did not get on well and his new church building ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... his friend Laurence, and Laurence had simply assured him that all should be made right in two days,—or, at furthest, by the end of a week. Since that time he had observed that his friend had been somewhat shy of speaking to him when no others were with them. Phineas would not have alluded to the bill had he and Laurence been alone together; but he had been quick enough to guess from his friend's manner that the matter was not settled. Now, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Bid fair enough to answer in the proof, Harmless, and safe, and natural as they are, A disappointment waits him even there: Arrived, he feels an unexpected change, He blushes, hangs his head, is shy and strange. No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease, His favourite stand between his father's knees, But seeks the corner of some distant seat, And eyes the door, and watches a retreat, And, least familiar where he should be most, Feels all his happiest privileges lost. Alas, poor ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... before price is mentioned at all. Many solicitors consider it so essential to keep the price in the background until near the end of the canvass that they artfully dodge the question, "What is the cost?", until they think the prospect is sufficiently interested not to "shy" when the ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... friends,' she said. We had a quarrel. The truth was, I was enraged at the sweeping out of my prospects of rising to distinction among the gipsies. After breakfast at an inn, where a waiter laughed at us to our faces, and we fed scowling, shy, and hungry, we had another quarrel. I informed her of my opinion that gipsies could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:—and by position and experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... declared consolingly. "They're both powerful mawdrate hosses. Besides,"—the speaker stole a half-mischievous, half-shy look at her companion,—"Thinkright'll tell ye it's one o' the seven deadly sins to be skeered of anythin' that's in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the sea ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... likely that he would secure the Aschers. Millionaires are usually shy birds, well accustomed to being pursued by all sorts of ordinary men. They develop, I suppose, a special cunning in avoiding capture, a cunning which the rest of us never achieve. However Ascher's cunning was no use to him in this case. Gorman ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... it said. "Quit fooling, yourself. Don't you know young dongolas are always water-shy at first? Tie them in the lake and let them soak, and they will learn to swim fast enough. If I didn't know any more about dongolas than you do I would keep clear of them. ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... large," he observed. "Odd creatures you women are," he went on suddenly, after a brief silence. "You shy wildly at the idea of letting a man see the foot God gave you, but you've no scruples at all about letting any one see the selfishness that the devil's put into ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... and naturally shy, I was visiting my aunts at Workington, where my grandfather had been rector, and was asked to preach on Sunday evening in St. John's, a wretched modern church—a plain oblong with galleries, and a pulpit like a very tall wineglass, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... wind," continued Dorothy, "two good eyes. By night or by day I can see everything within the range of my vision, and a great deal that is not. I shy, at times, when an uncouth object suddenly comes upon me. I am warranted gentle if properly handled, but otherwise it is unsafe to curry ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Just as the crabbed old sexton was going to drive him out of the gate with a big stick, I says, more in the way of a joke than anything else: 'Graves, come here!—I want a word or two with you.' He came up, looking shy and suspicious, and saying he wasn't going to harm anybody, but there was some fresh ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the eldest was a youth just one and twenty. Michael was called by his enemies Antinomian. He was fervently religious, upright, temperate, but given somewhat to moodiness and passion. He was singularly shy of talking about his own troubles, of which he had more than his share at home, but often strange clouds cast shadows upon him, and the reasons he gave for the change observable in him were curiously incompetent to explain such results. David, who had watched him from the other end of ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... for he had made me his own member, and meant to profit by me in all possible ways. He had discovered my electioneering talents. I was very engaging among the women: a matter of no small moment in such affairs: and 'though I was rather shy of my glass, yet I could sing an excellent song, which I could likewise make, quite suitable to the occasion.' He therefore proposed that we should both journey into my native county, and there exercise all our wit and ingenuity, to aid in bringing ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... signor of a bird!] he directs the bill of the foremost to it; and when she has got the dirty pearl, he struts over her with an erected crest, cling round her with dropt wings, sweeping the dust in humble courtship: while the obliged she, half-shy, half-willing, by her cowering tail, prepared wings, yet seemingly affrighted eyes, and contracted neck, lets one see that she knows the barley-corn was not all ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... How do I feel!... My whole soul has acquired a new impulse. My own unhappiness bowed me to the ground; made me fretful, short-sighted, shy, careless: her unhappiness raises me. I see clearly again, and feel myself ready and capable of undertaking anything for her sake. Why do I tarry? (Is going towards Minna's room, when Franziska comes out ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... eleven years old, shy, secret, and rather childish of his age, though not backward in schooling, which had been pushed on far by a private governor, one M'Brair, a forfeited minister harboured in that capacity at Montroymont. The boy, already much employed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in one corner, or to kill a deer in another, it would be, 'where is the dog Priest?' says one. 'Who has seen the accursed Tuck?' says another. 'The unfrocked villain destroys more venison than half the country besides,' says one keeper; 'And is hunting after every shy doe in the country!' quoth a second.—In fine, good my Liege, I pray you to leave me as you found me; or, if in aught you desire to extend your benevolence to me, that I may be considered as the poor Clerk of Saint Dunstan's cell in Copmanhurst, to whom any small donation ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... with him as the reason? 'We will do thee good, for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.' Probably Hobab looked rather shy at the security, for I suppose he was no worshipper of Jehovah, and he said, 'No; I had rather go home to my own people and my own kindred and my father's house where I fit in, and keep to my own ways, and have something a little more definite to lay hold ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... free-and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons, which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went in the cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy's mamma, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as the dinner went on, and at the various feats and instances of espieglerie on the part of her son. The Colonel—for so he became very soon afterwards—I remember joked the boy with a great deal of grave fun, pointing out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating him not to baulk his appetite, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bar of the Golden Boar, and I was madly in love with her, seriously intent on lawful wedlock. Luckily for me she threw me over for a neighbouring pork butcher, but at the time I took it hardly, and it made me sex-shy. I was a very poor man in those days. One feels one's griefs more keenly then, one hasn't the wherewithal to buy distraction. Besides, ladies snubbed me rather, on the rare occasions I met them. Later I fell in for a legacy, the forerunner of several; indeed, I may say I ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... way. Cherry was full of softness, of ready response to any appeal, of sympathy and comprehension. She had been misunderstood, unhappy, neglected; she had developed through suffering a certain timidity that was almost a shrinking, a certain shy clinging to what was ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... the maiden forth with the bowl and the loaf; and indeed she was fair enough, and shy and kind; but Ralph heeded her little, nor was his heart moved by her at all. She set a stool for him beside the door and he sat down and ate and drank, though his heart was troubled; and the maiden hung about, and seemed ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... "Awful shy since the arrow hit her. She don't know what it means yet. She'll get used to that I reckon. She's a good girl and smart as a steel trap. Her father takes her out on the plains with him shooting. She ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... newspapers of the years 1739 to 1783 evidently furnished the material for an article called "Old News," reprinted in "The Snow Image." Hawthorne seems never to have talked much about reading: 'tis imaginable that he was as shy in his choice of books and his discussion of them, as in his intercourse with men; and there is no more ground for believing that he did not like books, than that he cared nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such a mind, of men, women, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... had become a fixture in the old house, but he was not like Dick. He was a heavy, silent young man, shy of intruding into the family life and already engrossed in a budding affair with the Rossiter girl. David tolerated him, but with a sort of smouldering jealousy increased by the fact that he had introduced innovations David resented; had ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and practised modesty of the old bawd Science; turning again to shower a benediction of unexpected caresses on the most cavalier of her wooers, Poetry. This world, the child of Sense and Faith, shy, wild, and provocative, for ever lures her lovers to the chase, and the record of their hopes and conquests is contained in the lover's language, made up wholly of parable and figure of speech. There is nothing under the sun nor beyond it that does not concern man, and it is the unceasing ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... do not see that, Rita! She is shy and awkward, and I should think very young for her age. But she has an honest, good face, and I like her. Besides," she added, unconsciously repeating the argument she had used in defending Rita herself against Peggy's animadversions, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... booted and fully equipped, my travelling companion—if such a word can at all express the relation between the arrogant young blood, just fresh from assuming the toga virilis, and a modest child of profound sensibilities, but shy and reserved beyond even English reserve. The aged servant, with apparently constrained civility, presented my mother's compliments to him, with a request that he would take breakfast. This he hastily and rather peremptorily declined. Me, however, he condescended to notice with an approving nod, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and which would indeed have terminated in death. I was therefore shy enough of applying for assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue of recovering me. But as to London in particular, though doubtless my father ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... scornful; it tosses its analogies in your face; humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart," says E. P. Whipple. "Wit is intellectual, humor is emotional; wit is perception of resemblance, humor of contrast—of contrast between ideal and fact, theory and practice, promise and performance," ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... hero receiving favors in a hospital is one thing, and an unknown discharged soldier asking them is quite another. The very thought of Quinby Graham presenting himself as a caller, and the comments that would follow made Eleanor shy away ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... enough to hide him. When they were able to stand alone he stole out in the dark to have a look at them, and then if unobserved his bosom swelled. I have never known any one more modest and no one quite so shy. Many actors have played for him for years and never spoken to him, have perhaps seen him dart up a side street because they were approaching. They may not have known that it was sheer shyness, but it was. I have seen him ordered ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... flour, another with tierces of tobacco, while over still another the wayfarers proceeded on the tops of cook stoves. These sank gradually in the soft soil until the tops were almost level with the mud. Of course one of the first acts of the merry jester was to shy the stove lids off into space. The footing especially after dark can be imagined. Crossing a street on these things was a perilous traverse watched with great interest by spectators on either side. Often the hardy adventurer, after teetering for ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... next few minutes I found that some of the shy mountain women were beginning to hover about me, and in another ten minutes I had laid the foundations of an export rug and quilt business that I have a feeling will ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... but they are shy, and they possess the true Colorado spirit,—they are mountain-worshipers. As the time approaches when each bird leaves society and retires for a season to the bosom of its own family, many of the feathered residents of the State bethink them of their inaccessible ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the hall. She was not in any way shy. She seemed to rule all around her with a sort of high-bred dominance, all the more remarkable as she was greatly agitated and as pale as snow. In the great hall were several servants, the men standing together near the hall door, and the women clinging together in the further ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... hero; she has little idea of him as a man. He was certainly the most dominating character in our not uninteresting community: indeed, there is no doubt that he would carry weight in any gathering of human beings. But few who knew him realized how shy and reserved the man was, and it was partly for this reason that he so often laid himself open ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... was found asleep covered with snow. The Indians wrapped the sick man at once in a grizzly bear skin, fastened him to a pony, and carried him to their camp near the big trees. It was morning before Alfonso was conscious of his surroundings. Standing by him was a shy Indian maiden with a dish of hot soup. His bed, he discovered was in a burned-out cavity of one of the big trees. Near by were several tepees, the tops of which emitted smoke. Straight, black-haired Indians in bright blankets moved slowly from tent ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... two tenses, which is denied likewise, they [the foregoing examples] are all one [; i.e., exactly equivalent]"—Id. "Both these tenses may represent a futurity, implied by the dependence of the clause."—Id. "Cry, cries, crying, cried, crier, decrial; Shy, shier, shiest, shily, shiness; Fly, flies, flying, flier, high-flier; Sly, slier, sliest, slily, sliness; Spy, spies, spying, spied, espial; Dry, drier, driest, drily, driness."—Cobb, Webster, and Chalmers cor. "I would sooner listen to the thrumming of a dandizette ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that? One can't be perfectly candid in the world, my dear, much as one would wish to be. What is that you're saying? "On the Hanging Committee this year?" How can you possibly know? "You heard him say so?" Then you ought to have stopped me, instead of standing there like a shy school-girl. Not that he would think I meant anything by a remark like that—why should he? I'm sure I tried to say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... school feeling as if her reason were rocking. She had never imagined that anything so nice could happen to her. Since the loss of her parents life had not been too bright. Sometimes she almost dreaded the holidays at her aunt's. She was shy and sensitive, and the impression that she was not altogether welcome there was a bitter one. It is very hard for a girl when she has no home of her own, and no one whose special prerogative it is to love and encourage ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... party climbed upwards towards the slope where the sheep had been seen on the previous day, Joses was full of stories about the shy nature ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... I'm always shy the price of the ticket home. You're rich. You could return to civilization and have a good time all the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... three of them in all the world, and not only are they harmless, but quite bashful and shy. They are kind-hearted, too, and although not beautiful in appearance, they do many kind deeds and are ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... manifest itself to public eye, but Willett manfully rose to the occasion. In the midst of anxiety, uncertainty and danger there beamed one ray, at least, of radiant, unshadowed, buoyant hope and bliss and shy delight. Lilian Archer envied no girl on the face of the globe, no white-robed seraph in heaven; and for her sake others, too, strove hard to hope, to help, to ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... meant it," said Polly, her brown eyes very grave. Would Jasper really persuade him to forget that laugh? "But he is shy, and he said the first thing ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... nice one! Full of all kinds of happiness; but shy. I'd like to see some rounder try to speak To her on Broadway. She ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... touch the sea and shed silver about the boats in the offing. Out yonder Gwennolar sang and took her toll of life as before; but the people heeded less, and soon forgot even when their dearest perished. Other things than sorrow they began to unlearn. They had been a shamefaced race; the men shy and the women chaste. But the Stranger knew nothing of shame; nor was it possible to think harm where he, their leader, so plainly saw none. Naked he led them from the drinking-bout down the west stairway ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... statement had power to visualize the young creature as Angela had once seen her: pretty as the flower whose name she bore, a little shy thing ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the three pictures which Will Ford had kept under his pillow during his long convalescence in one of the army hospitals over there. These readers may also remember that one of the pictures was of the boy's mother, another of his sister, Grace, and the third of shy little Amy Blackford, who now was blushing so furiously at the mere mention ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... love! I find you so weak and small, A human child, not a god at all; Two angry, sleepy eyes that cry, Two little hands so soft and shy, I'll hush you with a ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... To-day the supply of whales' bones is large, in consequence of our desire, expressed on previous days, to obtain them. One has come with two vertebrae, one with a rib or some fragments of it, one with a shoulder-blade. They are not shy in laying heavy loads on ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... ravishing model. Note the eyes—the dreamy, cognisant expression; glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the world-famous nickname ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... reticence, that it was always more likely that a man had done a bad thing than that he hadn't. That he himself had several times 'reckoned up' Gaffer, but had never been able to bring him to a satisfactory criminal total. That if this story was true, it was only in part true. That the two men, very shy characters, would have been jointly and pretty equally 'in it;' but that this man had 'spotted' the other, to save himself and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... 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, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... never paraded his knowledge, or lay in wait to trip people up. Although the prospect of going out worried him, and his first impulse was to refuse an invitation, he enjoyed society when he was in it, being neither vain nor shy. At Oxford he could not dine out. Late hours interfered with his work. But he was hospitable both to tutors and to undergraduates, liking to show himself at home in the old place. Except for the failure of his health, perhaps in spite of it, his ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas westward, the pale-green vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody—he, this same 'roundsman on the beat,' stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the index and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny goat for the girl and reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ... And so, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... that division of the county at the approaching election, he was something of a figure in the place. It was rather abnormal that any pretty little half-rustic girl should treat him with anything but reverence. If the girl had been shy, and had blushed and trembled before him a little, he could have understood it. Had she been pert he could have understood it. Young women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... manual in hand, you must not expect to be able to identify every new bird at the first attempt, for some species are either exceedingly shy or obscurely marked, or probably both, while quite a number are so much alike in markings and habits that it is hard to distinguish them from one another. A few birds remained enigmas to me for a number of years, in spite of the help of the field glass. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... wonder the women-folk flocked out into the yard. Mescal hung back shy-eyed, roses dyeing the brown of ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... simple and sweet and very shy," reproved Kate. "So shy that she will doubtless be painfully embarrassed at meeting you, and seem—well, really ill ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... ideal shape, with no existence in space, only to be spoken of in figures and metaphors, makes it all the more important that in our thought it should be protected by no romantic scruple. Or perhaps it is not really the book that we are shy of, but a still more fugitive phantom—our pleasure in it. It spoils the fun of a novel to know how it is made—is this a reflection that lurks at the back of our minds? ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... founded Troy," a boy, who had not spoken before, said suddenly, to the surprise of every one. He was silent and seemed to be shy. He was a pretty boy of about eleven, called Kartashov. He was sitting near the door. Kolya looked at ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... desired a still greater income. He began to embark in risky ventures which promised large and quick returns. He went into partnership with two different nobles, who made a practice of bidding on the taxes of frontier provinces exposed to enemy raids. Bidders were shy of investing their cash in the problematical returns of such regions and those who had the hardihood to enter into contracts with the government made huge profits if lucky. Falco was lucky each time. He ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... easier to describe than to define, but it seems to express the very soul of magic. This orenda is your power to do things, your force, sometimes almost your personality. A man who hunts well has much and good orenda; the shy bird who escapes his snares has a fine orenda. The orenda of the rabbit controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it will fall. When a storm is brewing the magician is said to be making its orenda. When you yourself are in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... wine when I met them, and was introduced as a friend of Miss Mavis who had gone abroad. I was I found well known by name and a character for kindness, and I expect also for being a fool. All the women were shy at first, Hannah's sister (the servant) I overheard telling Hannah that the ladies did not like my being in the parlour. Hannah at times would ask me to leave, as a lady wanted to come into the parlour and wait there, and so on. But gradually ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... everywhere fled before us, and were with difficulty prevailed upon even to direct us along our road. A rude police is established by the British Government all over the country, and to it the traveller applies for guides and assistance; but the Conches were so shy and difficult to deal with, that we were generally left ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Bassompierre with pleasure. That young lady had different moods for different people. With her father she was even now a child. With me she was serious and womanly. With Mrs. Bretton she was docile and reliant. With Graham she was shy—very shy. At moments she tried to be cold, and, on occasion, she endeavoured to shun him. Even her father noticed this demeanour in her, and asked her what her old ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... breath, a garcon entered with some custards and an enormous omelette soufflee, whose puffy brown sides bagged over the tin dish that contained it. "There's a tart!" cried Mr. Jorrocks; "Oh, my eyes, what a swell!—Well, I suppose I must have a shy at it.—'In for a penny in for a pound!' as we say at the Lord Mayor's feed. Know I shall be sick, but, however, here goes," sending his plate across the table to the garcon, who was going to help it. The first dive of the spoon undeceived him as he heard it sound at the bottom ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... and have an artistic mind—have achieved things beyond the mere drudgery of the profession. I take it that, being interested in his work, he will not have rested content with mounting—even in a perfect manner—his animals at rest, but will have "had a shy" at animals in action, or engaged in some characteristic occupation. The days of birds on "hat-pegs," stiff-legged, long-necked and staring, round-eyed, at nothing—of mammals, whose length and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... been very shy of the old Quaker, who had spoken so plainly to him; but his words made some impression on him, though no one would have supposed so, as there was no change in his conduct towards his daughter. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... before her mind's eye the picture of Emil Lindbach, just as she had seen it in the illustrated paper; but immediately both the vision and her slight alarm vanished, and she felt a kind of emotion at the shy question of the young girl who believed that she still grieved for her dead husband, and that it would comfort her to have an ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy animals. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... never made his successors' mistake of despising her. He cultivated good relations, but he rejected the idea of an alliance, because, as he said, "the English constitution is not compatible with treaties of assured continuity." In other words, he fought shy of British democracy, which he felt to be an incalculable factor. This threw him ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... as I was putting him in his cot, and I had some little trouble in lulling him to sleep again. Hannah was dressing Joyce, and as soon as she had finished, I tried to make friends with the child. She was very shy at first, but I called Snap, and made a great fuss over him. I was just beginning to make way, when the gong summoned Mrs. Morton to luncheon, and soon after that the nursery dinner was served. Hannah waited upon us very ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... of roses, when she obeyed the summons to the stage door on being told that the great manager wished to see her. She came toward him, flushed, excited, adorably pretty. She laid down her roses and held out her hand, shy, but perfectly self-possessed. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... cheer, and kind intent The weary stranger oft hath known When she, its mistress, fair and good, Reigned here in peerless womanhood, When soft, shy maiden fancy gave Encouragement to soldiers brave, And Washington his presence lent To grace ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Phillimore, or even to have read a single word of any international law. I have refused to read any such, knowing that it would only confuse and mislead me. But I have my common sense to guide me. Two men living in one street, quarrel and shy brickbats at each other, and make the whole street very uncomfortable. Not only is no one to interfere with them, but they are to have the privilege of deciding that their brickbats have the right of way, rather than the ordinary intercourse of the neighborhood! If that ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Something ought to come of this arrangement. One of those two young ladies must certainly captivate and perhaps capture the Tutor. They are just the age to be falling in love and to be fallen in love with. The Tutor is good looking, intellectual, suspected of writing poetry, but a little shy, it appears to me. I am glad to see him between the two girls. If there were only one, she might be shy too, and then there would be less chance for a romance such as I am on the lookout for; but these young persons lend courage to each other, and between them, if he does not wake up like Cymon ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... formed between them. The boy opens all his heart to his mother, telling her everything; and she, happy woman, knows how to be a boy's mother and to keep a mother's place without ever startling or checking the shy confidences, or causing him to desire to hide anything from her. The boy whispers his inmost thoughts to his mother, and listens to her wise and gentle counsels with ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Rosy's aunt. Rosy scarcely seemed to care to play with her at all. Her whole time, when not at her lessons, was spent in her aunt's room, generally with Nelson, who was never tired of amusing her and giving in to all her fancies. Bee grew silent and shy. She was losing her bright happy manner, and looked as if she no longer felt sure that she was a welcome little guest. Mrs. Vincent saw the change in her, but did not quite understand it, and felt almost inclined ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... that I was comparatively young and lacked the earmarks of the highwayman, she was greatly relieved. She was inclined to fight shy of Hotchkiss, however, for some reason. She gave us a breakfast of a sort, for there was little in the house, and afterward we telephoned to the town for a vehicle. While Hotchkiss examined scratches and replaced the Bokhara rug, I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he was going back home whooping and yelling, he saw something dark in the road before him, and he rode his horse at it full tilt. The horse seemed to have little taste for such sport, for he snorted and wanted to shy around the dark object. But the man clapped spurs to the horse and drove him right at it. The black thing ran, and the man spurred his horse after it. It ran down the road, then across an old field and back into the road again, the man pursuing it as hard as he ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... Shy. Ho no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is a good man, is to haue you vnderstand me that he is sufficient, yet his meanes are in supposition: he hath an Argosie bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies, I vnderstand moreouer vpon the Ryalta, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... took from a glass counter-case a paper box in which was a miscellaneous assortment of such articles; there were five or six of the pocket-books. Madeline selected one,—a small, flexible affair, of some dark-colored morocco lined with pink silk. She paid the trifle the shy, demure little librarian demanded, and was taking her leave in silence, without even a "Good-day," when, as she was passing the door, Miss Wimple espied on the counter, near where her customer had stood, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... speaking lines about the mouth. All that one can notice is a disappointed, somewhat peevish look in the eyes. Such was Henrietta. The fact that she had not been much wanted or appreciated hitherto began to show now she was eighteen. She was either shy and silent, or talked with too much positiveness for fear she should not be listened to; so that though she was not a failure at dances and managed to find plenty of partners, there were none of the interesting episodes that were continually occurring on Louie's evenings, and for a year or two her ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... Irene—perhaps she was shy—but, starting off at a quick pace, led her down a long passage into a room on the ground floor. It was a pleasant room with a French window that opened out on to a veranda, where, over a marble balustrade, there was a view of an orange garden and the sea. Round a table were collected several ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... good-natured, jovial, popular, 'the sort of man that one involuntarily addresses by his Christian name'; that although he was shy and awkward in the society of ladies, at ease with his own sex only when cattle and horses were the subject of conversation, ignorant of music, and unable to tell Millais from Tenniel, he 'could pick you out any bullock in a herd ... shear a hundred sheep a day ... and drive four horses ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... contemporaries agree that he was a man of great consideration for form, and assert that if there are coarse passages in his songs it is because they only could express what he depicted. All coarseness was foreign to his nature; he was reserved and somewhat shy, and only in the company of his chosen few did he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... precautions, and this road not being particularly safe at night, we were probably indebted for our safe return more to "good luck than good guidance;" or, perhaps, we owed it in part to the padre, for the robbers are shy at attacking either soldiers or priests, the first from fear, and the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... affectionate disposition, the cheerful home influences, the motherly care of Mrs. Elmer, whose heart was very tender towards the motherless boy, and, above all, the great alteration in his father's manner, had changed the shy, sullen lad, such as he had been, into an honest, happy fellow, anxious to do right, and in every way to please the kind friends to whom his debt of gratitude was so great. His regular employment at the ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... in low-falling black—and the fine white plaits (of a painter's white, somehow) disposed on her chest. What had happened was that these arrangements, determined by certain considerations, lent themselves in effect much better to certain others. Adopted in mere shy silence they had really only deepened her accent. It was singular, moreover, that, so constituted, there was nothing in her aspect of the ascetic or the nun. She was a good hard sixteenth-century figure, not withered with innocence, ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... Against the silver pools. Two figures pace The wharf in ghostly silence, face from face. O'er the black line of mountain, silver-clear In faint rose-tint of vaporous evening air, Sinketh the bright suspicion of a wing, The slim curved moon, who in shy triumphing Hideth her face. Above, the rose-tint pales Into a silver opal, hills and dales Of cloudy glory, fading high alone Into a tender blue-grey monotone.— And then I thought: "ere that fair, slender moon Has rounded grown and full, (so soon, so soon!) Our hearts' desire accomplished ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon
... 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 she was simple, natural and taciturn. This silence did ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... me: be women no more; But fellow-men born, from top branch to the core; Men who must fight—who can kill, who can die, While women once more shall be covered and shy. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... only possible standard, for his moral earnestness was as fervent at eighty-eight as it had been at thirty. Although eminently accessible and open in the ordinary converse of society, he was in reality a reserved man; not shy, stiff, and externally cold, like Peel, nor always standing on a pedestal of dignity, like the younger Pitt, but revealing his deepest thoughts only to a very few intimate friends, and treating all others with a ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... disliked it; and the matron felt the commonness of the girls, without knowing what exactly it was. The girls, on the other hand, were interested in the young man: he looked like a gentleman! Ian was interested in the young women: he thought they were shy, when they were only "put out," and wished to make them comfortable—in which he quickly succeeded. His unconsciously commanding air in the midst of his great courtesy, roused their admiration, and they had not been many minutes in his company ere they were satisfied that, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... preserving waters that used to be open. The distance to Sutherland makes that county almost beyond the range of a brief holiday. Loch Leven is nearer, and at Loch Leven the scenery is better than its reputation, while the trout are excellent, though shy. But Loch Leven is too much cockneyfied by angling competitions; moreover, its pleasures are expensive. Loch Awe remains, a loch at once large, lovely, not too distant, and not destitute ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... of Eva Lylyan Lynch-Blosse, an English lady, who came to Sioux Falls early last winter and attracted almost instantly the respectful attention of the citizens. Not because she was a strikingly beautiful woman, for a student of statues might find some faults in her features, but because out of the shy, violet eyes a high, indomitable spirit occasionally gleamed and a stray flash from them, combined with her radiant freshness of complexion and perfect grace of figure and of carriage, would light up the common sordid streets of the common ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... over the vast region of lake and forest. Along the shores of the little rivers the new grass was springing, and in nook and sheltered corner of rock and depression shy white flowers lifted their pretty heads to the coaxing sun. Deep in the budding woods birds in flocks and bevies called across the wilderness of tender green, while at the post the youths sang snatches of wild French ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... of Cyllenian Hermes, the Slayer of Argus, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods. He was born of Maia, the daughter of Atlas, when she had made with Zeus,—a shy goddess she. Ever she avoided the throng of the blessed gods and lived in a shadowy cave, and there the Son of Cronos used to lie with the rich-tressed nymph at dead of night, while white-armed Hera ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Nan were on the veranda. Bud's attitude was one of almost shy reserve. Nan was smiling a welcome such as a moment before would have seemed quite impossible. But her schooling had finally triumphed in the crisis, and her loyalty to her generous love had vanquished every baser feeling. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... sounds that might bestow Rest on the fever'd bed, All slumb'rous sounds and low Are mingled here and wed, And bring no drowsihed. Shy dreams flit to and fro With shadowy hair dispread; With wistful eyes that glow And silent robes that sweep. Thou wilt not hear me; no? Wilt thou not ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... it had looked a few days before. Perhaps my face betrayed my feeling; for when we reached the foot of the incline and our path broadened out as it turned to follow the windings of the little river toward the pond, mademoiselle rode up beside me, and with a very pretty air indeed, half arch, half shy, wholly sweet, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... always through the single eyeglass. Even the vaguest approach to emotion or sentiment invariably made him feel stiff and shy. Realising this, he did not quite understand why he rather liked it in the case of Emily Fox-Seton, though he only liked it remotely and felt his own inaptness ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... remembered speaking to. It seemed an extravagant statement, but in a way it is true. What his past has been I don't know, but since I knew him his life has never been influenced by women. Think what that means to a man! Besides, he is sensitive and shy. I can quite understand his being uneasy ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister's strange ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... good guess, Toby," remarked Max. "Perhaps the boy believes we're some sort of deputy sheriffs, and up here to give the man he's with trouble. Anyhow, I have a pretty good idea myself that it was our guns that made him so shy." ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... slum work gives us a sweet shy welcome. She is a Swedish girl, with the fair complexion and crisp, bright hair peculiar to the Scandinavian blonde-type. Her head reminds me of a Grenze that hangs in the Louvre, with its low knot of rippling hair, which fluffs out from her ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... one not amongst the noisy group, and that one was Hans. His parents perceived with anxiety that the little noisy child had grown into a silent, shy boy, who avoided the games of his comrades and dreamingly went his own way. For hours he sat in the garden on the bench near his mother's flowers, and gazed dreamingly at the busy bees and butterflies, or lay in the woods near by and stared up through the branches ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... more experience I get the more convinced I am that we're all shy. Why, you were shy when you came to ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... 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 a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... nibbled at the pastures green; Up from its clovery lurking-place, the hare Arose; the pheasant from the coppice stray'd; The cony from its hole disporting leapt; The cattle in the bloomy meadows lay Ruminant; the shy foal scarcely swerved aside At our approach from under the tall tree Of his delight, shaking his forelocks long In wanton play; while, overhead, his hymn, As 'twere to herald the approach of night, With all her gathering stars, the blackbird sang Melodiously, mellifluously, and Earth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll. Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This change did not much surprise me, as I hardly knew any one that had the slightest pretension to their acquaintance who had not troubled them for employment or borrowed their money, at the same time that they complained of their neglect and their breach ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... not to destroy their plumage. I went back into the forest along a path where I had often seen the great footmarks of the tapir. After riding about a couple of miles, I heard the notes of some birds, and, dismounting, tied up my mule, and pushed through the bushes. The birds were shy, and in following them I had got about fifty yards from the path, to a part where the big trees were more clear of brushwood, when I heard a loud hough in a thicket towards the left. It was something between a cough ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... out of view Five brighter ones they quickly placed anew; At length the slackening multitudes grew less, And the lamps floated scattered and apart. As stars grow few when morning's footsteps press When a slight girl, shy as the timid halt, Not far from where we stood, her offering brought. Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught. Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours Since she had left her childhood's innocent home; And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers, To ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson |
