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More "Reticent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him news of Brian. He was healthy and happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, Brian was over-reticent. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... published interview, Mackaye expressed his concern for the case; but he likewise was reticent about making theatre capital out of it. He ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... embittered by some cross, for though grim of countenance, rough of speech, cold of manner, a keen observer would have soon discovered traces of a deeper, warmer nature hidden, behind the repellent front he turned upon the world. A true New Englander, thoughtful, acute, reticent, and opinionated; yet earnest withal, intensely patriotic, and often humorous, despite a touch ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... came to herself and realised where she was, and found out from her attendant the circumstances under which she had been brought to the hospital, she was still more reticent. For her first thought related to the annoyance Archie would feel at her detention in a public hospital; her second, to the unmerciful use Madame would make of the circumstance. She could not reason very clearly, but her idea was to find her cousin and gain her ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... Sempland was ordinarily a reticent and a quiet man, but this possibility awoke him into action. He pleaded so long and so hard, and so determinedly that he overbore the other man, and finally wrung from him a grudging assent ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... talk about this period of her life with entire openness. She has, however, written me a letter in which she tells the essential truth, although clothing it with a certain pathetic attempt to conceal the one episode in her life about which, to me, she was perhaps unreasonably reticent. She did not say that she and Gertrude were separated from Terry for a time, but she wanted to convey the impression that she and Terry, from the start, struggled along together, which was essentially, though not literally, true. Continuing her account, from the time the two families cast her and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... late years has talked to me so much, and with such affectionate admiration, of "Julia Countess," as he called her, never happened to have mentioned this interview; he was very reticent about his love-makings, especially about any love that ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... his early life, but learned only that his father had been "engaged in the express business." He was ably reticent. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... exhibited no trace of confusion, assuring the sergeant that he had not seen the man Cohen for several days. Cohen had come to him with an American introduction, which he, Huang, believed to be forged, and had wanted him to undertake a shady agency, respecting the details of which he remained peculiarly reticent. In short, nothing had been gained by this official interrogation, and Huang blandly denied any knowledge of an attempted burglary of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-begotten selfhood—in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing—and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... near the middle of the afternoon, when Waukko, who was the leader of the little group, suddenly showed great excitement, which speedily communicated itself to his companions. All three of these scamps were sullen and reticent, frequently riding for hours at a time without exchanging a word, so that this excitement meant something. The three halted simultaneously, and talked loudly and excitedly, so that Fred suspected that some cause for a quarrel ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... very reticent, and consequently but little was heard of the proceedings in Albemarle Square. A good many loiterers had stopped to stare at the darkened windows of the great mansion; but as two coffins had been borne from the place, it was forgotten outside that another still remained. What might have been ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... she can hardly do into her task-work; and there she is taught,—how she shall learn to love; how she shall receive the lover when he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy; why she should be reticent, and not throw herself at once into this new delight. It is the same with the young man, though he would be more prone even than she to reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he too will there learn either to speak ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... expected a brother of Rodgers Warren's to look. Oddest of all, if he was such a brother, why had neither Caroline or Stephen mentioned his existence? According to his story, Graves, the Warren lawyer, had warned the children of his coming. Caroline had been very reticent concerning her father's will, the amount of his estate, and the like. And Mrs. Dunn had repeatedly, though discreetly, endeavored to find out these important details. Neither hints nor questions had resulted satisfactorily. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... murmured the local duchess to Lady Northgate. "I don't wonder at Lord Angleford's losing his heart. Half the men in the room would fall in love with her if she were free. And I like that quiet, reticent manner of hers; not a bit shy, but dignified and yet girlish. Yes, Lord Angleford is ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to "a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the Fides Publica, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only appeals to himself to come forward and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to spare their adversaries, sometimes they find habit too strong for them, and lunge home in spite of themselves. Besides, he began to be really interested in Madame Lescande—in her coquettish ways, at once artful and simple, provoking and timid, suggestive and reticent—in short, charming. ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... men, Jeanne's life and death were surrounded by marvels and mysteries. Many had from the first doubted her having perished by the hand of the executioner. Certain were curiously reticent on this point; they said: "the English had her publicly burnt at Rouen, or some other woman like her."[2632] Others confessed that they did not know ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... an entrance into the dressing room; he, moreover, alleged that he sat upon the throne, that he saw the Queen, and heard the Princess Royal cry, but his story was such a romance, that no reliance could be placed upon it. He was extremely reticent as to the cause of his intrusion into the Palace, the only explanation which he vouchsafed, on being arrested, was, that he wanted to see what was going on in the Palace, that he might write about it, and, if discovered, he should be as well off ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... itself to hideous war on the very day after Lyman Teaford had wed beyond the purple. It was awful, yet somehow fitting. Anything less than a World War would have appeared inconsequent, anti-climactic, to these two so closely concerned in the preliminary catastrophe, and yet so reticent that neither ever knew the other's wound. Wilbur Cowan may have supposed that the entire Penniman family, Winona included, would rejoice that no more forever were they to hear the flute of Lyman Teaford. Certainly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... stammer out his request. Never would they accost me or otherwise disturb me while I was writing or reading; yet at other times they could be positively impertinent, especially if excited. The islander is very nervous; when he is quiet, he is shy and reticent, but once he is aroused, all his bad instincts run riot, and incredible savageness and cruelty appear. The secret of successful treatment of the natives seems to be to keep them very quiet, and never to let any excitement arise, a point in which ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of furs. She was so white-skinned that she startled La Hontan as an apparition of Europe. He got but one black-eyed glance. She drew her blanket over her head. The group had doubtless heard the conference outside, but ignored it with reticent gravity. The hunter of the lodge was on his heels by the embers, toasting collops of meat for the blanketed princess; and an Etchemin woman, the other inmate, took one from his hand, and paused, while dressing it with salt, to ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... been pleasant to exchange even these few friendly words, for of late the habit of silence had been forced upon Pierce Phillips. For weeks now he had toiled among reticent men who regarded him with hostility, who made way for him with reluctance. Haste, labor, strain had numbed and brutalized them; fatigue had rendered them irritable, and the strangeness of their environment had made them both fearful and suspicious. There was no good- fellowship, no consideration ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... bring into the light of day his grandfather's cobbler's awl? And yet it is difficult to be altogether silent! It may not be necessary for any of us to be always talking of our own parentage. We may be generally reticent as to our uncles and aunts, and may drop even our brothers and sisters in our ordinary conversation. But if a man never mentions his belongings among those with whom he lives, he becomes mysterious, and almost open to suspicion. It begins to be known that nobody ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... out of pieces of words, or compounded words. Besides this difficulty, no language can be taught successfully by means of a dictionary, until the human memory acquires more power. Three years of hopeless struggle with the mighty debris of his symbols left him, although in the main reticent, a mighty man of words. But his labors were not lost. Through that heroic, unaided struggle he gained the first true glimpses into the elements of language. It is a startling fact, that an uneducated man, of a race we are pleased to call barbarians, attained in a few years, without books or tutors, ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... and then with horses blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing every sign of fatigue and disturbance. The colonel said a few sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent, plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon himself. HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them, but it was no fault of HIS, and they had to ride ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... reticent in his manner with strangers, (but this is readily explained by his imperfect command of English, and his reluctance to expose his deficiency) though voluble to the last degree when he falls in ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... in such a small minority. But probably not the saints alone will be saved, and it is some such hope that Mr. White has constantly in mind when making his constant appeal to conscience. It is, of course, a dramatic, not a didactic appeal. He preaches so little and is so effectively reticent that I could almost with he had left out the preface of his book, good as it is. Yes, just because it is so good I could wish he had left it out. It is a perfect justification of his purpose and methods, but they are their own justification with all who can think about them, and the others ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mrs. Ansell, with her usual calm precision, proceeded to measure the tea into the fluted Georgian tea-pot. She could be as reticent in approval as in reprehension, and not for the world would she have seemed to claim any share in the turn that events appeared to be taking. She even preferred the risk of leaving her old friend to add half-reproachfully: "I told Amherst what you ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... an example to set, was she fit for that? She was so quaint, so original, there were such depths of passionate thought and feeling side by side with such strange shallows of social and intellectual ignorance—though reticent she was so direct, though tenacious so simple, her love, if difficult to win, had such marvelous vitality when won—that he felt as if she spoke a language sweeter and purer in many of its tones than the current speech of society, but a language with which neither his own people nor that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Wainwright Mr Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people "hanging about" to pick up such tricks of the masters as they could, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... me, as I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his dearest see the ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... interference was impossible. There were men among them, however, who watched his course warily, and who were not indisposed to follow the example he had set by revolt against hated institutions, but for the most part they went their way, quietly reticent and content to wait for time to demonstrate the truth or error of their convictions. But for the most there was ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... in Europe could give a man cause for pride. He was apparently the only individual in the Gezireh Palace Hotel who had come to Egypt for any serious purpose. A purpose he had, though what it was he declined to explain. Reticent, often brusque, and sometimes mysterious in his manner of speech, there was not the slightest doubt that he was at work on something, and that he also had a very trying habit of closely studying every object, small or great, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... such minds that the war-mongers condemned and destroyed. Those men were selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they subdued their insurgent thoughts—and what that sacrifice meant to them in the lonely night ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... not been reticent about her feelings made Tai-yue unwittingly flush scarlet. Taking hold of her sleeve, she screened her face; and, turning her body round towards the inside, she pretended to be fast asleep. Pao-yue drew near her. He was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... from any desire to be reticent, but simply because the details appeared to him to be altogether uninteresting to ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... often in after-years with a sense of thankfulness that for once she, who was so reticent, had let Hester see how ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the children in regard to the money. She was naturally reticent, and dreaded the gossip of the little town, which made a nine-days' wonder of every small happening; and had besides that self-respecting pride which dislikes to thrust its misfortunes on a careless world. But perhaps more than all, a certain loyalty to the dead mother closed her lips. She ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... as were congenial, though in this Isaac Hecker was more ready than his companions. Father Walworth tells an incident characteristic of both himself and his transcendental companion. He was admonishing young Hecker to be more reticent among the crew and was asked why. "You wouldn't like to kneel down and kiss the deck before all those sailors," said Walworth. "Why not?" was the reply. "Then do it." And down dropped Hecker to the deck and kissed it ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... pause of wonder and doubt, then a low cry from Hannah, as she flew into her husband's arms; and in another second the whole family had closed around the father and brothers, and for once the hardy, stern, reticent New England nature, broken up from its foundations, disclosed its depths of tenderness and fidelity. There were tears, choking sobs, cries of joy. The madam held her lace handkerchief to her eyes with real need of it; ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... him deeply that he must so greatly disappoint his parents. But the consideration that weighed most with him was this: they urged upon him in every possible way that hopes had been raised in the heart of the young lady herself, and although he was always very reticent in regard to her. I think she seconded the family scheme, for the marriage would have joined two very large estates. Although my heart often stood still with fear while he apparently wavered a little, I can ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... which makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.[1] In ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... of Africa, a little below the equator; that their name was Billings, and that they had no friends in the little settlement for which they were bound. Upon the point of their purpose in visiting the place Condon found the boy reticent, and so he did not push the matter—he had learned all that he cared to know ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the removal of cancers, tumors, etc. The doctors were quite willing to answer questions, within certain limits; but when I asked them about the composition and properties of their drugs they became reticent at once and said that they were secrets. They do not use chloroform in operations, but they all asserted, and their assertions were corroborated by Mr. Ng Choy, that they possess drugs which throw their patients into a profound sleep, during which the most ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... was she reticent. Her father, she said, had come to this country on an errand for the rebels, but what that errand was she did not explain. "He is General Moreto now," she remarked; "and if ever Senor Zayas becomes President and our party comes into control ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... salons, he cannot have been altogether unable to hold intercourse with his brother-artists. And, lastly, who are the pianist friends that were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his aristocratic worshippers? The fact that Chopin became subsequently less social and more reticent than he had been in his early Paris days, confined himself to a very limited number of friends and families, and had relations of an intimate nature with only a very few musicians, cannot, therefore, be attributable to ill-health alone, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... answering the old woman in monosyllables, when she questioned him as to his camp for the night and his movements on the following day. Possibly he may have thought it unwise to take old Durham's wife into his confidence, but if so the men under him were not so reticent, and when they came in a few moments later, chatted freely on their preparations for the night, and half in jest roughly warned the old woman that the ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... far as it went. She could pronounce between three and four thousand Martian words, and she couldn't assign a meaning to one of them. Selim von Ohlmhorst believed that she never would. So did Tony Lattimer, and he was a great deal less reticent about saying so. So, she was sure, did Sachiko Koremitsu. There were times, now and then, when she began to be afraid that they ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... sure of it," answered his wife, "sure that something is troubling her very much, and I was about to speak of it to you. She is such a reticent, reserved child, that I did not like to try and force her confidence, although I have opened the way for her to give it to me if ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... but the complements of each other. Fisk was bold, unscrupulous, dashing, enterprising, ready in execution, powerful in his influence over the lower and more sensual order of men. Gould was artful, reticent, long-headed, clear of brain, fertile of invention, tenacious of purpose, and no more burdened with unnecessary scruples than his more noisy and flashy companion. They were not long in joining fortunes. At ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... great men or great nations become illustrious. His home was singular, and singularly calculated to nurture into greatness any child born as John Herschel was with natural gifts, capable of wide development. At the head of the house there was the aged, observant, reticent philosopher, and rarely far away his devoted sister, Caroline Herschel, whose labours and whose fame are still cognisable as a beneficent satellite to the brighter light of her illustrious brother. It was in the companionship of these remarkable persons, and under the shadow of his father's ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... slightly, then, with admirable self-command, he recovered himself and became as tight-lipped and reticent as ever. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the Puritan is to be censured chiefly for the rigidity of his conscience. He will not let us enjoy such "natural" pleasures as mirth, love, drinking, and idleness without a bitter antidote of remorse. He keeps books dull and reticent, makes plays virtuously didactic, and irritates all but the meek and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... of riding in a locomotive cab, where, with the constant rattle and roar, conversation is very difficult, the engineman, Truman Stump, had become a most reticent man, who rarely spoke unless it was necessary. He had thus gained the reputation of being ill-tempered and morose, which was exactly what he was not. Everybody admitted, though, that he was a first-class engine-driver, and one who could ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... father, when he heard of this performance, lost all self-command. In his ordinary temper the most humane of men, he simply raged at Gumbo. He would teach him, he said, to destroy his papers. And it appeared, from what we could piece together (for old Tom was very reticent and my father very incoherent), that he actually branded or tattooed a copy of what Gumbo had burnt ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... greater or less degree, all the Northern nations. The average Frenchman or Irishman excels the average Englishman, German or American in courtesy and ease of manner, simply because it is his nature. They are more social and less self-dependent than men of Teutonic origin, more demonstrative and less reticent; they are more communicative, conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; while men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Flaxen sat with the letter in her hand and the paper on her lap. She was meditating deeply, but what was in her mind Anson never knew. She had grown more and more reticent of late. She sighed, rose, ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... always reticent. We avoided publicity; didn't want Mister John Q. to know about our affairs. You surely remember how reluctant our father was when it was found that his private bank must be nationalized. One little share ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... here, defective powder, deficient artillery, and the like; but not a word did he say about the Cooper[855] and Boudinot intrigues. It was too early to commit himself on matters so personal and yet so fundamental. The Indians were not so reticent. The evil influence that Cooper had over them, due largely to the fact that he professed himself to be interested in Indian Territory to the exclusion of all other parts of the country, was beginning ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... little in common with his lodger, who was a thin, dark, spectacled man, with a stoop which gave the impression of actual, physical deformity. I remember that during our short visit we found the vicar garrulous, but his lodger strangely reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted eyes, brooding apparently ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strange lady was residing at Beaumanoir. He was too thoroughly a libertine of the period to feel any moral compunction for any excess he committed. He was habitually more ready to glory over his conquests, than to deny or extenuate them. But in this case he had, to the surprise of Cadet, been very reticent, and shy of speaking of this lady even ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... she could have laid on a little heavier the brush that traced Elsie's eyebrows, and continued them a little longer at the temples. Then, her upper lip was, if anything, the least bit too short. Yet what a sweet, concentrated little mouth it was,—reticent and pure, and not over-ready with smiles, though the hidden teeth were small, flawless, and of baby whiteness! Yes, the mother sighed, just a touch or two,—and she knew just where to put those touches,—and the girl had been a beauty. If nature would only consult ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... collection, resulting from the slow accumulation by more than one generation of quilt enthusiasts, that a quilt collection at all worth while can be found. In such a case the owner is generally so reticent concerning his treasures that the community as a whole is never given the opportunity to profit ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... real sob at parting, Julia had a swift vision of her little sister years ago sitting on that same stair weeping from a fall, and herself comforting her; and she put her arms around Ellen, and kissed her for the first time in many reticent years. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... inheritor, as you know—for I'm sure nobody has been reticent upon the subject—of these broad lands," with a sweep of the hand towards the plains outside. "Captain Monk is now pleased to inform me that he thinks of substituting for ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... much that was stern and hard and reticent in the Puritan character, there was also an innate delicacy concerning the inward life. They made few appeals to each other's sympathies. Perhaps this very reserve gave them strength to endure trials heroically ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... mind for a space. "I don't know," he said at last. Billy had always been rather reticent about his people. She demanded descriptions. She demanded an account of Billy's furniture, Billy's clothes, Billy's form of exercise. It dawned upon Benham that for some inexplicable reason she was hostile to Billy. It was ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... generally reticent about telling their names; and when they do tell, the name given is usually the one borne in childhood; an old man will generally answer " am-a'-ma," ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... she left Miss Louise she wuz more reticent, only remarking that after Prince Arthur went to college she wanted a change, so she had strolled over to South America, and from there to Asia and so on to Chicago where she wuz hired as nurse to Miss Dotie, and when her ma ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... the Emperor Alexander called upon Hortense, little Louis Napoleon, who was naturally very retiring and reticent, took a ring which his uncle Eugene had given him, and, stealing timidly over to Alexander, slipped the ring into his hand, and, half frightened, ran away with all speed. Hortense called the child to her, and asked ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... days that followed, Mrs. Peck's honest soul was both vexed and anxious concerning her charge. She found Columbine extraordinarily reticent. As she herself put it, it was impossible to get any sense ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African War—says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the opportunity of studying law in London so that he may ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... more of him now," said Hilda; "and yet, though you are very reticent on the subject, I have a shrewd suspicion, my darling, that you ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... them altogether, and consigning them to the limbo of inventions and lies. In spite of certain anecdotes which are, to say the least of it, ridiculous, there may be found in these texts some accurate details and authentic narratives which the Evangelists, cautiously reticent, did not think proper to record. The Middle Ages by no means lent themselves to heresy when they ascribed to these purely human Scriptures the value of probable legend and the interest ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... thought - Slurred by those added braveries; So for thy spirit did devise Its Maker seemly garniture, Of its own essence parcel pure, - From grave simplicities a dress, And reticent demurenesses, And love encinctured with reserve; Which the woven vesture should subserve. For outward robes in their ostents Should show the soul's habiliments. Therefore I say,—Thou'rt fair even so, But better Fair I use ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... about their own affairs. He came of a secretive, suspicious stock; and had no mind at any time to part with unnecessary facts about himself. As talkative as you please about art and opinion; of his own concerns not a word! London had made him all the more cautious and reticent. No one knew anything about him except as an artist. He always posted his letters himself; and he believed that neither his landlady nor anybody else suspected him ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... obligation to any kind of restlessness. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, but as he did none there was nothing for it but that the kingdom of heaven should yield to his leisure. The delicate, the abstinent, the reticent graces were his in the heroic degree. Where shall I find a pen fastidious enough to define and limit and enforce so many significant negatives? Words seem to offend by too much assertion, and to check the suggestions of his reserve. That reserve ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... the colonel was in his happiest vein, and by the time the coffee was served, had succeeded not only in entertaining the table in his own inimitable way, but he had drawn out from each one of his guests, not excepting the reticent Fitz, some anecdote or incident of his life, bringing into stronger relief the finer qualities of him who ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not told you. I so dread the possibility of losing your friendship that I will never tell you unless you promise me beforehand to forgive me. I know that is unfair, but it is the only way I can see out of a difficulty that my foolish reticence has led me into. Few people, perhaps, consider me reticent, but in some cases I am afraid I am even deceitful. Won't you make it easy to "'fess" so I ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... is, in the vast majority of cases, a person easily persuaded to talk, and not disposed to be reticent in keeping secrets. Father Benwell began to see his way already to the necessary information. "Is Mrs. Eyrecourt ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Praise from her usually reticent husband never failed to deepen the tint of pink on Aunt Sarah's still smooth, unwrinkled, youthful looking face, made more charming by being framed in waves of silvery gray hair, on which the "Hand of Time," in passing, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... my word and honour, Lady Chiltern," Gerard Maule said to his hostess, "I believe that oaf of a man is making up to Adelaide." Mr. Maule had not been reticent about his love towards Lady Chiltern, and came to her habitually in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... matters attentively, "was as good as the best." Looking down the long table after they were seated, he smiled with satisfaction and expanded, a subtle suavity born of being host to distinguished folk unlocking his ordinarily reticent tongue, causing him even to joke with Mrs. Adams, whom he ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... became of Mookerjee? Soothly, who can say? Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way, Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute. But the belts of all of them simply ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... point alone caused a little—in certain quarters not a little—shaking of heads, we are told by John Ramsay of Ochtertyre. The distinguished professor was a friend of "Hume the atheist"; he was himself ominously reticent on religious subjects; he did not conduct a Sunday class on Christian evidences like Hutcheson; he would often too be seen openly smiling during divine service in his place in the College chapel (as in his absent way he might no doubt be prone to do); ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... Vladimir Ulianov, and that's what he called himself. He had proved to be reticent, secretive, deceitful, diligent, and utterly unhuman. His lower lip was shaped as though something dripped from it. Blood, perhaps. His eyes were brown and not entirely unattractive. But God makes the eyes; the mouth ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... I found this type of angler to be remarkably reticent as to experience and method. Moreover, the tackle used was amazing to me. Stiff rods and heavy lines for little fish! I gathered another impression, and it was that bonefish were related to dynamite and chain lightning. Everybody who would listen ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... of dismay. He had meanly ignored the note, with the intention of cheating Mrs. Barclay. He had supposed it was lost, yet here, after some years, appeared a man who knew of it. As Mr. Barclay had been reticent about his business affairs, he had never told his wife about having deposited this sum with Squire Davenport, and of this fact the squire had meanly ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... were over, John Jay, the quiet, the modest, the reticent, was known as a safe and competent lawyer—Kissam having pushed him forward as associate counsel in ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... two considerations,—a glimpse into heaven, and a parable. Fair interpretation can scarcely deny that Christ here teaches that His children are under angel-guardianship. We should neither busy ourselves in curious inferences from His reticent words, nor try to blink their plain meaning, but rather mark their connection and purpose here. He has been teaching that pre-eminence belongs to the childlike spirit. He here opens a door into the court of the heavenly King, and shows us that, as the little ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... characteristically reticent mood. Already had he observed that he would have endured another Valley Forge with greater pleasure than the ordeal of a wedding ceremony. Still he was nicely dressed for the occasion, wearing for the first time a new full dress uniform ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and arms, and swung violently against a gate, was usually part of this ceremony, and it no doubt still exists, although I have no particular information, which indeed is rather difficult to obtain, as boys, while they remain boys, are reticent concerning ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the spot; then the poor girl fell on his dead body screaming in a distracted manner. She was arrested and brought to jail at Medicine Lodge; and was there six months. Being Jail Evangelist I went to see her, sometimes twice a week. When I first saw her she was reticent, and did not seem glad to see me. She was so nice, that I fell in love with her and I asked the ladies of the W. C. T. U. to visit her, but they thought her a hopeless case. She bought a Bible and we would read ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... her husband was a Roman Catholic, and would not go with her to St. Mark's Church. True, she had known him to be a Catholic when she married him; but she had not known or dreamed that these Catholics were so set and obstinate in their religion. He had been so reticent upon the subject that she had supposed him quite indifferent. Once married, she could convert him; O, that would be a very easy matter. He need go to St. Mark's but once to be so delighted that he would wish to go there ever after. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... who educated himself in solitude, was reticent in society, serious and discreet in his personal life and conduct toward others, he was free and unconstrained in his letters, in which he often reveals himself, without hesitation, just as he felt. We see him worried, troubled, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... works he was reticent on the matter of religion, and what he has left on the subject was not written with a view to publication. (As an exception may be mentioned, a few words of concurrence with Dr. Abbot's 'Truths for the Times,' which my father allowed to be ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Alan's reply to their applications for particulars of his life and career was of the most meagre nature. Although in common with the majority of other distinguished men, averse to giving publicity to the incidents of his life, he was otherwise than reticent with his friends, and was never happier than when surrounded by them. His house in Gloucester Place was a rendezvous during many years for his companions in arms, and his "Highland cousins" (as he fondly termed them) were always received ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... had come upon the happy home. Guillaume was becoming more and more annoyed about Salvat's affair, not a day elapsing without the newspapers fanning his irritation. He had at first been deeply touched by the dignified and reticent bearing of Salvat, who had declared that he had no accomplices whatever. Of course the inquiry into the crime was what is called a secret one; but magistrate Amadieu, to whom it had been entrusted, conducted it in a very noisy way. The newspapers, which he in some degree ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... underlying the words that were said, that she should not spend too much on his clothes, she knew nothing. Indeed, after the first week or two Horace was very reticent about what passed at school, rarely mentioned a schoolfellow by name, and seemed absorbed in his lessons all the evening. He talked sometimes to Fred about his mysterious idea, which she knew was connected with chemistry; but beyond this she knew ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... of New York City. This gentleman had cordially united with his wife in offering Madge a home, and his manner toward the young girl, as far as his absorbed and busy life permitted, had been almost paternal. He was a quiet, reticent man, who had apparently concentrated every faculty of soul and body on the problem of commercial success. Trained to business from boyhood, he had allowed it to become his life, and he took it very seriously. It was to him an absorbing game—his vocation, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the little city which had been handed over to us by the French Government for a naval base, one of the ports where our troops and supplies are landed. Those who know provincial France will visualize its narrow streets and reticent shops, its grey-white and ecru houses all more or less of the same design, with long French windows guarded by ornamental balconies of cast iron—a city that has never experienced such a thing as a real-estate boom. Imagine, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... greatest difficulty in getting pupils to recite well or to talk naturally. Perhaps before and after school and at recess they will converse freely and delightfully, but as soon as their classes are called they become reticent and ill at ease. Not all of this lack of spirit is due to the teacher, but some of it is. In any event it is an unfortunate condition, and the teacher ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... was it of the utmost importance that neither one of them should play out. At half past twelve a telephone message had reached me, after having passed through three different channels, that my little girl was sick; and over the wire it had a sinister, lugubrious, reticent sound, as if the worst was held back. Details had not come through, so I was told. My wife was sending a call for me to come home as quickly as I possibly could; nothing else. It was Thursday. The Sunday before I had left wife and child in perfect health. But scarlatina and diphtheria ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... Cavagnari to the superficial observer appeared as phlegmatic as he was habitually taciturn. This sententious imperturbability was only on the surface; whether it was a natural characteristic or an acquired manner is not easy to decide. Below the surface of measured reticent composure there lay a temperament of ardent enthusiasm, and not less ardent ambition. In subtlety he was a match for the wiliest Oriental, whom face to face he dominated with a placid dauntless masterfulness that was all his own. The wild hill tribes among whom he went about escortless, carrying ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... to the other. He let his blue eyes rest upon them calmly as they peacocked across to St. George's Hospital, still laughing, and evidently discussing him. He did not know them, but he was accustomed to being known. His life had never been a cautious one. He was too modern to be very reticent, and he liked to be wicked in the eye of the crowd. Secret wickedness held little charm for him. He preferred to preface his failings with an overture on the orchestra, to draw up the curtain, and to act his drama of life ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... I know no one more reticent on such subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand pounds ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... claim too unreservedly. I will merely take courage to confess that Landor very frequently bores me. So do a good many writers whom I thoroughly admire. If any courage be wanted for such a confession, it is certainly not when writing upon Landor that one should be reticent for want of example. Nobody ever spoke his mind more freely about great reputations. He is, for example, almost the only poet who ever admitted that he could not read Spenser continuously. Even Milton ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... had an air of distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one highly distinguished, who lived and died so recently, should have almost entirely escaped observation until he had reached middle life. From fragments of his early history which have been collected, we learn that he was a peculiar boy,—shy, reticent, fond of solitary walks, without playfellows, and utterly insensible to the attractions of home and social life. He was born with inflexible reserve; and the love of retirement so manifest in in later life mastered all his instincts even ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... of Matanga, but Drake was reticent on the subject, through sheer disinclination to talk about himself, a disinclination which the girl recognised, and gave him credit for, shooting ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... modulated movements, now of her arms, now of her whole supple body. In her voice, as in her body, there is always a reserve of energy, a dignified self-respect; there is never any self-abandonment. She has sung first in French, now she comes on in an Italian air, and afterwards is not too coyly reticent in taking an encore which is in English, to a piano accompaniment, and when that is over she hastens to bring the accompanist by the hand to her side before the audience, and bows, sweetly and graciously, with a gesture of the whole body, yet again with a certain reserve, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... life. No one would ever have called him emotional, or prone to enthusiasms of a weak kind, and yet he was by no means hard of heart. He had quiet fancies of his own about people and things, and many of these reticent, rarely-expressed ideas were reverent, chivalrous ones of women. The opposing force of a whole world could never have shaken his faith in Priscilla Gower, or touched his respect for her; but though, perhaps, he had never understood it so, he ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bachelor living in German lodgings feels half the terrors of the conjugal future removed, and rushes madly into love—and housekeeping! What wonder that I, a long-suffering and patient master, who have been served by the reticent but too imitative Chinaman; who have been "Massa" to the childlike but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the brotherly but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and have been proudly disregarded by the American ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the intimate life of a manuscript before it is accepted might be even more curious to the general public. The career of many an obscure manuscript, I reflected, doubtless is much more romantic than its character. I wonder why, I said, manuscripts have all been so uncommonly reticent concerning themselves. But manuscripts, one recollects, have sensitive natures; and their experiences, at least the experiences of those not born to a great name, could hardly be called flattering to ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... the way, the mother following with the impetuosity and abandon of maternal love, and the father with stronger and stranger emotions than he had ever known, but restrained in a manner natural to a quiet, reticent man. They were about to greet one on whom they had once centred their chief hopes and affection, yet long mourned as dead. It is hard to imagine the wild tumult of their feelings. Not merely by words, but chiefly by impulse, immediate ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... case. We find each other true, and have learnt to esteem and trust each other. I should, for instance, go out of this room leaving this book open on the table, knowing that the men would not read my letter. They are discreet, reticent, observant, and on many subjects well informed, but they are of a type which has no antitype at home. All women work in this region, so there is no fuss about my working, or saying, "Oh, you mustn't do that," or ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... for she who lies beneath thy feet in death was the loveliest flower ever cropt in its bloom," affects us irresistibly as a case for tears on the spot. The whole elaborate inscription indeed says something over and beyond all it does say. The English have the reputation of being the most reticent people in the world, and as there is no smoke without fire I suppose they have done something to deserve it; yet who can say that one doesn't constantly meet the most startling examples of the insular ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... time we part from them on the following morning. What their mirrors say to each of them is, A dear face, not classically perfect but abounding in that changing charm which is the best type of English womanhood; here is a woman who has seen and felt far more than her reticent nature readily betrays; she sometimes smiles, but behind that concession, controlling it in a manner hardly less than adorable, lurks the sigh called Knowledge; a strangely interesting face, mysterious; a line ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... grew cool nor dull for the waiting. He detested concealment and secrecy more than most people, but his disinclination to speak of any matter until he was sure of it had given him the reputation of being both reticent and calculating. Giovanni now no longer concealed from himself the fact that he was annoyed by what was passing, but he denied, even in his heart, that he was jealous. To doubt Corona would be to upset the whole fabric of his existence, which he had founded upon her love and ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... they were afraid she would expose their folly. If most people were fools, it was no fault of hers, and she was not obliged to indulge them by pretending to believe that they knew anything. She had once owned considerable property, but was reticent about her affairs, and told no one how much she was worth, though it was supposed that she had considerable ready money, besides her house and some other real estate. Mrs. Carteret was her nearest living relative, though her grand-nephew Tom Delamere ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... roads he seems to have been less reticent and more himself than with any other of his vagabond acquaintance, not excepting even Mr Petulengro. To the handsome, tall girl with "the flaxen hair, which hung down over her shoulders unconfined," and the "determined but open expression," he showed a more amiable side of his character; yet he ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... in great loneliness. He worshipped his mother, and she was fond of him. But she was dignified and reticent, and pathos, like tattle, was disgusting to her. She was afraid of intimacy, in case it led to confidences and tears, and so all her life she held her son at a little distance. Her kindness and unselfishness knew no limits, but if he tried to be dramatic and thank her, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... renaissance she experienced the winter that the Reverend MacGill came to the Methodist church; naturally not her father nor mother nor Aunt Nettie, because grown-ups, though nice and well-meaning, with their inability to "understand," and their tendency to laugh make one feel shy and reticent about the really deep and vital things. And not even Tess O'Neill, Missy's chum that year, a lively, ingenious, and wonderful girl, was in this case clever enough to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... prejudices; though I fully admit that it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist." But his conscientiousness compelled him to state briefly his opinion on the subject in the Origin of Species in 1859. Nevertheless he did not escape reproaches for having been so reticent. This is unmistakably apparent from a letter to Fritz Mueller dated Feb. 22 [1869?], in which he says: "I am thinking of writing a little essay on the Origin of Mankind, as I have been taunted with ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... afterwards became the first Countess Russell, was destined to a long, eventful life. As a girl she lived among those directing the changes of those times; as the wife of a Prime Minister of England unusually reticent in superficial relations but open in intimacy, in whom the qualities of administrator and politician overlay the detachment of sensitive reflection, she came to judge men and events by principles drawn from deep feelings and wide surveys; and in the long years of her ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... enough, and for his art, it was enough. He gives you harmony which does not need to mean anything outside itself, in order to be supremely beautiful; and he gives you beauty with a certain exquisite formality, not caring to go beyond the lines which contain that reticent, sufficient ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Harvard Square. Not your Harvard Square, gentle reader, that place populous with careless youths and careful maidens and reticent persons with books, but one of sleeping windows and clear, cool air and few sounds; a Harvard Square of emptiness and conspicuous sparrows and milk wagons and early street-car conductors in long coats going to their breakfast; and over ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... and nods. She thought she might still be behind Mrs. Mountstuart; and she was a bold woman, and anxious about him, half-crazed by the riddle of the pot she was boiling in, and having very few minutes to spare. Not extremely reticent by nature, privileged by station, and made intimate with him by his covert looks, she stood up to him. "One word to an old friend. Which is the father of the fortunate creature? I don't know how to behave to them." No ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he formed this opinion before the publication of Madame Recamier's memoirs. Chateaubriand's letters, together with other corroborating facts, warrant a totally different conclusion. It is very evident that Madame Recamier loved Chateaubriand with all the strength of a reticent and constant nature. That he was the only man she did love, we think is also clear. Prince Augustus captivated her for a time, but her conduct toward him, in contrast with that toward Chateaubriand, proves that her heart had not then been touched. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... at a newspaper office. The editor and proprietor had observed our approach and they were awaiting us with looks of amused interest. "Hello!" the proprietor said cheerily, "you have really stimulated the enterprise of the town. Why have you kept so reticent on that subject all ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... see, this is the reason: I am a bachelor; I am without kin; I am in a place that did not know me at birth. And so, when holidays come around, there is no place anywhere for me. I have friends, of course; I don't think I've been a very sulky, shut-in, reticent fellow; and there is many a board that has a place for me—but not at Christmastime. At Christmas, the dinner is a family gathering; and I've no family. There is such a gathering of kindred on this occasion, such a reunion of family ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... are in only a very few instances such diaries as may have been in use during a journey. These notes are mostly found in the MSS. books of his later and quieter years, and it is certainly remarkable that Leonardo is very reticent as to the authorities from whom he quotes his facts and observations: For instance, as to the Straits of Gibraltar, the Nile, the Taurus Mountains and the Tigris and Euphrates. Is it likely that he, who declared that in all scientific research, his own experience ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... her whole supple body. In her voice, as in her body, there is always a reserve of energy, a dignified self-respect; there is never any self-abandonment. She has sung first in French, now she comes on in an Italian air, and afterwards is not too coyly reticent in taking an encore which is in English, to a piano accompaniment, and when that is over she hastens to bring the accompanist by the hand to her side before the audience, and bows, sweetly and graciously, with a gesture of the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... moment's pause of wonder and doubt, then a low cry from Hannah, as she flew into her husband's arms; and in another second the whole family had closed around the father and brothers, and for once the hardy, stern, reticent New England nature, broken up from its foundations, disclosed its depths of tenderness and fidelity. There were tears, choking sobs, cries of joy. The madam held her lace handkerchief to her eyes with real need of it; Master Loomis choked for sympathy; ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Whitaker brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, Brian was over-reticent. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... So secret and reticent was he, that as he thought this he was nervously anxious lest the junior partner should happen to look up and read it ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... very frank in stating his desire to learn everything possible about American methods of business while he remained in New York, and he asked a few questions of Mr. Hatch, but never pressed a point when the gentleman seemed reticent over it. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... days, both in the castle and among the servants; and during them the young couple were abundantly discussed. One of these discussions, occurring between the factor of the estate and Miss Campbell's maid, is worth repeating, as it indicated a possible motive in the reticent little lady's life with which her friends were ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... representative of New York's oldest family, have wanted in this nest of infamy? What errand of hope, fear, despair, avarice or revenge, could have brought this superior gentleman with his refined tastes and proudly reticent manners, so many miles from home, to the forsaken den of a brace of hardy villains whose name for two years now, had stood as the type of all that was bold, bad and lawless, and for whom during the ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... look at the face of his old friend and partner. It was as keen and energetic as ever, with perhaps an even more hawk-like activity visible in the eye and nostril; but it was more thoughtful and reticent in the lines of the mouth under the closely clipped beard and mustache, and when he looked up, at first there were two deep lines or furrows across his low broad forehead. Demorest fancied, too, that there was a little of the old fighting look in his eye, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... visited Washington he called on them and had little trouble in learning the names of their gentes, their order in the camping circle, &c., provided the interpreters were absent. During his visit to the Omaha, from 1878 to 1880, he did not find them very reticent in furnishing him with such information, though he was generally referred to the principal chief of each gens as the best authority for the names in his own division. But he found it very difficult to induce any of them to admit that the gentes had subdivisions, which were probably the original ...
— Osage Traditions • J. Owen Dorsey
... had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied. As to the details of his life during these years he was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Van Blarcom, but without results. It was ruffling; I should have absorbed in so much intercourse a fairly definite impression of his personality, profession, and social grade. But he was baffling; reticent, but self-assured, authoritative even, and, in a quiet way, watchful. He smoked a good cigar, mixed a good drink, seemed used to travel, but produced a coarse-grained effect, made grammatical errors, and on ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... not an ideal being, he is still less a stolid mentally squalid brute. He is not reticent out of imbecility or mental weakness. He fails properly to understand much of what takes place around him, especially what happens within the circle of our modern civilization, but withal he is far from indifferent ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... are talking to a man who is a member of a traditionally reticent and unexpansive race; who says about one third of what he feels; who is obsessed by a mania for understating his country's case, exaggerating its weaknesses, and belittling its efforts; who is secretly shy, so covers up his shyness with a cloak of aggressiveness which is offensive to those who are ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... that she could have laid on a little heavier the brush that traced Elsie's eyebrows, and continued them a little longer at the temples. Then, her upper lip was, if anything, the least bit too short. Yet what a sweet, concentrated little mouth it was,—reticent and pure, and not over-ready with smiles, though the hidden teeth were small, flawless, and of baby whiteness! Yes, the mother sighed, just a touch or two,—and she knew just where to put those touches,—and the girl had been a beauty. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... inferiors would have been competent. I do not know whether it was to diffidence and reserve or to the gentleness which shrinks from dispelling illusions that another peculiarity is to be attributed. On religious matters, says his biographer, he was 'absolutely reticent'; he would discuss such topics indeed, but without ever mentioning ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... bones, and even these are scattered by the wolves. The Indians at Tuscarora, Nevada, stated that when it was possible and that they should by chance meet the bony remains of any Shoshone, they would bury it, but in what manner I failed to discover as the were very reticent, and avoided giving any information regarding the dead. One corpse was found totally dried and shrivelled, owing to the dryness of the ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... and seizing and projecting them in open sight? Who doubts that this sheeny panel on so many walls, with wary art slurring off its elusive gleam, could, at the one compelling word, paint again the reflections of all on which it silently dreams in its reticent heart,—the joy, the grief, the weeping face, the laughing lip, the lover's kiss, the tyrant's sneer, almost the crouched and bleeding soul on which that sneer descended, of which some wandering beam carried record? When we remember ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... gave vent to a real sob at parting, Julia had a swift vision of her little sister years ago sitting on that same stair weeping from a fall, and herself comforting her; and she put her arms around Ellen, and kissed her for the first time in many reticent years. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... his troops he once more went back to Dr. Graham's. His cheerful demeanour during his previous visit, although he had been as reticent as ever as to his plans, had produced a false impression, and this he thought it his duty to correct. He explained his plans to his friend, and as he detailed the facts which had induced him to change them, he repeatedly expressed his reluctance to give up Winchester without a blow. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... "brute after his own peculiar fashion." Brute or human, the big master-mechanic had the manners of a gentleman, and his easy good-nature broke down all the barriers of reserve that his somewhat reticent companion could interpose. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Melanie checked him. "Such great news as we have receive'! Our son is bethroath'!—to a good, dizcreet, beautiful French girl; which he foun', in a cellar at Rheims!" When a drum-fire of questions fell on him he grew reticent and answered quietly: "We have only that by firz' letter. Full particular' ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... measure than ever, his old delightful charm of conversation, and his humour, which had always been predominant in him, took on a deeper and a richer tinge; but whereas in old days he had been brilliant and epigrammatic, he was now rather poetical and suggestive; and whereas he had formerly been reticent about his emotions and his religion, he now acquired what is to my mind the profoundest conversational charm—the power of making swift and natural transitions into matters of what, for want of a better word, I will call spiritual experience. I remember ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... what he had done for God and the church, and his lips were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. He was animated enough when drawn out in discussion religious, educational, or political, but he had great powers of silence. I once took him to see General Grant, our reticent President. On that occasion they both seemed to do their best in the art of quietude. The great military President with his closed lips on one side of me, and my brother with his closed lips on the other side of me, I felt there was more silence in the room than ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... Mac received a good thumping, and I doubted not in the least that he deserved it. The wonder of the affair, however, was the fact that no one appeared to know what had made the Rube so furious. The porter would not tell, and Mac was strangely reticent, though his smile was one to make a fellow exceedingly sure something out of the ordinary had befallen. It was not until I was having breakfast in Providence that I learned the true cause of Rube's conduct, and Milly confided it to me, insisting on ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... little child, it was instilled into me to be silent and reticent. This was one of the most important traits to form in the character of the Indian. As a hunter and warrior it was considered absolutely necessary to him, and was thought to lay the foundations of ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... officers and men to such an extent, that the 28th Militia Regiment soon became conspicuous for its excellence. But no one, not even his comrade from Elandslaagte, succeeded in getting nearer to the colonel's heart. Colonel Katterfeld was a reticent man, whom no one ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... have facts, you don't need a detective. I'd rather have a suspect talk freely and never tell the truth than have him be reticent and stick ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... a reticent and a quiet man, but this possibility awoke him into action. He pleaded so long and so hard, and so determinedly that he overbore the other man, and finally wrung from him a grudging assent to ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... discretion might readily be relied upon. And so the sequel proved. During our repast, however, I felt a little doubtful about one of the waiters who know French, and I therefore cautioned M. Zola and M. Desmoulin to be as reticent ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the two old chums rode away on a side scout of their own, it might well be expected that "Coyote" would be less reticent. The eyes of half the command had followed them appreciatively as the detachment started, Graham and Connell in the lead, Sergeant Drum, and his nineteen following in compact column of twos. No sooner did they reach the outlying sentries, however, than it was noted that the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... Emerson's enthusiasm; and William Ellery Channing, whose figure stands out like a gnarled and twisted scrub-oak,—a pathetic, impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on account of an innate nobility of character. "Generally crabbed and reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says Emma Lazarus. "The bond of our sympathy was my admiration for Thoreau, whose memory he actually worships, having been his constant companion in his best days, and his daily attendant in the last years of illness and heroic ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... for the woman was not at all reticent, that she had been a low comedian and a dancer at Drury Lane Theatre, and like most comedians, high tragedy was her passion, and had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... then, looking up, was a trifle dismayed at the expression upon Cornelia's face. For Cornelia was as reticent, as Arenta was garrulous; and the girls were incomprehensible to each other in their deepest natures, though, superficially, they were much on the same plane, and really thought themselves to be distinctly ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... so thought Morris, was timid and reticent, because he dared not discover his heart, that had been so sorely trampled by Fate and Fortune. Yet he had a heart which, if he could find a confessor whom he could trust, he longed to ease in confidence. For the rest, the man's physical frame, not too robust at any time, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... of colour on the banks, the ragged pink flowers of the Joe-Pye-weed (which always reminds me of a happy, good-natured tramp), and the yellow ear-drops of the jewel-weed, and the intense blue of the closed gentian, that strange flower which, like a reticent heart, never opens to the light. Sometimes the river spread out like a lake, between high bluffs of sand fully a mile apart; and again it divided into many channels, winding cunningly down among the islands as if it were ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... Long-Hair overbore everything else in his mind. He could not cease his efforts; it seemed to him as if he were pleading for Alice herself. Captain Farnsworth, strange to say, was the only man in the fort who leaned to Beverley's side; but he was reticent, doubtless feeling that his position as a British prisoner gave him no right to speak, especially when every lip around him was muttering something about "infamous scalp-buyers and Indian partisans," with whom he was ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... as told him," muttered the ruffled fair, too angry to be reticent, "that I had no one to drive me to-morrow; and I think it was real rude asking that Bluebell Leigh before my face,—a mere nursery governess—and not giving me so much as ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... much of their national character, and the pioneers from the South who visited them or settled among them never ceased to wonder at their gayety, their peaceable industry and enterprise, and their domestic affection, which they did not care to dissemble and conceal like their shy and reticent neighbors. It was a daily spectacle, which never lost its strangeness for the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, to see the Frenchman returning from his work greeted by his wife and children with embraces of welcome "at the gate of his door-yard, and in view of all the villagers." ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... calmly as they peacocked across to St. George's Hospital, still laughing, and evidently discussing him. He did not know them, but he was accustomed to being known. His life had never been a cautious one. He was too modern to be very reticent, and he liked to be wicked in the eye of the crowd. Secret wickedness held little charm for him. He preferred to preface his failings with an overture on the orchestra, to draw up the curtain, and to act his drama of life to a crowded audience of smart people ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change of soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small, reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress, and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully suggestive, to her husband's ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... next three days the impatience of the public met with nothing but disappointment. The police were reticent,—more reticent far than usual,—and the papers, powerless to add to the facts already published, had little but conjectures ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... a cold, hard, stern man, despising sentiment, reticent and self-restrained. But beneath the surface there lay deep emotions and an aesthetic sense, of which his drawings were the only outward sign. To these sketches he himself attached no value. "You can buy better at the nearest shop for sixpence," he would say, if he heard them praised. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... so," murmured Jennings, more and more perplexed. "But Miss Saxon won't be reticent with me. I'll ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... was the progressive of Evangelical theology. In his age he stands the proud and reticent conservative, the now silent representative of a departed glory, a departed severity—and, we must admit, of a departed strength—from which the theology of our times has melted away. Like other men in such positions, he has had battles to fight, and he has fought them; enemies to make, and he ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... was shaving, and, as was his usual custom, conversed with his reflection. Being a detective, and of an extremely reticent disposition, he never talked outside about his business, or made a confidant of anyone. When he did want to unbosom himself, he retired to his bedroom and talked to his reflection in the mirror. This method of procedure he found to work capitally, for it relieved ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... be supposed that this interview stung Tom to swift action. Otherwise, one cannot explain why he should not have been just as reticent on the subject nearest his heart when bestowing on Sally the twenty-seventh cabbage as he had been when administering the hundred and sixtieth potato. At any rate, the fact remains that, as that fateful vegetable changed ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Nero seem tame in comparison. The grand tier at the opera was a semicircle of dazzling dresses, though there was not, as happens in London, any obtrusion of diamonds. Here was an example of taste reticent as ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... making words out of pieces of words, or compounded words. Besides this difficulty, no language can be taught successfully by means of a dictionary, until the human memory acquires more power. Three years of hopeless struggle with the mighty debris of his symbols left him, although in the main reticent, a mighty man of words. But his labors were not lost. Through that heroic, unaided struggle he gained the first true glimpses into the elements of language. It is a startling fact, that an uneducated man, of a race we are pleased to call barbarians, attained in a few ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... on Sunday night, and as they came late little Harry Bradley and the still smaller Jennie Bradley were tired, and hence not at all responsive to the welcomes of the Perkinses, large or small. They were excessively reticent. When Mrs. Perkins, kneeling before Master Harry, asked him the wholly unnecessary question, "Why, is this Harry?" he refused wholly to reply; nor could the diminutive Jennie be induced to say anything but "Yumps" ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... present are Generals Hunter and Dyer and two staff captains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the empty chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword contrasting with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crape on his arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar just apparent above ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... to me, as I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his dearest see the better part ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... drove out into the country on business, she would go miles out of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the women who seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmothers who spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell her their story without realizing they were doing so. She went to country funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer's daughter who was to be married could count on a wedding present from ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... found the village quiet and very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his determination to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... than a week Burnside and Forbes returned from Paris. They told us their experience had been interesting, but were very reticent as to particulars, and though we tried hard to find out what they had seen or done, we could get nothing from them beyond the general statement that they had had a good time, and that General Trochu had been considerate enough to postpone a sortie, in order to let ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... confessing her positive reason, so she answered, 'The man is a kind of man . . . I was not there long; I was glad to escape. He . . .' she hesitated: for in truth it was difficult to shape the charge against him, and the effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative, now that he had been spoken of, as to the detested doctor, reduced her to some confusion. She was also fatally anxious to be in the extreme degree conscientious, and corrected and modified her remarks ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sent to the State, I am sure I would have known it. If he raised his voice or used his pen for such purpose, that fact was never brought to my notice and I am satisfied it was never done. My own opinion is that he remained reticent and refused to take sides. The true reason why troops were not sent in compliance with the request of Governor Ames was that, although the President once directed that the requisition be complied with, he later rescinded the order when informed by Republicans ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... handkerchief knotted sailor-fashion about his strong neck, story after story flashed out, clear and dramatic, from his answers. The bunch of houses there on the shore? Yes, that had a history. The people living there were a dark-featured, reticent lot, different from other people hereabouts. It was said that one of the Spanish galleons went ashore there, and the men had been saved and had settled on the spot and married Devonshire women, but their descendants ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with a duchess shall speak of his father's small shop, or bring into the light of day his grandfather's cobbler's awl? And yet it is difficult to be altogether silent! It may not be necessary for any of us to be always talking of our own parentage. We may be generally reticent as to our uncles and aunts, and may drop even our brothers and sisters in our ordinary conversation. But if a man never mentions his belongings among those with whom he lives, he becomes mysterious, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... it will be well to bear in mind the advice of Polonius to his son Laertes: "Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;" but unless you have special reason, do not too closely adhere to his precept, "Give every man thine ear, but not thy tongue." This will only serve to make you appear reserved and reticent, when to be so would be not only out of place, but ill-bred. In society, a man should make himself as agreeable as he can, doing his best to assist conversation, as well by talking gracefully and ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... he speaks CHRISTINE and KEITH Come in from the billiard-room. He is still in splashed hunting clothes, and looks exceptionally weathered, thin-lipped, reticent. He lights a cigarette and sinks into an armchair. Behind them DOT and JOAN have come ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had been, Mr. Barrett never forgave her, held no communication with her even when she became a mother, and did not mention her in his will. It is needless to say anything more upon this subject. What Mr. and Mrs. Browning were invariably reticent upon can well be passed over with mere ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Emperor knew and appreciated at its full value; and though Marie Louise was younger, she was colder, and had far less grace of manner. I think she was much attached to her husband; but she was reserved and reticent, and by no means took the place of Josephine with those who had enjoyed the happiness of being ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... proclaiming death? Is it likely, sir? Is it conceivable even that any such cry as we heard could, in this day and generation, ring through such an assemblage, unless it came with ventriloquial power from his own lips? You observed that he turned his back; that his face was hidden from us. Discreet and reticent as we have all been, and careful in our criticisms of so bizarre an event, there still must be many to question the reality of such superstitious fears, and some to ask if such a sound could be without human agency, and a very guilty agency, too. Inspector, I am but a child in ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... lay the little city which had been handed over to us by the French Government for a naval base, one of the ports where our troops and supplies are landed. Those who know provincial France will visualize its narrow streets and reticent shops, its grey-white and ecru houses all more or less of the same design, with long French windows guarded by ornamental balconies of cast iron—a city that has never experienced such a thing as a real-estate boom. Imagine, against such a background, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... meant the reticent father and daughter, and March flung out, "I shouldn't want them to think you weren't. There's such a thing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who looked at his commander in alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that as a reason for your giving them money?-No; they have been very reticent on that point if it is a fact. I should be very sorry to know that there were any poor persons starving when ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... the actual phraseology of certain metrical romances.[15] Whether this feature be due to Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not been able to trace anything of the same character in a cursory inspection of some of his romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to conceive of our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his Genoese dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent bombast, with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen of the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was more reticent and less given to interference than his wife; but he felt it also. He would not for the world have hinted to his son that it might be well to marry money; but he thought that it was a good thing that his son should go where money was. He knew that Frank was apt to spend his guineas faster ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... protection. And as its outset had been marked by an unusual burst of confidence on Clarence's part, the boy, in his gratitude, now felt something of the timid shyness of a deeper feeling, and once more became reticent. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... sweet letter, I thought, even if it carried little comfort; quiet and reticent like its writer, but with an undertone of sincere affection. I laid it down at length, and, taking the ring from its box, examined it fondly. Though but a copy, it had all the quaintness and feeling of the antique original, and, above all, it was fragrant with the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to that dreadful little ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... of the afternoon, when Waukko, who was the leader of the little group, suddenly showed great excitement, which speedily communicated itself to his companions. All three of these scamps were sullen and reticent, frequently riding for hours at a time without exchanging a word, so that this excitement meant something. The three halted simultaneously, and talked loudly and excitedly, so that Fred suspected that some cause for a quarrel had ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... had kept from him her knowledge of this affair;—for, when he came to turn the matter over in his mind, he did believe Tregear's statement as to her encouragement. Then, too, he had been proud of his daughter. He was a man so reticent and undemonstrative in his manner that he had never known how to make confidential friends of his children. In his sons hitherto he had not taken pride. They were gallant, well-grown, handsome boys, with a certain dash of ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... quiet, starlit night. The Lieutenant-General was enjoying his fragrant Havana cigar, and was in a mood for conversation, not upon what he was going to do, but upon what had been done. He is always wisely reticent upon the present and future, but agreeably communicative upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Flemyng himself appeared, clamorous for cigars and drink, but mighty discreet and vexatiously reticent. Yes, he had taken a letter to Medland; yes, and another to Perry; no, he had no idea what the missives were about. He believed Medland was to see the Governor to-morrow, but it was beyond him to conjecture the precise object of the interview. Was it resignation or dissolution? Really, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... without surprise, and any how, without comment. His self-important loquacity ceased, and his condescending smile passed into a sharp, reticent, business look. He knitted his shaggy brows, contracted that coarsely-hung, but resolute mouth, in which lay the secret of his success in life, buttoned up his coat, and stuck his hands behind him over his coat-tails. As he stood there on his own hearth, with all his comfortable ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the half-drawn portieres, the rest of us heard all that passed; and, indeed, the captain was not reticent,—it was not in his nature to be,—and he would have been quite as garrulous in the presence of an audience of any size, provided he knew all his hearers to be friends. And not even the gravity ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... a neurologist, he asked my advice. I inquired about the patient's former life, but discovered that my traveling companion was little inclined to be communicative in this direction, in fact he was strikingly reticent. To my inquiry about the immediate origin of the insomnia, he told me it was immediately connected with a miserable dream which he had dreamt a month past, and from which he had awakened in terrible anxiety. I asked him to tell me this dream and gave him hope ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... has learnt everything, to forget,—that is, to appear to forget, so as to create one's own style, and this apparent forgetting cloaks an amalgamation of science with mind. And Degas is one of those patient and reticent men who spend years in arriving at this; he has much in common with Hokusai, the old man "mad with painting," who at the close of his prodigious life invented arbitrary forms, after having given immortal examples of ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... however, written me a letter in which she tells the essential truth, although clothing it with a certain pathetic attempt to conceal the one episode in her life about which, to me, she was perhaps unreasonably reticent. She did not say that she and Gertrude were separated from Terry for a time, but she wanted to convey the impression that she and Terry, from the start, struggled along together, which was essentially, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... was glad to see the young lieutenant again. Her house seemed to be headquarters, as before, and nothing interested her more than to hear the story of the southern campaign from such an enthusiastic talker as Vane, for Andrew was rather reticent about his own share in ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... than deliberate, a choice of the blood, not of the brain, they had long ago exhausted the fund of conversation with which they had started. There was nothing to talk about—since Virginia had never learned to talk of herself, and Oliver had grown reticent recently about the subjects that interested him. When the daily anecdotes of the children had been aired between them with an effort at breeziness, nothing remained except the endless discussion of Harry's education. Even this had worn threadbare of late, and with the best intentions in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the relaxation of the rule preventing such from accepting a volunteer appointment. A man of medium size, with light hair and sandy beard, his manner was rather diffident and shy, and his whole style quiet and reticent. His voice was light rather than heavy, and he was so laconic of speech that this, with his other characteristics, caused it to be commonly said of him that he had been so long fighting Indians on the frontier ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a hypothetical condition which he had never even considered. He had known men to fall in love, just as he had known men to suffer from malaria or yellow fever, without considering that the same experience might overtake him. A shy, reticent man, behind that hard mask was a diffidence unsuspected by ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... verse, as to his own chief sorrow. A stranger intermeddles not with it, and he kept secret his brief lay on that insuperable and incommunicable regret. Much would have been lost had all poets been as reticent, yet one likes him better for it than if he had given us a ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... says Dr. Matignon, "resides largely in her foot. 'A foot which is not deformed is a dishonor,' says a poet. For the husband the foot is more interesting than the face. Only the husband may see his wife's foot naked. A Chinese woman is as reticent in showing her feet to a man as a European woman her breasts. I have often had to treat Chinese women with ridiculously small feet for wounds and excoriations, the result of tight-bandaging. They exhibited the prudishness of school-girls, blushed, turned their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... utterly bewildered with it all, but something kept me silent. And so we hurried on, and on, and on, our course directed by my now wholly reticent companion. Where he was going, what his purpose was, I could not but vaguely surmise. I only recognized that his intentions were humane, which fact was emphasized by the extreme caution he took to avoid the two or three late pedestrians ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... on foot from city to city, always calm yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient, serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only man that perfectly glorified God in His body no less than in His spirit. It is worthy of remark, that in choosing His disciples He chose plain men from ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual; springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once, even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching this new art without a gradual training under the service of others. Try some simple scheme from the things of ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Hermiston," "the laird himsel' ": he had an air of distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the everlasting fountains ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the last remark had not been made. Though it were said with the ease of unconscious and humorous gaiety, the quick glance of the secretary saw the instant effect. This was the only point on which he remained reticent to his bosom friend. They had been together for years. They had grown from childhood together, yet Captain Trevelyan's secret must remain a secret. Were it known to Charles Douglas, he would have cherished it with a sanctity becoming him as one whose whole lifetime ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Brook—which was the name of Emery Bland's place in New Hampshire—every time he had gone there; but, her quality being unobtrusive, he had paid her no attention. Furthermore, both Bland and Mrs. Bland, being emphatic in personality and talkative, he had been the more easily led to ignore this reticent girl, whose function was apparently limited to seeing her aunt provided with a shawl, or her uncle with a cigar, at the right opportunities. If he thought of her at all, it was as of the living spirit ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... must make allowances for my then frame of mind," David laughed. "I rather gather from your manner that somebody else has been after the case; if that is so, you are right to be reticent. Still, it is in your hands to settle the matter on the spot. All you have to do is to open the case, and if you fail to find my initials, D.S., scratched in the left-hand top corner, then I have lost my property and the other fellow has ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... by our segundo and the trail foreman riding up to the cow pen. The two had been up the river during the afternoon, looking over the cattle on the range, for as yet we had not commenced gathering. Nancrede was very reticent, discovering a conspicuous lack of words to express his opinion of what ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... all in an instant. 'They, too, are on the watch,' she thought to herself bitterly. The strong reticent nature was outraged by the perception that she had been for days the unconscious actor in a drama of which her sisters and Mrs. Thornburgh had been the silent ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... William is reticent to a degree. With great difficulty I found my way to his insides, and then found that he had practically none to speak of at all. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... honey-sweet excesses, With passionate prodigalities of praise, With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses, Adore me not in charming childish ways. This pastoral is beautiful enough: But never shall it antidote my drouth: I want a reticent ironic Love With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth. Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought: So in Love's deadly duel I would not be Victorious, and the peace I long have sought, Sure knowledge of his great supremacy, Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier, ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... attractively, in the intervals of work, on the subject of League football in general and Manchester United in particular. The subject is not hard to master if one sets oneself earnestly to it; and Psmith spared no pains. The football editions of the evening papers are not reticent about those who play the game: and Psmith drank in every detail with the thoroughness of the conscientious student. By the end of the fortnight he knew what was the favourite breakfast-food of J. Turnbull; what Sandy Turnbull ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... was imparted, and the rest of the letter was so stiff and formal that Laura's pleasure in the correspondence ended with it. The realities of life were beginning to make her child-friend feel sober and reticent. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... which was given gratuitously to all. He was said to have been concerned in some of the many South American revolutions, but although we were friendly from this time until his death, he never alluded to such an occurrence. I realised, however, that he was very reticent as to his early life, and the gossip may ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... plead for the landlords who have been so cruelly robbed and ruined are weak-voiced and reticent compared to the loudly crying advocates for the peasantry. English tourists run over for a fortnight to Ireland, talk to the jarvies, listen to the peasants themselves, forbear to go near any educated ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... stunned silence that followed this outburst from short-spoken, reticent Olive, there came a new voice; such a sweet, lovely voice with a tender ring that made every one start to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... tent, and did what he could to draw him. In this part of his narration, the mulatto with modest naivete, hints of his own adroitness; how he threw his inquisitor off the scent, and became at length disembarrassed of him. He is even more reticent about an incident, soon after succeeding, but referred to it at an early part of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... falling in love with all that took his fancy was a natural propensity which he could not control. But, in short, it is very manifest that he had one alone whom he made mistress of his will, to whom he commended himself very frequently and very secretly, for he prided himself on being a reticent knight." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... think that any man could call himself Heneage's particular friend," he answered. "He is exceedingly reticent about himself and his doings. He is a man whom none of ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... girls, to thrust their attentions upon them, and, if possible, lure them away to a service of song—Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. It was a bitter place in a narrow street. The street was gay and loud with humanity, only at its centre was a dark and forbidding door, reticent and inhuman. There was no sign of good-fellowship here; no warm touch of the flesh. It was as brutal as justice; it seemed to have builded itself on that most horrible of all texts: "Be just before you ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... you play, but only with your fans. Nothing is pardoned you, least of all a heart." What Levana says of the use and abuse of philology and about the study of history as a preparation for political action is no less significant. Goethe, who had been reticent of praise in regard to the novels, found in Levana "the boldest virtues ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... young and old, from discussion of the very matters of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my need, contented themselves with the vague generalities with which we seek to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs. But there were foolish voices about me less reticent; while the literature, illustrated and otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a fiery furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could turn to the accompanying ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Doctor Norton observed to Mr. Mencke, as she left the room, determined to draw out his reticent companion if that ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Dr. Thornton, of Welbeck Street, who has visited her from time to time on behalf of the Treasury, in conjunction with Dr. Wade, her own medical attendant, went down to Barton-on-the-Sea on Monday, and once more examined Miss Callingham's intellect. Though the Doctor is judiciously reticent as to the result of his visit, it is generally believed at Barton that he thinks the young lady sufficiently recovered to undergo a regular interrogatory; and in spite of the fact that Dr. Wade is opposed ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Mr Blandois found that to pour port wine into the reticent Flintwinch was, not to open him but to shut him up. Moreover, he had the appearance of a perfect ability to go on all night; or, if occasion were, all next day and all next night; whereas Mr Blandois soon grew indistinctly conscious ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... mound-builders. On further examination they prove to be the sweating chambers or Turkish baths of this curious people. Of these chambers, the largest appears also to serve the purpose of a council chamber and mystic hall, where rites peculiar to the tribe (about which they are very reticent) are performed. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... she had been thus reticent and quiet in her joy, though she was resolved to be discreet, and knew that there were circumstances in her engagement which would for a while deter her from being with her accepted lover as other girls are with theirs, did not mean to estrange ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... me all about yourself," she suggested. "Really, when I come to think of it, considering the length of our conversations, you have been remarkably reticent. You are the youngest of the family, are you not? How many brothers ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... story, and a genuine one to boot, is worth recording. A well-known racing man travelling on a steamer round the coast was attracted by a seedy, out-of-elbows individual seated all alone. He got into conversation with him. The seedy stranger was reticent about himself, but voluble about others, particularly those who were making their piles in Western Australia—he was going there if he had to walk. The idea of a man walking was a repulsive thought to a racing man, so he most generously insisted upon this dilapidated acquaintance accepting ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... enjoined secrecy on the children in regard to the money. She was naturally reticent, and dreaded the gossip of the little town, which made a nine-days' wonder of every small happening; and had besides that self-respecting pride which dislikes to thrust its misfortunes on a careless world. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... closed and the door locked. He is not opaque of set purpose, often it is against his will - it is certainly against mine, I try to keep my shutters open and my foot in the door but they will bang to. In many ways my mother was as reticent as myself, though her manners were as gracious as mine were rough (in vain, alas! all the honest oiling of them), and my sister was the most reserved of us all; you might at times see a light through one of my chinks: she was double-shuttered. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... than a satirist and a snarler." His polished jibes were more mischievous than brutal. "This reticent, sensitive, attractive, yet dangerous youth ... slew his victims mostly by the midnight oil, not by any blaze of gaiety, or in the accumulative fervour of social sarcasm. From him came most of those sharp things which the victims could not ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
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