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More "Shyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... float above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! Often other skaters appear,—young men and boys,—who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness, and moves regally like a king. One afternoon, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice—very remarkable, but very ugly, methought. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... bellicose and amorous of adventure, and more than all other nations has a tendency to clothe its patrimonial ardour of defence in beautiful terms and gallant attitudes. This is one of the points on which the British race, with its scrupulous reserve, often almost its affectation of self-depreciating shyness, differs most widely from the French, and is most in need of sympathetic imagination in dealing with a noble ally whose methods are not necessarily the same as ours. It is difficult to fancy a young English lieutenant ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... so retiring in private," she declared, gayly. "He was one of our happy family for three months last summer and we never noticed any shyness; did ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... football or cricket; nevertheless we did our best in the meadow at the bottom of the garden, our scanty numbers being eked out by Mr. and Mrs. Windlesham's five girls. They were nice, kind people, and, when the first shyness had worn off, I settled down happily at Castlemore. During the next three uneventful years I received occasional visits from Captain Knowlton, while I grew greatly in stature, and, it is to be hoped, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a very amiable disposition sound sense and all the qualities that can be given by a careful education. She is liked by all at court, and is spoken of as a model of gentleness and kindness. She has a fine bearing, yet it is perfectly simple; she is modest without shyness; she can converse very well in many languages, and combines affability with dignity. As she acquires familiarity with the world, which is all very new to her, her fine qualities will doubtless develop further, and endow her whole being with even more grace ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... is much anecdotage: most of the anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred of personal notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he would say when alarmed by effusive strangers. It has not seemed worth while to repeat more than one or two of these legends, nor have I sought outside the Biography ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... questions frankly enough, but Madame de Ruth observed with satisfaction that she told only such things as all the world might hear. There were no outbursts of girlish confidences, no indiscreet questions; she was mistress of the situation, and if she showed any shyness, it was never either awkward or foolish, but seemed merely a delightful youthful attribute, an added charm. Her hostess felt a deepening interest. This girl would be a more potent factor in the intrigues for which they had destined her than they had dreamed. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... sweetheart, that we, in our unabashed simplicity, would pass for two very wide-awake little scandal-mongers. What lessons may be conveyed in a finger on the lips, in a word, a look! All in a moment I was seized with excessive shyness. What! may I never again speak of the natural pleasure I feel in the exercise of dancing? "How then," I said to myself, "about ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... sacred nightgowns and diminutive shirts. The next morning, when I opened the door of the nursery where her maid was brushing her hair, the same dignity radiated from the little round figure perched on its high chair, the same almost hostile shyness gazed at me from the great expressive eyes. Obviously, it was time ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... The tender contemplation of my inspiring eyes is for him alone; they weigh on his bent head, until the look I'm calling searches and meets mine in a shock of souls, so foreseen and so sweet, that I must needs close my lids to hide the exquisite shyness I feel. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... say any of this aloud, but it was not pride that kept him from the avowal, only a very natural and reasonable shyness of talking about himself. He stopped rocking, and sat with his gaze fixed on the trees in the distance, without really seeing them a bit. A new feeling of half-dismayed contrition was springing up in his heart, but the bitterness of resentment and the sense of injury ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... Billy met Marguerite Winthrop that evening. At the outset there was just a bit of shyness and constraint in the young wife's manner. Billy could not forget her old insane jealousy of this beautiful girl with the envied name of Marguerite. But it was for only a moment, and soon she ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in order to dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House. He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of no ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... statement—(because if it was quite as bad as you say, you know, I never should have seen you ... and I have!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No—it has not been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with both eyes wide open—only that by a supernatural influence they won't stay open ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... he is quite at his ease, and makes love freely. When fairly caught, he discovers that the supposed "inn" is a private house, and the supposed barmaid is the squire's daughter; but the ice of his shyness being broken, he has no longer any difficulty in loving according to his station.—Goldsmith, She Stoops to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of course I never tried to avoid him. The first sight on which his eyes fell was a victoria pulled up before the hotel door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember now but that of some slight shyness. He got in without a moment's hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such was his peculiar gift) gave me ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... sincerity and dignity of Mr. Grierson's soul I cannot kneel down with him and take part in the performance of his prayer. Prayer is either the Supreme Illusion, or the Supreme Act, the pure and naked surrender to Reality, and attended by such sacredness and shyness that you can accomplish it only when alone or lost in a multitude ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... Zelie!" cried Aleck, and there came a sudden lull as they scrambled to their feet. Jim was the only one she did not know, and for some reason the sight of this slender young woman in black, with a white rose in her dress, caused him a fit of unusual shyness. Ikey himself could not have been more abashed than he was when ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... return to the rendezvous on the after boat-deck. Something held her back—an emotion of shyness new to her. But on Saturday afternoon, Dan ran the blockade of the after companion-way, penetrated brazenly to the first-class promenade, joined her where she stood leaning against the rail, and led her away resolutely to a ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... manners, strictly forbade any communication with the schoolboys. Sometimes in after days, speaking of these early times and of the constraint of many bygone rules and regulations, Mrs. Barbauld used to attribute to this early formal training something of the hesitation and shyness which troubled her and never entirely wore off. She does not seem to have been in any great harmony with her mother. One could imagine a fanciful and high-spirited child, timid and dutiful, and yet strong-willed, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... had a wild-rose prettiness, I thought, when I saw her at Oxford. She looked like a lily till I spoke to her, and then flamed like a red rose. So fresh, so easily startled. 'Tis pity that shyness of youthful purity wears off in a week. I dare swear by this time Mrs. Kirkland is as brazen as the boldest of our young houris yonder," with a glance in the direction of the maids of honour, the Queen's ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the creature within shot. Taking up one of the grouse, he flung it out upon the snow some thirty yards from the fire. No sooner had he done so, than the owl, at sight of the tempting morsel, left aside both its shyness and prudence, and sailed gently forward; then, hovering for a moment over the ground, hooked the grouse upon its claws, and was about to carry it off, when a bullet from Lucien's rifle, just in the "nick of time," put a stop to its further ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... women and children were gathered about to listen, their shyness overcome by their torturing anxiety for news. They made one think of women in war-time, listening to the roar of distant guns and waiting for the bringing in of the wounded. Hal saw Bob and Dicky glance now and then at the ring of faces about them; they ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... diversion, except when playing at home among her father's possessions or making a visit to Kitty, being found in the books of fairy-tales which the old hunchback, Tim Kelsey, had lent her. At first this natural shyness had held her aloof even from O'Day, content only to watch his face as he answered her childish appeals. But before the first week had passed she had slipped her hand into his, and before the month was over her arms were around his neck, her fresh, soft cheek ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... liberated from the schoolroom, she would have liked to go to picture-galleries, attend concerts, and mix with interesting people; in spite of her shyness and gentleness, she had plenty of mind and character, and Malcolm had already cultivated her artistic tastes. One summer, indeed, they had gone abroad, and Malcolm had been with them, and for two months Anna felt they had been ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... any successor to the J.D.C. I described how I watched the boys leaving school today—a solitary figure, clad in the latest fashion, moodily pacing the Hammersmith Road—and asked myself "where among these is the girlish gush of a Bentley—the passionate volubility of a Vernede, the half-ethereal shyness of a Fordham?!!" I admitted that we had had misfortunes, one of us had a serious illness, another had had a very good story in the Strand Magazine: but I thought that a debating club of 12 members that had given three presidents to the University Unions, had not done badly. The rest was sentimental. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... fifty yards was the extreme deadly range of the hunter's weapons, wild creatures were comparatively tame. The advent of the rifle and of the lawless skin hunter soon turned all big game into fugitives of excessive shyness and wariness. One glimpse of a man half a mile off, or a whiff of him on the breeze, was enough to make a Mountain Ram or a Wolf run for miles, though formerly these creatures would have gazed serenely from a point ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... bearer of this is the son of an old friend. One of the most agreeable young men I ever saw. As modest as he is well educated, and I can't say more. Procure him some amusement, that a little of his shyness may be rubbed off; and forward his fortunes, my dear friend, as far as you can ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... of living fishes is most entertaining and is rendered somewhat difficult by the medium in which they live, by their {108} shyness, and by the necessity of approaching closely in order to obtain any accurate view. The spawning, feeding, swimming and other habits of very few of our fishes are so well known that further information thereon is ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... character, ought to have the satisfaction of knowing that they have it, both as a reward and as an encouragement. They write, that you are not only 'decrotte,' but tolerably well-bred; and that the English crust of awkward bashfulness, shyness, and roughness (of which, by the bye, you had your share) is pretty well rubbed off. I am most heartily glad of it; for, as I have often told you, those lesser talents, of an engaging, insinuating manner, an easy good-breeding, a genteel behavior ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... its self-sufficiency—of individuals whose consequence grows neither out of manners, intellectual endowments, superior taste, nor polished connections—and of inhabitants of a metropolis, among whom shyness of intercourse is necessary as a security against imposture—it is not to be wondered that most of the showy mansions in these villages are points of repulsion rather than of attraction. It must, however, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... head of a big "stock and station" firm. Some one else clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to meet his banker; behind them towered half a dozen old squatter friends, with fellow clubmen, all trying at once to get hold of his hand. David Linton's constitutional shyness melted in the heartiness of their greeting. Beyond them Norah seemed to be the centre of a mass of girls, one of whom presently detached herself, and came to him. He said in amazement, "Why, it's Jean Yorke—and grown up!" and actually kissed her, to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... youngest of the party, Laura was the least embarrassed: she had never known a nursery, but had mixed with her elders since her babyhood. And she was not of a shy disposition; indeed, she still had to be reminded daily that shyness was expected of her. So she sat and looked about her. It was an interesting room in which she found herself. Low bookshelves, three shelves high, ran round the walls, and on the top shelf were many outlandish ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... first arrival at Parinacochas we were left severely alone by the shepherds; but two days later curiosity slowly overcame their shyness, and a group of young shepherds and shepherdesses gradually brought their grazing flocks nearer and nearer the camp, in order to gaze stealthily on these strange visitors, who lived in a cloth house, actually moved over the forbidding waters of ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... to Herzl that he would have to take an active part in the task he had set forth in "The Jewish State." He no longer felt that he stood alone. He was not inclined to appear on a public platform. He had the shyness of the man who had always written what he had to say. He also felt that it would do more harm than good if his ideas were to be obscured by his personal presence. Through correspondence he set in motion Zionist activities—in London, in Paris, in Berlin, ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... with some shyness, as if feeling that one older than himself might smile at the romantic wildness of his fancy. But this my Lord Dunstanwolde did not, understanding him full well, and lying a hand on his pressed ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are—honest. But after all, there's no real dishonesty if you do good work. And I think"—there was a sudden return to her old shyness—"I think, if you win out, your great reward will be the good work ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... relieved. Still later the frequent disturbed cries of coot, heron, and marsh-hen, recognizing the presence of unusual invaders of their solitude, distracted her yet more, and forced her at last with increasing color and an uneasy sense of shyness to steal out to the gallery for a swift furtive survey of the Marsh. But an utterly unexpected sight met her eyes, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the noble old Lady Astrida, and the reception of the Barons who had come in the train of their Lord. Richard was bidden to greet them, but, though he held out his hand as desired, he shrank a little to his father's side, gazing at them in dread and shyness. ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a deep breath. "Yes, that's it. That's what it meant. I felt it." And then, as though with a sudden shyness at her self-revelation, she glanced about. "What a pretty place! I've ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... at no one as she passed along on her husband's arm; but he interpreted this to be not shyness nor self-consciousness, but rather a sort of instinct against giving any one that opportunity of looking into ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... maddening joy pounded in his brain. Jeanne's voice came to him sweetly, with a shyness in it that made him feel like a boy. He was glad that the night concealed his face. He would have given worlds to have ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... think my profession would have cured me of being shy, but not a bit. Nervous disease, of course! Ought to be treated as such. Almost universal. Besides, even if he is shy, your governor—even if he's a hundredfold shy, that's no reason for keeping out of England. Shyness is not one of those diseases you can ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor and his promotion to be Secretary of State did not contribute to his happiness. His wife appears to have been arrogant and imperious; his step-son the Earl was a rake and unfriendly to him; while in his public capacity his invincible shyness made him of little use in Parliament. He resigned his office in 1718, and, after a period of ill-health, d. at Holland House, June 17, 1719, in his 48th year. Besides the works above mentioned, he wrote a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... child—the last daughter of the ever-beautiful Rothesay line—which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive looked up at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no childish shyness—only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied unbelief. Then his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... "Good-day"? I should have heard her voice—no doubt an additional charm—for I never yet saw a beautiful woman with a harsh voice; and I fear the inverse proposition is equally true. Why passed I without speaking? No doubt, she deems me a yokel! Perhaps it was my very shyness she was smiling at? S'death! what a simpleton—Ho! what do I hear? A woman's voice—a cry?—of terror? There again!—a scream! the words, "Help, oh! help!" Is it she who is calling? Yes—yes it is she! By such strange sounds were my reflections interrupted. Turning my horse with a wrench, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... out and explore the town, if only for a little way. To-morrow was Sunday, and all the stores would be closed. But Manasseh was too busy to come with him for bodyguard—and his father's boots were off; and besides, he stood in great awe and shyness of his admired parent. Had the boots been on, it would have cost him a bold effort to make the request. On the whole, the cordial warming him, Master Dicky had a mind to ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "Jason, listen. We are close to Carthon, the others can lead them the rest of the way. Why go back to them at all? Slip away now and never go back! We can—" she stopped, coloring fiercely, that sudden and terrifying shyness overcoming her again, and at last she said in a whisper, "Darkover is a wide world, Jason. Big enough for us to hide in. I don't believe they would search ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of the age, and the women of the whole city are distracted with his charms; yet he is so bashful as to answer no advances, and shrinks from notice like a school-boy, but I will endeavour to overcome his shyness, and procure you a meeting." Having said thus, she went immediately to the wallet-maker's, and giving him a piece of gold, desired he would let his assistant accompany her home with two of his best wallets. The man was pleased with her generosity, and selecting his choicest manufacture, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... certain shyness prohibited him from entering the dining-room in which he heard Madge, Eliz, and the stranger talking French together. He betook himself to the library, to the Letters of the Portuguese Nun and an easy-chair. They might oust him with severity, but it was as well to enjoy a short interval ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! After other skaters appear,—young men and boys,—who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness and moves regally like a king. One afternoon Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice,—very remarkable, but very ugly methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne, who, wrapped ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... bundle and ran after him. He was small, stiff in his movements and evidently had very little strength. She soon caught up with him and knocked his hat off to induce him to stop. He really wished to do so, but he was confused with shyness and fled with still greater speed. She ran after him and began to pull at his game-bag. Then he had to stop to defend it. She fell upon him with all her strength. They fought, and she threw him to the ground. "Now he will not speak of it to any ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... she do to make Miss Quincy feel at ease? The girl certainly had brains and character. Dick had told them of her brave bearing of burdens. This stiff back and this silence were but the tribute of shyness to new surroundings. So ran Mrs. Lenox's swift thoughts and she set herself to make Lena talk about the things with which she was familiar, to link her past ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... fifty pounds a year, and three years later was transferred to the Colonial Secretary's Office at two hundred pounds a year. During this period he read extensively, and wrote much verse. By 1867 he had so far overcome his natural shyness that he undertook to deliver a series of lectures at the Sydney School of Arts. One of these, on "Love, Courtship and Marriage", precipitated him into experience of all three; for he walked home after the lecture with Miss Charlotte Rutter, daughter of a Government medical ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Auckland. Bonfires blazed on the ranges, guns were fired, and a procession of boats escorted theirs home. As a strictly bachelor community, we felt some hesitation about going to call and congratulate the couple. This was owing to our own shyness and uncouthness, you understand, not to any disfavour with which we looked upon matrimony as an abstract thing. For we were previously unacquainted with the bride. However, some demon prompted us to give them ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... elementary process of keeping step, and despite his youthful proficiency as a jockey, the regulation seat of the dragoon, to be acquired on the back of a rough cavalry trooper, was an accomplishment which he never mastered. If it be added that his shyness never thawed, that he was habitually silent, it is hardly surprising to find that he had few intimates at the Academy. Caring nothing for the opinion of others, and tolerant of association rather than seeking it, his self-contained nature asked neither ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... spirit of satire, had in it two or three men of real gift. Forbes himself was a man of uncommon vivacity. Small, stocky, with an unruly thatch of yellow hair and a quaintly wry and homely face, he hid his shyness and his brilliancy behind a brusque manner. Ostensibly cynical and a witty satirist of his more sentimental fellows, his desk was full of charming ballades and pieces d'amour, scratched off at white ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... a morose or unhappy man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very happy one, full of generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... think she's purty," protested the boy with a quick palpitant shyness, "an' most people l——," he stopped trying to talk, laughing brusquely and flushing with ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... when it was alluded to before, a red flush dyed the face of Hamish. Certainly, it could not be a flush of guilt, while that ingenuous smile hovered on his lips. But Hamish seemed attacked with sudden shyness. "Your refusal to satisfy me on this point, when we previously spoke of it, tended to confirm my suspicions," continued Mr. Huntley. "I think you might make a confidant of me, Hamish. That money could not have dropped from the clouds; and I am sure you possessed ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... by shyness, had nothing to do with this brisk interchange. She walked between the contestants like a child out with her betters. Senhouse led them down the scarped side of a hill into his own valley; rounding a bluff, they suddenly came upon ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... was rewarded by the sight of a tall young man who lifted down a little girl about Molly's age, a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked little girl, prettily dressed, and in no way suggesting a wild Indian. The instant Molly saw her, she was seized with a fit of shyness and could not follow her first impulse to rush forward. Instead she waited where she was till the two ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... to meet a woman! Her picture was in his pocket, in his brain, in his blood. A vast shyness, coming to consternation, seized him. He felt a sense of personal guilt; and yet a feeling of indignity and injustice claimed him. But all this and all his sullen anger was wiped out in this great shyness of a man not used to facing women. Sim Gage was product of a womanless ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... arrived, she played hostess with an alluring mixture of shyness and happy importance, capping his lively sallies with the quick wit of old days. And when Suraj was announced—"Oh, please—may I see him?" she begged eagerly ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... slender lad, dark-haired and dark-eyed, ruddy and embrowned by mountain sun and air; and the bow with which he bent before her had something of the rustic lout, and there was a certain shyness over him that ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heart-burnings and griefs, her sudden despairs and eager hopes, her tempestuous angers, took place in the bottom of her heart. She would have been as dismayed at the thought of others seeing them as she would have been at the thought of being discovered unclothed. Shyness and pride combined to make her hide her innermost feelings so that no one should venture to offer ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the personal qualities that endeared him to his intimate friends. I always detected in his life a certain undefined loneliness. The scholar's shyness and the isolation of his exalted position hardly account for it. A humanistic scholar in a University where the practical departments were making greatest progress, engrossed in his intellectual interests in the solitude of ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... very white, with soft, dark hair rippling away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talked very little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk—living, as she did, with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no close friends;—her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she did not inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt's elderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave her good advice; so ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... hasten with her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... incongruity of a Greek Hermes in the central hall of Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition. Fascinated, she strayed down the line toward him. She halted, looked for a second or two into a pair of liquid black eyes and then blushed in agonized shyness. She stared at the beautiful boy, and the beautiful boy stared at her, and not a word could she find in her head to speak. She turned abruptly and moved away. The boy broke rank and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... mentioned; no one, except the good old duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her to me; but by the way he welcomed me I guessed that his daughter had privately commended me to his care. At the moment when I was beginning to overcome the foolish wonder and shyness which besets a young man at his first entrance into the great world, and to realize the pleasures it could give through the resources it offers to ambition, just, too, as I was beginning to make use ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... she left London, Herminia thought to herself she had never seen her child look so absolutely lovely. The unwonted union of blue eyes with that olive-gray skin gave a tinge of wayward shyness to her girlish beauty. The golden locks had ripened to nut-brown, but still caught stray gleams of nestling sunlight. 'Twas with a foreboding regret that Herminia kissed Dolly on both peach-bloom cheeks at parting. She almost ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... gleam in the lovely baroness's eyes. Then she came nearer to Herr Bernat, and asked with womanly shyness: "And you ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... ill at ease, attributed it to shyness or perhaps awe of the Colonel, who was, as Max put it, "a bit impressive till a fellow knew him," and tried to help matters by talking nonsense that amazed Win and evidently amused the Colonel. Gradually, as he saw that Max was not ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... path, and for the moment the boy was forgotten. She welcomed him with the cordiality of old friendship. There was genuine pleasure in her smile, there was hearty welcome in her eyes, and in the soft, warm grip of her strong young hand, but that was all. There was no shyness, no avoiding the honest devotion in his look. The radiant hope shining in his clear, dark eyes was not for her understanding. The unusual care in his dress, the neatly polished boots under his leather chaps, the creamy whiteness of his cotton shirt, the store creases of the new silk handkerchief ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... a silly child," she said. "Of course you will feel strange just at first, but you will soon get over your shyness. It will be quite a fresh world for you, and a very interesting one. I expect to have the most enthusiastic letters from you when you have been there for ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... fine figure. Her eyes are blue, and their clear, candid expression indicates an unusually sincere and simple character. But, unfortunately, it is only her friends who are fully conversant with the expression of her eyes, for she is very shy. Shyness in little people is frequently piquant, but its effect in girls of the Juno style is too often that of awkwardness. Her friends call Maud Elliott stately; those who do not like her call her stiff; while indifferent persons speak of her as rather too reserved and dignified in manner to be ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and, finding that his friend hung back, went out again and half led, half pushed him indoors. Mr. Bell's shyness he attributed to his having lived so long ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... to keep them from trembling. What would they think of her? She saw that they were smartly dressed. Doubtless they were very grand and clever indeed, and would think her more trying than ever. But although all her shyness threatened for a moment, it was summarily routed ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the door of the kitchen and ushered the visitor in. Mrs. Burton was making a batch of bread, and had to limit her welcome to cheery words and smiles; but the twins immediately claimed him as an old friend, rushing upon him with a freedom from shyness which was surprising, until one knew that they were never troubled ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... will make her an excellent husband. She will not be so foolish as to reject such a disinterested affection. Besides," he added, hesitating a little, "I have a very shrewd notion that all this apparent indifference is only shyness on my little girl's part, and that ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; regarding ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... went into peals of laughter. And from that moment I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gibson's firmament of eligible young men: for in spite of the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was really and merely the result of my shyness, he had always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable, proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary—that is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter; for she ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... our presents behind our backs and tried to remain unobserved by the door. The whole effect of a surprise, upon which we had been counting, was entirely lost. When at last every one had made the sign of the cross I became intolerably oppressed with a sudden, invincible, and deadly attack of shyness, so that the courage to, offer my present completely failed me. I hid myself behind Karl Ivanitch, who solemnly congratulated Grandmamma and, transferring his box from his right hand to his left, presented it to her. Then he withdrew a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... that beats here?' she said, and with a shyness in adventurousness, she struck the point of her forefinger on the rib. 'Fancy me in love with a flint! And running to be dutiful to a Jacob Blathenoy, at my flint's command. I'm half in love with doing what I hate, because this cold thing here bids me do it. I believe ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by the exercise of studious tact in ingratiating myself in his friendship and confidence; he talked with freedom of his feelings and his affairs; and although he had not yet admitted me to the knowledge of his past, he evinced but little shyness in speaking of the present. At our interviews in his tent I seldom met his wife; indeed, I suspected him of contriving to keep her out of the way; for I was always told she had just stepped out;—or if by chance I found her there, she was never again vulgarly loquacious, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... become accustomed. She rather relished the hard, manual labour, to which she applied herself with full energy. But her baby was a stranger to her, cried when she wished to take her up, and became only gradually accustomed to her. Her faculties had been sharpened, too; she felt a certain shyness in her husband, noticed his weaknesses, and was deeply hurt when, on the second evening after her return, he went to the inn, "so that people should not say he was under her thumb." Then, Hansei, coaxed by the shrewd innkeeper, had set his heart upon acquiring the inn, now that they had "wealth," ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... now to attack him, having already given them a trial of his strength; alluding to what he had already done to them at Calicut. The enemy continued to hover off at sea, but did not venture to come nearer than a league, though they seemed in fighting order. Seeing this shyness, the general weighed anchor, and went out with all his fleet against them, having on board the two nayres who were hostages for the factory on shore, but his intentions were to have returned with them to Cochin. Soon after leaving the harbour, a great storm ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... with the three in turn. All were out-doors men, bronzed, diffident with the social shyness of men who live their lives alone or among none but alien people. Lindsey and Cochran were square-set, serious young men: Casey, older, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Mary, trying in her turn to stop him, with English shyness about tender topics. But he took the soft hand in his, and proudly surveying the one ring it wore, went on with the air of an admiral aboard ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... gave little credit to his professions.—Some people coming in on business to her father, and saying they would wait till he came home, obliged Natura to take his leave for that time, well satisfied in his mind, that he had declared himself, and not much doubting, but that in spite of this first shyness, she would easily be prevailed upon to correspond with his desires, when his perseverance in them, should have assured ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... and excitedly now, throwing off all shyness and reserve. Blakeney was forced to check her vehemence, which might have been thought "suspicious" by ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... buy. These three are clad very magnificently in kimonos of silk crape, very soft, and brilliantly coloured, with huge coloured sashes. Their little heads, with straight all-round fringes of black hair sticking out like brushes, are deliciously comic. They regard us gravely and without any fear or shyness. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... his extreme simplicity... The first time I had seen him was in a hall in Brussels, when he opened the Great Exhibition in royal state, in the presence of many princes and ministers and all his Court. Even then it seemed to me he had a look of sadness—it may have been no more than shyness—as though the shadow of some approaching tragedy touched his spirit. I spoke of it at the time to a friend of mine and he smiled at the foolishness ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the Lizard arrived; and my patients being all fit for duty, they and I were ordered on board of her, where I understood from Mr. Tomlins that there was a shyness between the lieutenant and him on my account; the rancorous villain having taken the opportunity of my absence to fill the captain's ears with a thousand scandalous stories to my prejudice; among other things affirming, that I had been once transported for theft, and that when ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... had shining black hair, over which she had flung the most coquettish sort of lace shawl they call a rebosa. Her eyes were large, dark, and expressive; and she constantly used them most provocatively, though with every appearance of shyness and modesty. Her figure, too, was lithe and rounded; and so swathed, rather than clothed, that every curve was emphasized. I suppose this effect was the result of the Spanish mode rather than of individual sophistication; just as the ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... with their visitor, who interrupted the even course of their studies and "made fools," as she considered, of Miss Davis and Nell. She thought Hetty's pretentiousness became greater and greater as her first slight shyness wore away and she grew perfectly familiar with every one in the house. Phyllis was sufficiently generous to refrain from complaining of Hetty to her mother or father, but she privately found fault with Nell for encouraging her ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... illness from which he had risen with a weak spine, and ever-working brain, and a quiet heart, he had shown himself not merely a good sort of man, for such he had always been, but a religious man; not by saying much, for he was modest even to shyness with grown people, but by the solemnity of his look when a great word was spoken, by his unblamable behaviour, and by the readiness with which he would lend or give of his small earnings to his poor neighbours. The only thing of which anybody could complain was his temper; but it showed itself ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... corner, dressed in black coats that had something of the antiquity of heirlooms, talked all night among themselves in Gaelic. The young girl beside me lost her shyness after a while, and let me point out the features of the country that were beginning to appear through the dawn as we drew nearer Dublin. She was delighted with the shadows of the trees—trees are rare in Connaught—and ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... to by all classes, and the J. B. Riley ward of the institution served to remind us of one who, by his charity, goodness and generosity, was a good man, but whose shyness did not allow of this being known. His brother, Mr. F. W. Riley, and Mr. R. L. Chirnside, who were closely associated with him, carried on his good work, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... welcomed the stranger most cordially in French, and was still more bewitched by the retiring shyness of his modest demeanor. As the jailer retired, a wink signified his desire to commune with me apart in his office, where I learned that the new comer had been arrested under a charge of counterfeiting, but on account of his genteel appearance ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... spoke to me of the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive of her veneration for his virtues and her attachment to himself.—"The King," said she, "is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease under the eyes ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... from a trustworthy source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read the Uncle Remus book; and a fine genius, too, as all know by the same sign. I seem to be talking ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it is easy enough," she answered. "He took my hand, and I permitted him to hold it for a moment, then withdrew it, you know, as though impelled by modesty. After duly hanging my head and casting down my eyes in a very spasm of shyness, I told the king that I hoped he would accept the French king's offer, and reminded him that it might avert the terrible consequences of war, in addition to putting ten thousand pounds in my poor empty little purse. ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... terror of every Ragusan (only mention the word and he will cross himself)—and here on a fine Sunday morning you may see Dalmatians, Albanians, and Herzegovinians in their gaudiest finery, while here and there a wild-eyed Montenegrin, armed to the teeth, surveys the gay scene with a scowl, of shyness rather ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... years of his school-teaching at Jasper Mackenzie slowly grew out of his extreme rawness of appearance. His legs hardened from long rambles over the hills, his face browned like an outdoor man's, his rustic appearance, his clabber-days shyness, all slowly dissolved away. But the school board was not cognizant of any physical or mental strengthening in him. He was worth sixty dollars a month to that slow-thinking body when he came to Jasper; he was worth no more than sixty ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... Howel's last injunction to the best of her ability. Her youth and beauty were greatly in her favour, and her affectation covered the shyness and awkwardness that she felt in being suddenly thrown amongst people upon whom she had formerly looked with awe. The Nugents were there, but the Gwynnes were absent, and she had the pleasure of feeling that she had as many, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... supposed to be hereditary; but it is not so. Any puppy can be cured of gun-shyness in half a dozen short lessons. Sir Henry Smith's advice is to get your puppy accustomed to the sound and sight of a gun being fired, first at a distance and gradually nearer and nearer, until he knows that no harm will come to him. Companionship ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... food was provided for it, which it pecked up without the least shyness. Since then it has established itself on a very firm clawing, if I may use the term, as a necessary inmate of the house. Fluttering through the passages it follows the maids from room to room in the morning and shows the most lively interest in their work while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... them besides the weeds, and stones?" asked Nat; so interested, he forgot his shyness and spoke ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... events, as an old oak trembling and exposed to the wind of the plain, when the forest which surrounded and supported it has been destroyed. Yes!" cried De Thou, growing animated, "this aim is a fine and noble one. Go on in your course with a resolute step; expel even that secret shame, that shyness, which a noble soul experiences before it can resolve upon flattering—upon paying what the world calls its court. Alas, kings are accustomed to these continual expressions of false admiration for them! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hospitable; but there is much less visiting even among themselves, and much less of constant reception of strangers in their homes, than with us. Habit, lack of wealth, lack of trained servants, and a certain proud shyness, and in some cases indifference and a lack of vitality which welcomes the trouble of being host, account for this. No doubt, too, the old habit of economy remains even when there is no longer the same necessity for it, and saving and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... this miracle, the young man turned to Sally. Gallant, one might say reckless, as he had been a moment before, he now gave indications of a rather pleasing shyness. He braced himself with that painful air of effort which announces to the world that an Englishman is about to speak a ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... example influenced the captains immediately behind him cannot certainly be affirmed. Such shyness as he displayed is not only infectious, but saps that indispensable basis upon which military effectiveness reposes, namely, the certainty of co-operation and support, derived from mutual confidence, inspired by military discipline, obedience, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... few days, however, our shyness and strangeness wore off. We no longer sang with the soldiers, but segregated ourselves into congenial groups; and under the electric lights the promenade deck looked, for all the world, like the piazza of a ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... interruption in the early part of it though, from a pleasant visitor; and I have not been able to look rightly at your pretty little book. Nevertheless, I'm quite sure your strength is in private letter writing, and that a curious kind of shyness prevents your doing yourself justice in print. You might also surely have found a more pregnant ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... a smile or a sound. That ceremony over, they charged down upon me in an avalanche of gaiety. They waved their lanterns, they called banzai, they laughed and sung some of the old time foolish songs we used to sing. They promptly put to rout all legends of their excessive modesty and shyness. They were just young and girlish. Plain happy. Eager and sweet in their generous welcome. It warmed every fiber of my being. When they thinned out a little, I saw at the other end of the platform a figure flying towards me, with the sleeves ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... half-frozen sleet, joined in its descent by gutters from the house-tops, comes driving full in your face, blinding you to all external objects—on one of these blessed evenings, on my road to Camden Town, I chanced to miss my way, and was compelled, notwithstanding a certain shyness towards strangers, to ask my direction of the first respectable person I should meet. Many passed me by, but none sufficiently prepossessing; when, on turning down some nameless street that leads ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... been oppressing it for some time, and set his heart at rest. Egan, it must be remarked, was an odd mixture of courage and cowardice: undaunted by personal danger, but strangely timorous where moral courage was required. A remarkable shyness, too, made him hesitate constantly in the utterance of a word which might explain away any difficulty in which he chanced to find himself; and this helped to keep his tongue tied in the matter where Larry Hogan had continued to make himself ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... he said that after we left the room a good deal of his shyness wore off, and that he conversed pleasantly and well. Above all, he ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... had terminated, now that he was no longer a director and the representative of her employers, she should take him on trust simply as a friend. He was prepared to answer protests, to offer compromises—concessions to appearances. He'd expected her to exhibit some shyness of the taxi. According to his unconscious ideal of the situation she should have looked questioningly at him—hesitated, and then let him assure her that it was all right. She should have gasped a little when the car turned south in the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... loyalty had always been with effort. Therefore, when—the strain relaxed—they met her again, they were intensely conscious of her freedom and of their own resultant liberty. This produced in them, when with her, a restraint and shyness which Myra naturally construed into a confirmation of her own suspicions. She, having never found it the smallest effort to remember she was Michael's, and to be faithful in every thought to him, was quite unconscious ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... think we should meet so soon, Signor Grandi. But I am very glad." There was a sweet shyness in the little speech that touched me. I am sure she was afraid that it was not yet quite right, or at least that there should be some other ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... of it. Fact is, my dear Summerhays, once childhood is over, once the little animal has got past the stage at which it acquires what you might call a sense of decency, it's all up with the relation between parent and child. You cant get over the fearful shyness of it. ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... Chateaubriand (cited by Paulhan, Rev. Philos., March, 1898, p. 237) is a typical description of the situation: "The warmth of my (adolescent) imagination, my shyness, and solitude, caused me, instead of casting myself on something without, to fall back upon myself. Wanting a real object, I evoked through the power of my desires, a phantom, which thenceforth never left me; I made ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... yesterday," Theron replied. His earlier shyness had worn off, and he felt comfortably at his ease. "I don't know," he went on, "that the word 'genuine' is just what would have occurred to me to describe the Soulsbys. They are very interesting people, as you say—MOST interesting—and ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... hurried from the hotel, he was singularly agitated for a man merely suffering from the shyness of the desert wanderer in the presence of a pretty woman. His furtive looks and the uneasy glances he cast behind him, no less than the panicky character of his flight, might have aroused further question on the ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... All of a sudden there swept over him the unique sensation of shyness—most unique in him. He had never been abashed before in all his life. Now he was curiously conscious of having overstepped the bounds, and for the first time to be shown his place by a girl. This to him, who had ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... nature and properties of contra-terrene matter, and a workable star drive operating on the same basic principle as Earth's Koenig drive but which the Bruckians had never really used because of their shyness and fear of contact with other races. They also had an excellent understanding, thanks to their eavesdropping on Confederation interstellar radio chatter, of the existence and functions of the Galactic Confederation of worlds, and of Hospital Earth's ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... that edged the first field not far from the fence of the Harmon garden. And that which had broken the spell was the appearance of Alec Trenholme. He came right up to her, as if he had something of importance to say, but either shyness or a difficulty in introducing his subject made him hesitate. Something in his look caused ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... model soldier quoted every day by my colonel as a shining light to the regiment. But of course you must remember that a few months ago I was practically a yob at the game, and now of the fame (and the extreme shyness that seems to come with it) of my ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... half mile of which the girl had spoken. A sudden shyness seemed to have come over both of them. Then they began to come in sight of houses. "I am not afraid now," said the girl, "but I do think you are very foolish if you go back alone and try to hunt that man. Ten chances to one he is armed, and you haven't a thing to defend yourself ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... trustworthy source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read the Uncle Remus ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have scant knowledge, but the one I know was wont to cherish the memory of things his love had said and how she had said them; with what a pretty tilt to her chin, with what a daring shyness of the eyes, with what a fine colour and impetuous audacity she had done this or looked that. He was wont in advance to plan out conversations, to decide that he would tell her some odd brain fancy ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... themselves. After a cutlet and a glass of wine she had colour, and began to talk. She even grumbled when I denied her coffee, and hurried her off again. In the automobile she came close to my side, and with a shyness quite new to her linked her arm in mine. So we sped once more on ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and surrounding area. A couple of times, I glimpsed the eye reflections of small animals. They seemed to possess the shyness of most nocturnal creatures. But I couldn't ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... In spite of their shyness and timidity, they respond readily to kind treatment. They are never seen on the rivers, as they have no boats and cannot easily be persuaded to venture a trip in a boat. It is possible to make many expeditions through the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... kimonos of silk crape, very soft, and brilliantly coloured, with huge coloured sashes. Their little heads, with straight all-round fringes of black hair sticking out like brushes, are deliciously comic. They regard us gravely and without any fear or shyness. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... fourteen, the boy went to live for a while on the shore of Sebago Lake, Maine. "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom I enjoyed. But it was there I got my cursed habits of solitude." Shyness and aversion to meeting people became ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... of society in the place, he made our acquaintance early. I rather liked him; his manner was good, his perceptions acute, his tastes refined, and he had a certain strength of will that gave force to a character otherwise common-place. Josephine liked him at once; she laid his shyness and brusquerie, which were only the expression of a dominant self- consciousness, to genuine modesty. He was depressed and moody, because he was bored for want of acquaintance, and missed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... spell upon her which forbade her to raise them. Miss Olive Chancellor, it may be confided to the reader, to whom in the course of our history I shall be under the necessity of imparting much occult information, was subject to fits of tragic shyness, during which she was unable to meet even her own eyes in the mirror. One of these fits had suddenly seized her now, without any obvious cause, though, indeed, Mrs. Luna had made it worse by becoming instantly so personal. There was nothing in the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... to the bar, he had really found himself. He had taken the line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. His father's injudicious forcing had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in daylight. But no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in speculation. Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... blush To wear a tatter'd garb, however coarse; Whom famine cannot reconcile to filth; Who ask with painful shyness, and refused, Because ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... pined within him like a captive's, when he looked forth into the cheerful world, or recollected the affection of parents, the hopes and frolicsome enjoyments of past years. The misery he endured in this severe and lonely mode of existence strengthened or produced in him a habit of constraint and shyness, which clung to ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the young woman lit up; an answering gleam awoke in the other's. Myra Brown and her engagement absorbed their attention, and I slunk back in my chair, forgotten. I suffered agonies of shyness. I disliked these foolish virgins and longed to flee from them; but how to rise and make my escape, without rudeness, passed my powers of invention. I looked around me. At the tea-table on the farther ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... unless we, that are her first friends, come to her aid against her own pride and shyness. You think me intrusive—a meddlesome old maid, prying into what does not concern me: but, brother, she and Mr. Hartman were made for one another. They were deeply interested, both of them—I could see it plainly: it would have been settled in a few days more, if that wretched misunderstanding ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... sprang up from his chair, and ran to the empty seat. His face shone with keen and eager expectancy, but wore a touch of shyness too. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... violet flamed dusk as he sat with his immortal friends ranged around that Mrs. Matilda brought the treasure home to him. She was a very lovely thing, a fragrant flower of a woman with the tender shyness of a child in her manner as she laid her hands in his outheld to her with his ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... thought of marrying for money did not particularly commend itself to me. At length, when I felt sufficiently certain of my own feelings to justify such a step, I proposed, and was accepted with a sweet half-shyness, half-abandon of manner, which was as piquant and charming in effect, as I afterwards had reason to believe it was a consummately skilful piece of acting—now, do not interrupt me, Leo; wait until you have heard me to an end before you attempt to judge. Well, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the air was biting and cool, and Peter was unable to alight, but Mary and her husband came to them where they waited at the gate and stood long, talking happily. Jamie and Bobby followed at their heels and peered up curiously at the wounded soldier, but Betty was seized with a rare moment of shyness that ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... swiftly-vying wings, we came together Unto this rock and thee! With our sea-sire we pleaded hard, until We won him to our will, And swift the wafting breezes bore us hither. The heavy hammer's steely blow Thrilled to our ocean-cavern from afar, Banished soft shyness from our maiden brow, And with unsandalled feet ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the surface; a fact which affords ample proof that they do not descend to great depths, although they can dive as well as swim. They are often found in groups during calm weather, sleeping on the sea; but owing to their extreme caution and shyness, attempts to catch them are rarely successful; on the least alarm, they suddenly expel the air from their lungs and descend below the surface; a long stream of rising air-bubbles marking the rapid course which they make below. Their poisonous nature has ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the kitchen and ushered the visitor in. Mrs. Burton was making a batch of bread, and had to limit her welcome to cheery words and smiles; but the twins immediately claimed him as an old friend, rushing upon him with a freedom from shyness which was surprising, until one knew that they were never troubled with that complaint ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... little angel your Adochka is! What a charming little creature! How pretty she is! and how good! and how well she speaks French! And she knows Russian too. She called me aunt in Russian. And then as to shyness, you know, almost all children of her age are shy; but she is not at all so. It's wonderful how like you she is, Fedor Ivanich—eyes, eyebrows, in fact you all over—absolutely you. I don't usually like such young children, I must confess, but ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... hand, and perhaps her waist, but some indescribable quality held him off. It was difficult to suppose she did not half guess what was in his mind, and yet, without showing the smallest consciousness or shyness, she faced him with a look so boyishly frank and open it ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... a certain shyness from mentioning his wish at once to his grave master. He said how he had longed to see him once more, to hear how he was; and reproached him tenderly for not coming to see him. He added that he had certainly a great ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... made much of her, tried to make her get over her shyness, adroitly made her tell him all about her usual life, took a long time in sounding her chest, helped her to dress and undress, in a very paternal way, gave her a potion and was so thoughtful and caressing, that the poor girl blushed and felt quite uncomfortable at ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... mother's somewhat shocked astonishment, not in any words from a book, but in words—where did he get them?—that broke her heart. They were solemn and sweet, tender and simple; there was neither boldness nor shyness in them, although there was a frankness at which Mrs. Dallas wondered, along with the tenderness ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... was pride or shyness which kept the maiden aloof, she conquered it after a while; perhaps through mere woman's curiosity; and perhaps, too, from mere longing for amusement in a place so unspeakably stupid as the forest. She gave the English to understand, however, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... man who lifted down a little girl about Molly's age, a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked little girl, prettily dressed, and in no way suggesting a wild Indian. The instant Molly saw her, she was seized with a fit of shyness and could not follow her first impulse to rush forward. Instead she waited where she was till ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... though I do look small," cried Rose, forgetting her shyness in indignation at this insult ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... wisely turned away, and closed the door behind him; boys' shyness only wears off in the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of Maidenhead life. At lunch there had been five or six small tables with quietly affectionate couples who talked in undertones, a tableful of bright-coloured Jews who talked in overtones, and a family party from the Midlands, badly smitten with shyness, who did not talk at all. "A resort, of honeymoon couples," said the doctor, and then rather knowingly: "Temporary honeymoons, I fancy, in one or two of ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... charm to the promise, which is very soon granted you, of making the acquaintance with the thoughts and ideas which have interested Mr. Walter Poole since boyhood—in fine, which have given him his character. If he seems at first sight to conceal himself from you, it is from shyness, or because he is reluctant to throw open his mind to the casual curious. Why should he not keep his mind for his own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of his friends, treating it like his pleasure grounds or park? His books are not written for the many ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... girls, with dimples in the roses of their cheeks—drew nearer, as if lured by admiration of the ladies. Nell and Phyllis, seeing them, beckoned, and the fair creatures obeyed the summons with an appearance of shyness. They too, were photographed; and after many politenesses had been exchanged, Starr came to ask if I thought the dear things' feelings would be hurt by a small offering ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... together much longer without an explosion. I had a presentiment that Eunice shared my impressions. My feelings towards her had reached that crisis where a declaration was imperative: but how to make it? It was a terrible struggle between my shyness and my affection. There was another circumstance, in connection with this subject, which troubled me not a little. Miss Ringtop evidently sought my company, and made me, as much as possible, the recipient of her sentimental outpourings. I was not bold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... I thought the situation so diverting that I forgot my shyness. Northmour was at my mercy; I arranged a good practical jest, though I knew well that my neighbor was not the man to jest with in security; and, chuckling beforehand over its success, took my place among the elders at the edge of the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... eighteen, shy and retiring from the convent schooling that had ended but lately, soon came downstairs at her father's summons. Dr. Tisco bowed low before the charming girl. Tom and Harry were presented, and tried to make themselves agreeable to the young Mexican girl. Senorita Francesca's shyness, however, made this somewhat difficult, so the young engineers felt inwardly grateful when Dr. Tisco strolled ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... is natural in this case, dear Jennie," he said, "but you must make allowance for a young girl's shyness. The young man, I trust, will speak ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... fishes is most entertaining and is rendered somewhat difficult by the medium in which they live, by their {108} shyness, and by the necessity of approaching closely in order to obtain any accurate view. The spawning, feeding, swimming and other habits of very few of our fishes are so well known that further information thereon is not needed; and the boy scout's patience, skill, and powers of observation ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... with which his shyness was passing into effusiveness. But then was she not the "Mother-Confessor"? Had not even her favourite nuns told her things about their early lives, even when there was no moral to be pointed? "They're very good-hearted," she murmured apologetically. "I'm often companion—in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... esteem, is that their women are more chaste and modest. They esteem virginity, and keep it inviolate, even to advanced age, for the vocation of matrimony. It is true that this virtue is aided by their natural disposition, which furnishes for the defense of chastity their native stupidity and shyness; but therewith they succeed in an undertaking which among Lutaos and the other nations of these islands is rare and difficult indeed. This has secured them so much esteem and confidence in this region that the chiefs of high ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... later, the girl ran down the stairs. As she came forward she stopped, with sudden shyness. Absorbed in her anxiety for her father and mother, she had taken but little heed of the appearance of the officer who had saved them. That he was kind as well as brave she was sure for, although he had scarce spoken to her, the gentleness with which he had moved her father and her ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... perceived something which appeared to have its finger on its lips. Had all the modesty which had been in Fantine, and which had violently quitted her during her lifetime, returned to rest upon her after her death, to watch in indignation over the peace of that dead woman, and in its shyness, to keep her in her grave? Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We who believe in death, are not among the number who will ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the way of any proper adjustments of our differences seem to be almost insurmountable. Prejudices so strong and so extensive, have been excited against us that we, as the representatives of the Canada Conference, are looked upon with shyness, if not fear and contempt. Our situation is anything but pleasant; it is even distressing and painful.... Rev. Joseph Stinson is most cordial and affectionate, and is doing his utmost to further the object of our mission and promote peace in Canada; this is also the case ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the silvery glow of moonlight across the hoary headed queen of the Oberland. When Robin came out from dinner he seated himself on the porch, expectant, eager—and vastly lonesome. An unaccountable shyness afflicted him, rendering him quite incapable of sending his card up to the one who could have dispelled the gathering gloom with a single glance of the eye. Would she come stealing out ostensibly to look at the night-capped peak, but with furtive glances into the shadows of the porch in quest ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... respect, an advantage to the converted unbeliever to be treated by the Church with shyness. It affords him an opportunity of proving his attachment to Christ and Christianity, in a way in which he could not prove it, if every one welcomed him with demonstrations of affection, and signs of joy. None are so slow to believe in the sincerity of a converted ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Baldwin's native school. It was very interesting. The dialogues were exciting, even though in an unknown tongue and spoken by little boys; for they acted them out thoroughly, seeming to forget the spectators entirely. The singing was spirited and in good time. There was none of that painful shyness and hesitation which we sometimes see in our American schools, and we greatly enjoyed ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... months after his arrival, Muriel had been to Roland Bleke a mere automaton, a something outside himself that was made only for neatly-laid breakfast tables and silent removal of plates at dinner. Gradually, however, when his natural shyness was soothed by use sufficiently to enable him to look at her when she came into the room, he discovered that she was a strikingly pretty girl, bounded to the North by a mass of auburn hair and to the South by small and shapely feet. She also possessed what, we are ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... lurk in the wide doorway between the hall and the drawing-room—under such conditions the universal refuge of his sex at all ages. There he found several boys of notorious shyness, and stood with them in a mutually protective group. Now and then one of them would lean upon another until repelled by action and a husky "What's matter 'th you? Get off o' me!" They all twisted their ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... knew—she felt sure—that He loved her, she must not be the smallest fraction of time before him in confession. She was too proud for that. He would tell her that he loved her; and the spell would be broken. Her shyness would be gone; her bravado immediately unnecessary. But until then she must beware. It was as necessary to Keith's pride as to her own that he should win her. The Keith she loved would not care for a love too easily won. The consciousness of this whole issue was at work below her thoughts; ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... exclaimed suddenly. "What an impenetrable girl you are Lena, with those grey eyes of yours! Windows of the soul, as some poet has said. The fellow must have been a glazier by vocation. Well, nature has provided excellently for the shyness of your soul." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... youth, with the boy and man in him, vivacious, mirthful, slender, of a fair complexion, with light hair that had a curl in it: his bright and cheerful aspect made a kind of sunshine, both as regarded its radiance and its warmth; insomuch that no shyness of disposition, in his associates, could well resist its influence. We soon became acquainted, and were more especially drawn together as members of the same college society. There were two of these institutions, dividing the college between them, and ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... She had forgotten her shyness. She was running round the room like a delighted child looking at the pictures and ornaments with which it ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... she was the least happy of the three, and, though she did not know it, her spirit was somewhat broken. Agatha, she thought, had lost the bloom of girlhood, but was bolder, stronger, and cleverer than before. Agatha had, in fact, summoned all her self-possession to hide her shyness. She detected the emotion of Gertrude, who at the last moment did not try to conceal it. It would have been poured out freely in words, had Gertrude's social training taught her to express her feelings as well as it had accustomed ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... conclude she would have carried out whatever plan she might have formed. I can imagine de Barral accustomed for years to defer to her wishes and, either through arrogance, or shyness, or simply because of his unimaginative stupidity, remaining outside the social pale, knowing no one but some card-playing cronies; I can picture him to myself terrified at the prospect of having the care of a marriageable girl thrust on his hands, forcing on him ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... expression of face, so shapely and well-knit of body, and thoroughly healthy-looking and strong. All were at least comely, and one of them very handsome and regular of feature. They came up to us at once merrily and without the least affectation of shyness, and all three shook hands with me as if I were a friend newly come back from a long journey: though I could not help noticing that they looked askance at my garments; for I had on my clothes of last night, and at the best was never a ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... looked at the pair beside her—at the alert brightness in the man's strong and quiet face as he sat stooping forward, with his hands upon his knees, hardly able to keep his eyes for an instant from the dark apparition beside him—at the girl's evident shyness ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the milky skin of the Irish girl. She was less sure of herself, more easily embarrassed, than the average American of her age and sex. Occasionally in her manner was that effect of shyness one finds in the British even after they have escaped ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... thought; but by this time the two girls had reached the cottage; and I could not help regarding them with some little interest. The eldest was not more than eighteen, the youngest four years less; and they possessed the simplicity and shyness of manner such children of the mountain might be supposed naturally to imbibe from the mode of life they led, and the desolation which surrounded them. They wore no covering to the feet or head, and their arms and shoulders were equally bare; and though naturally of a very fair complexion, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... am so shy. My shyness takes a peculiar phase. I never look a person in the face. The reason is that I am afraid they may know me and that I may not know them, which makes it very embarrassing for both of us. I always wait for the other person to speak. I know lots of people, but I don't know who they are. It ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... herself. Yet the girl's eyes sparkled, and her whole aspect was changed in the last hour. She seemed, as far as he could judge, to be in a state of the utmost excitement; she had shaken off the timidity which her brother's temper too often imposed on her, and with it her reticence and her shyness before strangers. All the Irish humour in her fluttered to the surface, and her tongue ran with an incredible gaiety. Uncle Ulick, the O'Beirnes, the buckeens, laughed frank admiration—sometimes at remarks which the Colonel could not understand, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... she was not sure that she had not worn out her passion by dwelling on it. But that might easily be caused by the mere gene of the first two or three meetings. There is a shyness, a sort of coldness, in meeting again a person one has passionately loved. To see the dream in flesh and blood, the thought made concrete, once more brings poetry down to prose. Then the terms they met on now were changed. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... after a day alone with the Parson: "I'm very glad you could come. I hope I'll often see you and that we'll all be very happy together...." He paused, could think of nothing more to say, so retreated back in sudden shyness against ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... his cabin. Mr. Thompson conscientiously lugged the assortment of parcels and magazines over to Sam Carr's house, duly delivered the three letters to Carr himself, and—for reasons that he could not define as anything but an unwarrantable access of shyness—declining the first invitation he had ever received to break bread at Carr's table, hurried back to his own primitive quarters. Perhaps the fact that Sophie Carr, curled up in a big chair, smiled at him in a way that made his pulses quicken had ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... only received a moderate education in the cadet school, he liked to read, occupying himself chiefly with politics and natural science. In his speech, his manners and his gait he betrayed a gentle shyness, never obtruded his dignity, but was ready to show it if necessity arose. However intimate he might be with anyone, he always maintained a certain courtesy and reserve in word and gesture. He bowed to the Governor or a friend or a new acquaintance with the same old-fashioned politeness, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... those happy sons of the gods who are born to success. No young man of his age was more courted both by men and women. There was no one who in his youth had suffered fewer troubles from those causes of trouble which visit English young men,—occasional impecuniosity, sternness of parents, native shyness, fear of ridicule, inability of speech, and a general pervading sense of inferiority combined with an ardent desire to rise to a feeling of conscious superiority. So much had been done for him by nature that he was never called ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... high-bred strangers. For Terence, or Fibsy, as he was nicknamed, was a child of the streets, and though a clever assistant to Fleming Stone in his career, the boy seldom accompanied his employer to the homes of the aristocracy. When he did do so, he was seized with a shyness that was by no means evident when he was in ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... happens that, as Adler remarks (Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 133), the sexual impulse in women is fettered by an inhibition which has to be conquered. A thin veil of reticence, shyness, and anxiety is constantly cast anew over a woman's love, and her wooer, in every act of courtship, has the enjoyment of conquering afresh ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... away, and Agnes Rivers was feeling quite at home in her uncle's house. She had lost much of her nervous shyness, but except with Mrs. Mittens she was very quiet and reserved. She was a little afraid of her uncle, as were the whole family; a little in awe of Eddie too, who was still somewhat stately and grand in his manner; and she always had an uncomfortable sort of feeling that Bertie was kind to her ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... is something very different from the girls that you admire. I hope she'll let me help her, but I doubt it. She is the sort that wouldn't come if you tried to call and coax her. You said her father was like that, didn't you? Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one can't put out a cage, you know. The only way is to scatter crumbs on the window-sill and then stand and wait. Will you let ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... doctor and his daughter walked away the shyness of the young men returned upon them in a heavy backwash. They were so whelmed by it that they did not even speak to one another. But both glanced with cautious stealth at the receding backs, the doctor in front, his daughter walking daintily on the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... instinct with power; the face, from the broad upright brow to the firm chin, was alight with thought and intelligence. But the blue eyes, usually so clear in their grave gaze, held a shadow to-day, a curious look of shyness, one might almost say shamefacedness. Mrs. Merryweather gazed at him, and thought her own thoughts, but she knew her husband's ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... became one of the first literary men of his day and one of the most brilliant talkers, rich in ideas, overflowing in language, subtle without obscurity, suggestive, and satisfying; yet always retaining a certain shyness, and "able to say anything, but good-morning." Yet he was soon carried away by the excitement of conversation and of discussion. He had a trick of tapping his interlocutor on the knee, by way of giving point to his remarks, and the Empress Catharine II. of Russia complained that he mauled ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for this domesticity being that he "had to study longer than Fred did, to keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred possessed—if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all of the best-looking girl students in the place—knew them well enough, it appeared, to speak of ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... in service in Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigour which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... her as a poor relation, a mere housekeeper, and to treat her as a person of no great account. On the other hand, the majority of the merrymakers deemed her, no doubt, a stiff stuck-up thing; whereas she would in fact have given much to break through her shyness and accost them. For these reasons, the meal over, she was glad to pay her sixpence and escape from the throng back to ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I was intoxicated with a felicity which seemed too immense, and yet I felt melancholy, but Henriette, who looked sad likewise, had no reproach to address to me. Our sadness was in reality nothing but shyness; we loved each other, but we had had no time to become acquainted. We exchanged only a few words, there was nothing witty, nothing interesting in our conversation, which struck us both as insipid, and we found more pleasure in the thoughts which filled our ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... distracted by the eccentric performances of the kreta, one might well have admired the scenery. Close at hand, the road teems with fascinating pictures of native life. Only occasionally does one see a really beautiful face, but there is a pretty shyness such as one seldom sees on the roads of a European country. Although we read of the thirty millions of people in Java, there is still, apparently, room for more, and nearly every woman has a brown baby slung ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... increased now by my eldest brother's unexpected generosity; and by dint of these violent mental exercises I had reduced my mind to a comfortable stupor by the time I reached the school gates. There I was overcome by shyness, and although I saw lights in the form-rooms and heard the voices of boys, I stood awkwardly in the playground, not knowing where I ought to go. The mist in the air surrounded the lights with a halo, and my nostrils were filled with the acrid smell ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Thrush you may hear more often than see—he is a will-o'-the-wisp for shyness, whether on his journeys or about home. But remember three things about him: his back is evenly olive (if you do not know what this dark-greenish color is, look at the olives you have on the table, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... to write to him, and set his heart and her own at rest. But a great shyness and timidity paralyzed her, and she gave up the idea of writing, and had hitherto been hoping they might meet, and she might reinstate herself by some one cunning word. And now the end of it all was, that she was driven away from Raby Hall without ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... she began, defending him involuntarily. "But, Baldos, you forget that I am the princess!" She drew away in sudden shyness, her cheeks rosy once more, her eyes filling with the most distressingly unreasonable tears. He did not move for what seemed hours to her. She heard the sharp catch of his breath and felt the repression that was mastering some ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... there came a sudden lull as they scrambled to their feet. Jim was the only one she did not know, and for some reason the sight of this slender young woman in black, with a white rose in her dress, caused him a fit of unusual shyness. Ikey himself could not have been more abashed than he was when Carl ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... be the original singed cat, for assuredly he possessed more attractive qualities inside than were exteriorly visible, and from a first shyness that did not lack charm he expanded briskly. After visiting a "dry" cafe, to seal this fortunate acquaintanceship—as he insisted upon calling it—he warmed up to us and we to him, with the result that his bags were ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... to definite rain, and Louise Eden accepted "a lift" on the Doctor's car, as he had to pass her gate in going home. His shyness soon wore off as the girl talked to him with complete ease and simplicity, first of some of his poor patients, then of herself and her interest ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... our shyness and strangeness wore off. We no longer sang with the soldiers, but segregated ourselves into congenial groups; and under the electric lights the promenade deck looked, for all the world, like the piazza of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... relating to me in the interval between the meetings and the formation of the new ministry, which produced some alteration.... In confirmation of the notion I have recorded above, I am distinct in the recollection that there was a shyness in Peel's manner and a downward eye, when he opened the conversation and made the offer, not usual with ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... shyness about meeting this formidable conclave? Remember you have at least two good ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... on one of these expeditions. Lottie's beauty was still pale and unripe, like those sheathed buds which will come suddenly to their glory of blossom, not like rosebuds which have a loveliness of their own; but the young man was struck by the boyish mixture of shyness and bluntness with which she greeted him, and attracted by the great eyes which gazed at him from under Robin's shabby cap. When he and Horace went to the Blakes' he amused himself idly enough with the school-girl, while his cousin flirted with Addie. He laughed one day when Mrs. Blake was unusually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the reply; "he have not told me nor his mother the young woman's name; but he said if he got her he should be the luckiest fellow that ever was." Here, from intense confusion and shyness, Laura dropped the book, St. George picked it up for her, and nobody thought of connecting the fall with the story, the unconscious Nicholas continuing. "So thereby his mother judged that it would come to something, for that's what a young chap mostly says ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... criticism, if she chose to make any. She proved, however, a most charming critic, her shafts falling mainly upon herself, for she declared that her novel seemed unworthy of its elegant new dress. She conceived a shyness toward this quiet youth, and blushed when the striking situations and bold language of her tale came into the conversation. It was so different ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... willingly. Yuranigh and he scarcely understood a word of what each other said, and yet the former had the address to overcome the usual difficulties to intercourse between strange natives, and their shyness to white men, and to induce this native thus to become our guide. He took us to the Culgoa, which we made at about seven miles from the Balonne, and I was so much pleased with the willing service and true civility of this native, that I presented him with an iron ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of shyness, modesty, shame, and blushing as due originally to "self-attention directed to personal appearance, in relation to the opinion of others," appears to me to be a very good statement of some of the aspects of the process, but hardly an adequate explanation ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... where people of whom he was fond were concerned. It was this which drew to him those who had intelligence enough to see beyond his sometimes rather forbidding manner, and to realize that his blunt speech was largely due to shyness. In spite of his prejudice against Edward, he could put himself into Mr Waller's place, and see the thing from ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... day she left London, Herminia thought to herself she had never seen her child look so absolutely lovely. The unwonted union of blue eyes with that olive-gray skin gave a tinge of wayward shyness to her girlish beauty. The golden locks had ripened to nut-brown, but still caught stray gleams of nestling sunlight. 'Twas with a foreboding regret that Herminia kissed Dolly on both peach-bloom cheeks at parting. She almost fancied her child must be slipping ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... to the rendezvous on the after boat-deck. Something held her back—an emotion of shyness new to her. But on Saturday afternoon, Dan ran the blockade of the after companion-way, penetrated brazenly to the first-class promenade, joined her where she stood leaning against the rail, and led her away resolutely to a seat on ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... about to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room with her long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang, and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each felt at the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch of expression to meet again in ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... knew him as the poet, he would be still more free to make his jokes and his compliments to all those fine people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... not out of love for him. Look into yourself! [With a certain shyness of expression.] Search out all that lies under—and ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... made mention of this remarkable fact, she flashed up at him one of her eager, brilliant glances. Then, meeting something more than usual in his look, she quickly dropped her eyes again, and over her manner there came that mystifying air of shyness and reserve, as if some invisible attendant had wrapped about her an impenetrable veil. In their early acquaintance he had often noticed that quick and baffling change in her manner, and had liked it, because it seemed to tell of a refined and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... it for granted, that upon first going from school to Oxford, and entering into society different, in many respects, from any that you have hitherto been accustomed to, you feel some of that shyness which belongs to the character of most Englishmen. I should be sorry if you did not. You probably feel diffident, too, of your ability to bear your part in general conversation, and an apprehension of being, on that ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... meal was in progress they all talked at once. The children after their first shyness had worn off were entranced when they learnt that their guests had, only a few months ago, been in a real ship on the real sea. Marcella, in turn, was fascinated in watching the manoeuvre with which Jerry concealed the fact that there ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... youthful proficiency as a jockey, the regulation seat of the dragoon, to be acquired on the back of a rough cavalry trooper, was an accomplishment which he never mastered. If it be added that his shyness never thawed, that he was habitually silent, it is hardly surprising to find that he had few intimates at the Academy. Caring nothing for the opinion of others, and tolerant of association rather than seeking it, his self-contained nature asked neither ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... being, neither girl nor woman, had magically been evolved. Could it be possible that she loved me still? My complacency had vanished; suddenly I had become the aggressor, if only I had known how to "aggress"; but in her presence I was seized by an accursed shyness that paralyzed my tongue, and the things I had planned to say were left unuttered. It was something—though I did not realize it—to be able to feel ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... never die!" said I, with an emphasis which went from my heart to hers. Then all her shyness fled. She knew me; and we shook hands, and smiled into each other's eyes with the smile of kindred ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... which the woman brought him, and the children, stricken with sudden shyness, had gathered together to give the stranger that mute, earnest, so soon-finished scrutiny characteristic of childhood. For a child, like a dog, is wont to judge by instinct rather than reason. Schmucke looked up; his eyes rested ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... exclaimed Mollie, quite forgetting her shyness. 'How I wish Cyril would come in! He does so love things to be nice—he and Kester are so particular. Mamma!' glancing up at a window above them, 'won't you please to hurry down? May I sit there, Miss Ross? I always pour out the tea, because mamma does not like the trouble, and Kester always ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... exercises without relaxation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as the sensible Lady Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a walk, there was a prayer-meeting. Cowper himself was made to do violence to his intense shyness by leading in prayer. He was also made to visit the poor at once on spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which Thornton, the religious philanthropist, supplied Newton and his disciples with means. This, which ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... its unpreparedness for recruits. Men were talking very freely in the club; one of the temporary effects of the war in its earlier stages was to produce a partial thaw in the constitutional British shyness; and men who had glowered at Mr. Britling over their lunches and had been glowered at by Mr. Britling in silence for years now started conversations ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... when asked to repeat or sing a hymn, and I did so now. I suppose the words of the hymn pleased him, for from that time he always had me to dine with him; and he had such a kind manner, that I soon recovered from my shyness, and used to sit on his knee and prattle away to him as if he had been your grandpapa, and I had known him all my life. It made Dolly so pleased, too, for she said her master was beginning to look quite like his old self; and she only hoped your grandmamma would ...
— Bluff Crag - or, A Good Word Costs Nothing • Mrs. George Cupples
... expected his pupil to learn, his expectations were surpassed. The girl beyond clearing up the room had nothing to do, and she devoted herself with enthusiasm to this work. Once she had mastered simple words and felt her own progress, her shyness as to her ignorance left her. She always carried her book in her pocket, and took to asking girls the pronunciation of larger words, and begging them to read a few lines to her; and sitting on the door-step poring over her book, she would salute any passer-by with: "Please tell ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... door for a few moments. She was torn with conflicting fears and emotions. A strange feeling of oppression and shyness had come over her. It had seemed so easy to say that she would be married at once, to-morrow, to Jervis. But she had not known that she would have to ask Jervis's consent. She had supposed, foolishly, that it would all be settled for ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... church. For though a dog is all very well on a gravel path, and shows no disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror (should you be one of a congregation—alone, shyness is out of the question), a dog destroys the service completely. So do these women—though separately devout, distinguished, and vouched for by the theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek of their husbands. Heaven knows why it is. For one thing, thought ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... brought her back, he sat down beside Anne. Shyness still chained her, but he chatted easily. Anne could not have told why she was shy. In the stable she had felt at her ease with him. But then she had not seen Eve or Winifred. It was the women who had seemed to ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... leaving school today—a solitary figure, clad in the latest fashion, moodily pacing the Hammersmith Road—and asked myself "where among these is the girlish gush of a Bentley—the passionate volubility of a Vernede, the half-ethereal shyness of a Fordham?!!" I admitted that we had had misfortunes, one of us had a serious illness, another had had a very good story in the Strand Magazine: but I thought that a debating club of 12 members that had given three presidents to the University Unions, had not done ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Zoological Gardens are very shy and restless; when alarmed they dash and leap about their dens and utter a short guttural cry somewhat resembling a bark. This shyness is partly to be attributed to their imperfect vision by day, and partly to their resemblance in character to the wolf, whose treachery and suspicious manners in confinement must have struck every one who has gazed on this "gaunt savage" in his den in the Regent's Park. The specimens ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Lionel's shyness fell away from him with disconcerting suddenness. "Why are you anxious?" he demanded. "What do you ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... going. I caught a little quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We greeted them as they passed, with a shy "Good luck!" and they smiled shyly back, surprised, of course, to see a couple of women on that road. But there was no shyness towards the General. It was very evident that the relations between him and them were as good as affection and confidence on both sides ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lips were quite white, and if Lucis had been a man of quick perceptions he would have realised, her face must have shown him, that she loathed him. He was dense, however, and though he commented on her silence later on it was evident that he attributed it to shyness. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... and clove to the roof of his mouth when he essayed their utterance. Then had come an inspiration. The stirring narration of how the Newmarket cadets had charged the Northern guns was to have been his cue, carrying him with the momentum of its intrinsic heroism over the ramparts of tongue-tied shyness. That was what he had essayed this morning, aided and abetted by the tuneful fragrance of June in Virginia. The stage had been set—his courage had mounted—and before he had reached his magnificent peroration, she had laughed at him. Ye Gods! She had affronted the erstwhile Confederate ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... man by ther name of Brent back thar in Coal City ter kinderly see ef anybody along ther road I come hed any timber they sought ter sell." The giant still spoke with a hulking shyness. "I hain't l'arned nothin', because I come through soon in ther mornin' an' ther roads was empty, but I reckon I'd better send him a message ter ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... said to Mrs. Stimpson, with a touch of shyness, "that you will all give me the pleasure of dining with us this evening? You see, you must have something to eat ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... doubted not but there was some Foundation for his Reports of the rest of the Company, as well as for the whimsical Account he gave of me. The next Morning at Day-break we were all called; and I, who know my own natural Shyness, and endeavour to be as little liable to be disputed with as possible, dressed immediately, that I might make no one wait. The first Preparation for our Setting-out was, that the Captain's Half-Pike was placed near the Coach-man, and a Drum behind the Coach. In the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... she took him unreservedly into her heart. Ruth observed, idly, that she never called him "Mr. Winfield." At first she spoke of him as "your friend" and afterward, when he had asked her to, she yielded, with an adorable shyness, and called him Carl. ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... pavement instead of looking at me. By this time I had made up my mind about him. He was not only a gentleman beyond all doubt, but a shy gentleman as well. His bluntness and his odd remarks were, as I thought, partly efforts to disguise his shyness, and partly refuges in which he tried to forget his own sense of it. I answered his audacious proposal amiably and pleasantly. "You would only lose your way again," I said, "and I should have to take you back to the inn ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the daytime. Never had I seen such a perfect embodiment of grace and elegance as that boy as he stood there for a moment poised to the throw; the afternoon sunshine warm and strong on his bunched brown hair, a girlish flush of shyness on his handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs, clear cut against the dusky background beyond. And now the javelin was going. Surely the mystic would think better of it at the last moment! No! the initiate held his ground with tight-shut ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... for his son he cherished a yet higher ambition and one which he did not conceal. He said openly that he intended him to be Prime Minister of his country. The knowledge of this provoked many jests among the boy's friends and caused him no slight embarrassment. It conspired with the shyness and reserve, which were innate in him, to win him from the outset a reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... later Lynda took Ann home. They went shopping first and the child was dazzlingly excited. She forgot her restraint and shyness in the fascinating delirium of telling what she wanted with a pretty sure belief that she would get it. No wonder that she was taken out of herself and broke upon Truedale's astonished gaze as quite a different child from ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... quietly, "I rather like people who are not too sure of themselves, and I think all the more of Ranald for his shyness ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... smaller children commenced to thaw out and lose their shyness, and talk. How they did talk! Myron said nothing (but that was expected of Myron). When at last Rosanna was tipping up the second thermos bottle to see if there was a drop of tea left, and they were all eating the last cookies very, very slowly, partly to make them last and ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... once absurdly young and a little frightened—this tall and stately Penelope—while a faint blush-rose colour ran swiftly up beneath the pallor of her skin, and her eyes—those nice, humorous brown eyes of hers that always looked the world so kindly and honestly in the face—held the troubled shyness of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... big mare forward till he rode beside the sergeant. A tall, half-lanky lad he was with the eager prescience of youth, its dreams and something of its shyness hidden in the dark alertness of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... ladies to play at hide and seek. I saw one stern-visaged gentleman tormented in this way till he looked ready to give the child its "final quietus." [Footnote: American juveniles are, generally speaking, completely destitute of that agreeable shyness which prevents English and Scotch children from annoying strangers.] There were angry people who had lost their portmanteaus, and were ransacking the state-rooms in quest of them, and indolent people who lay on the sofas reading novels and chewing tobacco. Some gentleman, taking no heed ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... to receive him, she was wondering how she should greet him. Blushingly she recalled the impassioned kiss he had pressed on her lips—why it was only yesterday. It had seemed ages and ages ago, so much had intervened. Mingled with a shyness that arose from her vivid memories was also a shade of indignation. Why had he not told her? Did he not trust her? She resolved to punish him for not taking her into his confidence by an air of coldness toward him. ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... few years I had crows, but their nests are an irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement was broken up. They grew so wonted as to throw off a great part of their shyness, and to tolerate my near approach. One very hot day I stood for some time within twenty feet of a mother and three children, who sat on an elm bough over my head gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All birds ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... said with a shyness she could not overcome. "Indeed I was startled when you came in, but of course it's pleasant to see you safely back. I knew Colonel Challoner had given orders for you to be traced if possible, and that you had been found, but that was all Mrs. Keith told me. I suppose she didn't know—didn't ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... an oddly indirect way, as if she had been returning against her will. At the same time she looked up in his face, with an absence of shyness which showed, like the snatching away of his stick, that she was familiarly acquainted with him, and accustomed to take liberties. And yet there was an expression of uneasy expectation in her round attentive eyes. "Do you want it back again?" ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... curious visitor from the caves—a small black cat, which was tame enough to wander between our legs as we sat round the fire, but too wary to be caught. I can hardly imagine a prospector carrying a cat as companion, and yet how else did it get there? Its shyness inclined us to think it had strayed from civilisation. Jim tried to catch it one evening, and not only got scratched and bitten for his trouble, but so startled the beast that it never returned. Our party was now increased to five; for an extra hand, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... you speak to me," she said. A new timidity came into her tone; she raised her head. "I—somehow when you spoke—I felt that you—you were honest." She stammered again, but Lansing's cool voice brought her out of her difficulty and painful shyness. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... He did not understand French, but he knew we were speaking of his love affair, and he was not afflicted with shyness. As he accompanied us to the village he played again, and I read his nature in the soft sounds ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... for the evening simply but tastefully attired in white, looking very sweet and fair. She was evidently disposed to be on friendly terms with her new relatives, yet clung with a pretty sort of shyness to her young husband, who perceived it with delight, regarding her ever and anon with ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... which he was drinking, and a heady elation in the currents of his veins. She had slipped in and out of the room as he had talked with the patriarch, after supper, flitting like some illusive shadow of shyness. He had had hardly a score of words with her, but the future would ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... recollections and comparisons of cities and countries they had visited at separate times; but neither she nor he mentioned the chief subject of their thoughts. She refrained because of a strange yet natural shyness of a woman who has found herself; and he, because from his angle of vision it was best that Warrington should pass out of her life as suddenly and mysteriously as he had entered it. Had he spoken frankly he would have saved Elsa many a bitter heartache, ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... pick out from my fireplace the thick branch that sheltered it; for I often watched the birds coming and going. I have no doubt that Killooleet would have welcomed me there without fear; but his mate never laid aside her shyness about it, never went to it directly when I was looking, and I knew he would like me better if I respected her ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... a very troublesome and vicious habit of turning round suddenly,—we do not here allude to shyness, but restiveness,—without exhibiting any previous symptom of their intention. A horse soon ascertains that the left hand is weaker than the right, and, consequently, less able to oppose him; he, therefore, turns ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... Raymond seemed to have an instinctive perception of the point on the horizon toward which we ought to direct our course. Antelope were bounding on all sides, and as is always the case in the presence of buffalo, they seemed to have lost their natural shyness and timidity. Bands of them would run lightly up the rocky declivities, and stand gazing down upon us from the summit. At length we could distinguish the tall white rocks and the old pine trees that, as we well remembered, were just above ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... back I had never believed any one could be so delicate and lovely to another as she. I drove her once, upon a journey, and she was shy with me, although she was a lady, and above me. She blushed and looked down. And the strange thing was that she made me feel a kind of shyness myself, although I was only her servant. Only by looking at me with her two eyes when she spoke to me, she showed me treasures and beauty beyond what I knew before; I remember it still. Ay, here I sit, remembering it yet, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... set at work and sent regularly to the Sunday-schools, where they are taught what none of them have been taught before—to read and write. In a short time they became expert at their work; they lose their sullen shyness, and their physiognomy becomes comparatively open and cheerful. Their families are relieved from the temptations to theft and other shameful courses which accompany the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... precisely the mingling of banter, and earnestness, of archness, devotion, shyness and fervor implied in the Latin words as ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Lucy, for she saw the boy reddening with embarrassment and she went across and shook hands with him, taking in with a glance his coarse strange clothes and his soiled hands and face and his tangled hair, but pleased at once with his shyness and his dark eyes. She was really never surprised at any caprice of her brother, and she did not show much interest when the Major went on to tell where he had found the lad—for she would have thought it quite possible that he might have taken the boy out of a circus. As for Chad, he was ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... though somewhat exaggerated in your statement—(because if it was quite as bad as you say, you know, I never should have seen you ... and I have!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No—it has not been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with both eyes wide open—only that by a supernatural influence they won't stay open with you as they ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... consent; before, in short, it has become an "understood thing" all over town—there are such moments, when the lady throws off all reserve, and by a look, a smile, a blush, a half-articulate word, repays her lover for months, if he is fool enough to court so long, of prudish and affected shyness, past or future. These moments occur but seldom, even in the most patriarchal courtships, and it is well that it is so. Love is a fiery steed, and should always be ridden with a curb bridle, both before and after marriage. (I am sorry ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... and crime flourishes simply because every one knows that nobody expects anything better, so in a community in which sexual problems are the lessons of the youth and the dinner talk of the adult, the feeling of respect for man's deepest emotions fades away. Man and woman lose the instinctive shyness in touching on this sacred ground, and as the organic desires push and push toward it, the youth soon discovers that the barriers to the forbidden ground are removed and that in their place stands a simple signal with a suggestive word of ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... to conquer that timidity," said Mr. Montague, "by making her answer every stranger who speaks to her; but by taking that office upon yourself, you absolutely encourage the shyness you complain of. Come hither, my little girl," continued he, observing she was retiring upstairs, "and tell the lady what your ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... moving in her bedroom, and she wondered how a sister must feel at the approach of a brother she had not seen for many years. She knew that if she should ever be parted from John or Rupert there would be no shyness at their meeting and no effusion: things would be just as they had been, for she was certain of an affection based on understanding, and now the thought of her brothers kept her warm in spite of the daunting coldness of the ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... him in the face. They were not more than three inches apart, and Jeffrey, gazing into the passionate black eyes, tasting, as it were, the odour of the handsome creature and feeling his breath, was not repelled, but had a sudden shyness before him, as if the man's opinion of him were an attack on his inmost self, an attack of ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... eyes it was evident she was again terrified. Helen was really at a loss what to say. From the little she knew of Rachel's upbringing she supposed that she had been kept entirely ignorant as to the relations of men with women. With a shyness which she felt with women and not with men she did not like to explain simply what these are. Therefore she took the other course ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... were the best stewards he ever had, but they would do anything from wearing a tuxedo to going to a circus. I can never forget Brother I's prayers. Although he was modest and retiring to the point of shyness he was one of the few members in the church at Celestial Bells who could be depended upon to lead in prayer. This was frequently William's experience. Oftener than not the brother who could slap him on the back or sing a bass in the choir that made the chandeliers rattle would turn pale ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... flesh," and I was shy. You'd think my profession would have cured me of being shy, but not a bit. Nervous disease, of course! Ought to be treated as such. Almost universal. Besides, even if he is shy, your governor—even if he's a hundredfold shy, that's no reason for keeping out of England. Shyness is not one of those diseases you can cure by change ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... others. Upon arrival opposite the band, the bugles and drums suddenly commenced with such a clash of cymbals that he seemed rather startled, and he entered the tent in the most undignified manner, with an air of extreme shyness half concealed ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... take these, and do whatever you like with them," Mary said hastily, her voice quivering with shyness and compassion. She began dealing out her thousand-franc notes, and did not stop until she had given one to each of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lessons of my own, I could read a change in Leonora, and perceive mischief in the air. Her extreme quietness when my son entered the apartment, the faint shade of shyness in his manner of addressing her attracted me curiously. He began to linger in our haunts so long and on such frivolous pretexts, that I began seriously to think what was to be done with such a lovesick page. To oppose Fred would be worse than useless. Opposition determined ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
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