"Coy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she minced ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... tendencies were greatly and visibly increased. Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a thorough knowledge of her own heart. Having made up her mind that Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man know his ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... way and made the barriers tight? Next morn I heard their impious voices sing; All up the stairs their blasphemies did ring: "Come forth, O Williams, wherefore thus supine Remain within thy chambers after nine? Come forth, suffer thyself to be admired, And blush not so, coy dean, to be desired." The captive churchman chafes with empty rage, Till some knight-errant free him from his cage. Pale fear and anger sit upon yon face Erst full of love and piety and grace, But not pale fear nor anger will undo The iron might of gimlet and of screw. Grin at the window, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... to finish, but waltzed right in. I danced straight up to that side of beef with the diamonds still on it, and flinging my arms about her, turned a coy ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... enjoyed things—the coy tremble of the tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... dying case; she had neither pain nor sickness. Her appetite was diminished; she knew the reason. It was because she wept so much at night. Her strength was lessened; she could account for it. Sleep was coy and hard to be won; dreams were distressing and baleful. In the far future she still seemed to anticipate a time when this passage of misery should be got over, and when she should once more be calm, though perhaps ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... one remark at a time, and at the end of each assumed an appropriate attitude—coy, Madonna-like, resigned, as the circumstances might require. Mr. Jackson came forward to shake hands, and she turned her languishing ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... scratched gratingly on the tree trunk, and gazed up in ostentatious admiration at the coy Simon Cameron. The Persian, like all his kind, was foolishly open to admiration. Brice's look, his crooning voice, his entertaining fashion of scratching the tree for the cat's amusement all these proved a genuine lure. Down the tree started Simon Cameron, moving backward, and ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... song and swelled her song With maiden coy caprice In a labyrinth of throbs, 120 Pauses, cadences; Clear-noted as a dropping brook, Soft-noted like the bees, Wild-noted as the shivering wind Forlorn through forest trees: Love-noted like the wood-pigeon Who hides herself for love, Yet cannot keep her secret safe, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... my board and lodging, it was covenanted that, without any more ado, I should resign myself to clerical employment at Nantes. The merchant there is a friend of the family, and had offered to demonstrate his friendship by paying me too little to live on. Enfin, Fame has continued coy. The year expires to-night. I have begged a few comrades to attend a valedictory dinner—and at the stroke of ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Brigade, under General Cayley. On the way I was taken up to "Gibraltar" observation post to get a bird's-eye view of the line. Besides my old friends of the 29th Division I saw some of the new boys, especially the 1st Newfoundland Battalion under Colonel Burton, and the 2/1st Coy. of the London Regiment. This was the Newfoundlanders' first day in the trenches and they were very pleased with themselves. They could not understand why they were not allowed to sally forth at once and do the Turks in. The presence of these men from our oldest ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... come to my knowledge, I deem it my duty to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your conduct will be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'tis the most beautiful Snuff he ever put to his Nose. He bought a Pound of it, for which De Suaso charged him at the moderate rate of Four Guineas; and desires to know his Lodging, that he may send his Friends to buy some of this Incomparable Mixture. The Artful Rogue then affects the Coy, says that his Stock of the Snuff is very low, and by degrees raises his price to Eleven Pistoles a Pound, until the English in Brussels have been half-poisoned with his filthy Remnant; when there comes upon the scene a certain Mr. Dubiggin, a rich old English Merchant of the Caraccas, who ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to the bed, she clung still more fondly to Wilhelm, and murmured in coy and halting tones—"Perhaps you have not noticed that everything in this room, except the altar and the priedieu, is new; I had this fresh little nest arranged for us while we were in St. Valery. I hope our rest may be sweet and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... stronger. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... "Give me the beauty that is not too coy," is the Alpha and Omega of his personal creed. How should it have been otherwise? Knowing woman chiefly, as he obviously did, only in the ranks of the demi-monde, he was not likely to regard the fairest face, after ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... talk of my Mr. Jones just as if we were married, because it all comes easier to me in that way. You will see that I absolutely believe in you and I expect that you shall absolutely believe in me. Send you a kiss! Of course I do; I am not at all coy of my favours. You ask Mahomet also as to what he thinks of the strength of my right arm. I examined his face so minutely when I had to fall into his arms on the stage, and there I saw the round mark of my fist, and the swelling all round it. And I thought to myself as I was singing my devotion ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... "The coy potato or the onion browns, The tender steak takes on a nobler hue. I ponder 'mid the falling of the dew, And watch the lapwings circling ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... you preach last Sunday," she said, glowing with interest. He began to look coy. Then her voice changed to something colder than the wind. "The most lamentable sairmon I ever listened to. Neither lairning nor inspiration. And a read ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... up thy treasures, are not all pleasures most sweet, when enhanced by expectation? What were the chase, if the deer dropped at our feet the instant he started from the cover—or what value were there in the love of the maiden, were it yielded without coy delay?" ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... old friends, Dr. Thorne and Miss Dunstable, was the third on the list, but that did not take place till the latter end of September. The lawyers on such an occasion had no inconsiderable work to accomplish, and though the lady was not coy, nor the gentleman slow, it was not found practicable to arrange an earlier wedding. The ceremony was performed at St. George's, Hanover Square, and was not brilliant in any special degree. London at the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... such sustained [113] power. Poetic scholar!—If we must reserve the sacred name of "poet" to a very small number, that humbler but perhaps still rarer title is due indisputably to Mr. Gosse. His work is like exquisite modern Latin verse, into the academic shape of which, discreet and coy, comes a sincere, deeply felt consciousness of modern life, of the modern world as it is. His poetry, according with the best intellectual instincts of our critical age, is as pointed out recently by a clever writer in the ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... Kept, as Danae, in a tower; But yet love, who subtle is, Crept to that, and came to this: Be ye lock'd up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides: Or those babies in your eyes, In their crystal nurseries; Notwithstanding love will win, Or else force a passage in; And as coy be as you can. Gifts will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... to lie a-bed all day and hatch turkey's eggs. The least allusion to this rumour used to drive him well-nigh frantic, and the fatal termination of his duel with young Crofts, which began in wanton mirth, and ended in bloodshed, made men more coy than they had formerly been, of making the fiery little hero the subject of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... O'Hana, in which the maiden was coy and willing, the lover circumspect and eager, or at least thought he was, those around the pair were soon well informed; that is, with the exception of the most interested—O'Iwa and Kwaiba. The marked neglect which now ensued O'Iwa ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... smile is curving o'er her creamy cheek, Her bosom swells with all a lover's joy, When love receives a message that the coy Young love-god made a strong and true heart speak From far-off lands; and like a mountain-peak That loses in one avalanche its cloy Of ice and snow, so doth her breast employ Its hidden store of blushes; and they wreak Destruction, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... whip the hov'ring demons from her brow. Ill-fated Maid! thy guiding spark is fled, And lasting wretchedness awaits thy bed ... Thy bed of straw! for mark, where even now O'er their lost child afflicted parents bow; Their woe she knows not, but perversely coy, Inverted customs yield her sullen joy; Her midnight meals in secresy she takes, Low mutt'ring to the moon, that rising breaks Through night's dark gloom:... oh how much more forlorn Her night, that knows ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... females at first withdraw from the males; they are coy, and have to be sought out, and sometimes held by force. This tracking and grasping of the females by the males has given rise to many different characters in the latter, as, for instance, the larger eyes of the male bee, and especially of the males of the Ephemerids (May-flies), some species ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... summer's heat More thirst for drink than she for this good turn. 92 Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: 'O! pity,' 'gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy: 'Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96 ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... sighed on all day for joy, The prow each pouting wave did leave All smile and song, with sheen and ripple coy, Till the ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... To stay the soul with coy caresses; But he who only loves the True Slays them again, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... if I stand right in his way," said Mrs. Thomas, with a coy glance from under her lashes ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of Lords by men who were desperately endeavouring to prove that the House of Lords consisted of clever men. There is one really good defence of the House of Lords, though admirers of the peerage are strangely coy about using it; and that is, that the House of Lords, in its full and proper strength, consists of stupid men. It really would be a plausible defence of that otherwise indefensible body to point out that the clever men in the Commons, who ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... fresh, crimson lips of hers, that were like a half-opened damask rose. Modesty is apt to go to the wall in camps, and poor little Cigarette's notions of the great passion were very simple, rudimentary, and in no way coy. How should they be? She had tossed about with the army, like one of the tassels to their standards; blowing whichever way the breath of war floated her; and had experienced, or thought she had experienced, as many affairs as the veriest Don ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... learned to draw his sword, wave it dramatically over his head, cheer for a few seconds in monkey talk, then break and dash to the rear. "Paterno" was an easy candidate for second honors. He gave a giddy dance and looked coy. ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... and the poor creature that from morning to night and Sunday to Sunday, in calm and storm, had clung to his rough affections: and the bright eyes, and the winding arms so often trellised over his tremendous form, and the coy tricks and laughter that had cheered so many tired hours. He may have been much of a brute, but he felt that, after all, that sort of thing was denied to dogs and pigs. Before he could translate his thoughts into words or acts a shrewd-looking, curly-haired ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Nay, life is breathed even into inanimate objects by the imagination of Slavic girls and youths. A Servian youth contracts a regular league of friendship and brotherhood with a bramble-bush, in order to induce it to catch his coy love's clothes, when she flees before his kisses. Even the stars and planets sympathize with human beings, and live in constant intercourse with them and their affairs. Stars become messengers; a proud maiden ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... at his sword for a space, but finding that weapon coy and unwilling to leave its sheath, he raised his helmet gracefully and respectfully to the General. His manner was ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... overwhelm him for a moment. Certainly of late Marjorie had been uncertain, coy, and very hard to please. Marjorie had suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, being in a very bad ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... and put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl's eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning were as far from her as was active, tumultuous joy. Calm thankfulness ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Here in this arena the courting is done, the male bird chasing his mate up and down, bowing his pretty head and playing the agreeable generally, while she indulges in all manner of airs and graces, pretends to be very coy, and acts the coquette to perfection. But her lover's devotion conquers at last, and in due time the fair flirt surrenders, yields up her liberty and settles down as a dutiful wife and loving mother, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... society was the advancement of universal brotherhood, of liberty and equality, the annihilation of those arbitrary barriers called national frontiers—in short, a society for the encouragement of the millennium, which, however, appeared to be coy. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... melody, pitched in a higher key, yet not unlike Niagara. You hear the cardinal's rich flute-like song of "What, what cheer!" ringing from a wild grapevine. Again he seems to say "Come, come here!" Whether it be an invitation to all mankind or just a message to his coy mate you know he learned it from the same teacher as Niagara, and their voices are alike full of rarest melody. The leisurely golden chant of the wood thrush, where the misty spray and cool shadows enfold you, seems like a spirit voice speaking audibly to you, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... then, April, Iris' daughter, Born between the storm and sun; Coy as nymph ere Pan hath caught her,— Thou then, April, Iris' daughter. Now are light, and rustling water; Now ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... swimming bath and a French cafe. That, of course, is a serious consideration. I am well aware that those responsible for her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate accents to believe that if she had hit end on she would have survived. Which, by a sort of coy implication, seems to mean that it was all the fault of the officer of the watch (he is dead now) for trying to avoid the obstacle. We shall have presently, in deference to commercial and industrial interests, a new ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... made to pacify the Court of Chancery. All the Beresfords came up to town, except Nan, who remained to look after the Brighton house. The chief difficulty of the moment was to discover the whereabouts of Mr. John Hanbury. That gentleman was coy; and wanted to find out something of what was likely to happen to him if he emerged from his hiding-place. At last it was conveyed to him that he was only making matters worse; then he wrote from certain furnished apartments in a house on the south-west side of Regent's Park; finally, there was ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... and, with them, the sweetness, of this young girl were charming and perplexing to Sir Basil. Girls so assured he had found harsh, disagreeable and, almost always, ugly; they had been the sort of girl one avoided. And girls so lovely had usually been coy and foolish. This girl walked like a queen, looked at one like a philosopher, smiled at one like an angel. He fixed his mind on her last words, rallying his sense of quizzical paternity to meet ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... when I heard my daughter scream in the kitchen. Whereupon I straightway ran in thither, and was shocked and affrighted when I saw the sheriff himself standing in the corner with his arm round my child her neck; he, however, presently let her go, and said, "Aha, reverend Abraham, what a coy little fool you have for a daughter! I wanted to greet her with a kiss, as I always used to do, and she struggled and cried out as if I had been some young fellow who had stolen in upon her, whereas I might be her father twice over." As I answered naught, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... yesterday, which seemed to challenge me to find her a second time. In the end I was vexed, and resolved to be even with her by not visiting the wood for some time. A display of indifference on my part would, I hoped, result in making her less coy ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... from the main pursuits of his life in poetry, and the volume before us contains some forty illustrations of his abilities, as a worshipper of the muse whose temples are most thronged, but who is most coy and most chary of her inspiration. They have for the most part been previously printed in "The Token," or in literary journals, but a few are now published the first time. In typographical and pictorial elegance the book is unique. It is an exhibition of the success of the first ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No, no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could not read a ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... other figure could be mistaken for hers. By all the gods ever worshipped here, she is the loveliest woman I ever saw, but as coy as a maid of fifteen. The fact that she secludes herself so rigidly only stimulates curiosity, and I have sworn a solemn oath to make her acquaintance; for it is something novel in my experience to have my overtures rejected, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Bostonianism rule? Shall Love teach Browning in his school? Or shall coy glances, passion-rich, Compel my ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... indifferent, or whether the young ladies were coy, none of these official flirtations came to anything. He seemed not to care for one more than another; he laughed and joked with them all, and had an official manner with each which served somewhat like a disparity of years in putting them at their ease ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stealthy like a bird of prey, All tense the muscles of her seemly flanks; She, the coy creature that the idle day Sees idly riding in the ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... tenant in the chicken-coop, once a gay and dapper young cock, bearing him so bravely among the coy hens. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... would be issued to the families of the gentry in the nearest counties, to attend a great ball at Elmwood. The old house would be filled from garret to cellar, and the hospitable homes of nearby friends would open to take in the overflow of guests. Dames and maidens coy, clad in the quaint and picturesque colonial costume, with powdered hair and patches, in richly brocaded gowns and satin slippers, made stately courtesy to gay dandies and jovial squires arrayed in coats of many colors, broidered vests, knee breeches and silken hose, brilliant buckles ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... prevail; No more the smith his dusky brown shall clear, 245 Relax his pond'rous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; Nor the coy maid, half willing to be press'd, Shall kiss the cup to pass ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... wantonness to kiss the fragrant reeds that grow upon the rivers' banks, yet of such limpid transparency that one's form could be seen in their liquid depths as if reflected in a mirror. These were surrounded by long silken lashes—now drooping in coy modesty, anon rising in youthful gaiety and disclosing the laughing eyes but just before concealed beneath them. Eyebrows like the willow leaf; cheeks of snowy whiteness, yet tinged with the gentlest colouring of the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Sisters of the sacred well That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string; Hence with denial vain and coy excuse: So may some gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destined urn: And as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to my ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... glorious lot; For thee Edina culls her evening sweets, And showers their odours on thy candid sheets, Whose Hue and Fragrance to thy work adhere— This scents its pages, and that gilds its rear. [75] Lo! blushing Itch, coy nymph, enamoured grown, Forsakes the rest, and cleaves to thee alone, And, too unjust to other Pictish men, Enjoys thy ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... environs will please you no less. The country immediately surrounding it is ravishing; the hedges are full of flowers, honeysuckles, roses, box, and many enchanting plants. It is like an English garden, designed by some great architect. This rich, coy nature, so untrodden, with all the grace of a bunch of violets or a lily of the valley in the glade of a forest, is framed by an African desert banked by the ocean,—a desert without a tree, an herb, a bird; where, on sunny days, the laboring paludiers, clothed in white and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... source of every joy. He envied not, he never thought of kings; Nor from those appetites sustain'd annoy, That chance may frustrate, or indulgence cloy; Nor Fate his calm and humble hopes beguiled; He mourn'd no recreant friend, nor mistress coy, For on his vows the blameless Phoebe smiled, And her alone he loved, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... of beauty she to sight appears * And, lovely-coy, she mocks all loveliness; And when he fronts her favour and her smile * A-morn, the Sun of day in clouds ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Charles Burpee, of Sheffield, writes me that there were about two hundred families who at this time found homes along the river. Some of their names were: Perley, Barker, Burpee, Stickney, Smith, Wasson, Bridges, Upton, Palmer, Coy, Estey, Estabrooks, Pickard, Hayward, Nevers, Hartt, Kenney, Coburn, Plummer, Sage, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... irregular shape, but a mile long and two miles wide, slowly lifted themselves from a horizontal position to a vertical one, thus converting themselves from blankets into curtains. Yet behind and through them,—as a coy beauty half reveals, half conceals, her charms,—so the walls and buttes, the pinnacles and buttresses, took on a new and delicate beauty, a subtleness of charm and refinement that only such a veiling ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... but they are broad and determinate; and, when found, vindicate themselves. Still, in all this erroneous subtilisation, and these abortive efforts, Kant perceived a grasping at some real idea—fugitive indeed and coy, which had for the present absolutely escaped; but he caught glimpses of it continually in the rear; he felt its necessity to any account of the human understanding that could be satisfactory to one who had ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... same time give it. To be pleased one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you. Paris is indisputably the seat of the GRACES; they will even court you, if you are not too coy. Frequent and observe the best companies there, and you will soon be naturalized among them; you will soon find how particularly attentive they are to the correctness and elegance of their language, and to the graces of their enunciation: they would even call the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Laura's coy smile hinted many things. "I should say so. Since the very first day in church. He said—but I don't like to tell ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... lov'd them a whole summer long: 250 And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, And still the cup was full,—while he, afraid Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid Due adoration, thus began to adore; Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure: "Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee! For pity do not this sad heart belie— Even as thou vanishest so I shall die. 260 Stay! though ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... degree to see her bustling about, preparing for the wedding as if it would take place as a matter of course. Mrs. Whately's affectionate smiles and encouraging words were even harder to endure. That good lady acted as if Miss Lou were a timid and coy maiden, who merely needed heartening and reassuring in order to face a brief ordeal, and then all would be well. Her cousin gallantly lifted her hand to his lips and then rode away with part of his men, saying cheerfully, "I'll manage ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... him see it without being rude; but the blindness of egotism and vast self-appreciation was upon him and he thought her only charmingly coy; probably with the intent to thus conceal her ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... enhanced by a glimpse she caught of a restless fawn, glancing in the distance across the avenue, as he silently changed the tree under which he slept?—Then the gentle breeze would enter her window, laden with sweet scents of which he had just been rifling the coy flowers beneath, in their dewy repose, tended and petted during the day by her own delicate hand!—Beautiful moon!—cold and chaste in thy skyey palace, studded with brilliant and innumerable gems, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... twenty-five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Harmouth it's improving your mind. And so," added Coy, "we run to reading-clubs, and we all go fierce, winter after winter, to see who'll get the 'severest.' There's a set outside of the faculty that descends to charades and music and inconceivably low intellectual depths; and some of our girls sneak off and get in there once in a while, like ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... have been display'd. "Then had my tears been seen; then had he view'd "My raptur'd countenance; then had I spoke "Far more than power of letters can convey. "My arms around his neck I then had thrown "Howe'er unwilling; and, had he been coy, "In dying posture I his feet had clasp'd; "And stretch'd before him life demanding, all "Had I achiev'd. Perchance though, by the boy, "My messenger commission'd, I have fail'd: "Aptly perhaps he enter'd not; perhaps, "And much I fear, improper hours he chose; "Nor sought a vacant time, when ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... bit, and then Hilda gets up and says she's going to the ladies' room. She doesn't act coy about it, the way most girls do when they're sitting ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... maid And fresh as any flower, Whom Harpalus the herdman prayed To be his paramour. Harpalus and eke Corin Were herdmen, both yfere; And Phylida could twist and spin, And thereto sing full clear. But Phylida was all too coy For Harpalus to win; For Corin was her only joy, Who forced her not a pin. How often would she flowers twine, How often garlands make, Of cowslips and of columbine, And all for Corin's sake! But Corin, he had hawks to lure, And forced more the field; Of lovers' law he took no cure, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... the artist voweth lover's vows To Art, in manhood maketh her his spouse. Well if her charms yet hold for him such joy As when he craved some boon and she was coy! ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to the flamenco music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the fandango, the bolero, the malaguena, the chaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate abandonment ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... rendre a ma maison a Londres. Sur ce temps-la, s'il vous plaira d'envoyer v^{re} filz vers moy, il sera le bien venu. Son traittement rendra tesmoinage de l'estime que je fais de vostre amitie. De vous envoyer des nouvelles, ce seroyt d'envoyer Noctuas Athenas. Tout est coy icy. La mort de Concini a rendu la France heureuse. Mais l'Italie est en danger d'estre exposee a la tirannie d'Espagne. Je vous baise les mains, et suis, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... No. Coy Conveyancing would not come to Mr. Grewgious. She was wooed, not won, and they went their several ways. But an Arbitration being blown towards him by some unaccountable wind, and he gaining great credit in it as one indefatigable in seeking out right and doing ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... in the courts of the Divine Architect, I dismiss all modes of conveyance, and with well-nailed shoes, rough clothes, a staff, and a lunch, I take the kingdom by force. When once in, I am royally entertained; for though coy and apparently hard to woo, Nature is a most delightful companion when once you ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... littoral, beach, strand, bank. Shorten, abridge, abbreviate, curtail, truncate, syncopate. Show (noun), display, ostentation, parade, pomp, splurge. Show, exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... afraid of Madame Schontz, who really loved him for himself, but he had supplanted a friend in the heart of a Marquise. This Marquise, a lady nowise coy, sometimes dropped in unexpectedly at his rooms in the evening, arriving veiled in a hackney coach; and she, as a literary woman, allowed herself to ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... however, Were my hump made a mountain. Bless him, God! Pour everlasting bounties on his head! Make Croesus jealous of his treasury, Achilles of his arms, Endymion Of his fresh beauties,—though the coy one lay, Blushing beneath Diana's earliest kiss, On grassy Latmos; and may every good, Beyond man's sight, though in the ken of heaven, Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes; My heart is beating with a lighter pulse; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... was not lynched in May only because the prominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of the penitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white woman in the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burned alive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence. Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the Chicago Inter Ocean, ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... blushed, applying fork and spoon, in coy confusion, to the remains of the nectarine ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for what greater matter is there in "I will in no wise cast out," if another stood by that could receive them? But here appears the glory of Christ, that none but he can save. And here appears his love, that though none can save but he, yet he is not coy in saving. "But him that comes to me," says he, "I will in no ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... or impudence enough to venture from my concealment; indeed, I felt like an arrant poacher, until I read one or two of Ovid's Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself as some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood nymph of whom I was in pursuit. There is something extremely delicious in these early awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel, even at this moment, the thrilling of my boyish bosom, whenever by chance I caught a glimpse of her white frock ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... which female delicacy is to be ascribed. If we attend, however, to the whole animal creation, if we consider it attentively wherever it falls under our observation, it will discover to us, that in the female there is a greater degree of delicacy or coy reserve than in the male. Is not this a proof, that, through the wide extent of creation, the seeds of delicacy are more liberally bestowed upon females than ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... there's just three sorts of 'em. There's Snorters—the goers, you know—the sort that go rampaging round, looking for insults, and naturally finding them; and then there's fools; and they're mostly screeching when they're not smirking—the uncertain-coy-and-hard-to-please variety, you know," he chuckled, "and then," he added seriously, "there's the right sort, the sort you tell things to. They're ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... dear disdains And dulcet coy defeats And strifes fond lovers use To fire their hearts—but ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... prove As passive to the breath of Love. 20 In tender accents, faint and low, Well-pleas'd I hear the whisper'd 'No!' The whispered 'No'—how little meant! Sweet Falsehood that endears Consent! For on those lovely lips the while 25 Dawns the soft relenting smile, And tempts with feign'd dissuasion coy The gentle violence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to go on with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others had been there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said other things which grated ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... charm'd A tumult to his heart, and a new life Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife, 530 But for her comforting! unhappy sight, But meeting her blue orbs! Who, who can write Of these first minutes? The unchariest muse To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse. ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... covering him with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed I am to hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez I hev. It looks as though I 'd b'en doin' the coortin'. I did n't drame that I 'd b'en able ter draw yer ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... hardly seen Lady Ethel since the evening when she had yielded a coy assent to his not (it must be confessed) very amorous request that she would fix an early day for their nuptials, and his state of mind was anything but an enviable one. If ever a man was torn two ways, halting between ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... name. You want to marry Mademoiselle, who thinks you are too old and too big a scoundrel. That is Mademoiselle's business. Giraud junior is also in love with Mademoiselle Lucille, who would doubtless marry him if he had the wherewithal. In the mean time she is coy—awaiting the result of your search. You are seeking Giraud's money, so that he may marry Mademoiselle of the bright ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... cruel jade, cares not, and hardens her heart, and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium-eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers fondly—caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks of choice—indifferent in her companionship with him, to all save the virtue ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... air be it," the soldier acquiesced, plausibly. "Let us consider it as if it were in the air—a possible contingency. This is what I would say—My—'the lady we are speaking of' is by way of being a difficult lady—'uncertain, coy, and hard to please' as Scott says, you know—and it must be a very skilfully-dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface. She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it. Her husband was the most frightful ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies and aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing pace, straight-arming... ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of a dee-coy," said he, stretching his huge hulk, "a little, unarmed boat that goes messing around in the ocean until it finds a submarine and then ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... favourite task it was to laugh his so-called virtues to scorn. Such, at least to begin with, was his honourable intention. But the subtle Wratislaw drew him from his retirement and skilfully elicited his coy principles. It was a cruel performance—a shameless one, had there been any spectator. The one would lay down a fine generous line of policy; the other would beg for a fact in confirmation. The one would haltingly detail some facts; the other would promptly convince him of their ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... plunder in little bunches carelessly and impartially over the rest of his features; he was dressed in a very big old frock coat and a long cylindrical top hat, which he had kept on; he was very much bent, and he carried a rush basket from which protruded coy intimations of the lettuces and onions he had brought to grace the occasion. He hobbled into the room, resisting the efforts of Johnson to divest him of his various encumbrances, halted and surveyed the company ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... rather shy, he responded: "Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben, looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by the Senate, and he made one of the best marshals in the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... but she is still the same, as nice and coy as Fortune when she's courted by the wretched; yet she denies me so obligingly, she keeps my Love still in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... bones and a mighty bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter, one chapter only," was the cry. After "Nay, by'r Lady, nay!" and a few more coy shifts, the proof sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... death of Edwin. From Edwin therefore the language of love would have created no disgust. Imogen was not heedless and indiscreet; she would not have sacrificed the dignity of innocence. Imogen was not coy; she would not have treated her admirer with affected disdain. She had no guard but virgin modesty and that conscious worth, that would be wooed, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Man Agent he would have shouted "Sick 'em" and reached for a Paper-Weight. But when the Agent has the Venus de Milo beaten on Points and Style, and when the Way the Skirt sets isn't so Poor, and she is Coy and introduces the Startled Fawn way of backing up without getting any farther away, and when she comes on with short Steps, and he gets the remote Swish of the Real Silk, to say nothing of the Faint Aroma of New-Mown Hay, and her Hesitating Manner seems to ask, "Have I or have I not met a Friend?"—in ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... the strangers drew closer. "I wonder," she began, addressing her hostess with almost a coy air, "if we could induce you to take lunch with us down-town. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... that weird stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It sounded rather ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... to ask me if there might be another?" she inquired, with a coy glance and just a little petulance in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... purchase a burro, packs, canteen, pick, shovel, dynamite, and provisions. He intended to repay the investor by money-order from some desert town as soon as he found the hidden gold. This unusual and worthy intention lent Overland added assurance, and he needed it. Fortune, goddess evanishing and coy, was with him for once. If he could but dodge the plain-clothes men long enough to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... coy one, Dodiekins!" he replied. "Of course I'm asking you, you know that. You can't think I don't mean it. You ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... [Footnote 8: Coy as was the Brahman in the adoption of the new gods he was wise enough to give them some place in his pantheon, or he would have offended his laity. Thus he recognizes K[a]l[i] as well as Cr[i]; in fact he prefers to recognize ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... ladies that are coy, What the mighty Love can do; Fear the fierceness of the boy: The chaste Moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires, Circled round about with spies, Never dreaming loose desires, Doting at the altar dies; Ilion, in a short hour, higher He can build, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... previous day, so turning two or three corners, I came to the front gate. From the gate to the entrance the walk was paved with granite. When I had passed to the entrance in the rikisha, this walk made so outlandishly a loud noise that I had felt coy. On my way to the school, I met a number of the students in uniforms of cotton drill and they all entered this gate. Some of them were taller than I and looked much stronger. When I thought of teaching fellows of this ilk, I was impressed with a queer ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... said Paula. But she did not come near him; indeed, she withdrew a little. She looked up the passage, and down the passage, and became conscious that it was long and gloomy, and that nobody was near. A curious coy uneasiness seemed to take possession of her. Whether she thought, for the first time, that she had made a mistake—that to wander about the castle alone with him was compromising, or whether it was the mere shy instinct of maidenhood, nobody knows; but she said ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... long. I think I'll have you painted as chaste Diana, descended from the sky, despite her coldness, to lavish sweet kisses on Endymion. You shall take your place among those other goddesses, who were as coy and hard to please at first as yourself, and who are far greater ladies, my dear, than you ever will be. Your fall is at hand, and you must learn, as your betters have done before you, that there's no withstanding the will of a Vallombreuse. 'Frango ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Look into those eyes; read that blush now. She looks coy, not reluctant. She bends before him—adorned as for love, by all her native graces. Air seems brightened by her bloom. No more the Outlaw-Child of Ignominy and Fraud, but the Starry Daughter of POETRY AND ART! Lo, where they glide away ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... or the Figure of Twinnes.] Ye haue yet another manner of speach when ye will seeme to make two of one, not thereunto constrained, which therefore we call the figure of Twynnes, the Greekes Endiadis thus. Not you coy dame your lowrs nor ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... her, in her fresh young beauty, seated at the old instrument, the moonlight falling on her bright hair; the sweet eyes averted from my too admiring gaze, veiled beneath the drooping lashes, cast down with a coy pretence of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the irrepressible Hicks, as Coach Corridan warmed up to his vision, "you don't want much, Coach! Why don't you ask Ted Coy, the famous ex-Yale full-back, to give up his business and play the position for you? Maybe you can persuade Charlie Brickley, a fair sort of dropkicker, to quit coaching Hopkins, and kick a few goals for old Bannister! I get you, Coach—you want a fellow about the size of the Lusitania, made ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... just wouldn't. And I was unwilling to force the matter for fear of losing entirely that coy and canny fish. I did get him, though, to let me rewrite the line last month, so as to include some property not at first insured, and that ties it up until next April. And maybe before next April comes around, the hard-hearted John M. will have relented toward ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy January can court our yellow Clelie over one fence, with coy and delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each other's eyes out through the other all the year round. These are fowls ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... on material comfort is one of the rocks ahead which the American vessel will need careful steering to avoid; and it is certain that Americans lead us in countless little points of household comfort and labour-saving ingenuity. But here, too, the exception that proves the rule is not too coy for our discovery. The terrible roads and the atrociously kept streets are amongst the most vociferous instances of this. It is one of the inexplicable mysteries of American civilisation that a young ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Cat. to recollect that the woman was so notorious for excessive ill-breeding, that no particular affront was intended, and hoped she would not continue coy, as I long to hear something of this Lioness from one ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... know," replied Fitzgerald. "Scenery and sleep; of the two I prefer the latter. I have always been routed out at dawn and never allowed to turn in till midnight. You can always find scenery, but sleep is a coy thing." ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... meadow orchis, taller and finer by far than those in the meadows, and deliciously fragrant. In the swampy hollows were yellow marsh marigolds and blue forget-me-nots; on the drier soil of the rising bank the wild hyacinths were just shaking open their bells, and heartsease here and there lifted coy heads to the sunlight. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... my little Athene; have we her approval? Nay, never blush, nor hide your face. Well, well, maidens will be coy; 'tis a delicate subject. But there, she nods consent. Now, off with you; and mind, the beaten ones must not be cross with the judge; I will not have the poor lad harmed. The prize of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... that such was the case, but Wilmur Benton gave me so to understand—said you were a coy damsel but a glorious girl, and would make a splendid wife—'just such as I need,' ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... mortal flight. Sky-piercing mountain! in thy bowers of love, No tears are seen, save where medicinal stalks Weep drops balsamic o'er the silvered walks. No plaints are heard, save where the restless dove Of coy repulse, and mild reluctance talks. Mantled in woven gold, with gems inchas'd, With emerald hillocks graced, From whose fresh laps, in young fantastic mazes, Soft crystal bounds and blazes, Bathing the lithe convolvulus that winds Obsequious, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... brought me back to his chin—back to that big, oozing cut. I had been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn't know myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how he had me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So I followed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... to me, my darling, whom I despaired of ever seeing again—she came shy and coy, I thought, but love was shining from her ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... against Antinomians and others. He seems to have had an ingenious and enterprising mind. At a General Court held at Boston, Sept. 6, 1638, it was voted that, "Whereas Emanuel Downing, Esq., hath brought over, at his great charges, all things fitting for taking wild fowl by way of duck-coy, this court, being desirous to encourage him and others in such designs as tend to the public good," &c., orders that liberty shall be given him to set up his duck-coy within the limits of Salem; and all persons are forbidden to molest him in his experiments, by "shooting in any gun within ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... with one accord, they turned to a dove-like maiden mild, With a seraph's purity of look, and soft graces of a child; "Speak out, speak out now, sweet shy Clare, we anxious wait for thee, Coy, gentle one! fear not to say what thy heart's ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... loue; where scorne is bought with grones: Coy looks, with hart-sore sighes: one fading moments mirth, With twenty watchfull, weary, tedious nights; If hap'ly won, perhaps a haplesse gaine; If lost, why then a grieuous labour won; How euer: but a folly bought with wit, Or else a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... encircled by eternal snows reflected a sheen of glorious splendor; when, conscious of her immense wealth in coal, minerals, and fisheries, her delightful climate and geographical position, she bid for commercial supremacy. It is said of States, as of women, they are "fickle, coy and hard to please." For, changed and governed from England's Downing Street, "with all its red tape circumlocution," "Tile Barncal," incapacity, and "how-not-to-do-it" ability that attached to that venerable institution, its ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... joy incessant palls the sense; And love, unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy! With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I became ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... a maiden I ought to be coy, and say that I would prefer to wait; but, dearest love, sorrow and trouble have banished all that. You will not love me less because I tell you that I count the minutes till ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... courage to peruse these bibliomaniacal pages) will recollect to have been the same to which Richardson sends Clarissa in one of her escapes from Lovelace. Here Steevens lived, embosomed in books, shrubs, and trees: being either too coy, or too unsociable, to mingle with his neighbours. His habits were indeed peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated; as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... answer. But she had not yet quite made up her mind. Had she known her mind, she would have answered him frankly. She was quite resolved as to that. If she could once bring herself to give him her hand, she would not coy it for a moment. "I will be your wife, Larry." That was the form on which she had determined, should she find herself able to yield. But she had not brought herself to it as yet. "If you can take me, Mary, you will,—well,—save ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... and roof. Its banked edges bristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crooked breakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to its harbourage—an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For the attractions of King's Cobb are—comparatively—limited, and its nearest station is a full six miles distant ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadnor's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... what I'm talking about, Jim, because I have certainly been the original human dog. I used to think I was the Village Rubber—but not any more. They have made me look like thirty cents not once, but a dozen times. I can gaze into the dim, hazy distance and see where every one of these coy, clever fellows is going to get it, and get it good, and I am glad of it. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr. |
