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Shy   Listen
verb
Shy  v. t.  To throw sidewise with a jerk; to fling; as, to shy a stone; to shy a slipper.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shy" Quotes from Famous Books



... their way of responding to the final trump. The good get out of their tombs with a certain modest gayety, an alacrity tempered by respect; one of them kneels to pray as soon as he has disinterred himself. You may know the wicked, on the other hand, by their extreme shy- ness; they crawl out slowly and fearfully; they hang back, and seem to say, "Oh, dear!" These elaborate sculptures, full of ingenuous intention and of the reality of early faith, are in a remarkable state of pre- servation; ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... was a steady roar and buzz of voices; the Captain was easy and genial, prophesying to the ladies on either side Of him a calm voyage. In the shelter of his big voice even the shy found it easy to make remarks to their neighbors. Listening to fragments of the talk O'Malley found that his own eyes kept wandering down the table—diagonally across—to the two strangers. Once or twice he intercepted the doctor's glance traveling in the same direction, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... formal Dutch fashion, with walks and beds centring in a fountain, the grass plats as sharply defined as possible, and stiff yews and cypresses dotted at regular intervals or forming straight alleys. She felt strange and shy, but the sunshine, the cheerfulness, and the sight of the children, had reassured her, and when she had said her morning prayer, she had lost the last night's sense of hopeless dreariness and unprotectedness. When another ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... adjourned to the nursery, where they amused themselves with a variety of innocent games. Quite early in the evening, and greatly to Elsie's delight, her father joined them; and, though some of the young strangers were at first rather shy of him, they soon found that he could enter heartily into their sports, and before the time came to separate for the night, he had made himself ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... disposed to inspect its treasures. I know not, cavaliere," he added, "if the report of my humble labours has ever reached you;" and on Odo's affirmative gesture he went on, with the eagerness of a shy man who gathers assurance from the intelligence of his listener: "Such researches into the rude and uncivilised past seem to me as essential to the comprehension of the present as the mastering of the major premiss to the understanding of a syllogism; and to those who reproach me for wasting ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... twenty-six, tall and gypsy-like, her black hair in a bang and her thin brown arms jingling with bangles. Esther liked her, she was straightforward and jolly. The brother was younger and very shy, yet plainly one of those timid souls whose tenacity of purpose will carry them through agonies of embarrassment to a desired end. The end in this case was evidently Esther. His black eyes shone with frank admiration, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... papa to build him a small shelf on the tree, about four feet from the ground, so that he could put nuts on it to feed the squirrels. At first the little fellows were very shy, and would not come near the shelf, but sat on the branches of the tree; and we fancied that we heard them saying to each other, "Do you think that little boy would hurt us, if we should run down, and ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... drink in his hall, Audunn ate his meal out of doors, as is the custom of Rome pilgrims, so long as they have not laid aside their staff and scrip. In the evening, when the King went to Vespers, Audunn intended to meet him, but shy as he was before, he was much more so now that the courtiers were merry with drink. As they were going back, the King noticed a man, and thought he could see that he had not the confidence to come forward and ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... her own, and stretched out the other towards Cornelia, thus making both girls feel the warmth of her welcome. Elma smiled her pretty, shy smile, but left it to her friend to reply. She was considerably astonished at the sudden development of anxiety which ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... TROLL (HEINE tells us) "danced nobly." Pride swells us To think our young guest is a true ATTA TROLL; No Bugbear, though shaggy, a trifle breech-baggy, And not altogether a dandyish doll; No Afghan intrigue, dear, or shy Native league, dear, Has brought Bruin's foot o'er our frontier to dance: He comes freely, boldly—don't look on him coldly, Or make him suspect there ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... and gentle, soft-spoken and shy. They had all adopted Brazilian clothes. The hut of the chief was extremely clean and neat inside, the few utensils that were visible being kept in ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... a comfort to my mother Marie, in days of sadness,—before my birth, for she was never sad after I came,—and she loved him, and he clung to her. He was a round-faced boy, with hair almost white; awkward and shy, but ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... a great many English abroad that autumn, and we met whole batches of pretty girls at every station and at every table d'hote on our route. Did he avoid them, or glare at them savagely, or say hard things of them? Oh no! quite the reverse. He was a little shy at first; and when he saw a party of distressed damsels in a station, with their bewildered father in vain attempting to make himself understood to a porter, he would assist them in a brief and businesslike manner as if it were a duty, lift his cap, and then march ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... succulent, shelving down into black boggy pools here and there at the edge of which the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy and agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened polished ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... in a recent print, professing to furnish a list of wealthy tax-payers, the list contained four lawyers, and only one was a barrister. The instance proves little, for a lawyer may be very rich and yet pay no taxes. The assessors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go their rounds, because of his penchant to find flaws in their actions and bring them official discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality a sinecure of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... channel in flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different—a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing, viz., ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... if she had wished to escape she would not have dared, would not have known how; for she was shy outside the family circle, and could hardly move or talk; people thought her insignificant. This she knew; it wounded her self-respect, and therefore she went out as little as possible, preferring to stay at ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... sight. He has read of such things, and introduced them into this dialogue for the sake of effect—all quite right to do—had his reading lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. The common Eagle—which he ignorantly, as we have seen, calls so rare—is a shy bird, as all shepherds know—and is seldom within range of the rifle. Gorged with blood, they are sometimes run in upon and felled with a staff or club. So perished, in the flower of his age, that Eagle whose feet now form handles to the bell-ropes of our ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... beg your pardon," said Mary, laughing and covering her mouth with her hand exactly in her old, shy, half-frightened way. ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... it? By God, I expected as much the moment you came in! What! you don't believe my girl—don't you? You're going to fight shy, and behave like a scamp—are you? Damn your infernal coolness and your aristocratic airs and graces! You shall see I'll be even with you—you shall. Ha! ha! look here!—here's the marriage certificate safe in my pocket. You won't do the honourable by my poor child—won't you? ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... She made a shy curtsey and John bowed. It was the first time that he was ever in the heart of an old French home, and he did not know the rules, but he felt that he ought not to offer his hand. Young girls, he had ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... my little sister is entirely and overwhelmingly happy, for he is literally her Prince. Physically he is much improved; has developed surprisingly, but has the shy, taciturn manner of a student, and is, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... right. If you're shy about it," responded the reporter good-humoredly. "But you must have thought of writing ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... astonished, lifted up his hollow-eyed head and looked amazedly at the white songstress whose scarlet sash and neck-ribbons gleamed in such vivid contrast to the foliage about her. A wondering little "cotton-tail" rabbit, shy and wild as a hawk, came darting through the bushes into the sunshiny patchwork on the path, and then, uptilted and with quivering ears and nostrils and wide-staring eyes, stood paralyzed with helpless amaze, ignoring the tall man in gray ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... as we have directed "Mary Williams," and find all the addresses of societies where young women are trained for zenana and other missionary work. It is very wrong not to go to church on Sunday mornings merely because of "feeling shy." That is rubbish. Attend to your book and your prayers, and not to your neighbours. Nobody will ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... America—promises to work a revolution; for notwithstanding the fact that, in many of the largest iron, steel, and glass factories in Pittsburg and its vicinity, natural gas has already been substituted for coal, the managers of some such works are shy of the new fuel, mainly for two reasons: 1. They doubt the continuity and regularity of its supply. 2. They do not deem the difference between the price of natural gas and coal sufficient as yet to justify the expenditure involved ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... and sweet and very shy," reproved Kate. "So shy that she will doubtless be painfully embarrassed at meeting you, and seem—well, really ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... whose gentle silver grace, So wise of speech and kind of face, Whose every wise and witty word Fell shy, half ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... dressing-gown, I sat by my tiny window, watching the shadows of the wind-blown locust-boughs on the moonlit grass below, full of the dreams which are the stuff that romances are made of, and which, though I had often used them as "material," I had never known myself before; shy and tender dreams they were, that glorified that summer night, and kept me ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... of women was evidently so close, and what he writes about them is usually so penetrating, that many legends have naturally sprung up about the manner in which he gained his experience. Of these, most are pure fiction. As a matter of fact, Ibsen was shy with women, and unless they took the initiative, he contented himself with watching them from a distance: and noting their ways in silence. The early flirtation with Miss Rikke Hoist at Bergen, which takes so prominent a place ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... Yes! How she looked, standing there with the children about her, the little slender figure swaying to and fro to the music, the pretty head bent down so lovingly, the dark eyes looking here and there, bright and shy, like those of a wild creature so gentle in its nature that it knew no fear. But he had taught her fear! yes, he saw it grow under his eyes, just as the love grew in his own heart ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards

... pine forests, relieved by slender stems of silver birch, those green spots in the midst of the forest, those winding dales and upland lakes, those various shapes of birds and beasts, the mighty crashing elk, the fleet reindeer, the fearless bear, the nimble lynx, the shy wolf, those eagles and swans, and seabirds, those many tones and notes of Nature's voice making distant music through the twilight summer night, those brilliant, flashing, northern lights when days grow short, those dazzling, blinding ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... the centre of the room, and then darted along the wall and disappeared between the loose logs in the corner. Often during the night it crept out from its hiding place, and at last Dan grew to look for it with a certain wistful comfort in its shy companionship. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... thorough training in the dance is a most effective remedy. The shy, constrained, awkward boys and girls mingle with their companions on terms of ordered freedom and equality. They are taught grace of movement; the spontaneous expression of their individuality is modified by contact ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... it was too that kept her dwelling pleasedly on Starr's shy, protective regard for her, instead of watching the peaks in fear and trembling lest another bad, un-uplifted Mexican should be watching a chance to send another bullet zipping down into the Basin on its ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... he's so quiet. I used to think he was surly. But he isn't really. He's only shy. Is he, Aunt Mary?" The blue eyes whisked round to Mrs. Ralston and were met by a slightly reproving shake of the head. "No, but really," Tessa protested, "he is a nice man. Tommy says so. Mother doesn't like him, but that's nothing to go by. The people she likes are ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... the attempt to secure the hand of the beautiful Miss Effingham, and not daring to risk another trial, as it might spoil the plans he had been contemplating since Edith's dismissal of him, he had kept shy of that young lady during the remainder of his stay, and prior to his departure for London, he had contrived to have a long interview with the Baronet, during which he very ably showed the position that he would hold should the Baronetcy eventually descend to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... idea. 'Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them—and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I'll go down and—no, I won't JUST yet,' she went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go down among them without a good long branch to brush them away—and what fun it'll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say—"Oh, I like it well enough—"' (here came the favourite ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... acceptable present he could make him, and received in return some fine fowls of the grouse kind, and twenty trouts. Our sportsmen met with but bad success; for though the bay swarmed with flocks of ducks of various kinds, and Greenland pigeons, yet they were so shy that they could not come within shot ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... class (I take the town-bred, slum-bred majority, mind) are men who have discarded the civil standard of morality altogether. They simply ignore it. This, no doubt, is why civilians fight shy of them. In the game of life they don't play the same rules, and the consequence is a good deal of misunderstanding, until finally the civilian says he won't play with the Tommy any more. In soldiers' eyes lying, theft, drunkenness, bad language, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... the sympathetic courtesy which was their due. She never had tried her hand at flirting; but it was left for this season to stamp Miss Kennedy as 'the most unapproachable woman in town.' Which, however, unfortunately, made her more popular than ever. She was so lovely in her shy reserve; the hardwon favours were so delightful; the smiles so witching when they came; and nobody ever suspected that what she did with all her triumphs was to mentally bestow them on somebody else. They belonged to him, now, not to her, and for ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... was badly stunned. My husband, who chanced to be near at the time, picked up the injured one and brought it home. My three daughters, who at times had had pet horses, snakes, turtles, and rats, welcomed this shy little stranger and at once set about caring for her injuries. Just before "Bob" had fully recovered, there came a heavy fall of snow, which was followed by such a succession of storms that we concluded to keep her with us, provided she was willing to stay. We gave her the freedom of ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... England than it knew of me. Men and manners were equally strange to me, except those on board the different men-of-war I had served in, and they were not the most polished. In the society of the fair sex I was exceedingly shy, and my feelings were sometimes painful when I had to run the gauntlet through rows of well-dressed women, some looking as demure as a noddy at the masthead. I was now in my twenty-third year, and an agreeable—nay, an old lady, whose ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... many of the natives got together in parties, on several parts of the shore, all armed with bows, spears, &c. Some swam off to us, others came in canoes. At first they were shy, and kept at the distance of a stone's throw; they grew insensibly bolder; and, at last, came under our stern, and made some exchanges. The people in one of the first canoes, after coming as near as they durst, threw towards us some cocoa-nuts. I went into a boat and picked them ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... right as to the social side of the question, but I am convinced that The Fair Haven did him grave harm in the literary world. Reviewers fought shy of him for the rest of his life. They had been taken in once, and they took very good care that they should not be taken in again. The word went forth that Butler was not to be taken seriously, whatever he wrote, and the results of the decree were apparent in the ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... this trying to get to know the birds; but scouts are not looking for the easiest jobs, and it is great sport for them to follow some shy songster through the briery thicket until a really good look can be had, to sit stock still for half an hour to watch some unknown bird come home to her nest, or to wriggle on all fours through the grass to have a glimpse ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... another; and the fact that it is an ideal shape, with no existence in space, only to be spoken of in figures and metaphors, makes it all the more important that in our thought it should be protected by no romantic scruple. Or perhaps it is not really the book that we are shy of, but a still more fugitive phantom—our pleasure in it. It spoils the fun of a novel to know how it is made—is this a reflection that lurks at the back of our minds? ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... worse than that, the crested lark, that was formerly so timid and shy, is now no better than a thief, and steals maize and corn whenever she can ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... was soon called in from the store. At first he was a little awkward and shy, but Jack's heartiness soon ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... shy!" says Beauclerk to himself. He goes quickly up to her with all the noble air of the conqueror, and seizing one of her trembling hands holds it ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... not be a blind partisan, but, with all their faults, the old masters I plead for knew how to touch the heart. It may be difficult at first to believe this; like children, they are shy with us—like strangers, they bear an uncouth mien and aspect—like ghosts from the other world, they have an awkward habit of shocking our conventionalities with home truths. But with the dead as with the living all depends on the frankness ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... as the result of an early engagement, though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part and forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr. Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all men who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions a vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always an indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of public ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... calico signs, flags and had stocks of American canned goods to show in their shop windows. The children, when bold, played with the American soldiers, and the children that were more shy ventured to go up and touch an American soldier's leg. Very old peasant ladies put on their Sunday black, and went out walking, and in some mysterious way talking with American soldiers. The village mayors turned out and made speeches, utterly ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... friend of yours the other day." And when Florrie, "gun-shy" as Elmer called her, was too wise to ask any questions, he hastened on: "Juanito Miranda it was. Sent his best. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... them only by hearsay. Then you know the effect of suggestion in such cases. The undefinable sense we were speaking of is a ticklish instrument, easily thrown out of gear by a sudden fall of temperature; and the sharpest experts grow shy and self-distrustful when the cold current of depreciation touches them. The sale was a slaughter—and when I saw the Daunt Diana fall at the wink of a little third-rate brocanteur from Vienna I turned sick at the folly ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... showed so formidable a set of teeth, that it was thought prudent to desist, and trust to his following his companion, who still trotted along, coughing and choking, and almost stifled by our own dust, blown after us by the east wind. After this attempt, Spart evidently played shy of our whole party, and, having raced ahead during a few miles, finally disappeared in the woods, probably attracted by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Lynch-Blosse, an English lady, who came to Sioux Falls early last winter and attracted almost instantly the respectful attention of the citizens. Not because she was a strikingly beautiful woman, for a student of statues might find some faults in her features, but because out of the shy, violet eyes a high, indomitable spirit occasionally gleamed and a stray flash from them, combined with her radiant freshness of complexion and perfect grace of figure and of carriage, would light up the common sordid streets of the common masculine mind and turn them, for the nonce, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... her work, getting up from time to time to turn the roast which she had impaled upon a sharp stick above the glowing coals, the bride had a stream of shy callers, of the little people of the woods. She sat very still, so as not to startle them, and there is much curiosity among these people ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... then,—full of a young, boyish wistfulness and sweet pain, unmarred dreams and unstained, unbroken illusions,—that Rollins wanted to paint. Rollins knew that Mrs. Dustin was a great friend of Tony's and that she would be the best person to coax a consent from the shy, gentle old man. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... been a shy kind o' moon to-night, an' it's a gittin' so much shyer that it's plumb afraid to show its face. In three minutes it will hide behind a big cloud that's edgin' up over thar, an' we won't see it ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... longing of mine by changing me into a wolf. I feel wretchedly bored, weary of keeping still. I want, by night at least, to run free about the forest. Away with stupid servants, with dogs that stun me with their noise, with clumsy horses that kick out and shy at a thicket." ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... world. Nothing but the light of the sun would they share with men. Quietly and unbeknown, callous of all but their craft, they wrought their poems or their pictures, gave them one to another, and wrought on. Meredith, Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Holman Hunt were in this band of shy artificers. In fact, Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr. Oscar Wilde who managed her debut. To study the period is to admit that to him was due no small part of the social vogue that Beauty began to enjoy. Fired by his fervid words, men and women hurled their mahogany into the streets ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... as well as most familiar instance of this enthralling spell over his readers, is too well known a story to tell in detail. But how intensely and painfully distinct is the opening description of the silent, inflexible Austin Ruthyn of Knowl, and his shy, sweet daughter Maude, the one so resolutely confident in his brother's honour, the other so romantically and yet anxiously interested in her uncle—the sudden arrival of Dr. Bryerly, the strange Swedenborgian, followed ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... no longer shy in speaking his name, but called him Roger boldly and many times, and twice during that meal of marvelous forgetfulness—though long lashes covered her eyes when she spoke it—she ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... refuge. Behind Jerba, the fabled island of the Lotus-Eaters, was an immense inland sea, commanded in the Middle Ages by castles, and affording a refuge for which the rovers had often had cause to be grateful. Merchant vessels were shy of sailing in the dangerous Gulf of the Greater Syrtes with its heavy tides and spreading sandbanks, and even the war-galleys of Venice and Spain were at a disadvantage when manoeuvring in its treacherous eddies against the Corsair who knew every inch of the coast. Passing westward, a famous ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... taller copy of Maruja, and more regularly beautiful, had built up a little pile of bread crumbs between herself and Raymond, and was listening to him with a certain shy, girlish interest that was as inconsistent with the serene regularity of her face as Maruja's self-possessed, subtle intelligence was incongruous to her youthful figure. Raymond's voice, when he addressed Amita, was low and earnest; not from any significance of matter, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... difficulties before my admittance to the Borda. And later I lived through many troublous years; years replete with struggles and mistakes,—I had many a Calvary to climb; I had to pay cruelly and in full for having been reared a sensitive, shy little creature, by force of will I had to recast and harden my physical as well as my moral being. One day, when I was about twenty-seven years of age, a circus director, after having seen my muscles that then had the elasticity and ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... inclination to engage in any of the pursuits they considered proper to the ambitions of a worthy young man. Rather a dreamer, I imagine, until he had found the thing he wanted to do. Not a very impressive figure in the eyes of whitespatted fatherhood. Moreover, he himself was shy about trying to marry a rich girl while she ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Portuguese, acquired during the delay in the Brazils. He had absolutely no friends in India, and made no friends for many months after his arrival. It would be hard to think of a more desolate position for a proud, shy, high-spirited lad with a strong strain of melancholy in his composition. We find him sighing for Manchester with all the profound and pathetic longing which inspires the noble old English ballad of "Farewell, Manchester." It is not easy for us of to-day, who associate the name of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... of all her tales was this. One summer morning, when the Boulogue promenade was bright and crowded and lively, the Colonel was seated with his grandson beside him. A little distance away sat Rupert's mother, who was just about as shy of the Colonel as the Colonel was shy of her (which fact accounts, probably, for Rupert Ray's growing up into the shy boy we knew). Well, all of a sudden, the boy got up, stood immediately in front of his grandsire, and leaned forward against his knees. There was no mistaking ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... was a poet. Here in Florence, although the hermit life was happy, new friends—the gift of England—added to its happiness. Frederick Tennyson, the Laureate's brother, and himself a true poet in his degree, "a dreamy, shy, speculative man," simple withal and truthful, had married an Italian wife and was settled for a time in Florence. To him Browning became attached with genuine affection. Mrs Browning was a student ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... o'er, with thoughtful look, The boy sought out a shaded nook, Apart from all—yet near The opening where the men had laid Their rations on the mossy glade, Beside the swamp-marsh drear. Silent was he, reserved and shy, Seldom raising cap or eye; Not many days since first his hand Had joined him to that patriot band; Yet none more truly did fulfill, The duties of his arm required, Though slight withal, and often still When the loud signal-gun was fired, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... come and see you.' She suddenly felt rather shy of offering the visit, without having any reason to give for her wish to make it, beyond a kindly interest in a stranger. It seemed all at once to take the shape of an impertinence on her part; she read this meaning too ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... thou the magic flower By whose bright rays the soul's dark deeps are lit; Which, hiding in its quiet, sacred bower, Waits for the Fairy Prince to gather it; But which, if he find not its shy recess, Withers and dies in forlorn loneliness? Within the bosom of its petals furled Lies with Life's sense the Riddle of the World; And he that first its chalice openeth Glows with the wine of Life, the ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller

... enjoy me, my friend, that Krishna so fickle, I who am shy like a girl on her way to the first of her trysts of love, He who is charming with flattering words, I who am tender In speech and smiling, he on whose hip the garment lies ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... "He's shy," proceeded Mrs. Ch'in, "and has seen nothing much of the world, so that you are sure to be put out when ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... said she, angrily; "and what should ail thee to shy at the quarry? Give me the weapon." And with that she seized the hammer as though rendered furious by the pusillanimity of her attendants. The whole group were paralysed with terror. Not a word was spoken; scarcely a breath was drawn; every ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... were the alternatives which confronted him. He had very little money,—just a modest salary—therefore the excitement of trading, of big, shady deals, said nothing to him. He went to the races, a shy onlooker. He could not afford to risk his little salary in betting. Above all things, he was cautious. Consequently life did not offer him much outside of office hours, and in office hours it offered him nothing at all. You will see from this that he was a very limited person, incapable of ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... and my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." "You, little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we know them all now. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... death she had sought out Selene, but dame Hannah could not and would not conduct her to see the sick girl, for she learnt from Mary that she was the mother of her patient's faithless lover; and on a second visit Selene was so shy, so timid and so strange in her demeanor, that the old woman was forced to conclude that her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... do you know Where the sea-flowers blow, Down deep in the ocean's bed? Where the shy plants hide 'Neath the swelling tide, And the Anemone lifts its head? Where the Nautilus frail, To set his sail, Creeps forth from the silver sand? Then come with me, And you will see The ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater

... personal character, I may quote the words of Dr. Glaisher when he says, "Strangers who first met him were invariably struck by his simple and unaffected manner. He was a delightful companion, always cheerful and genial, showing in society but few traces of his really shy and retiring disposition. His nature was sympathetic and generous, and in few men have the moral and intellectual qualities been ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... ever. There were two children standing in the doorway, and presently Mr. Bowles came out and shook hands with me and helped me down with my things. He was a kind, sensible-looking man, and he made the children come and speak to me and shake hands. They were shy then and hung back, and put their fingers in their mouths; I knew just how they felt. I wanted to hang back, too, when he took me into the house to see Mrs. Bowles. She was an invalid, he told me, and could ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... pleased at seeing Jack, and all shook him warmly by the hand. The doctor and Mr Griffiths told him that they remembered him well when he was a young lad, first going to sea, little thinking that from that day to this he should be knocking about the world far away from home. He looked very shy and reserved, and seemed inclined to keep close to Miles Soper and me, but in other respects he was as much in his senses as any of us. The doctor had found several roots and fruits, which he said were ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... very grave, with doubt, and bewilderment, and growing certainty, and drew yet further off. Rosy blushes, more and more witchingly shy, chased in and out of her cheeks; till obeying the certainty which yet was vague, Faith's head stooped and her two hands covered her face. She was drawn back into the stranger's arms, and her hands and face (what there could) were covered ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... Satterly had said—some whimsical thing—and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence which followed. The little, nickel alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the rocky bluff opposite, and the ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... Sylvia said, but it suggested a whole volume of rebuke. Brought up in seclusion, like the princess in an enchanted castle, the girl was exceedingly shy. Paul's ardent looks and eager wooing startled her at times, and he thought disconsolately that his chivalrous love-making was coarse and common when he gazed on the delicate, dainty, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... lights—either as the helpless Infant in the arms of the mother, or as the stern Judge who required to be softened by Mary's merciful intercession. But the one gush of confidence over, she was doubly shy. She shrank from clothing her vague thoughts ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt

... had been seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll. Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This change did not much surprise me, as I hardly knew any one that had the slightest pretension to their acquaintance who had not troubled them for employment or borrowed their money, at the same time that they complained of their neglect and their ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... their own impressions, will not expect to be moved again through life by so magnetic a presence. In his dealings with those much younger than himself, his tact and influence were unequalled; he received a shy but ardent youth with such a noble courtesy, with so much sympathy yet with no condescension, with so grand an air and yet so warm a welcome, that his new acquaintance was enslaved at the first sentence. This seems to me to have been in a certain sense the key-note of the man. He was essentially ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... the women in the passage became hysterical. The young men looked on awkwardly, with grave faces, not knowing what to do. There was something very English in their shy aloofness; in their dislike of intruding ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... I'm shy a rib myself and Phoebe is it. Don't I get a pain in my side every time I see her? It's the real psychic thing, only she doesn't seem to get hold of her end of the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... unattempted or said, That might soften the Heart of this pitiless Maid; But still she was shy, And would blushing deny, Whilst her willinger Eyes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... to nurse the old villain all through his spell, and he never forgave me for the double dose I gave him, though pretending it was all right, and that, thinking as I did, I had done the proper thing. Stackpole kept shy of our place after that, but I knew he would never forgive me, and if the time ever arrived when he could get even he would take the chance gladly. That was why I kept an eye on him all the time he was with us, and warned you to look out, for the fellow is really a thief, and has a bad reputation ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... mouth agape, beneath long rows of turkeys which white-aproned shopmen sold. And everybody bought save Smoke, mouth still agape, chained by a leadenness of movement to the pavement. A boy again, he sat with spoon poised high above great bowls of bread and milk. He pursued shy heifers through upland pastures and centuries of torment in vain effort to steal from them their milk, and in noisome dungeons he fought with rats for scraps and refuse. There was no food that was not ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either. I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... very displeased,—I don't think we can blame him for that—but we had no open break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that, and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to stop where I was and never to take up such work again, that—" here she stole a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her—"that I had lost my social status and need never hope now for the attentions of—of—well, of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see," her dimples all showing, "that I am not such a ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... wich reely blossoms like the lobster, wuz uv yoose; but I spect my hevin a gray coat on, with a stand up collar, with a brass star onto it, wuz wat finished the biznis. The Southern delegates fought shy uv me; but the Northern ones, bless their souls! the minit they saw the star on the collar uv my gray coat, couldn't do enuff for me. They addressed me ez Kernel and Gineral, and sed "this wuz trooly an unmeritid honor," and paid for my drinks; and ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... End had been present, and he related their ludicrous efforts to get in without being seen by anyone, and their terror when someone to frighten them called out 'Copper!' Then Tom and he entered into a discussion on the subject of boxing, in which Tom, being a shy and undogmatic sort of person, was entirely worsted. After this they strolled back to the brake, and found things being prepared for luncheon; the hampers were brought out and emptied, and the bottles of beer in great profusion made many ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... looked sad instead of pleased when she chattered about the fine things she should do. Mr. and Mrs. Brown, to be sure, came to wish her good-bye; but they were so respectful, and took such pains that she should walk first, that she grew shy and sheepish, and did not like ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... men in those days, receiving regularly the poet's sunny recognition and the statesman's rather unsympathetic stare. Both men were overwhelmingly famous, but, touched simultaneously by warmth and frost, I, a shy youngster, could keep my balance in their presence. Sumner in those years was the especial bete noire of the South and the conservative North, and the idol of the radicals—at once the most banned ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... blind, to let in what light could sift finely through the vine leaves, and sat down in a high-backed old chair that had appertained to her great-grandmother. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at us with shy appeal in her blue-gray eyes. Plainly she found it hard to tell us her secret, yet all the time there was an air of pride and exultation about her; somewhat, also, of a new dignity. Aunt Olivia could never be self-assertive, but if it had been possible that would ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... walking demurely through the lancers, her skirt held up above her satin shoes, her coral necklace glowing deeper pink against her slim white throat. Mistletoe and holly hung over her, and the light of the candles shone brighter where her radiant figure passed. He caught the soft flash of her shy brown eyes, he heard her gentle voice speaking trivial things with profound tenderness. His hand still burned from the light pressure of her finger tips. Oh, his day had come, he told himself, and he was furiously in love ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... right stuff in him, a something will take possession of him that will grip him again every time he returns to the scene and will make him long and hunger for the place when he is away from it. Later, the lights in the busy streets will bewilder and entice him. He will feel shy and helpless amid the hurrying crowds. A new emotion will take his heart as the people hasten by him,—a feeling of loneliness, almost of grief, that with all of these souls about him he knows not one and not one of them ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... sin was in not giving her my full name. I was afraid she might be shy of me, if she knew that I was the heir of the wealthy Miss Dinsmore, and so I told her my name was Richmond Montague. About that time, my studies being completed, my aunt wanted me to go abroad for ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... had been choking various People and taking it away from them. He had four Salesmen under him and had butted into the Firm, but he was still shy on Botany. ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... and added an inexpressible gentleness and tenderness to its beauty. The long dark eyelashes shadowed the cheeks, which were suffused with a faint flush. Felicita looked young again, with something of the sweet shy grace of the girl whom he had first seen in this distant mountain village so many years ago. He sank down on his knees, and shut out the sight of her from his despairing eyes. The silent minutes crept slowly away unheeded; he did not stir, or sob, or lift up his bowed face. This kneeling ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... tournament except the poor bridegroom, who was too weak and feeble in body, and too timid in mind, for any such rough and warlike exercises. Francis was very plain and unprepossessing in countenance, and shy and awkward in his manners. His health had always been very infirm, and though his rank was very high, as he was the heir apparent to what was then the greatest throne in Europe, every body thought ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... day taken into White's Club-House by a friend who wanted to write a note. Lord Carmarthen approached to speak to him; but feeling rather shy, he merely said, "Mr. Foote, your handkerchief is hanging out of your pocket." Foote, looking suspiciously round, and hurriedly thrusting the handkerchief back into his pocket, replied, "Thank you, my lord: you know the company ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... The child cast a shy look up at him; she seemed unaccustomed to such kindness and unable to say anything in reply. Reinhard opened the door, and lighted her way, and then the little thing like a bird flew downstairs with her cakes and out of ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm

... any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith's conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging—not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk—and yet so far from pushing, shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by the appearance ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... while standing beside me; and—and I noticed, too, that he leaned against me a little more than the occasion demanded, or at least I fancied so; but perhaps it was the jolting of the car. I took little shy peeps at him. I wanted to see what he looked like, Nadine had been sounding his praises so. I found he was dreadfully nice, quite the handsomest young fellow I had ever seen—elegantly formed, straight as an arrow, with ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... "You're shy just half of the fifteen thousand, Clancy," was the reply; "there's only seventy-five hundred ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish

... foremost rank saw them they fell back at once in great disorder, which alarmed those in the rear, who thought they had been fighting. There was then space and room enough for them to have passed forward, had they been willing so to do; some did so, but others remained shy. All the roads between Abbeville and Crecy were covered with common people, who, when they were come within three leagues of their enemies, drew their swords, bawling out, "Kill, kill," and with them were many great lords that were eager to make show of their courage. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... father was dead, and she lived with her mother, a woman of low degree, who had been a cook before marrying her master. Either for this reason, or on account of the indisputable ugliness of her face, the Indians fought shy of her; although her exaggerated idea of her position exacted a certain respect in society. Her face was hideous, with irregular features, marked with erysipelas, and disfigured by red patches about the nostrils. She only retained one feminine taste, and that was for dancing, which ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... waiting for her to sit, and she drew forward a chair, placing it to give her an oblique view from the window. Having seated herself, she asked him, with a shy hospitality: ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... slack nor shy, I readily tarried. We knelt down opposite each other, and said our prayers; and he told me he was now comfortable. 'The evil one,' said he, 'hath enough to mind yonder: he shall ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... society, but he was indisposed to press them. He felt that he should see for himself, and at a prospect of entertainment of this kind, his fancy always kindled. Gordon was, moreover, at first rather shy of confidences, though after they had lain on the grass ten minutes there was a ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... think Captain Vesey had enough of getting aground yesterday, and he don't want to spend the day laid up on one of these ledges. I believe the steamer would go over Champion Rock all right; but her captain is shy, and I don't think he will come any nearer ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... got to come down the chimney, has he?' said Alice to herself. 'Shy, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but I THINK ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll

... miles of Solway swept clean of mist, great over-riding white clouds, crenellated and victorious—the Atlantic thundering on the Back Shore, and all the tides of the North Channel tearing past. She saw the Twin Valleys awakening—a marvel she had never yet missed—the sheltered blooms and shy crozier-headed ferns deep in the trough of the Abbey Burn, the wilder, vaster spaces of broom and gorse, the windflower and hyacinth in the woods and sheltered spaces of the Glenanmays Water! Ah, she knew where to look for every one.—And merely not to be there, made her heart ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... the pines would lose half its summer charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying time the metallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of scythe-whet. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If anybody had ooelogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair in my ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... girls, I think, are better looking since 1914, more confident, more brightly attractive; sometimes they are deliriously gay, more often cheaply aggressive and noisy. Yet, at other times, they seem deadened and slow in response. None of them are shy. Their eyes say things that are hard to read; they exhibit no end of energy, but there is a curious kind of contradiction—a confusion and difficult defiance, with much nervous weakness. I can find ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... Pachmann is inhuman, and music, too, is inhuman. To him, and rightly, it is a thing not domesticated, not familiar as a household cat with our hearth. When he plays it, music speaks no language known to us, has nothing of ourselves to tell us, but is shy, alien, and speaks a language which we do not know. It comes to us a divine hallucination, chills us a little with its "airs from heaven" or elsewhere, and breaks down for an instant the too solid walls of the world, showing us the gulf. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... rooms the happiest days of both lives were spent, and many a time have the walls resounded to the great voice, laughing, praising or condemning, of Walter Savage Landor; while the shy Hawthorne has talked here too. Casa Guidi lodged not only the Brownings, but, at one time, Lowell, who was not, however, a very good Florentine. "As for pictures," I find him writing, in 1874, on ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... in reply—hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room—familiar, unlovely, with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had studied his primer and his Ray's Arithmetic. In such a room he had made gradual recession from the smallest ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... way he soon learned "bring me," "fetch me," and other verbs. When the old woman was present, the two girls were silent and shy; but as Quizmoa was fond of gossiping, and so was greatly in request among the neighbors, who desired to learn something of the habits of the white man, she was often out; and the girls were then ready to talk as much as Roger wished. For a time it seemed to him that ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... Our interview was rather shy. I was a little doubtful about the proper way to talk to a real author, being purely a Chicagoan myself, and I had an idea that while my usual vocabulary was good enough for business purposes it might ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... all the liberty possible, and never be tied up: they should be taken out for steady, gentle exercise, and not permitted to get too fat or they become too heavy, with detrimental results to their legs. Many Mastiff puppies are very shy and nervous, but they will grow out of this if kindly handled, and eventually become the best guard and protector it is possible ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... very moment I catch sight of them from my window, as they get out of the omnibus. Jeanne leaps down lie a kitten; but Mademoiselle Prefere intrusts herself to the strong arm of the conductor, with the shy grace of a Virginia recovering after the shipwreck, and this time quite resigned to being saved. Jeanne looks up, sees me, laughs, and Mademoiselle Prefere has to prevent her from waving her umbrella at me as a friendly signal. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... a shy and solitary bird, living entirely on the flats, and is remarkable on account of its frequenting only the same locality. He is hence easily distinguished from the Gymnorhina tibicen, whose shrill and piping voice is so well known on all the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... notion of a world of little mysterious fairies, who cradled themselves in the deep blue bells of the campanules, and lay in the heart of the tall white lilies, powdering their airy garments with gold, and flying through the air of the still summer nights on the backs of the shy, spotted moths which blundered over the moor, when none were there to see, in chase of a will-of-the-wisp, whose lantern, darting hither and thither, lured them on. She stood thinking for a moment over all the run of ill luck to which Dorothy referred, and then ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... and I know more of the recent mission of Wittenhorst than we admit. You had best interrogate Cruwel in the presence of witnesses. I know not the man's humour, but it seems to me since his failure, that, in spite of his shy and lumpish manner, he is false ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... she looked at him wild and fearful, people said. It was more than anybody could understand, that sudden development of fierce passion and treachery in a boy who always had been so shy and steady. No wonder she gazed at ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... time were polite to Richardson after he had won fame at the mature age of fifty. He was not the man to presume on his position. He was 'very shy of obtruding himself on persons of condition.' He never rose like Pope, whose origin was not very dissimilar, to speak to princes and ministers as an equal. He was always the obsequious and respectful shopkeeper. The great Warburton wrote a letter to his 'good sir'—a phrase equivalent to the two ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... walking home together through the light snow which had just begun to fall. They had been curiously shy of speaking, and, before the silence was broken, a pretty wreath of snow had formed itself about the rim of each of their black felt hats, while little ribbons of it were decorating ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... her council. I was still absent. And it was agreed upon between my aunt Hervey and her, that she was to be quite solemn and shy in his next visit, if there were not a peculiarity in his ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... report enthusiastically on the new cash register. Mechanical experts do not, I suppose, write poetry, but there was without doubt a lyric in Mildmay's heart as he left the room. Tim packed the thing up again. Now that the mechanical part of the business was over, he relapsed into shy silence in a corner. His brother took out a cigarette and lit it I would not have ventured to light a cigarette in that sanctuary for a hundred pounds. But Gorman is entirely ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... grounds every onct in a while, an' let me tell you he hunts some peculiar, he do, he's half man and half wolf—but shucks, I won't spoil the show, you will see how he hunts for yourself if you stay here long. Glory be, but he's got me some bashful and shy. But mosey along and I'll hist yore stuff on this here cayuse while you let them tha' dogs out of their chicken coop boxes. You can cache your dude duds in the Emporium general store over yonder next to Squinty Quinn's saloon, an' then we're off for the hills. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... the indwelling religious spirit of the Russian people, who change but little and who are singularly tenacious of their customs in spite of all their ready receptiveness. In one sense the folk-song is as rude and hardy as its singer; from another point of view it is a shy, delicate emanation shrinking from all human intercourse outside its own small coterie of familiar voices. In Russia, as in every other country, it has had to be sought in the remote Steppes and far-off districts where foreign influences had never penetrated, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... knives, glasses and a variety of things that I thought would be useful or pleasing to them, and also to show them that we were disposed to be friendly to them, and by that means I hoped they would become less shy, and that our intercourse with them would be brought about; and I stood round the northernmost island to visit other parts of the island, and on the 14th in the morning Lt. Corner was sent on shore with the tender, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards

... a moment, for, as Jeanette, shy, and dewy-eyed, held out her arms to her new-found friend, quite suddenly Lucile knew. Impulsively she threw her arms about the older girl and drew her close, whispering, softly, "Tell me all you feel you can, Jeanette; you can ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... the incline and our path broadened out as it turned to follow the windings of the little river toward the pond, mademoiselle rode up beside me, and with a very pretty air indeed, half arch, half shy, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... behind some shrub. Slowly and quietly, however, I took my seat on a bank close under a thick bush,—while the silence around me was as profound as if no wing had ever fluttered there,—and became as motionless as circumstances would allow, for beside the birds there were other tenants not half so shy. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... told by Sgt. Fred Miller about Pvt. Fred Lang of Hospital No. 1 on Bataan. Miller had tried to do what he could for Lang, but no one else in the detachment was willing to give him a break. He was an unlettered hillbilly and, being ashamed of his own ignorance, he was shy toward other men. The rest of the story is ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... active service since the beginning, without a single medal. The younger Hungarian was one of those slumbering daredevils who combine a compact, rugged shape—strong wrists, hair low on the forehead—with the soft voice and shy manners of a girl. He spoke a little German and English in the slow, almost plaintive Hungarian cadence, but all we could get out of him about the war was that it had made him so tired—so 'mude'. He had gone to school in Zurich but could not tell our Swiss ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... her face in Lois's skinny hand, until Sam Polston came in, when she grew quiet and shy. The poor deformed girl lay watching them, as they talked. Very pretty Jenny looked, with her blue eyes and damp pink cheeks; and it was a manly, grave love in Sam's face, when it turned to her. A different love from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know? For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat—the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she's usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... had not said a word and had not chosen a home. This plant was the heather. She had not the sweet fragrance of the violet, and the children did not love her as they did the daisy. The reason was that no blossoms had been given to her, and she was too shy to ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... you want to claim him as your son! Herman Brudenell, I always hated you, but now I scorn you! Twenty odd years ago I would have killed you, only I didn't want to kill your soul as well as your body, nor likewise to be hanged for you! And now I would shy this stick of wood at your head only that I don't want Reuben Gray to have the mortification of seeing his wife took up for assault! But I hate you, Herman Brudenell! And I despise you! There! take yourself out ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the people would be shy," answered Griffin, with a little hesitation of manner, and yet with the directness and simplicity of a truly brave man. "We must let them get over the last brush before they are depended on much for any ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... will. He was a little shy at first of putting all his weight into his blows. It was hard to forget that he felt friendly towards O'Hara. But he speedily awoke to the fact that the Irishman took his boxing very seriously, and was quite a different person ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... "Fight shy of both of them. They're no good. They'll make you and your chums do all the work, now ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... deeply over these twin feasts, and it has occurred to me that, whilst land sports and water sports are both of them very good things in their way, neither expresses the real genius of a maritime resort, and also that we visitors, if we are too shy to enter with gusto into the local games, ought to provide some suitable entertainment in return. I have compiled therefore a programme of a Grand Beach Gala for next week, and have had a notice put up in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... is. I'm with you there. But about your question—I asked her if she had seen anything of two chaps about your size, and she told me enough to show me I was on your track. She told me which way you went, and I follered. She was a little shy at first, not knowin' but I might be an enemy of yours, but when she'd made up her mind to the contrary she up and told me everything. Well, I struck your trail, and ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... good hawk, who duck or woodcock shy, Partridge or pigeon, or such other prey, Seeing towards her from a distance fly, Raises her head, and shows her blithe and gay; So Mandricardo, in security Of crushing Rodomont in that affray, Gladly his courser seized, bestrode the seat, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... foreground. It transpired afterwards at various village entertainments that Rebecca couldn't be kept in the background; it positively refused to hold her. Her worst enemy could not have called her pushing. She was ready and willing and never shy; but she sought for no chances of display and was, indeed, remarkably lacking in self-consciousness, as well as eager to bring others into whatever fun or entertainment there was. If wherever the MacGregor sat was the head of the table, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... my life that I did see him. At some public sports or recreation ground I saw a group of rather objectless youths, one of whom was wearing the dashing uniform of a private in the Lancers. Inside that uniform was the tall figure, shy face, and dark, stiff hair of Simmons. He had gone to the one place where every one is dressed alike—a regiment. I know nothing more; perhaps he was killed in Africa. But when England was full of flags and false triumphs, when everybody was talking ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... experience, from presiding at weddings and standing beside open graves, sharing the joys and sorrows of innumerable persons, is so indispensable, as in the pastor, the physician of the spirit? Still, we will turn out some wise, shy, mellow old man, just ripened to the point of being the true minister to the souls of others, and replace him with a recent graduate of a theological school, because the latter can talk the language of the higher criticism or whatever else happens to interest us for the moment. ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... any," answered Flossie, who was feeling a bit shy and bashful because so many persons were looking at ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope

... and Jean le Negre, upon learning that B. was among the partis, came over to our beds and sat down without uttering a word. The former, through a certain shy orchestration of silence, conveyed effortlessly and perfectly his sorrow at the departure; the latter, by his bowed head and a certain very delicate restraint manifested in the wholly exquisite ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... price is mentioned at all. Many solicitors consider it so essential to keep the price in the background until near the end of the canvass that they artfully dodge the question, "What is the cost?", until they think the prospect is sufficiently interested not to "shy" when ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... the pheasant-tailed pigeon, are less frequent visitors; and though the purple-breasted fruit pigeon—the most magnificent of all—talks to his mate in coarse gutturals from the trees above, he has not been seen actually drinking. So shy and furtive a bird would choose his time for refreshment when there is little likelihood of interruption. In the ravine there are often metallic starlings by the dozen, and little green pigeons—for those domiciled come and go at all hours of the day. Occasionally ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... to ride on as he was doing. "Were your horse to shy, Miss Ferris," he remarked, "I might be the means of saving you, and I would run every risk for the ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... and I could not help it." It would not mend matters in the least to tell them that she had overheard their criticism, so she resolved to be silent, but when Mrs. Mittens came, a little later, to conduct her to the dining-room, she was very shy and nervous. As she took her place, she looked at the boys wistfully, wondering which of them thought her "ugly," and which thought her pleasant enough to look at curled up on the sofa. Secretly, she hoped that Eddie was her champion, but before the dinner was over ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... absorption of the party in their different pursuits, he was able to see more of Ethel than he had ever done. He was so different from the men she had known that he was a continual study to her. Instead of the studied indifference, shy avoidance, shy advances, culminating in a blunt and straightforward declaration of "intentions," which she would have thought natural in an admirer, followed by transparent, honest delight in the event of acceptance, or manly submission to the inevitable in the event of rejection, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... "much confounded and truth gained ground."[21] Fox himself was not present at the "discussion," but he had a personal interview with Abrahams at about the same time as the "discussion." The interview was not very satisfactory. Fox says that he found this "notable teacher" "very high and shy, so that he would not let me touch him nor look upon him, but he bid me keep my eyes off him, for {123} he said they pierced him!"[22] But at a later visit, in 1684, Fox found the Collegiant doctor, now venerable with years, "very loving ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... therewith in the same proportion, with an ease which communicated it to others; with all this, a man who never desired to show more wits than they with whom he conversed, who put himself within everybody's range without ever letting it be perceived, in such wise that nobody could drop him, or fight shy of him, or not want to see him again. It was this rare talent, which he possessed to the highest degree, that kept his friends so completely attached to him all his life, in spite of his downfall, and that, in their dispersion, brought them together ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot



Words linked to "Shy" :   confident, shy away from, shy person, timid, diffident, insufficient, colloquialism, work-shy, wary, unsure, startle, confidence, throw, deficient, jump, shyness



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