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More "Shyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creature— How modest seems his feature! He nestles so demurely, You'd think him safer surely; And yet for all his shyness, There's danger in his slyness! The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... emotion; perhaps the memory of as dear a face that once beamed upon him with the same holy tenderness, stirred the long-time quiet depths within his young bosom, and sent forth the tear that lay upon his thin cheek! At any rate, the shyness and misery had vanished, and he stood intently gazing into the face of the lady until he seemed to have forgotten his misfortunes in the happiness of that one sacred moment. The gentle voice recalled him to a sense of his position, and he sighed ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... went on pretty glibly. I fancy he had been afraid of beginning to speak to me, just as I was to him; but he got over his shyness with me sooner than I did mine with him. I let him choose the subjects of conversation, although very often I could not understand the points of interest in them: for instance, he talked for more than a quarter of an hour of a famous race which a certain dog-fox had given him, above ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... left him in the library. May I introduce Miss Bremerton—Sir Henry Chicksands.' The girl spoke with hurried shyness, the quick colour in her cheeks. The lady beside her bowed, and Sir Henry took off his hat. Each surveyed the other. 'A strong-minded female!' thought Sir Henry, who was by no means advanced in his views ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and remorseless coaching could make him. Everything needful was in his head—but could he get it out again? That was the question. The roaring world in which he would find himself, the strange examination-room, the quizzing professors—would these combine with his native shyness to seal the lips and cramp the pen of Robert Chalmers Fordyce? No—a thousand times no! He would win through! Robert set his teeth, braced himself, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... After the first shyness of her intercourse with the young teacher had worn off, she began for a while rather to make eyes at him, which if Keith ever dreamed of, he never gave the least sign of it. She, therefore, soon abandoned the useless campaign, and for a time held ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... was generally given out that Mr. Meeks had a vague desire to get married, but, being a shy and timorous youth, lacked the moral courage to do so. It was also well known that the Widow Conway had not buried her heart with the late lamented. As to her shyness, that was not so clear. Indeed, her attentions to Mr. Meeks, whose mother she might have been, were of a nature not to be misunderstood, and were not misunderstood by anyone but ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... him, as if she had known and loved him for ten years—ten years during which, however, she had never quite been able, in spite of undiscouraged attempts, to cure him, as goddesses had to cure shepherds, of his mere mortal shyness. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... whether it was due to the fact that Mariana did not reciprocate his feelings, or that his choice should have fallen upon a girl so utterly unlike him, was not quite clear. But most of all she evidently strove to soften Nejdanov, to arouse his confidence towards her, to break down his shyness; she even went so far as to reproach him a little for having ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... and station" firm. Some one else clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to meet his banker; behind them towered half a dozen old squatter friends, with fellow clubmen, all trying at once to get hold of his hand. David Linton's constitutional shyness melted in the heartiness of their greeting. Beyond them Norah seemed to be the centre of a mass of girls, one of whom presently detached herself, and came to him. He said in amazement, "Why, it's Jean Yorke—and grown up!" and actually kissed her, to the ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... gaze of these two men, for they had none of the shyness or nothing of the indirection of the ruder men she had met. They expressed something which angered her, though she could not ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... no Ring Lardner, no Irvin Cobb, no Casey at the bat. Mr. Smith is an infinitely close and acute observer of sophisticated social life, tinged with a faint and agreeable refined sadness, by an aura of shyness which amounts to a spiritual virginity. He comes to us trailing clouds of glory from the heaven of pure and unfettered speculation which is our home. He is an elf of utter simplicity and infinite candour. He ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... possessed a curious shyness which gave to his character an appearance the more misleading in that it hid in reality a will of iron and a ruthlessness comparable to a Condottiere of the Middle Ages. The fact was that his soul was thirsting ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... something of the great poets. Miss Mary Leicester was taken up with the important business of her own invalidism, but it might be a very good thing for her to take some part in such pleasant plans. Under all Aunt Barbara's shyness and habit of formality Betty had discovered her warm and generous heart. They had become fast friends, and, to tell the truth, Aunt Mary was beginning to have an uneasy and wistful consciousness that she was causing herself to be ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... from the schoolroom, she would have liked to go to picture-galleries, attend concerts, and mix with interesting people; in spite of her shyness and gentleness, she had plenty of mind and character, and Malcolm had already cultivated her artistic tastes. One summer, indeed, they had gone abroad, and Malcolm had been with them, and for two months Anna felt they had been in the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was not a smile or a sound. That ceremony over, they charged down upon me in an avalanche of gaiety. They waved their lanterns, they called banzai, they laughed and sung some of the old time foolish songs we used to sing. They promptly put to rout all legends of their excessive modesty and shyness. They were just young and girlish. Plain happy. Eager and sweet in their generous welcome. It warmed every fiber of my being. When they thinned out a little, I saw at the other end of the platform a figure flying towards me, with the sleeves of her kimono out-stretched like the wings of a gray bird, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... fabrications of a dismissed servant. Mr. Nicholls had also his grievance. There was just a suspicion implied that he had not been quite the most sympathetic of husbands. The suspicion was absolutely ill-founded, and arose from Mr. Nicholls's intense shyness. But neither Mr. Bronte nor Mr. Nicholls gave Mrs. Gaskell much trouble. They, at any rate, were silent. Trouble, however, came from many quarters. Yorkshire people resented the air of patronage with which, as it seemed to them, a good Lancashire lady had taken their county in hand. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... him so?" demanded Clarice of Heliet, in an astonished whisper. "Always," replied Heliet, with a sad smile. "But surely," said Clarice, her amazement getting the better of her shyness, "it must be very wanting in reverence from a ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... temperament, and from the earliest age evincing those characteristics of pride and shyness which rendered him unsocial, and therefore unpopular in general society, this nobleman, in the private walks of life, was amiable, and peculiarly disinterested. While in India, his correspondence with those of his own family, evinced in a remarkable degree those ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... loved before, caressed as men caress a dog, kicking it off when it becomes troublesome. George's boyish shyness, his reverent awe ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and the friendly rivalry with his fellow-students, had imbued him with the manly courage with which he faced the world. Yet not one of us can permanently alter his temperament; and, to the end of his life, Ivan was destined to suffer periodic torments from shyness, natural reticence, and a never-dying sense of shame at the memory of that unjust disgrace which by this time many interpreted rightly, and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... back, and it was then the concertinas came in useful. They sat down on the grass, and the concert was begun by Harry, who played a solo; then there was a call for a song, and Jim stood up and sang that ancient ditty, 'O dem Golden Kippers, O'. There was no shyness in the company, and Liza, almost without being asked, gave another popular comic song. Then there was more concertina playing, and another demand for a song. Liza turned to Tom, who was ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... out of love for him. Look into yourself! [With a certain shyness of expression.] Search out all that lies under—and behind ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... some caress. She looked sick and her lips were quite white, and if Lucis had been a man of quick perceptions he would have realised, her face must have shown him, that she loathed him. He was dense, however, and though he commented on her silence later on it was evident that he attributed it to shyness. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that such a condition was discoverable. Her bright eyes were looking into the grey world outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... therefore, the two young ladies between whom she was seated, rather with a wish of addressing, than a shyness of being attacked by them; but the elder, Miss Larolles, was earnestly engaged in discourse with a gentleman, and the younger, Miss Leeson, totally discouraged her, by the invariable silence and gravity with which from time to time ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... was Tom Longman. Tom was a big, hulking fellow, good-natured and simple-hearted in the extreme. He was the victim of an intense susceptibility to the girls' charms, joined with an intolerable shyness and self-consciousness when in their presence. From this consuming embarrassment he would seek relief by working like a horse whenever there was anything to do. With his hands occupied he had an excuse for not talking to the girls or being addressed by ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... at the door apprised him that his expected guests had arrived. Alas! blunder number two trod hard on the heels of number one! He had no tea or coffee, not even a box of biscuits, to take off the edge of the interview and offer a retreat for his own inevitable embarrassment and the possible shyness of his visitors. The arrangements for that reception were as formal as the invitations had been. Was it much wonder if the conference turned out stiff and awkward? In the first place, as all four entered together, and none of them were labelled, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... to give dares and to take risks. No class of players needs more sympathetic or tactful understanding and help from a teacher than the timid. Such children often suffer greatly through their shyness. They should first be brought into play in some form of game that does not make them conspicuous; one, for instance, in which they do what all the other players do, or merely take turns. Such children should ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... The Invention occupied him at night. He read, too, books on optometry. Don't think that he was a Rollo. He wasn't. But he was naturally somewhat shy, and further handicapped by an unusually tall lean frame which he handled awkwardly. If you had a good look at his eyes you forgot his shyness, his leanness, his awkwardness, his height. They were the keynote of his gentle, studious, kindly, humorous nature. But Chicago, Illinois, is too busy looking to see anything. Eyes are something you see ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... statement—(because if it was quite as bad as you say, you know, I never should have seen you ... and I have!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No—it has not been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with both eyes wide open—only that by a supernatural influence they won't stay open with you as they are used to do with other people ... so ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... there can be no question that Goldsmith, conscious of his pitted face, his brogue, and his ungainly figure, was exceedingly nervous and sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such people mostly are, to cover his shyness by an appearance of ease, if not even of swagger; and there can be as little question that he occasionally did and said very awkward and blundering things. But our Japanese friend, whom we mentioned in our opening pages, looking ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... her trembling in his arms as they drove through the crowded streets in the shabby neighbourhood she had never seen before, to the house crowded between others all like itself. She had actually not heard the young chaplain's name in her shyness and tremor. He would scarcely have been an entity but for the one moving fact that he himself had just hastily married a girl he adored and must leave, and so sympathised and understood the stress of their hour. On their ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... conclude she would have carried out whatever plan she might have formed. I can imagine de Barral accustomed for years to defer to her wishes and, either through arrogance, or shyness, or simply because of his unimaginative stupidity, remaining outside the social pale, knowing no one but some card-playing cronies; I can picture him to myself terrified at the prospect of having the care ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... was feeling with every moment less at ease in his companionship and more determined to seem at ease. Being generally self-possessed, she had a horror of slipping into shyness and so retrograding from her usual vantage ground. She expected him to speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a heavy-footed ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... glance round the rooms and the company; then, as if conscious of the remarks and glances directed toward him, but completely "ignoring" them, and without the least shyness or awkwardness, he walked quietly through the hall to the host ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a stranger from her stool in the most persistent manner, never withdrawing her eyes, as if she would pierce to his soul, and understand by very force of insight whether he was or was not one to be honored with her confidence; and I have often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the 79th—leaned forward and tried to put his hand upon the child's shoulder, not unkindly, but with a rough playfulness of the soldier. Gilian shrank back, his face flushing crimson, then he realised the stupidity of his shyness and tried to amend it by coming a little farther into the room and awkwardly attempting the salute in which the Sergeant More had tutored him. The company was amused at the courtesy, but no one laughed. In a low voice the Paymaster swore. He was a man given to swearing with no great variety ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... expression, too, in the whole face, of fixedness of purpose, without any hardness of determination. Her countenance altogether seemed the index to an interesting mental history. Signs of mental trouble were always an attraction to him; in this case so great, that he overcame his shyness, and spoke to her one evening as they left the works. He often walked home with her after that; as, indeed, was natural, seeing that she occupied an attic in the same poor lodging-house in which he lived himself. The street did not bear the best character; ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... towards him, palpitating between her shyness of the Commander of the Garrison and her womanly curiosity to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Gardens are very shy and restless; when alarmed they dash and leap about their dens and utter a short guttural cry somewhat resembling a bark. This shyness is partly to be attributed to their imperfect vision by day, and partly to their resemblance in character to the wolf, whose treachery and suspicious manners in confinement must have struck every one who has gazed on this "gaunt savage" in his den in the Regent's Park. The specimens exhibited ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... an odd sensation—too sunny upon the nooked, retiring current that flowed in him. He might have turned to the cool accustomed shadow that Alicia made, but she was aware that he did not, that he was struggling through her strangeness and his shyness for something to say to her. He stirred his coffee, and once or twice his long upper lip trembled as if he thought he had found it; but it was Alicia who talked, making light accusations against the rigours of the Mission House, complaining of her cousin ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Smoke he was always absurdly gentle; also he was fatherly; and at the same time betrayed a certain diffidence or shyness. He recognised that Smoke called for strong yet respectful management. The cat's circuitous methods puzzled him, and his elaborate pretences perhaps shocked the dog's liking for direct, undisguised action. Yet, while he failed to comprehend these tortuous feline mysteries, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Later in the evening it was with an emotion like alarm that Lois heard that her parents had gone home without waiting to bear her company. Secretly she began to plan methods for stealing away alone. Her shyness of Thor was like nothing she had known in the days of courtship and marriage, or during the months in which they had been holding off from each other ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... that dropt from my mother's lips, as if at unawares,) that she is very fearful of the consequences that may follow;—to my prejudice, perhaps, is her kind concern; since she sees that they behave to me every hour with more and more shyness and reserve: yet, would she but exert that authority which the superiority of her fine talents gives her, all these family feuds might perhaps be extinguished in their but yet beginnings; especially as she may be assured that all fitting concessions shall ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and admired their healthy, happy, and well-fed appearance; and then proceeded to the apartment of the boys; all little things of the same age, sitting ranged in a row like senators in congress, and, strange to say, much quieter and graver than the female babies; but this must have been from shyness, for before we came away, we saw them romping in great style. The directresses seem good respectable women, and kind to the children, who, as I mentioned before, are almost all taken away and brought up by rich people, before they have ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... good fortune to know many wise and virtuous men. I never knew any man of really great intellect, who carried less of the ways of ordinary greatness about him. There was an added charm to the very shyness of his manner when one remembers how fearless he was, if the occasion called for fortitude ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... when I repeat it. You lose the sweet shyness of her face, the appeal in her eyes not yet dry, and that soft minor chord in her voice that reminds me ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... ease. The community song leader must be able to raise a hearty laugh occasionally, and he must by the magnetism of his personality be able to make men and women who have not raised their voices in song for years past forget their shyness, forget to be afraid of the sound of their own voices, forget to wonder whether anyone is listening, and join heartily in ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... their feet. It was still hissing and smoking, but Ned, driven by some unknown impulse, seized it and with a mighty effort hurled it over the wall, where it burst. Then he stood licking his burned fingers and looking rather confusedly at Crockett. He felt a certain shyness over what he ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... know. I am so shy. My shyness takes a peculiar phase. I never look a person in the face. The reason is that I am afraid they may know me and that I may not know them, which makes it very embarrassing for both of us. I always wait for the other person to speak. I know lots of people, but I don't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a measure strange to her, seeing all her girlhood had been spent at her aunt's house in London town, where she had received her education. Possibly she had looked forward not without dread to the rough merry-making of the Fair; but she too had kindled at the Stranger's message. Her shyness fled from her as, with her hand locked fast in her husband's, the two pressed forward. The crowd seemed to melt away at sight of their radiant faces, and almost before the sermon was ended the young couple found themselves face to face ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... in short, it has become an "understood thing" all over town—there are such moments, when the lady throws off all reserve, and by a look, a smile, a blush, a half-articulate word, repays her lover for months, if he is fool enough to court so long, of prudish and affected shyness, past or future. These moments occur but seldom, even in the most patriarchal courtships, and it is well that it is so. Love is a fiery steed, and should always be ridden with a curb bridle, both before and after marriage. (I am sorry that I cannot think of a nautical metaphor, or I assure ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Swiggs!" exclaims the old man, toddling toward Tom, and grasping firmly his hand, as he enters the door. "You are welcome to my little place, which shall be a home." Tom hangs down his head, receives the old man's greeting with shyness. "Your poor father and me, Tom, used to sit here many a time. (The old man points to an old sofa.) We were friends. He thought much of me, and I had a high opinion of him; and so we used to sit for hours, and talk over the deeds of the old continentals. Your ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... probability of even greater miracles in the matter of price. She saw the average price of ten pounds rising to fifteen, or even twenty, pounds—provided her husband was given no opportunity to ruin the affair by his absurd, retiring shyness. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... among inverts, it is quite obvious that it was not the masculine character of the boy which kindled the love of man, but it was his physical resemblance to woman as well as his feminine psychic qualities, such as shyness, demureness, and the need of instruction and help. As soon as the boy himself became a man he ceased to be a sexual object for men and in turn became a lover of boys. The sexual object in this case as in many others is therefore ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... happy one, full of generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... future happiness. Every object and every aim of his life had reference to her. It was hard to give up such a perfect love, and she felt that she could not see Andrew face to face and do it. Hence her refusals to meet him, and her shyness and silence when a meeting was unavoidable. Hence, also, came a very peculiar attitude of Andrew's friends and mates; for they could not conceive how Andrew's implicit faith in his love should prevent him from finding out what ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking again to the long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls have encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition, he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard to his companions by placing himself on the inner side of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a steeple-top the part of Paris ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been "up and doing." (Not up and saying, be't well understood). As TUPPER (the Honourable C.H., Minister Of Fisheries) said, in the style of his namesake, "The fool imagines all Silence is sinister, "But the wise man knows that it's often dexterous." Be sure no inquisitive shyness or bounce'll Make us "too previous" with our Report, which goes first to the QUEEN and the Privy Council. Some bigwig's motto is, "Say and Seal," but as TUPPER remarked a forefinger laying To the dexter side of a fine proboscis, "Our motto at present ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... came often, when the first shyness had worn away. He was an orphan, like Marie herself: a pretty, dark-eyed little fellow, who looked, she fancied, like the children at home in France. He did not expect her to talk and answer questions, but was ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... the wind was crisp and cold as I rode into Howard's Creek. Smoke rose from the cabins. I limped toward the Davis cabin, a strange shyness holding me back. Some ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... make a girl talk to a man, such a ducking as Lucinda had had would do so. Such sudden events, when they come in the shape of misfortune, or the reverse, generally have the effect of abolishing shyness for the time. Let a girl be upset with you in a railway train, and she will talk like a Rosalind, though before the accident she was as mute as death. But with Lucinda Roanoke the accustomed change ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... murmured and then, all at once, from throat to brow crept a wave of hot colour, her long lashes drooped and she turned away with a strange, new shyness; and in this moment I saw she was altogether more lovely than I ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... not from pride but from shyness, and presently her husband said to her: "Get up, my dear, and show how smart you are." She obeyed, but she had no need to get up to show it. She walked to the end of the studio and then came back blushing, her fluttered eyes on the partner of her appeal. ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Agnes Rivers was feeling quite at home in her uncle's house. She had lost much of her nervous shyness, but except with Mrs. Mittens she was very quiet and reserved. She was a little afraid of her uncle, as were the whole family; a little in awe of Eddie too, who was still somewhat stately and grand ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... go with me, Manning,' said he; 'I used to be as impudent a fellow as need be, and rather liked going amongst strangers, and making my way; but since my illness I am almost like a girl, and turn hot and cold with shyness, as ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... architecture, he could not be mistaken in his confidence that I was a connoisseur. All eyes were turned upon me. As a shy man, this made me blush; as a vain man, the blush was accompanied with delight. It might easily have happened that such an appeal, acting at once upon shyness and ignorance, would have inflamed my wrath; but the appeal happening to be directed on a point which I had recently investigated and thoroughly mastered, I was flattered at the opportunity of a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... expected his pupil to learn, his expectations were surpassed. The girl beyond clearing up the room had nothing to do, and she devoted herself with enthusiasm to this work. Once she had mastered simple words and felt her own progress, her shyness as to her ignorance left her. She always carried her book in her pocket, and took to asking girls the pronunciation of larger words, and begging them to read a few lines to her; and sitting on the door-step poring over her book, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... embarrassed, he smiled stupidly and fell to gazing at the stage. He gazed at it but was no longer feeling bliss. He began to be troubled by uneasiness. In the interval, he went up to Brizzhalov, walked beside him, and overcoming his shyness, muttered: ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... always inviting to the guess, the passionate surmise—that told him first here was a maiden made for love. A figure tremulous with a warm grace, a countenance perfect in its form, full of a natural gravity, yet quick to each emotion, turning from the pallor of sudden alarm to the flush of shyness or vexation. The mountains had stood around to shelter her, and she was like the harebell of the hills. Had she been the average of her sex he would have met her with a front of brass; instead there was confusion in his utterance ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... deep. Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line over the elder-bushes that dip into the water, it seems as if we could catch nothing but frogs and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them. And even when a fish of reputable aspect is drawn out, one feels a shyness about touching him. As to our river, its character was admirably expressed last night by some one who said "it was too lazy to keep itself clean." I might write pages and pages, and only obscure the impression which this ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... troubles incidental to folk-song collecting it is unnecessary to speak. But the collection of shanties involves difficulties of a special kind. In taking down a folk-song from a rustic, one's chief difficulty is surmounted when one has broken down his shyness and induced him to sing. There is nothing for him to do then but get on with the song. Shanties, however, being labour songs, one is 'up against' the strong psychological connection between the song and its manual acts. Two illustrations ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... those happy sons of the gods who are born to success. No young man of his age was more courted both by men and women. There was no one who in his youth had suffered fewer troubles from those causes of trouble which visit English young men,—occasional impecuniosity, sternness of parents, native shyness, fear of ridicule, inability of speech, and a general pervading sense of inferiority combined with an ardent desire to rise to a feeling of conscious superiority. So much had been done for him by nature that he was never called upon to pretend to anything. Throughout ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... refined manner, with a candid but somewhat frightened-looking face. She was wearing a very plain indoor dress, and had on a shabby old-fashioned hat, but she still carried a parasol. Unexpectedly finding the room full of people, she was not so much embarrassed as completely overwhelmed with shyness, like a little child. She was even about to retreat. "Oh... it's you!" said Raskolnikov, extremely astonished, and he, too, was confused. He at once recollected that his mother and sister knew through Luzhin's letter of "some young woman of notorious behaviour." He ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... feel any shyness about meeting this formidable conclave? Remember you have at least two good friends ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... of that, and swung round to face him. Her glance met his own without, shyness now; there was a hardening glitter in her eyes, a faint stir of colour in her cheeks. She suspected him ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... was struggling with a feeling of uncontrollable shyness which completely tied her usually ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... ways, low tones of voice, lips that can wait, and eyes that do not wander,—shyness of personalities, except in certain intimate communions,—to be light in hand in conversation, to have ideas, but to be able to make talk, if necessary, without them,—to belong to the company you are in, and not to yourself,—to have nothing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... result of exaggerated humility. If you concentrate upon what you are saying, and forget all about how you are saying it, you will forget your shyness. Respect yourself, have confidence in yourself-and nervousness and shyness ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... her affectionate father,—who had procured it at a high rate, and who would have given half his substance to gratify his daughter,—sat the girlish form of Rose Flammock, who had so much of juvenile shyness in her manner, so much of feeling and of judgment in her thoughts and actions. Dame Margery followed, mixed in the party escorted by Father Aldrovand, whose company she chiefly frequented; for Margery affected a little the character of the devotee, and her influence in the family, as ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... out beneath the tiny frill of her thin garment, looked at the broad-shouldered handsome girl Manella who had just brought in her breakfast tray and now stood regarding her with an odd expression of mingled admiration and shyness. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... Herein lay all her early wildness and strangeness. Herein lay, as yet half hidden, dimly sensed and all unspoken, the power of a mighty all-compelling love for one human soul, and, through it, for all the souls of men. All this lay growing and developing; but as yet she was still a girl, with a new shyness and comeliness ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... if she would not renounce all pensions, abandon the alliance with Austria and give up all the bailiwicks for a term of office. But Bern was by no means so ready for war. In the Council, jealousy or mere political shyness of the often hasty interference of Zurich, appears to have given new animation to the party opposed to her. "We are," wrote Haller to Zwingli, "as unsound as ever in our government; and though we now at Easter possess the Small and ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... ornament to the age in which he lived." At a comparatively early age he had outlived all his family, and thus became the owner of large landed property. He suddenly became a prey to strange, overmastering habits of indolence, apathy, and shyness, which gradually estranged him from all society. He neglected his property, allowed his rents to remain for years and years in the hands of his steward, without troubling himself about them, and allowed his dividends to grow up in the hands of his bankers without concerning himself as to ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... presence of the Houyhnms. These noble animals, so graceful, so clean, so condescending, appalled him. Yet he had found the Silchester men who came to visit the Mission easy enough to get on with. No doubt they, without their background were themselves a little shy, although their shyness never mastered them so far as to make them ill at ease. Here, however, they seemed as imperturbable and unbending as the stone saints, row upon row on the great West front of the Cathedral. Mark apprehended more clearly than ever the powerful personality ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the door for a few moments. She was torn with conflicting fears and emotions. A strange feeling of oppression and shyness had come over her. It had seemed so easy to say that she would be married at once, to-morrow, to Jervis. But she had not known that she would have to ask Jervis's consent. She had supposed, foolishly, that it would all be settled for her ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in order to dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House. He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... recollections they retain of their early childhood. A few, as I do, remember it all. Many remember nothing whatever which occurred before they were five years old.... I have suffered much from a feeling of shyness and reserve, and I have not been able to do things by trying to do them. What comes to me comes of its own accord, and almost in spite of me; and I have hardly any power when verses are once written to make them any better.... There were no hardships in my youth, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... "You are a noble fellow, sir, and will make her an excellent husband. She will not be so foolish as to reject such a disinterested affection. Besides," he added, hesitating a little, "I have a very shrewd notion that all this apparent indifference is only shyness on my little girl's part, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... was greatly disconcerted. He had never been a Lothario. In forty years he had never had an episode with one of "the other sex," but it was not because he was impervious to the softer emotions. An intolerable shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women, and even small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques. Yet even with Zoe, who was so simple and companionable and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a word because she thought that, like herself, the girl had seen Cynthia's boy coming down the hill and wished with girlish shyness to be out of the house when he came. But Nanny had not seen him, had not been watching the roads, so taken was she with her guilty secret. Her surprise when she almost ran ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... introduced to the owner of the haunting face. He had lived too much in the great world all his life to retain the innate shyness of an Englishman; but he certainly was confused and embarrassed when his eyes met Isaura's, and he felt her hand on his arm. Before quitting the room she paused and looked back. Graham's look followed her own, and saw behind them the lady with the scarlet jacket escorted by some portly and decorated ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in service in Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigour which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... flush and Jimmy's twinkle; his incredible, irrepressible twinkle. You could even see the tips of Jimmy's little front teeth trying to bite down his lip into some sort of composure. You could see that he was very shy and very modest; you could see that in spite of his shyness and his modesty he was frightfully pleased; but more than anything you could see ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... gallops the animal after its fellows, never separating itself from the main body. Every Maratha brings his own horse and his own arms with him to the field, and possibly in the interest they possess in this private equipment we shall find their usual shyness to expose themselves or even to make a bold vigorous attack. But if armies or troops could be frightened by appearances these horses of the Marathas would dishearten the bravest, actually darkening the plains with their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... not have passed as so proud a man, and would have been more popular. There is no trait of character in a great man less understood than what we call pride, which often is not pride at all, but excessive shyness and reserve, based on sensitiveness and caution rather than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... undersized, red-haired, and somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read the Uncle Remus book; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to make acquaintance with a colley-dog, I have never been able to succeed in producing any degree of familiarity. On the contrary, he has always regarded me with looks of shyness and suspicion. His master appears to be the only being to whom he is capable of showing any degree of attachment; and coiled up on his great-coat, or reposing at his feet, he eyes a stranger with distrust, if not with anger. At the same time there is a look of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... cried Aleck, and there came a sudden lull as they scrambled to their feet. Jim was the only one she did not know, and for some reason the sight of this slender young woman in black, with a white rose in her dress, caused him a fit of unusual shyness. Ikey himself could not have been more abashed than he was when Carl ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... presence, approval, and scorn of men 1. Gregariousness. 2. Attention to human beings. 3. Attention-getting. 4. Responses to approval and scorn. 5. Responses by approval and scorn D. Mastering and submissive behavior 1. Display. 2. Shyness. 3. Self-conscious behavior E. Other social instincts 1. Sex behavior. 2. Secretiveness. 3. Rivalry. 4. Co-operation. 5. Suggestibility and opposition. 6. Envious and jealous behavior. 7. Greed. 8. Ownership. 9. Kindliness. 10. Teasing, tormenting, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the Cantorei. How eagerly he had looked forward to this break in his life, with what zeal he had planned how he was to assist Michael in his work, when he had smoothed the young one's entry, helped him over his shyness, and shown him all the delightful scenes and circumstances which his new life would comprise. It had infused new vigour into his resolutions, and fired him with fresh ardour for his own work, this coming of his brother to share ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... scant knowledge, but the one I know was wont to cherish the memory of things his love had said and how she had said them; with what a pretty tilt to her chin, with what a daring shyness of the eyes, with what a fine colour and impetuous audacity she had done this or looked that. He was wont in advance to plan out conversations, to decide that he would tell her some odd brain fancy and watch her while he told it. Many ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... anxiety was as to whether Fika would get his share all right; but I expect he did, for the Ajumbas are very honest men; and they were going back with my Fan friends. I found out, by the by, the reason of Fika's shyness in coming through to the Rembwe; it was ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Mrs. Spafford and she washed up. Later, they brought their sewing into the sitting-room. While we were trying to thaw the little schoolmarm's shyness, a mouse ran across the floor. In an instant Miss Buchanan was on her chair. The mouse ran round the room and vanished; the girl who had been sent to Paradise to keep in order the turbulent children of the foothills ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... all blushes and shyness. Her hair had gone back into the long plait, and she wore her schoolgirl ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... Consider you've got resources deposited with me. Perhaps at the first blush—it strikes you as odd. People are brought up to be so shy about money. As though it was indelicate—it's just a sort of shyness. But here I am to draw upon. Here I am as an alternative either to nasty ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... still think that there must have been some consultation and decision relating to me in the interval between the meetings and the formation of the new ministry, which produced some alteration.... In confirmation of the notion I have recorded above, I am distinct in the recollection that there was a shyness in Peel's manner and a downward eye, when he opened the conversation and made the offer, not usual with him ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... girl while his mother talked, and he seemed to detect in her a certain aloofness as far as he was concerned, although he was not sure that the impression was not due to his absence so long from the society of women. It gave him a feeling of shyness which he found difficult to overcome, and which he contrasted in his own mind with her ease and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is one of the names of the lion). The former is the game-killing tiger, retired in his habits, living chiefly among the hills, retreating readily from man. "He is a light-made beast, very active and enduring, and from this, as well as his shyness, generally difficult to ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... fire; a compelling apparition, erect, with snowy hair waving high over burning black eyes. To-day when I coldly analyse her fascination I recall nothing but these simple elements. She permitted not a moment of the shyness that has always plagued me. What our words were I do not now know, but I know that I kissed the two hands she held out to me as she called me Mantovani's son and her friend. Then I talked as never before or since, told her of my struggles and ambitions, and from time to time I was mute so that ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the passage, and one into the douche-chamber, which also served for another bathroom. Presently the first of the doors opened, and a girl, without apology, entered and took away a sponge. Did this intrusion make me feel shy? Well, you see, one gets over shyness after being washed like a baby once or twice; but she had hardly disappeared before the other door opened, giving admission to a second woman, who came in and deposited a towel; a moment later some one else appeared, and after a good stare departed; then came a fourth on some pretext ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the public platform had by this time become so insistent that Riley could no longer resist it, although modesty and shyness fought the battle for privacy. He told briefly and in his own inimitable fashion of these trying experiences. "In boyhood I had been vividly impressed with Dickens' success in reading from his own works and dreamed that some day I might follow his example. At first I read ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... That placid dame, The Moon's Celestial Highness; There's not a trace Upon her face Of diffidence or shyness: She borrows light That, through the night, Mankind may all acclaim her! And, truth to tell, She lights up well, So I, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the girls' fault. They had made a tremendous fuss about her the first few days and then, as the novelty had worn off, they had settled back into their own ways, and Janet had not understood the change. Her shyness made her morbid, and by the end of the first week she had made up her mind that she had failed in some way, and she construed the girls' thoughtless indifference ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... days in a round of religious exercises without relaxation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as the sensible Lady Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a walk, there was a prayer-meeting. Cowper himself was made to do violence to his intense shyness by leading in prayer. He was also made to visit the poor at once on spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which Thornton, the religious philanthropist, supplied Newton and his disciples with means. This, which Southey appears to think about the worst ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... poignant moments in the boat I met Dugald Shaw in commonplace fashion at the table, a sudden, queer, altogether unprecedented shyness seized me. I sat looking down at my plate with the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... beautiful in face, and dark in colouring, fond of inventing new costumes, and of spending day and night in song and dancing and all manner of delights." In these early days at Pavia and Milan there was, indeed, Trotti tells us, a certain shyness and reserve about her that was only natural and might well be ascribed to maiden shyness and timidity, but in the freedom and gaiety of her new life this soon gave way to the irrepressible mirth and joyousness ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... of welcome which she spoke found me hardly self-possessed enough to thank her in the customary phrases of reply. Observing my hesitation, and no doubt attributing it, naturally enough, to some momentary shyness on my part, Miss Halcombe took the business of talking, as easily and readily as usual, into her ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... it, when the Queen, with ready presence of mind, held out her hand: he grasped it, and was able to regain his feet in safety, but did not recover his perceptions enough to make any sign of gratitude before the carriage passed on. He had all a boy's shyness about the adventure; but perhaps it served to quicken the personal loyalty which is an unfailing ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nature not demonstrative; they do not greet their wives before strangers with a kiss, on returning from the day's business, as a Frenchman may do; and if very glad to see you on meeting, they are not likely to say so in words; but they cherish warm emotions under a hard crust of reserve and shyness, and lavish all their wealth of affection on the little band collected within the magic circle of Home. Said an American who had spent two years as a public lecturer throughout Great Britain: "Circumstances have introduced ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... pink, so transparent withal that you almost see the animal spirit careering within; the drooping shoulder, the rounded bust, clean limbs, well-turned ankle, fine almost to a fault, the light springy step, the graceful easy carriage, the absence of sheepishness or shyness, an air cheerful without noise, a manner playful without rudeness, and you have the true son or daughter of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... exhilaration in the emergency, a tendency to be proud of the storm, and of its effect upon their humdrum lives. They laughed and shouted as they battled with it, and as Nature's great barrier of snow threw down the little barriers of convention and shyness. Men held out their hands to slipping and stumbling women, caught them by their shoulders, panted to them that this was a storm, all right, this was the worst yet! Girls, staggering in through the revolving glass doors of the big department ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... The bearer of this is the son of an old friend. One of the most agreeable young men I ever saw. As modest as he is well educated, and I can't say more. Procure him some amusement, that a little of his shyness may be rubbed off; and forward his fortunes, my dear friend, as far as you can ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... to a neighbouring hill. If, however, by chance he abruptly meets a single animal, or several together, they will generally stand motionless and intently gaze at him; then perhaps move on a few yards, turn round, and look again. What is the cause of this difference in their shyness? Do they mistake a man in the distance for their chief enemy the puma? Or does curiosity overcome their timidity? That they are curious is certain; for if a person lies on the ground, and plays strange antics, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... view of endeavouring to be introduced to its author. By a fortunate chance he happened to take lodgings in a house where Mr. Levett frequently visited, who readily obtained Johnson's permission to bring Mr. Langton to him; as indeed, Johnson, during the whole course of his life, had no shyness, real or affected, but was easy of access to all who were properly recommended, and even wished to see numbers at his levee, as his morning circle of company might, with strict propriety, be called, for he received his friends when he got up from bed, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... coming with his father. Then he went to school and college and became a young doctor, and only last year he came back to us, so changed for the better that none of us would have known him but for his kindly voice and fine manly-looking manner. His shyness, too, has stuck to him a little, but it does not seem to hinder him now as it once did. Ah!" continued Mrs Roby, in a sympathetic tone, "it's a great misfortune ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... With their usual shyness the Indians watched the white man's method from the underbrush skirting the margin of the creeks, and when the trapper had left, they stole his trap and carried it off to their village. A long time elapsed before the savage ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... his creations, some sentiment in his poetry. When braggarts, self-satisfied and in love with themselves, step early into the fame which belongs rightly to their future achievements, they are men of genius only in the eyes of fools. If talent is to be measured by youthful shyness, by that indefinable modesty which men born to glory lose in the practice of their art, as a pretty woman loses hers among the artifices of coquetry, then this unknown young man might claim to be possessed of genuine merit. The habit of success ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... cheeks, tied up in quaint hats by ribbons under their chins, they made a charming picture. At least Paul thought so as he advanced towards them, hat in hand. They looked up at his approach, but again cast down their eyes with demure shyness; yet he fancied that they first exchanged glances with each other, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... soft garments, and turned. There in the doorway stood a feminine full moon—an elliptical young woman, with half of her pink and corpulent face showing above a gauzy veil, her two chubby hands clasped in front of her, the whole attitude one of massive shyness. ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... and looked as though she would say: "Do with me as you will, I trust you," while her mother Praskovya the work-woman hid herself in the kitchen numb with shyness. At one time in her youth a merchant whose floors she was scrubbing stamped at her in a rage; she went chill with terror and there always was a feeling of fear at the bottom of her heart. When she was frightened her arms and legs trembled and her cheeks twitched. Sitting in the kitchen she tried ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the newcomer, and ready, at the end of a week's acquaintance, to decide heartily in her favour. Monica was rather dignified and reserved in her manners, and evidently not much accustomed to mix with companions of her own age; but when her shyness began to wear off she proved ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... trembled at seeing me, and tears rushed into her eyes, for she remembered in whose company she had been accustomed to behold me. For my part, I cannot express what were my emotions. By degrees I overcame the extreme shyness that had formerly paralyzed me in her presence. We were drawn together by sympathy of situation. We had each lost our best friend in the world; we were each, in some measure thrown upon the kindness of others. When I came to know her intellectually, all my ideal ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... himself, distractedly: "What'll I say to her? What'll I talk to her about?" with each repetition winding himself, like a cocoon, deeper in webs of shyness. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... from which evil-smelling mud oozes. Offensive to man afloat and ashore, the "blanket weed" is a luxury to mullet and garfish, for during its period both may be seen in shoals skimming the surface of the sea in abandonment of habitual shyness, and the stomachs of both are found to be full of the greenish-grey slime. With the compliance of the sun the impurity disappears, giving place to the graceful weed of vivid green that attaches itself to dead and whitened shells and fingers of coral covered at low ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... outside the door for a few moments. She was torn with conflicting fears and emotions. A strange feeling of oppression and shyness had come over her. It had seemed so easy to say that she would be married at once, to-morrow, to Jervis. But she had not known that she would have to ask Jervis's consent. She had supposed, foolishly, that it would all be settled for her by ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... friend, Tom Swiggs!" exclaims the old man, toddling toward Tom, and grasping firmly his hand, as he enters the door. "You are welcome to my little place, which shall be a home." Tom hangs down his head, receives the old man's greeting with shyness. "Your poor father and me, Tom, used to sit here many a time. (The old man points to an old sofa.) We were friends. He thought much of me, and I had a high opinion of him; and so we used to sit for hours, and talk over the deeds of the old continentals. Your mother and him ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... hear more often than see—he is a will-o'-the-wisp for shyness, whether on his journeys or about home. But remember three things about him: his back is evenly olive (if you do not know what this dark-greenish color is, look at the olives you have on the table, or that stand in the tall glass jars in the grocer's window, for ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... a very troublesome and vicious habit of turning round suddenly,—we do not here allude to shyness, but restiveness,—without exhibiting any previous symptom of their intention. A horse soon ascertains that the left hand is weaker than the right, and, consequently, less able to oppose him; he, therefore, turns on the off side, and with such force and suddenness, that it is almost impossible, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... was something very charming about the people of the interior of Brazil, after they had overcome their first suspicion of strangers and their own shyness. They seemed imbued with the idea that everybody went there specially to do them harm. They lived in a constant state of fear and trembling, even of their own relations and friends. They all went about armed to the teeth, and ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... were hard ones, for Polly had not yet outgrown her natural shyness and going among so many strangers caused her frequent panics. But her purpose gave her courage, and when the ice was once broken, her little pupils quickly learned to love her. The novelty soon wore off, and though she thought she was prepared for drudgery, she found it very ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... tones of voice, lips that can wait, and eyes that do not wander,—shyness of personalities, except in certain intimate communions,—to be light in hand in conversation, to have ideas, but to be able to make talk, if necessary, without them,—to belong to the company you are in, and not to yourself,—to have nothing in your dress or furniture so fine that you cannot afford ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... atomic power, a working understanding of the nature and properties of contra-terrene matter, and a workable star drive operating on the same basic principle as Earth's Koenig drive but which the Bruckians had never really used because of their shyness and fear of contact with other races. They also had an excellent understanding, thanks to their eavesdropping on Confederation interstellar radio chatter, of the existence and functions of the Galactic Confederation ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... me a pair of pink silk stockings. No other girl in town had such a beautiful thing, and in the dressing-room they would not let me go down until I had shown them. The lighted dancing-rooms, and all the strange people, and my tall partners made me nearly die of shyness, but I danced two large holes in the toes of my lovely stockings, and afterward father teased me, and said he found he had suddenly become very popular with the young men. He had never been so ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... the tangled thickets of the Woods or along the shores of the Strathsey River, in season accompanied by dog and gun hunting fox and rabbit or partridge and wild duck. In Tom's company Nancy seemed to forget her shyness and would talk freely enough of her interests and her doings. He had always been fond of her, though until lately she had seemed to him hardly more than a child. This winter, as so frequently he had watched her sitting in the firelight listening to the old Marquis's ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... little girl of his own), and would shield her many times from the jostling crowd, or take her safely over the crossings. Indeed, he was so kind, that one day, when she was going home, she summoned up courage enough to overcome her shyness, and offer him some of the violets she had not sold. To her great delight he accepted ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... astonishing magnificence, but fell asleep in the middle of the sentence, and did not wake until late the next morning. Ann Mary had been awake for some time, but did not dare get up, so overcome was she by shyness and reverence for the grandeur of the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... intercourse between them. David Price, on the few occasions when he had visited New York, had not found it convenient to call. Once he had walked by on the other side of Fifth avenue and looked at the house, but shyness and the thought that he had no evening clothes in his valise had restrained him ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... civilization has taken, and hence it is that, unless one knows him well enough to respect him, he seems even yet stamped with the half-savagery of his folk as they were a century and a half ago. His fierce shyness, his arrogant self-regard, are notes of a primitive state. Naturally, he never learnt to house himself as did the Southerner, for climate, as well as social circumstance, was unfavourable to all the graces of life. And now one can only watch the encroachment of his rule upon ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of some of our most interesting wild animals, and especially of the badger, is to be accounted for by their extreme shyness. They venture abroad only when the shadows of night lie over the woods. For countless years, dogs and men have been their greatest foes, and their fear of them is found to be almost as strong in remote districts as where, near towns, their existence is continually threatened. Wild life in our ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... possible solutions to your problem. Do you think it was a case of Eve holding back in virginal shyness, expecting Adam ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... half turned to the ladies, "we must, until your potent inducements, Mr. Dale, have been joined to my instances, and we overcome what feminine scruples there may be, treat the circumstances as not generally public. Our Strephon may be chargeable with shyness. But if for the present it is incumbent on us, in proper consideration for the parties, not to be nominally precise, it is hardly requisite in this household that we should be. He is now for protesting indifference to the state. I fancy we understand that phase of amatory ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she looked from her cousin's hair to her cousin, a sudden sense of shyness came over her, and it was awkwardly enough ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... of pity the American watched them pass, while the skirl of the bagpipes lessened in the distance. In spite of the dissimilarity of type, there was a community of shyness that embraced almost every one—a silent plea not to be mistaken for heroes. As they passed the Horse Guards and saw the two sentries astride their horses still as statues (their glorious trappings, breastplates, helmets, and swords, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... be true enough. Strange, if the experience of 200 years' hunting, and by such hunters too, did not bring them to that. We may safely believe, that if the lions of Africa were placed in the same circumstances, a very similar shyness and dread of the upright biped would soon exhibit itself. What all these creatures—bears, cougars, lynxes, wolves, and even alligators—are now, is no criterion of their past. Authentic history proves that their courage, at least so far as regards man, has changed altogether since they first ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... strangely relieved. Still later the frequent disturbed cries of coot, heron, and marsh-hen, recognizing the presence of unusual invaders of their solitude, distracted her yet more, and forced her at last with increasing color and an uneasy sense of shyness to steal out to the gallery for a swift furtive survey of the Marsh. But an utterly unexpected sight met her eyes, and kept ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... at last she was coming to what for her (as he had known all along) was the real preoccupation of the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and at the same time, in their farther recesses, you felt a kind of fluttering shyness, as if I dare not were ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the ward after the others, and the door was closed, but his image, sorrowful and disquieting, lingered before my eyes. Of course, he, too, tried not to attract attention—and therein is the cause of his shyness; and when his wound will be dressed and he will be put into bed, he will also try not to moan. For, what right has he to ...
— The Shield • Various
... shyness, Lin was greeting her with ungainly ceremony, when she began at once, "You'll excuse me, but I just ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... float above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! After other skaters appear,—young men and boys,—who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness and moves regally like a king. One afternoon Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice,—very remarkable, but very ugly methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... fundamental assertions of Phrenology. Idiotic they are not; but their intellect and language are those of children of three or four years, to whom their gait also assimilates them; but they have none of childhood's reserve or shyness, are inquisitive and restless, and articulate with manifest efforts and difficulty. To children of three to six or eight years, their incessant pranks and gambols must be a source of intense and unfailing delight. The story that they were procured from an unknown, scarcely ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... "understood thing" all over town—there are such moments, when the lady throws off all reserve, and by a look, a smile, a blush, a half-articulate word, repays her lover for months, if he is fool enough to court so long, of prudish and affected shyness, past or future. These moments occur but seldom, even in the most patriarchal courtships, and it is well that it is so. Love is a fiery steed, and should always be ridden with a curb bridle, both before ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... white, and if Lucis had been a man of quick perceptions he would have realised, her face must have shown him, that she loathed him. He was dense, however, and though he commented on her silence later on it was evident that he attributed it to shyness. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... did, for his eyes were like sunbeams, and I thought they went through everything at that minute. I don't know what moved me, the consciousness of this inspection or the consciousness of what it discovered; but I know that floods of shyness seemed to flush my face and brow, and even to the tips of my fingers. I would have escaped if I could, but I could not; and I think Thorold rather liked what he saw. There was no hiding it, unless I hid it on his shoulder, and that I was ashamed ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a trifle nearer, stooping slightly over the man's hand, and she probably knew that the trace of shyness, which was not all assumed, became her. She was also distinctly conscious that the pose she fell into displayed ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... on her hand, shading her eyes from view, full of shyness for the first time in her bold young life. John Johnstone gazed on her with his soul in his eyes, and yet with a strange impatient interest in the business ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... saying, be't well understood). As TUPPER (the Honourable C.H., Minister Of Fisheries) said, in the style of his namesake, "The fool imagines all Silence is sinister, "But the wise man knows that it's often dexterous." Be sure no inquisitive shyness or bounce'll Make us "too previous" with our Report, which goes first to the QUEEN and the Privy Council. Some bigwig's motto is, "Say and Seal," but as TUPPER remarked a forefinger laying To the dexter side of a fine proboscis, "Our motto at present ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... Jock had recovered from his shyness—his difficulty in talking, all the little mist that absence had made—and roamed about after Lucy, hanging upon her, putting his arm through hers, though he was much the taller, wherever she went. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... were repelled by what they considered Mrs. Stevenson's cold and distant manner, but they were not aware of what it took her own family a long time to discover—that this apparent detachment and sphinxlike immobility covered a real and childlike shyness; yet it was never apathy, but the stillness of a frightened wild creature that has never been tamed. Though she said so little, she never failed to create an impression. Some one once said of her that her silence ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... to glance round the rooms and the company; then, as if conscious of the remarks and glances directed toward him, but completely "ignoring" them, and without the least shyness or awkwardness, he walked quietly through the hall to the host and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... would give it to her, for comparison, and criticism, if she chose to make any. She proved, however, a most charming critic, her shafts falling mainly upon herself, for she declared that her novel seemed unworthy of its elegant new dress. She conceived a shyness toward this quiet youth, and blushed when the striking situations and bold language of her tale came into the conversation. It was so ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... fine figure. Her eyes are blue, and their clear, candid expression indicates an unusually sincere and simple character. But, unfortunately, it is only her friends who are fully conversant with the expression of her eyes, for she is very shy. Shyness in little people is frequently piquant, but its effect in girls of the Juno style is too often that of awkwardness. Her friends call Maud Elliott stately; those who do not like her call her stiff; while indifferent persons speak ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... came to meet her son with a smile and morning greeting, setting her hands on his shoulder and kissing him, and so turned to me as if to ask Ethelbert to say who I was. And when she heard, I knelt and kissed the hand she held to me; and my shyness went, for I was no longer at a loss for somewhat to think of besides myself. I suppose the king or queen made some sign at this time, for the ladies rustled back to their seats, and their pleasant talk began again as if we were not present, only so low that ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... had crows, but their nests are an irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement was broken up. They grew so wonted as to throw off a great part of their shyness, and to tolerate my near approach. One very hot day I stood for some time within twenty feet of a mother and three children, who sat on an elm bough over my head gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All birds during the pairing season become more ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... what he had intended to do all along, but now that he saw the lighted windows, his fear of the darkness was gone. Instead, he felt again that shyness which always came over him now when he was near human beings. "I'll take a look around the town for a while longer," thought he, "before I ask anyone ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... inveigled into the party only goodness and Anne knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly. He never ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... delightful spot in the world. Here I took a fresh commission of life. I went out, a sort of battered remnant, to a forlorn hope; and now I come back to headquarters once again—not to be praised," he added in an ironical tone, and with a quick gesture of almost boyish shyness— "not to be praised; only to show that from a grain of decency left in a man may grow up some sheaves of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Fulk—Alured—Fetch him home! Emily came to warn us!" the accusation began to seem so monstrous and horrible that I could not go on with it before Emily. She too, perhaps, found it harder to utter to a man than to a woman, and between the strangeness of speaking to one another again, and her shyness and his wonder and delight, it seemed to me unreasonable that poor little Alured's danger was counting for nothing between them, and I turned from the former reticence to the bereaved tigress style, and burst out, "And are we to stand ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and griefs, her sudden despairs and eager hopes, her tempestuous angers, took place in the bottom of her heart. She would have been as dismayed at the thought of others seeing them as she would have been at the thought of being discovered unclothed. Shyness and pride combined to make her hide her innermost feelings so that no one should venture to ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the matter of opinions—the commonest of currency in our circle—he was niggardly and prone to qualify. No man ever guarded his mystery more effectually. There was a singular, intense spell, therefore, about those few evenings when he had broken through this excessive modesty, or shyness, or melancholy, and had, as ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... affording her an opportunity. She must be denied the smallest contact with these frightful faces and figures, these bars and cages, these deformities of the mind and heart, these curiosities of conscience, shyness, skill, and daring; all these dramas of reclamation, all these scenes of fervent gratitude, thankfulness, and intoxicating liberty—all or any of these things must never come to be the lot of her eyes; and she gave herself up to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... the curbstone,—wherever a group of men is assembled,—there is the freest talk on every possible subject; and the lives of men are open to their fellows as they cannot be in cities by reason of the mass or in country districts by reason of the solitude and the shyness which solitude breeds. Against Douglas there was the presumption, which every New England man who goes southward or westward has to live down, that he would in some measure hold himself aloof from his fellows. But ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... strength; alluding to what he had already done to them at Calicut. The enemy continued to hover off at sea, but did not venture to come nearer than a league, though they seemed in fighting order. Seeing this shyness, the general weighed anchor, and went out with all his fleet against them, having on board the two nayres who were hostages for the factory on shore, but his intentions were to have returned with them to Cochin. Soon after leaving the harbour, a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... front of the courtyard of La Thuiliere, and watched the lamps being lighted inside. But he had not ventured to knock at the door of the house; a foolish timidity had prevented him; so he had returned to the chateau, dissatisfied and reproaching himself for allowing his awkward shyness to interpose, as it were, a wall of ice between himself and the only person whose acquaintance ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... though I do look small," cried Rose, forgetting her shyness in indignation at this insult to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... him in the library. May I introduce Miss Bremerton—Sir Henry Chicksands.' The girl spoke with hurried shyness, the quick colour in her cheeks. The lady beside her bowed, and Sir Henry took off his hat. Each surveyed the other. 'A strong-minded female!' thought Sir Henry, who was by no means advanced in his views of ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her equanimity. He looked so droll with his wild sweeping gestures, and she felt so conscious of his shyness that she began to smile, and bravely held out the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the mingling of banter, and earnestness, of archness, devotion, shyness and fervor implied in the Latin ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and dancing on each anniversary than in the members being solely women. In men's clubs such celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon; but either the natural shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) or this their glory and consummation. The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. It had walked for hundreds of years, if ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of Dr. Spencer; but the carriage became like an oven. Aubrey curled himself up in a corner and went to sleep, but Leonard's look of oppressed resignation grieved Ethel, and the blue blinds made him look so livid, that she was always fancying him fainting, and then his shyness was dreadful—it was impossible to elicit from him anything ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him (I had nothing better to do), suggested to me, every now and then, the idea of a foreigner. In form and features he might be pronounced English, though even there one caught a dash of something Gallic; but he had no English shyness: he had learnt somewhere, somehow, the art of setting himself quite at his ease, and of allowing no insular timidity to intervene as a barrier between him and his convenience or pleasure. Refinement he did not affect, yet vulgar he could not be called; he was not odd—no quiz—yet he resembled ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... all measure Incurred the desperate displeasure Of his Serene and raging Highness: Whether he twitched his most revered And sacred beard, Or had intruded on the shyness Of the seraglio, or let fly An epigram at royalty, None knows: his sin was an occult one, But records tell us that the Sultan, Meaning to terrify the knave, Exclaimed, "'Tis time to stop that breath; Thy doom is sealed, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... at her vaguely, and she added, as if condescending to his natural shyness: "I've never seen May looking lovelier. The Duke thinks her the handsomest girl ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... proceed far in explanation; and he was studious in the sequel to prevent the young folks from being too intimately acquainted with each other's inclinations. Grimes, of consequence, attributed the reluctance of Miss Melville to maiden coyness, and the skittish shyness of an unbroken filly. Indeed, had it been otherwise, it is not probable that it would have made any effectual impression upon him; as he was always accustomed to consider women as made for the recreation of the men, and to exclaim ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... very shy or very deep. Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore, because she was not sure which it was. She intended to study him a little longer, unless she forgot the matter. If he was only shy, she would abandon him, for shyness is a bore. If he was deep, she would also abandon him, for ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... husband the same affection which had moved her so strongly a few hours before. It was certainly himself, those were the same features, that was the man to whom she had willingly given her hand, her heart, herself, and yet now that she saw him again a cold barrier of shyness, of modesty, seemed to have risen between them. His first kiss, even, had not made her happy: she blushed and felt saddened—a curious result of the long absence! She could not define the changes wrought ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... after her father, mother, and brothers, and, in short, to behave politely, and receive her in a becoming manner. To do this, however, Mr. Piner found was impossible, as his daughters were not at any time distinguished by the graces, and were always particularly awkward from their shyness ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... paid a price for my honors. With all my self-possession I had a certain capacity for shyness. Even when I arose to recite before the customary audience of my class I suffered from incipient stage fright, and my voice trembled over the first few words. When visitors were in the room I was even more troubled; ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... purpose, without any hardness of determination. Her countenance altogether seemed the index to an interesting mental history. Signs of mental trouble were always an attraction to him; in this case so great, that he overcame his shyness, and spoke to her one evening as they left the works. He often walked home with her after that; as, indeed, was natural, seeing that she occupied an attic in the same poor lodging-house in which he lived himself. The ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Lynde a cure which was completed by a winter in Southern Italy. He had regained his former elasticity of spirits and was taking life with a relish, when he went to Geneva; there he fell in with the Denhams in the manner he described to Flemming. An habitual shyness, and perhaps a doubt of Flemming's sympathetic capacity, had prevented Lynde from giving his friend more than an outline of the situation. In his statement Lynde had omitted several matters which may properly be ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... did not turn aside to call upon her, but went on to the meeting-house. On reaching the little country church, Mr. Odell found a small company of men assembled in front of the humble building, who looked at him curiously, and with something of shyness in their manner, as he rode up and dismounted. No one offering to take his horse, he led him aside to a little grove and tied the reins to a tree. One or two of the men nodded, distantly, as he passed ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... was the recent overlay of his own generation. Aside from a minute shyness, he felt that the old cynical kinship with his mother had not been one bit broken. Yet for the first few days he wandered about the gardens and along the shore in a state of superloneliness, finding a lethargic content in smoking "Bull" at the garage ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... good, was at that transition period of life when girlhood is least attractive—at least to young men: when bones are obtrusive, and angles too conspicuous, and the form generally is too suggestive of flatness and longitude; while shyness marks the manners, and inexperience dwarfs the mind. We would not, however, suggest for a moment that May was ugly. By no means, but she had indeed reached what may be styled a plain period of life—a period ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Enter the DUCHESS, showily and extravagantly dressed. Her manner at first is a mixture of alternate shyness and bravado. ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... it and it alone was to furnish forth the whole of the cloth. And so, what with the anxiety which the one evinced, and the gratification that it afforded to the other, it befell that, the one waxing unusually bold, and the other casting off not a little of her wonted shyness and reserve, they came to an understanding for their mutual solace; which proved so delightful to both, that neither waited to be bidden by the other, but 'twas rather which should be the ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the boy was without confidant or friend. Serious and eager, he came through school and college, and moved among a crowd of the indifferent, in the seclusion of his shyness. He grew up handsome, with an open, speaking countenance, with graceful, youthful ways; he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in the Speculative Society. It should seem he must become the centre of a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... occasional visits to her father's rectory, and of whom he had spoken to his wife. That Lady Dunstable should have unkindly slighted this motherless girl, who had evidently plenty of natural capacity under her shyness, was just like her, and Doris's feelings of antagonism to the tyrant were only sharpened by her acquaintance with the victim. Why should Miss Wigram worry her self? Lord Dunstable? Well, but after all, capable men should keep such wives in order. If Lord Dunstable had not been scandalously ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... certainly would, because he enjoys hockey as much as you or myself; but I reckon Nick, for the first time in all his life, finds himself afflicted with shyness. You see, he knows people don't, as a rule, believe in this sudden reformation. They can't have any faith in a fellow who's fooled them so often before. And that makes him want to keep away. Nick is fighting it out all by ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... responded Marcelle, slowly, with a certain dignified shyness that was characteristic of her. "My mother has told me all about it. She liked the library when she was here. She told me where her room was up-stairs, too, but I did not want to go up ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... informally. There was gay inconsequential chatter, an exchange of recollections and comparisons of cities and countries they had visited at separate times; but neither she nor he mentioned the chief subject of their thoughts. She refrained because of a strange yet natural shyness of a woman who has found herself; and he, because from his angle of vision it was best that Warrington should pass out of her life as suddenly and mysteriously as he had entered it. Had he spoken frankly ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... had remained the same self-sacrificing friend—ready out of mere but perfect kindness to befriend her to the uttermost. She had not doubted because she had not questioned. Now disquieting thoughts intervened, producing a new shyness. She remembered their last interview, and wondered if Ephraim would feel the same responsibility for her if she returned destitute. Perhaps the ardour of his friendship had cooled. Perhaps in the last letter he had intended to suggest to her that he thought ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... never separating itself from the main body. Every Maratha brings his own horse and his own arms with him to the field, and possibly in the interest they possess in this private equipment we shall find their usual shyness to expose themselves or even to make a bold vigorous attack. But if armies or troops could be frightened by appearances these horses of the Marathas would dishearten the bravest, actually darkening the plains with their numbers and clouding the horizon with dust for miles and miles ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... floundering devotion as uncomfortable as the endearments of a dripping dog—all out of gratitude for the Professor's kindness! He was full, in those days, of raw enthusiasms, which he forced on any one who would listen when his first shyness had worn off. You can't picture him spouting sentimental poetry, can you? Yet I've seen him petrify a whole group of Mrs. Lanfear's callers by suddenly discharging on them, in the strident drawl of Western New York, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... nice!' exclaimed Mollie, quite forgetting her shyness. 'How I wish Cyril would come in! He does so love things to be nice—he and Kester are so particular. Mamma!' glancing up at a window above them, 'won't you please to hurry down? May I sit there, Miss Ross? I always pour out the tea, because ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fire-arms against them: this affair, joined to the ill behaviour of some of the convicts, who in spite of all prohibitions, and at the risque of all consequences, have wandered out among them, has produced a shyness on their parts which it has not yet been possible to remove, though the properest means have been taken to regain their confidence. Their dislike to the Europeans is probably increased by discovering that they intend to ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... American seems to consider himself the father of the man in a way never contemplated by the poet. He interrupts the conversation of his elders, he has a voice in every matter, he eats and drinks what seems good to him, he (or at any rate she) wears finger-rings of price, he has no shyness or even modesty. The theory of the equality of man is rampant in the nursery (though I use this word only in its conventional and figurative sense, for American children do not confine themselves to their nurseries). You will actually hear an American mother say of a child ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the chair which the woman brought him, and the children, stricken with sudden shyness, had gathered together to give the stranger that mute, earnest, so soon-finished scrutiny characteristic of childhood. For a child, like a dog, is wont to judge by instinct rather than reason. Schmucke looked up; his eyes rested on that charming little picture; he saw the performer ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ther name of Brent back thar in Coal City ter kinderly see ef anybody along ther road I come hed any timber they sought ter sell." The giant still spoke with a hulking shyness. "I hain't l'arned nothin', because I come through soon in ther mornin' an' ther roads was empty, but I reckon I'd better send him ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... third place, Jims, who was usually so well-behaved in public, took a fit of shyness and contrariness combined and began to cry at the top of his voice for "Willa." Nobody wanted to take him out, because everybody wanted to see the marriage, so Rilla who was a bridesmaid, had to take him and hold ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that the desirable thing is to do just what you like. You can never find freedom or happiness in that way. Hold firm in your hearts that no gain of personal liberty counts as happiness to women. Treasure your womanly qualities—your sweetness, your gentleness, your shyness, your unlimited capacity for devotion, guard these as your greatest possession. Do not acknowledge your poverty by failing to honor yourself. Be the establishers of a revived feminist idealism, the ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... was accompanied by Mr. Gilchrist, and remained for a week, making his home at his publishers' house in Fleet Street. With great difficulty Mr. Taylor persuaded him to meet a party of friends and admirers at dinner. It was impossible for him to overcome with one effort his natural shyness, but the cordial manner in which he was welcomed by Mr. Taylor's guests put him comparatively at his ease, for he was made to feel that the labourer was forgotten in the poet and that he was regarded as an equal. The host placed him ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... a more formidable and less apparent fire. Yet what struck Jane first in Brodrick was his shyness, his deference, his positive timidity. There was something about him that appealed to her, pathetically, to forget that he was that important person, a proprietor of the "Morning Telegraph." She would have said that he was ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... frankly, because shyness and Cal were strangers. "The Happy Family sure ought to put this thing through a-whirling. We'll give 'em vaudeville till their eyes water and their hands are plumb blistered applauding the show. Happy, you're it. You've got ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... away, grandmother?' I said at last, my curiosity overcoming my shyness. 'Are these all your clothes? You will want a great many boxes to pack them in, and what queer ones some ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... In the clearer light of day he saw that she was not only a much prettier girl than he had fancied the night before, but that she had more fire and character in her eyes and lips than he had imagined. And though she glanced at him with evident shyness as he came up, and the colour came into her cheeks as she gave him her hand, he was quick to see that she was going to say whatever it was that was in her mind. It was Brent's way to ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... out of the Third Reader real cute—the children next door taught her," said May, but Marguerite would not be exploited; she dug her blonde head into her mother's shoulder in a panic of shyness; and shortly afterward the Pages went away. Uncle George gave each child a dime, Julia kissed her little cousins good-bye, and Emeline felt a sick spasm of pity and shame as May bade the children thank them, and thanked them herself. Emeline drew her sister to the door, and pressed ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... had come too close to raw reality to think of her pride. The morning light was sifting into the sky now. Billie could see the girl more clearly as she sat on a slab of rock waiting for the other searchers to join them. Was it his imagination that found in her an unwonted shyness of the dark eyes, a gentle timidity of manner when ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... as well as charmed. But I had no gift for making friends, although I was often attracted by people the very opposite of myself; especially by little, clever, quick, but not too familiar men; but even if they were disposed to make advances, a miserable shyness and stiffness of manner on my part, that I could not help, would raise a barrier ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... as a newly-joined subaltern are very like one's first days at school. The feeling is just the same. There is the same natural shyness, the same reverence for people who afterwards turn out to be of no consequence whatsoever, and the same fear of transgressing the Laws of the Medes and Persians—regimental traditions ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... excitedly now, throwing off all shyness and reserve. Blakeney was forced to check her vehemence, which might have been thought "suspicious" by some idle citizen ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the sentimental hucksters most valued opportunity. He tears these primary instincts from the wholesome privacy that shelters them in life, and cries them up from his booth in the market-place. The elemental forces of human life, which beget shyness in children, and touch the spirits of the wise to solemn acquiescence, awaken him to noisier declamation. He patronises the stern laws of love and pity, hawking them like indulgences, cheapening and commanding them like the medicines of a ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... with this old man, but there was even a sternness in the manner in which he repelled these advances, that gave little encouragement for their renewal. Nor did it seem that his companions of the Hospital were more in his confidence than Middleton himself. They regarded him with a kind of awe, a shyness, and in most cases with a certain dislike, which denoted an imperfect understanding of him. To say the truth, there was not generally much love lost between any of the members of this family; they had met with too much disappointment in the world to take ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... touch of shyness about Violet this morning that is enchanting. She carries off Cecil at once. There sits the lovely doll in a rocking-chair, and a trunk of elegant clothes that would win any little girl's heart. Cecil utters an exclamation ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... flower garden. Sometimes she spoke to him of her own accord, concerning the weather or other important topics. Once she even asked him if he were going to the Fourth of July ball at the town-hall. It took him until the next morning—like other warriors, Issy was cursed with shyness—to summon courage enough to ask her to go to the ball with him. Then he found it was too late; she was going with her cousin, Lennie Bloomer. But he felt that she had offered him the opportunity, and was happy and ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ballroom, and Randal's eyes were dazzled with the lights, the diamonds, the blaze of beauty. Audley presented him in quick succession to some dozen ladies, and then disappeared amidst the crowd. Randal was not at a loss: he was without shyness; or if he had that disabling infirmity, he concealed it. He answered the languid questions put to him with a certain spirit that kept up talk, and left a favourable impression of his agreeable qualities. But the lady with whom ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my horses, she only glanced at me, and resumed her walk towards the landing, apparently determined to avoid me. I was rather vexed at this treatment, for I wished to invite her to ride down to the river. I knew nothing about the shyness and reserve of young ladies in civilized life. I drove on once more, and she stepped out of the road to permit the team to pass. She glanced at me again, and I saw that she was not angry with me. I stopped the horses, and then I ventured ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... accustomed to the studied understatement of the cowpunchers and he was accustomed, also, to their real vanity which underlay the surface shyness. But it was patent that Bull Hunter, in spite of his size, was truly humble. This conception was new to Tod and slowly grew in his brain. His active eyes ran over the bulk beside him; he almost pitied ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... from the house-tops, comes driving full in your face, blinding you to all external objects—on one of these blessed evenings, on my road to Camden Town, I chanced to miss my way, and was compelled, notwithstanding a certain shyness towards strangers, to ask my direction of the first respectable person I should meet. Many passed me by, but none sufficiently prepossessing; when, on turning down some nameless street that leads to Tottenham Court-road, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... of human sweat was overpowering in the little ante-room. Some of the men had hearts and anchors and ships and dancing-girls tattooed in blue on their chests and arms. Some were skinny and others too fat. Very few looked fit. I remarked upon the shyness they suffered in ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... Amiens, "I know eighteen girls who were engaged to English officers and have been forsaken. It is not fair. It is not good. Your English young men seem so serious, far more serious than our French boys. They have a look of shyness which we find delightful. They are timid, at first, and blush when one pays a pretty compliment. They are a long time before they take liberties. So we trust them, and take them seriously, and allow ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... she held out her hand to him. "Good morning," she said with a touch of shyness. "I hope you haven't been wasting ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... forgive you, dear, if you will be kind to me in the future," he whispered, taking courage from her sweet shyness and bashfulness. "And now tell me why you are a fugitive from Boston, for your telegram was dated from ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... attempt, and he returned to Scotland disheartened. The death of the Cardinal Fleury in 1743 added to the discomfiture of his hopes.[13] Above all, the reluctance of the English Jacobites to pledge themselves to the same assurances that had been given by the Scotch, and their shyness in conversing with the people who were sent from France or Scotland on the subject, perplexed the emissaries who arrived in this country, and offered but a faint hope of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... a merry little schoolboy of seven, bright-eyed and curly-haired, a mischievous little sprite, no doubt, but a very affectionate lovable little fellow. He chattered continually during the meal, and did a great deal to take off the sense of shyness that Ruth felt in the company of Julia and Ernest, and her aunt asked questions about the farm-life at Cressleigh, and talked of their plans for ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... honesty. Before he left the hall, he threw another glance at the idol, and wondered at himself. For the idol was no longer a symbol to him; he could contemplate it quietly and objectively. A feeling of shyness came over him at the memory of the last half hour; but the distress which he had experienced was so great and his deliverance so simple and comprehensible to his soul, that the power of the idol had melted before it. The siren continued to howl. The strikers had fastened the valve ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... what I went through myself. At the time I thought (as everybody thinks) that it was a unique experience; but since I have heard the confidences of my father's patients I am convinced that it is the common lot. The shrinking, horrible shyness, alternating with occasional absurd fits of audacity which represent the reaction against it, the longing for close friendship, the agonies over imaginary slights, the extraordinary sexual doubts, the deadly fears caused by non-existent diseases, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... His Royal Highness Withdrew to take the air, Waiving our natural shyness, We swoop'd upon his chair. Policemen at our garments clutch'd: We mock'd those feeble powers; And soon the treasures that had touch'd ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... upon a wholly new existence as remote from all the social trials which beset shyness as if it were passed in some island of the uttermost sea. I had escaped from a harrying pursuit; I was free; and to the bliss of this recovered liberty I abandoned myself, without attempting to justify my flight to conscience or forming any scheme for ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... explain the mystery of the wood-thrush's advent in our gardens and upon our lawns. Until a year ago the wood-thrush was not one of the birds which ever raised its note in our pleasure-grounds. We heard them in the woods, and looked at them, when we intruded upon their privacy, with that sort of shyness with which we watch strangers. We knew their "wood-notes wild," and admired their plumage, but they did not inspire the same feeling as their cousin the robin. But a year ago all at once here was the thrush. Nobody could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... unnatural home was upon Hawthorne to the end of his life; it accounts in part for his shyness, his fear of society, his lack of interest in his own ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... sallow-skinned and was dressed in an anaemic gray; her thin hay-coloured hair was combed straight back from a rather fine forehead. She stooped a little when she walked, and even when not employed her hands picked nervously at each other. Martha's shyness, the "unappearing" quality, was another of her virtues in the eyes of Tom's mother. Martha rarely left home even to go to Millford. Martha did not go to the Agricultural Fair when her mats and quilts and butter and darning and buttonholes on cotton got their red tickets. Martha stayed at ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... But the following Sunday, on seeing them, she smiled with the kindly smile of a woman who understood their shyness, and she asked: ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and clumped through the rain to the garage. He saw a girl step from the car. He stopped, in the doorway of the Old Home, in uneasy shyness. He told himself he didn't "know just what it is about her—she isn't so darn unusually pretty and yet—gee—— Certainly isn't a girl to get fresh with. Let Ben take care of her. Like to talk to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to emergencies, and he accomplished more with the same resources than any of the others, excepting Tim Shearer. As long as the work was done for someone else, he was capable and efficient. Only when he was called upon to demand on his own account, did the paralyzing shyness ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... because he had no more to do with making himself than with the cut of his cloak, or with the fitness of his loin-cloth. But the fool either loses his head by comparing himself with still greater fools, or is prostrated when he finds himself inferior to other and lesser fools. This shyness he calls modesty, humility, and so forth. Now, whenever entering a corpse, whether it be of man, woman, or child, I feel peculiarly modest; I know that my tenement lately belonged to some conceited ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... shy of Cosmo—he had been away so long! but at intervals her shyness would yield and she would talk to him with much the same freedom as of old when they went to school together. In his rambles Cosmo would not pass her grandfather's cottage without going in to inquire after him and his wife, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... have been carrying about with me for many years, not so much a possession of my memory as an inherent part of myself. It was ever present to my mind and ready to my hand, but I was loth to touch it from a feeling of what I imagined to be mere shyness but which in reality was a very ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... short, the man is mainly a soul; the horse is mainly and essentially a body. And though the moral qualities even of a horse are of great importance,—such qualities as vice (which in a horse means malignity of temper), obstinacy, nervous shyness (which carried out into its practical result becomes shying); still the name of screw is chiefly suggestive of physical defects. Its main reference is to wind and limb. The soundness of a horse is to the philosophic and stable ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... inviting to the guess, the passionate surmise—that told him first here was a maiden made for love. A figure tremulous with a warm grace, a countenance perfect in its form, full of a natural gravity, yet quick to each emotion, turning from the pallor of sudden alarm to the flush of shyness or vexation. The mountains had stood around to shelter her, and she was like the harebell of the hills. Had she been the average of her sex he would have met her with a front of brass; instead there was confusion in his utterance and his mien. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... what comes from the feeling for home and wife and children. Then follow the gathering of the older sons and daughter, the telling of the experiences of the week, and the advice of the father. The daughter's suitor arrives, and the girl's consciousness as well as the lover's shyness are delicately rendered. Two stanzas in English moralize the situation, and for our present purpose may be ignored. The supper of porridge and milk and a bit of cheese is followed by a reverent account of family prayers, the father leading, the family joining in the ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... about the place; nor is there any affectation of "intensity" or of conversational cleverness. The neat things you meant to say are forgotten—you must be hardened indeed to say them to Mr. Ruskin's face; but if you were shy, you soon feel that there was no need for shyness; you have fallen among friends; and before dessert comes in, with fine old sherry—the pride of your host, as he explains—you feel that nobody understands you so well, and that all his books are ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... beings A. Motherly behavior B. Filial behavior C. Responses to presence, approval, and scorn of men 1. Gregariousness. 2. Attention to human beings. 3. Attention-getting. 4. Responses to approval and scorn. 5. Responses by approval and scorn D. Mastering and submissive behavior 1. Display. 2. Shyness. 3. Self-conscious behavior E. Other social instincts 1. Sex behavior. 2. Secretiveness. 3. Rivalry. 4. Co-operation. 5. Suggestibility and opposition. 6. Envious and jealous behavior. 7. Greed. 8. Ownership. 9. Kindliness. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... does not look as if he hated them, so far as I have remarked his expression. I passed a few words with him when his man was ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't believe it is much more than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some congenital or other personal repugnance to which has been given the name ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... breath away. But the window was doubtless unfastened as usual; should she go in by that? No. It was absurd, though, how she hesitated, especially after all that had happened; but be deterred by this most novel and uncomfortable shyness she would not! She had come so far, and it should not be for nothing. She would ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... friends." The very charming story of Ibsen's throwing his arms round old Hans Christian Andersen's neck, and forcing him to be genial and amiable, [Note: Samliv med Ibsen.] is not inconsistent with the general rule of passivity and shyness which he preserved ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... give dares and to take risks. No class of players needs more sympathetic or tactful understanding and help from a teacher than the timid. Such children often suffer greatly through their shyness. They should first be brought into play in some form of game that does not make them conspicuous; one, for instance, in which they do what all the other players do, or merely take turns. Such children should be encouraged by praise of their successful efforts, and especial ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Sophie, and took off the shawl from her head and sat down in a corner. The boy thought that this was shyness upon her part, but later on he realized that it was lassitude. The child rested her head upon her hand every chance that she got, and she never did anything that she did not ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... in the most persistent manner, never withdrawing her eyes, as if she would pierce to his soul, and understand by very force of insight whether he was or was not one to be honored with her confidence; and I have often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward, often unmanageable creature, but affectionate,—sometimes ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... And from that moment I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gibson's firmament of eligible young men: for in spite of the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was really and merely the result of my shyness, he had always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable, proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary—that is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... him [Motley] was at Cambridge, when he came from Mr. Cogswell's school at Round Hill. He then had a good deal of the shyness that was just pronounced enough to make him interesting, and which did not entirely wear off till he left college. . . I soon became acquainted with him, and we used to take long walks together, sometimes taxing each other's memory for poems or passages from poems ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unfortunate proprietor helpless. In swimming a river with the horse, the powder, &c. should be made into a parcel with your outer garment, and tied upon the head; then lead your horse gently into the water, and for a moment allow it to drink, to prevent all shyness; continue to lead it until you lose your depth, when, by holding with your left hand to the mane, both horse and man ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Lord Littimer drew the line there, but he contrived to get most of his meals under that hospitable roof, and spent a deal of time there. It was by no means the first time he had been "taken up" by the aristocracy since his conversion, and his shyness was wearing off. Moreover, Henson had given his henchman strict instructions to keep his eyes open with a view to getting at the bottom of the ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... half-doubtful glance at the girl's unsmiling foster-sister, hesitated, caught Elsie's golden head between his hands and bent to kiss her forehead. She drew back, overcome with sudden shyness. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... the doctor were already discarding their suits. Van Emmon and Billie followed more slowly; the one, because he did not share the doctor's confidence in their guide; the other, because of a sudden shyness in his presence. ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... she said again. Her voice was steady, although her heart hammered. Some other part of her brain was wondering where it was that he had got the drink. He must have had a bottle of whisky in his room; she remembered his shyness when he ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... or shyness, came upon him. The idea of meeting Mrs. Armstrong or even the members of the Smalley family he shrank from. Barbara invited him to come in, but he refused even to accompany her to ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass and trying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the fainting sickness of his stomach. He saw himself sitting at dinner with the community of a college. What, then, had become of that deep-rooted shyness of his which had made him loth to eat or drink under a strange roof? What had come of the pride of his spirit which had always made him conceive himself as a being apart in ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... disappointment was forgotten in the charm of this new-found friendship and protection. And as its outset had been marked by an unusual burst of confidence on Clarence's part, the boy, in his gratitude, now felt something of the timid shyness of a deeper feeling, and ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... women and girls, with dimples in the roses of their cheeks—drew nearer, as if lured by admiration of the ladies. Nell and Phyllis, seeing them, beckoned, and the fair creatures obeyed the summons with an appearance of shyness. They too, were photographed; and after many politenesses had been exchanged, Starr came to ask if I thought the dear things' feelings would be hurt by a small ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Una's face, if he had eyes for it at all, Captain Twinely might have seen something more than shyness. There was an expression of loathing on the girl's lips and in her eyes when he stepped up to her, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... from pride but from shyness, and presently her husband said to her: "Get up, my dear, and show how smart you are." She obeyed, but she had no need to get up to show it. She walked to the end of the studio and then came back blushing, her ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... "It was shyness on my part. I dared not obtrude my poor affairs on your attention until you should notice me in some way," she meekly replied, and then she gracefully slipped out of Mrs. Rockharrt's embrace and went and folded Cora to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... is that has puzzled you, and then I may be able to give you some kind of an opinion.' He gazed at me meditatively. 'Perhaps it would,' he said. 'I told Mary only to-day that I thought you had some vestiges of sense in your head.' (I bowed my acknowledgements.) 'The thing is, I've an odd kind of shyness about talking of it. Nothing of the sort has happened to me before. Well, about eleven o'clock last night, or after, I took my candle and set out for my room. I had a book in my other hand—I always ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... differ in what is the most English of all English traits; that shame which the French may be right in calling "the bad shame"; for it is certainly mixed up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of which we called shyness. Even an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon or a ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... he gathered up the reins, and it was not until they were well on their way along the Trumansburg road that the boy turned to her. How beautiful she looked, her shoulders completely covered with dusky-dark curls and her head bowed in maidenly shyness! All his doubts as to the expediency of his act were set at rest. She was deeply essential to his happiness, to his progress. To know she was his wife, married to him, so that none could separate them, would make ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... question whether she might be permitted to visit him and say her prayers at his bedside; but she feared to venture; and thus eight-and-forty hours slipped away, and the Baron still lived. Despite her shyness and awe of him she had almost made up her mind to call when, just at dusk on that October evening, somebody came to the door and asked ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
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