DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Taciturn' Quotes from Famous Books

... Much this land mattered to him now,—the earth in whose bowels he had left the sweat of his body and the strength of his limbs!... His son was all he had,—the fruit of a late marriage,—and he was a sturdy youth, as industrious and taciturn as his father; a soldier of the soil, who required neither orders nor threat to fulfil his duties; ready to awake at midnight when it was his turn to irrigate his land and give the fields drink under the light of the ...

— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... legs under the table, feeling that at last Red's guests could take care of themselves. Grayson proved an accomplished story-teller; Buller had lately had some remarkable adventures; even Ronald Grant, who had seemed a trifle taciturn, related an extraordinary experience of another man. The Scottish surgeon had the reputation ...

— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... college, he was a taciturn and apparently phlegmatic boy, only evincing sensibility by blushing and looking particularly stupefied whenever any body spoke to him. Vacation after vacation passed, and he returned more and more an altered being; and he who once shrunk ...

— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the old shack, Old Tom, was an ill-favored, taciturn man who would have naught to do with any of his neighbors, and asked only that they keep out of his path and leave him alone. He even evinced an aversion to dogs and to little children, driving them away from his shack whenever he ...

— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... His carriage was erect and commanding, and there was an air of hauteur in his countenance, arising from an elevated pride of soul, which did not forsake it when life was extinct. He was habitually taciturn, but, when excited, his eloquence was nervous, concise, and figurative. His dress was plain, and he was never known to indulge in the gaudy decoration of his person, which is the common practice of the Indians. On ...

— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... was inexorable in his refusal to hand the city over to Italy, and the various compromises devised by ingenious weavers of conflicting interests failed to rally the Italian delegates, whose inspirer was the taciturn Baron Sonnino. The Italian press, by insisting on Fiume as a sine qua non of Italy's approval of the Peace Treaty and by announcing that it would undoubtedly be accorded, had made it practically impossible for the delegates to recede. The circumstance that the press was inspired by the ...

— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... evokes a taciturn tyrant, devising in the crypts of a palace infamies so monstrous that to describe them ...

— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... upon the floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance of the English dominions from popery and slavery." We wonder how the taciturn Hollander received this effusion of Connecticut? There is nothing more to add on the situation of the Catholics in the land of the ...

— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... several men entered. They were Griffenberg, Baron Wirsch, the Beltons and the other financiers; they were all talking together and laughing, and their faces were flushed with triumph. Close behind them, but grave and taciturn as usual, ...

— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... the red-brick school clamored loudly of mornings; and dark, taciturn Mexican children, and paler, noisier children from the mining end of town, bubbled out of every door. Seven Vigils obeyed the daily summons, clad, boy and girl, in cotton stuff of precisely the hue of their skin. Bobbing through the gate, one after another, they were ...

— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... last ride. But few words passed between them. Windham was gloomy and taciturn. Zillah was silent and sad. At length, as they rode back, they came to a place on the shore a few miles away from the city. Here Windham reined in his horse, and, as Zillah stopped, he pointed ...

— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... these Diaries before looking into the tales, we may be sure that such a reader would be greatly surprised to hear the author described as a disappointed, disdainful genius. "This marked love of cases of conscience," says M. Montegut, "this taciturn, scornful cast of mind, this habit of seeing sin everywhere and hell always gaping open, this dusky gaze bent always upon a damned world and a nature draped in mourning, these lonely conversations of the imagination with the conscience, this pitiless analysis resulting from a perpetual examination ...

— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... evident that this ordinarily taciturn man wanted to unburthen his mind. He was desirous of talking to some one of Jack Meredith; and perhaps Jocelyn reflected that she was as good a listener as he would find ...

— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... formation. The 6th gradually got up into a position on our right, while the 5th and 8th followed in support. The march forward proceeded monotonously in the increasing heat, the men becoming more and more taciturn as the sun's power gathered. Allowance of course had to be made for the weariness of the men and the heavy going. Then a halt was called and we waited for an hour. It appeared that the L.F's., who formed the left of the ...

— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... best to know his character that the source of his greatest suffering at Witepsk was the uncertainty whether he should remain in Poland, or should advance without delay into the heart of Russia. While he was hesitating between these two decisions he was nearly always sad and taciturn. ...

— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... to me for his first vacation.... And, what marvel is this? I do not recognise my Yakoff! He had grown so tiresome and surly,—you couldn't get a word out of him. And his face had changed also: he had grown about ten years older. He had been taciturn before, there's no denying that! At the slightest thing he would grow shy and blush like a girl.... But when he raised his eyes, you could see that all was bright in his soul! But now it was quite different. ...

— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... small, taciturn boy of five who had become a daily, silent visitor at the store, came in one afternoon, roused into what, for ...

— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... stature, but was well-formed. His head was large and forehead ample, but his features were somewhat coarse; his cheek-bones were prominent, and his eyes small, sunk in his head, and surmounted by thick eye-lashes. In society he was reserved and often taciturn, but was free and communicative among his personal friends. He was not a little superstitious, and a firm believer in the reality of spectral illusions. Desultory in some of his literary occupations, he was laborious in pruning ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the latter's report, grimly taciturn. They talked together for a space of needs and expediencies. The fell disease had got to be checked somehow. He spoke of recalling the officers on leave. There had been such a huge sick list that summer that they were reduced to less than ...

— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... man had not the manners of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled, but was always at work in the daytime and always reading in the evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do, would go to the ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... astounded Colonel; "do you mean Hotchkiss the President of the Ditch Company?" He had recognized the name of a prominent citizen—a rigid, ascetic, taciturn, middle-aged man—a deacon—and more than that, the head of the company he had just defended. ...

— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... his approaches very gradually. The taciturn humility with which he commenced his operations was in exact proportion to the enthusiastic volubility of his advanced intimacy. Mrs Yeld thought that it became her to address to him a few civil words, and he replied to her with a shame-faced modesty that almost overcame her dislike ...

— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... was perhaps a snub; Sir Tichborne's was certainly a bottle. Sir Chetwode was somewhat garrulous, and was often like a man at a play, in the wrong box! Sir Tichborne was somewhat taciturn; but when he spoke, it was always to the purpose, and made an impression, even if it were not new. Both were kind hearts; but Sir Chetwode was jovial, Sir Tichborne rather stern. Sir Chetwode often broke into a joke; Sir Tichborne sometimes backed ...

— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... left, which was, to make the good old Osman a partaker of my happiness, to inform him of my marriage, and to invite him to our ensuing entertainment. But, shall I own it? so much did I feel that I was acting a false part, and so fearful was I of being detected, that I dared not trust even him, taciturn as he naturally was, with my secret, and therefore determined for the present to have no communication with him, or, in fact, with any of my countrymen, until I could feel myself so securely fixed in my new situation as to be fearless ...

— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... that night Sanderson was moody and taciturn. He had stretched out on his blanket and lay listening to the men until one by one ...

— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... tied neck and heels, it is not likely that this interrogatory received a reply; nor did his "reverence" expect any, as he continued putting similar questions in quick succession, appealing occasionally to his lieutenant for an answer. The latter, who was of the taciturn school, contented himself, and his superior too, with a ...

— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... possibly may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may appear." His native genius, or by whatever other term we may describe it, betrayed the wayward predispositions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn and placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious, and usually in the most opposite extremes; stubborn and impatient against force, but most open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of reprimand ...

— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... of recognition, taciturn and impassive, the three young men waited, their eyes bent upon ...

— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... the hut throughout the entire noon-hour, and on these occasions their finely discreet and taciturn old host placed food before them. Goat's milk was brought from an earthenware vessel having its place on a wooden hook under the eaves of the house; and there was a delicious stew of dried goat's flesh, served with a sauce which contained just a faint ...

— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... yesterday, and my little sister is entirely and overwhelmingly happy, for he is literally her Prince. Physically he is much improved; has developed surprisingly, but has the shy, taciturn manner of a student, and is, ...

— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Harold was less taciturn. With shrill voice, uplifted in solemn chant, he sang the great spheral circus-song, and the undying glory of the Ring. Of its timeless beginning he sang, of its fashioning by cosmic forces, and of its harmony with the stellar plan. Of horses he sang, ...

— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... terms with his comrades, there no longer existed between him and them that jovial and careless familiarity usual amongst persons who share the chances of a perilous profession. He did not repulse advances, but he made none; and although an Andalusian, he was often taciturn. If he at times threw off his melancholy, it was to run into the opposite extreme, and abandon himself to a gaiety as violent as it was factitious. Then he would drink like a fish, dance like a madman, and quarrel about every thing and about ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... hospital was much less popular, on account of her taciturn ways. She never spoke to any one, and no one knew anything of her history. She never said a word to us boys, but her haggard and wild look made a deep and painful impression upon us. I have often thought since of this enigma, though without being ...

— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... not cure her. However, he had to stick grimly to the perambulator. Nellie tripped primly in black silk on one side of it. Nurse had the wayward Ralph by the hand. And Robert, taciturn, stalked alone, adding up London and making a very small ...

— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... Perkins wouldn't be so taciturn. The proprietor of the Inn That Couldn't Get a Start was feeling so blue to-night that speech with some one besides his depressed family was almost a necessity. He couldn't talk with the women; Mr. Griffith, though kindly ...

— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... the only fever inherent in Philip IV., called The Handsome; he was a prey also to that of ambition, and, above all, to that of power. When he mounted the throne, at seventeen years of age, he was handsome, as his nickname tells us, cold, taciturn, harsh, brave at need, but without fire or dash, able in the formation of his designs, and obstinate in prosecuting them by craft or violence, by means of bribery or cruelty, with wit to choose and support his servants, passionately ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... taciturn brothers, with their wives and children, his father Pyrrhus, his wife and their youngest child, a daughter, Dione, a few dogs, cats, and chickens, composed the population of the ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... At three and twenty Thomas was quite a colossus, already bearded and extremely like his father. But although he had a lofty brow and energetic features, he was somewhat slow both in mind and body. And he was also taciturn, almost unsociable, absorbed in filial devotion, delighted with the manual toil which made him a mere workman at his master's orders. Francois, two years younger than Thomas, and nearly as tall, showed ...

— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... when the door had closed in his face and the Cardinal had gone again as mysteriously as he had come—now three days ago—he had heard no hint that could tell him how things developed. He had not even dared to ask the taciturn servant in uniform who brought him food as to the fate of the old man. For he knew with a certainty as clear as if he had seen the dreadful thing done, that his friend and master was dead—dead, as the Revolutionary Committee had said he would ...

— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... of his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked in the factory, suspected the cause of his trouble, and once ventured to rally him on ...

— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... walnut-shell for the baser sort. Paul Hentzner, who travelled in England in 1598, and Monsieur Misson, who wrote precisely a century later, note almost in the same words "a perpetual use of tobacco"; and the latter suspects that this is what makes "the generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thoughtful, and so melancholy." In Queen Elizabeth's time, the ladies of the court "would not scruple to blow a pipe together very socially." In 1614 it was asserted that tobacco was sold openly in more than ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... Washington from all sides, he had also to listen to the advice of military amateurs. Some of these had never been in a battle and knew nothing about warfare except from reading, but they were not on this account the most taciturn. Many urged strongly that an expedition be sent against Canada, a design which Washington opposed. His wisdom was justified when Richard Montgomery, with about fifteen hundred men, took Montreal—November ...

— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... the dinner Mr. Smith had been preoccupied and taciturn. Now he abruptly shot a glance ...

— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... pastures by the river's bank which, as we have read, delight the simple mind of the angler, and his float was already out, and bobbing up and down on the ripples of the stream; and the verdant valley, in which he and his taciturn companion stood side by side, resounded, from time to time, with Dangerfield's strange harsh laughter; the cause of which Irons did not, of ...

— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... wrapper being light blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily, and ...

— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... with Axel Stroem on the way back, leading his sheep on a string. Axel is taciturn, seemingly anxious about something, whatever it might be. There's nothing he need be troubled about that one can see, thinks Isak; his crops are looking well, most of his fodder is housed already, and he has begun timbering his house. All as it should be with Axel Stroem; ...

— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... brave has come to be axiomatic. If his life of isolation made him taciturn, it at the same time created a spirit of hospitality, primitive and hearty as that found in the mead-halls of Beowulf. He faced the wind and the rain, the snow of winter, the fearful dust-storms of alkali desert wastes, with the same uncomplaining quiet. ...

— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... not carry them all, and it was necessary to make two trips to convey the entire party. On the passage, Richard attended closely to his duty, and did not speak a word to the rebels. The two instructors were as taciturn as ...

— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... ways of the place to know one can bring one's own food to such places without giving offence. As in the morning, when they first passed it, there was no one about, every one had gone to the fair, except one taciturn old woman who brought the required things and then shut herself in the house. The meal was spread under the trees on a little green-painted table, with legs buried deep in sand; there were two high, straight chairs set up to the table, and a wooden footstool put by one for Julia, who, seeing ...

— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... of serious talk from a man I was accustomed to see either gay or taciturn so surprised and overwhelmed me that I could not frame a reply. He left me thinking over what he had said. Whatever was the soundness of his logic or the moral tone of his philosophy, his argument greatly impressed me. I could see, in spite of the absolute selfishness ...

— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... look of those that dolorously go In exile, and already their brown eyes Are heavy with the poison of the air. Here never note of amorous bird consoles Their drooping hearts; here never the gay songs Of their Abruzzi sound to gladden these Pathetic hands. But taciturn they toil, Reaping the harvests for their unknowrn lords; And when the weary labor is performed, Taciturn they retire; and not till then Their bagpipes crown the joys of the return, Swelling the heart with their familiar ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... was no end of questions to ask, about country and customs and people. When Belle could not answer, she appealed to Bradley, who, if taciturn, was at least patient. Every time the conversation lulled and Kate looked out into the night, it seemed as if they were drawing closer and closer to the stars, the dark desert still spreading in every direction and the ...

— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... one or other of the students rooms. Other luxuries had given out, but tobacco was still fairly cheap and its solace made up for many privations. Nor was Arnold's absence regretted. He had never been popular, and on the few occasions when he appeared among them, he was so moody and taciturn that his absence was felt as a relief. When on duty with the corps, however, he was always in good spirits. He seemed to delight in action and was ever ready to volunteer for any dangerous work, such as crawling up close to the German ...

— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... disappearance no long time after. Whither he went, none clearly knew. Folks said, to fight the French; but when he returned suddenly some twenty years later, he said little about sea-fights, or indeed on any other subject; nor did many care to question him, for he came back a stern, taciturn man, apparently with no great wealth, but also without seeming to want for much, and at any rate indisposed to take the world into his confidence. His father had died meanwhile, so he quietly assumed the mastership at Lantrig, nursed ...

— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... her until her husband, worn out by two hours of unceasing lamentations, begged of her to allow him to go to sleep. Her mood was different in the morning, and it was not until she had paid a couple of visits to the blue Swiss mountains that she became again taciturn. Dick did not as yet suspect his wife of confirmed drunkenness; he merely thought that she had grown lately very ill-tempered, and that a jealous woman was about the most distressing thing in existence; and, anxious to avoid another scene, he hurried through his breakfast. She watched ...

— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... first at being sent into dinner with him, but she found him disappointingly taciturn. In truth, he had acquired Oriental habits and views with regard to women. If a foolish Occidental custom demanded that they should sit at meat with the lords of creation, he, Maxwell Davison, would not pretend to acquiesce in it. Mildred, to whom it was unthinkable that any man ...

— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn and surly, on the look-out for sails, and alternately damning his soul and praying to his God. ...

— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... he attended to a taciturn silence broken by never a sound to indicate that he wasn't a lonely tenant of the little dwelling, then irresolutely lifted a foot to the first step—and withdrew it. If she continued to sleep, ...

— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... very intimate with the taciturn speaker could have perceived any evidence of interest in that imperturbable character. But Nicol Brinn took his cheroot between his fingers, quickly placed a cone of ash in a little silver tray (the work of Benvenuto Cellini), and replaced the cheroot not in the left but in the right ...

— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... the sombre and taciturn character of their leader, the party of officers had been riding for some time in silence, when they came in sight of a house situated at a short distance from the road, and of a superior description to the caserias and peasants' ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... and taciturn. She remained in her room till it was time to get the dinner ready. She was a bad cook and could do little more than chops and steaks; and she did not know how to use up odds and ends, so that Philip was obliged to spend more money than he had expected. When ...

— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... Natalie was obviously sulking, and Graham was rather taciturn. It was Marion who kept the conversation going, and he surmised in her a repressed excitement, ...

— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... any insects I might capture. Raimundo was a carpenter, and seemed to be a very industrious, man; he had two apprentices, Indians like himself: one a young lad, and the other apparently about twenty years of age. His wife was of the same race. The Indian women are not always of a taciturn disposition like their husbands. Senora Dominga was very talkative; there was another old squaw at the house on a visit, and the tongues of the two were going at a great rate the whole evening, using only the Tupi language. Raimundo and his apprentices were employed ...

— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... a workman also, remained in the boat. He looked rather timid, lean, and taciturn, ...

— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without. So we find that vain people are talkative, proud, and taciturn. But the vain person ought to be aware that the good opinion of others, which he strives for, may be obtained much more easily and certainly by persistent silence than by speech, even though he has very good things to say. ...

— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... prim, with lips set to a thousand responsibilities. She had a peculiar sensation of tight elastic about her eyes, but she felt no fatigue, and she did not yawn. Mrs. Tams, who had just descended, found her taciturn and exacting. She would have every household task performed precisely in her own way, without compromise. And it appeared that the house, which had the air of being in perfect order, was not in order at all, that indeed the processes of organization had, in young Mrs. Fores' opinion, ...

— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... knowing the principles of its pronunciation; but, in their customary rapid utterance, it sounds like a string of mere gabble. When left to myself, therefore, I got into great difficulties. . . . . It gives a taciturn personage like myself a new conception as to the value of speech, even to him, when he finds himself unable ...

— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... celebrated wife, who, as Lady Churchill and Duchess of Marlborough, so long and wholly swayed the mind and ruled the court of Queen Anne. Brought up in such close intimacy with the Princess, Lady Churchill had assumed from childhood an absolute ascendancy over her mind. Anne was indolent and taciturn; she delighted in the lively talk of her companion and bosom friend, and loved her in spite of her haughty temperament, to which her own easy disposition yielded without offering the slightest ...

— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... corridor, and for nineteen hours sat there on the sharp edges of our upturned trunks, fixed rigidly between the bodies of other travellers. To the left of us was a French peasant, a big, quiet man, with a bovine gift of patience and utterly taciturn. After the first five minutes I suspected that somewhere concealed about his person was a ripe cheese. There was a real terror in the malodorous vapours which exhaled from him. In a stealthy way they crept down the length of the corridor, so that other ...

— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... Turgot's character. It is less pleasant to learn that Turgot throughout his childhood was always repulsed by his mother, who deemed him sullen, because he failed to make his bow with good grace, and was shy and taciturn. He fled from her visitors, and would hide himself behind sofa or screen; until dragged forth for social inspection.[4] This is only worth recording, because the same external awkwardness and lack of grace remained with Turgot to the end, and had something to do with the unpopularity ...

— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... Worth. To set down the trouble briefly, he was desperately in love with La Signorina; and the knowledge of how hopeless this passion was, together with the frequent efforts he had put forth to repress the ardent declaration, were making him taciturn and solitary. La Signorina never went down to Florence, not even to Fiesole; so Worth never joined his companions when they took, pleasant excursions ...

— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... no further remark. He was one of the taciturn specimens of his class, and began at once to unload the waggon. With the able assistance of Brook and his men, and the feeble aid of the "Tottie," or Hottentot leader of the "span" of oxen, the boxes, ploughs, barrels, bags, cases, etcetera, which constituted the worldly ...

— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... totter to his fall among the fading flowers; every spring it was like Death himself urging on the resurrection; but he lived on year after year, and tended well Evelina's garden, and the gardens of other maiden-women and widows in the village. He was taciturn, grubbing among his green beds as silently as a worm, but now and then he warmed a little under a fire of questions concerning Evelina's garden. "Never see none sech flowers in nobody's garden in this town, not sence I knowed ...

— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Soulanges, a young man of about two-and-thirty, was endowed with the nervous temperament which in a man gives rise to fine qualities, his slender build and pale complexion were not at first sight attractive; his black eyes betrayed great vivacity, but he was taciturn in company, and there was nothing in his appearance to reveal the gift for oratory which subsequently distinguished him, on the Right, in the legislative assembly ...

— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac

... never became angry, but he had a very unyielding nature just the same. He was just as obstinate in his way as his brother, and never gave in. Philip was always on his side, for the two were the best of friends. Bruno was much more reserved and taciturn than Salo, who was naturally very gay and could sing and laugh so that the halls would re-echo loudly with his merriment. The Baroness herself often laughed in that way, too. That is why Bruno imagined that she loved her younger son better than him, and because he himself loved his ...

— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri

... it was a long time since he had seen active service. When appointed to the command he was sixty-six years old. From 1827 to 1852 he was military secretary at the Horse Guards,—the English War Office,—where he was made master-general of the Ordnance, and soon after became a full general. He was taciturn but accessible, and had the power of attracting everybody to him; averse to all show and parade; with an uncommon power for writing both good English and French,—an accomplished man, from whom much ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... great contrast between the reality she beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of business who had lurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling of city smoke, skin sallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with epigram—was such a relief to her that Elfride smiled, almost ...

— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... even he is dear to me. He who is alike to friend and foe, as also in honour and dishonour, who is alike in cold and heat, (and pleasure and pain), who is free from attachment, to whom censure and praise are equal, who is taciturn, who is contented with anything that cometh (to him), who is homeless, of steady mind and full of faith, even that man is dear to me. They who resort to this righteousness (leading to) immortality which hath ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... with me a taciturn humor that nothing could overcome; he respected it scrupulously. I did not reply to his questions and he dropped the subject; he was satisfied that I had forgotten my mistress. Nevertheless, I went to the chase and appeared at the table and was as convivial as ...

— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... in until dinner was half over, and when finally he appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda's eyes. June got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him there. Abruptly ...

— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... morning lying by the side of his plate. He had not been inconvenienced by their absence, because he never locked up anything in the way of drawers and boxes. Heyst said nothing. Wang also said nothing. Perhaps he had always been a taciturn man; perhaps he was influenced by the genius of the locality, which was certainly that of silence. Till Heyst and Morrison had landed in Black Diamond Bay, and named it, that side of Samburan had hardly ever heard the sound of human ...

— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... interest each other; a brilliant guest should be placed where he may at least snatch crumbs of intellectual comfort if his near companions, tho talkative, are not conversationalists of the highest order; the loquacious guest should be put next to the usually taciturn, provided he is one who can be roused to conversation when thrown with talkable people. Otherwise one of the hosts should devote himself to the business of promoting talk with the uncommunicative but no less interesting ...

— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... that Arab whose action ever seemed to hang in mystic suspense between the contradictory speculations and judgments disputing the possession of his will. It was not what Belarab would either suddenly do or leisurely determine upon that Lingard was afraid of. The danger was that in his taciturn hesitation, which had something hopelessly godlike in its remote calmness, the man would do nothing and leave his white friend face to face with unruly impulses against which Lingard had no means of action but force which he dared not use since it would mean the destruction ...

— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... the record of the court was duly signed and sealed in huge official envelope, and Lieutenant Loring, even more grave and taciturn than usual, went the rounds of the rude quarters to leave his card or pay his ceremonious parting call on the officers who knew enough to call on him—which in those crude days of the army many did not—he was asked by more ...

— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... connection there might be, or who the children were, was a mystery none had ever solved, nor was it likely that any inquiries—if such had ever been ventured upon—had met with much encouragement on the part of "auld Mike" or his equally taciturn wife. ...

— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

... there would be a game of cards now and then in the evening, especially at first. What frightened her most was the duplicity of her father, at least what looked like duplicity, when she remembered his persistent, insistent whispers on deck. However her father was a taciturn person as far back as she could remember him best—on the Parade. It was she who chattered, never troubling herself to discover whether he was pleased or displeased. And now she couldn't fathom his thoughts. Neither ...

— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... became somewhat moody and taciturn, and took to wandering about the land by myself, by day or night, so that Sir Thurstan more than once asked me if I had turned poet or fallen in love. Now, both these things were true, for because I had fallen in ...

— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... strangely sympathetic voice, in which Mark fancied that he perceived the power he was reputed to wield over the soldiers for whose well-being he fought so hard. Mark would have liked to ask him about life in the Aldershot priory; perhaps if Brother Anselm had been less taciturn, he would have broken if not the letter at any rate the spirit of the Rule by begging the senior to ask for his services in the Priory. But no sooner were they jogging back to Malford than the rain came down in a deluge, and Brother Anselm, ...

— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... helped win it. And he wouldn't open his trap. Couldn't bear havin' to talk about it. Some men's like that. Ornery, o' course, but you got to humor 'em. You put me a hull lot in mind o' my Abner." And she looked with great kindliness upon the taciturn person known to her as Mr. Johnston. True to her word, she asked him no questions. She fed him, and let ...

— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... and Buntingford had been able to verify it in all essential particulars by the evidence of the old bonne, who had lived with Anna in Paris before her flight, and had been present at the child's birth. The old woman was very taciturn, and apparently hostile to Buntingford, whom she perfectly remembered; but she had ...

— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of starting conversation, and Bertha's merry tongue had of late lost its volubility; she had so often irritated her aunt by her remarks that she had become afraid to speak. Maurice was too sad to be otherwise than taciturn. Thus the reunited little family sat in solemn silence. Count Tristan looked around him drearily for a while, and then having for a moment lost recollection of what had ...

— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Joam Garral, who was always taciturn, listened to all that was said, but took no part in the conversation. Benito quietly and attentively watched him. The eyes of Torres, with a peculiar expression, constantly sought his father. One would have called them the eyes of some wild beast ...

— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... quiet the next morning, in fact almost taciturn, and Andy noticed that he went into the saddle a bit stiffly. "That—where you got hurt botherin' you, Pete?" he asked with ...

— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... Idaho town in the valley below, which he viewed through the clearing before the cabin, his gaze came around to his father seated on the doorstep. Taciturn and brooding the latter had always been, but the pity and sorrow struck at the son's heart as he perceived what a mere shell of a man now sat there, gray-haired, bent, fleshless, consumed body and soul by the destroying acid of some dark secret. Even when a lad Steele ...

— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... its etiquette, retire into a corner, or into the embrasure of a window, with one of her most intimate friends, there to sadly make her the a confidante of her trials. During this conversation, from which she rose with red and swollen eyes, her husband remained thoughtful and taciturn at the opposite end of the room. Her Majesty, the Queen of Holland, has been accused of many sins; but everything said or written against this princess is marked by shameful exaggeration. So high a fortune drew all eyes to her, ...

— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... natives, upon their return, go to their camp, exhibiting the most stoical indifference, never take the least notice of their wives, but sit down, and act, and look, as if they had never been out of the encampment; in fact, if any thing, they are more taciturn and reserved than usual, and some little time elapses before they enter into conversation with freedom, or in ...

— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... person, this stern Australian nurse—taciturn, suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes's pleasant manner and frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability. She did not attempt to conceal her hatred ...

— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... flirtation. Moreover, she accepted my attentions with a certain degree of favor. She condescended to laugh at my witticisms and display an interest in my stories. Yet I felt that I had a rival in the person of a young man with quiet and refined tastes; and it struck me, at times, that she preferred his taciturn humor to my Parisian frivolity. He formed one in the circle of admirers that surrounded Miss Nelly at the time she addressed to me the foregoing question. We were all comfortably seated in our deck-chairs. The storm of the preceding evening ...

— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... of syrens," said Murgatroyd, speaking for the first time since the Astronef had landed; for this big, grizzled, taciturn Yorkshireman, who looked upon the whole cruise through Space as a mad and almost impious adventure, which nothing but his hereditary loyalty to his master's name and family could have persuaded him to share in, had grown more and more silent as the millions of miles between ...

— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... room, and have had hard work I promise you," replied the girl, impudently. "Mayhap you will give me a help whilst you wait, Sir Taciturn? This is the fifth basket of rubbish I have borne from the ...

— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... twenty-two, and enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street. There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery ...

— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... the then vicar of Golden Friars, a stout short man, with a mulberry-coloured face and small gray eyes, and taciturn habits, called and entered the drawing-room at Mardykes Hall, with his fat and garrulous wife ...

— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... he and Eleanor went to Green Hill for a few days vacation, the effect of this repression was marked. There were wrinkles on his forehead under the thatch of his blond hair; his blue eyes were dulled, and he was taciturn to the point of rudeness—except to Eleanor. He was very polite to Eleanor. He never, now, amused himself by imagining how he could disappear if he had the luck to be in a theater fire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself ...

— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... Poffenburgh and his watchful garrison, Dirk skulked about from room to room, being a kind of privileged vagrant, or useless hound whom nobody noticed. But though a fellow of few words, yet, like your taciturn people, his eyes and ears were always open, and in the course of his prowlings he overheard the whole plot of the Swedes. Dirk immediately settled in his own mind how he should turn the matter to his own advantage. He played the ...

— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... if she was kind, and he knew that she was patronizing. Further, she was not a conversationalist. At the luncheon she had not been at ease; but here in the car she was at ease absolutely, yet she remained taciturn. ...

— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... nature and general conduct did not altogether harmonize with John Clemens's more taciturn business methods. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a builder of dreams, Clemens was neat and methodical, with his papers always in order. He had a hearty dislike for anything resembling frivolity and confusion, which very likely were the chief features of John Quarles's storekeeping. ...

— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... brigade, but the wounded and dying had cheered him as he passed, and the survivors had pursued the enemy until the bugle called them back. For such a record he looked still too young and scholarly, albeit his handsome face was dark and energetic, and his manner taciturn. ...

— Clarence • Bret Harte

... from this spot. Lord Nelville constantly watched over Corinne. Sometimes she leant her head on Theresa who accompanied them; sometimes she closed her eyes, overcome by the languor of the air. Oswald awakened her immediately, with inexpressible terror; and though he was naturally taciturn, he was now inexhaustible in subjects of conversation, always well supported and always new, to prevent her from yielding to this fatal sleep. Ah! should we not pardon the heart of a woman the cruel regret which attaches to those days when she was beloved, when her existence was so necessary ...

— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... Dick was taciturn, and old Hiram, when I tried to engage him in conversation, cut me off with the remark that I would need my breath on the morrow. This somewhat offended me. So I made my bed and rolled into it. Not till I had lain quiet for a little did I realize that every bone and muscle ...

— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... along in silence with the rest. Even when Abby Atkins joined her there was little said. Ellen asked for Maria, and Abby replied that she had taken more cold yesterday, and could not speak aloud; then relapsed into silence, making her way through the snow with a sort of taciturn endurance. Ellen looked at the struggling procession of which she was a part, all slanting with the slant of the storm, and a fancy seized her that rebellion and resistance were hopeless, that those parallel lines of yielding to the onslaughts of fate were as ...

— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... marsh, hunting apart, but often meeting on the trail which Bob had taken, with grunts of mutual surprise. These suppressed feelings, never made known by word or gesture, at last must have found vicarious outlet in the taciturn dog, who so far forgot his usual discretion as to once or twice seat himself on the water's edge and indulge in a fit of howling. It had been a custom of Jim's on certain days to retire to some secluded place, where, folded in his blanket, with his back against a tree, he ...

— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... irritability, profligacy, but also note that it differs materially in the proportion of all its parts, from the European brain. Judging the character of the Indian from the aforesaid representation, we should say that he was cunning, excitable, treacherous, fitful, taciturn, or violently demonstrative. His constitution is very susceptible to diseases of the bowels and blood. His appetite is ungovernable, and his love of stimulants is strong. Syphilitic poison, small-pox, and strong drink will annihilate all these tribes ...

— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... telling me simply, like the woman at Gruenstein, that such a person had been here, that he had fallen ill, possibly died here—I would rather not know it. It is certainly not probable that it was so; they would have been pretty sure to gossip about any occurrence of the kind, taciturn though they are. The wife would have talked of it to me—she is more genial than the others—for I had had a little kindly chat with her the day before, a propos of what every mother, of her class at least, is ready to talk ...

— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... time Sandy Flash had leaped the hedge and was careering like lightning towards the shelter of the woods. The interest now turned upon Gilbert Potter, who was very taciturn and thoughtful, and had little to relate. They noticed, however, that his eyes were turned often and inquiringly upon Alfred Barton, and that the latter as steadily avoided ...

— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... too much disappointed even to smile, and during all the ride she was extremely taciturn, hardly replying at all to Mr. Graham's lively sallies, and winning golden laurels in the opinion of Mrs. Graham, who secretly thought her husband altogether too agreeable. As they turned into the long avenue which led ...

— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... manchet of bread and a stoup of wine. He was visited again at dinner and supper. Before the soldier came in the first time Malcolm concealed his sword in the straw, thinking that the soldier would be sure to remove it if he noticed it. The man who brought his breakfast and dinner was taciturn, and made no reply to his questions, but another man brought his supper, and he turned out of a more ...

— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... reader is wrong: Schliemann was tall, slender and reserved, also taciturn. Groceries were not the goal. In fact, he had interests outside of Indianapolis, that few knew anything about. When Schliemann was thirty-eight years old he was worth half a million dollars; and instead of making ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... perhaps, in peril like Hester, men assailed by the same vile impulses that had made a brute of Philip Meryon. During the preceding months Mary's whole personality had developed with great rapidity, after a somewhat taciturn and slowly ripening youth. The need, enforced upon her by love itself, of asserting herself even against the mother she adored; the shadow of Meynell's cloud upon her, and her suffering under it, during the weeks of slander; ...

— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in the sunlight, and a lighter voice. Mr. Rochester took breakfast with us in a gloomy old dressing-room, moody and taciturn, unpacified by sleep. But Jane, whimsical and deft, had tied a yellow ribbon in the ...

— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... so Burnham and Salsbury had to amuse themselves alone. They took their boat and idled about the waters inside the point, dozing under an awning, smoking, gaping, and wishing that headaches were out of fashion, while the taciturn and tarry skipper instructed the dignified and urbane Thomas in the science ...

— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... back, I see," remarked Old Billee as he greeted the lads, the Indian going off by himself, for he was rather taciturn in ...

— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... and sagacity; for this reason, he will not altogether give him up, and he listens still to his advice, although Haugwitz is no longer at the head of the foreign department. Because the king himself is taciturn, and thinks and feels more in his head and heart than is uttered by his lips, Beyme's eloquence and quick perception fill him with respect; and because he is so very modest, and always believes others to be more sagacious than himself, he esteems Lombard's abilities highly, ...

— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... works to her, Elena felt herself deified by her lover as was Isotta di Rimini by the medals which Sigismondo Malatesta caused to be struck in her honour; and yet, on those days when Andrea was at work, she would become moody and taciturn, as if under the influence of some secret grief, or she would give way to such sudden bursts of tenderness, mingled with tears and half-suppressed sobs, that the young man was startled and, not ...

— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... the senior marine officer of the 'Blonde,' was a reserved and taciturn man. He was quiet and gentlemanlike, always very neat in his dress; rather severe, still kind to his men. His aloofness was in no wise due to lack of ideas, nor, I should say, to pride - unless, perhaps, it were the pride which some ...

— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the desert, Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the brookside, And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven, Like the protecting hand ...

— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... holding oneself aloof from others, or holding back one's feelings from expression, or one's affairs from communication to others. Reserve may be the retreat of shyness, or, on the other hand, the contemptuous withdrawal of pride and haughtiness. Compare ABASH; PRIDE; TACITURN. ...

— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... have attracted attention in a Northern city except, possibly, the wide-brimmed hat and the boots with high heels. He was about thirty years of age. In the shack shone a polished spur—there seemed to be nothing else of cowboy accoutrement. She could not make him out. He seemed taciturn at times ...

— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... Tom said, abruptly, "You know um?" Boston replied that he did not know the stranger, told briefly how he came into camp, and by adroit questioning drew, in laconic sentences, a story from the taciturn Indian. ...

— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... and generally taciturn, had a spirit of his own, and no notion whatever of knocking under to a bully. It is true, he had not the faintest notion why he was singled out for the young gentleman's impertinence; but neither did he mean to enquire. His mahogany ...

— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... silence after this. Theo had gone back to her work with a sigh, and Miss Pamela was stitching industriously. She was never idle, and always taciturn, and on this occasion her mind was fully occupied. She was thinking of Lady Throckmorton's ...

— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... she had never before known John Pendleton. The old taciturn moroseness seemed entirely gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both ...

— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... The sun is far in the west when the knot of adventurous reconnoitrers who have gone farthest afield mount the train at Portmadoc. Nearer home they thrust heads out of window to rally their friends who join them on the poverty of their exploits. These, taciturn with weariness or hunger, find they haven't their best repartees at command. But they are all smiles and good humour again at the news that young So-and-so, with two or three more, who had strayed from their party, were sighted rushing along, all dust up to their eyes, ...

— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... fellow with a good-naturedly sour face, who nodded dreamily, like one who did not like to be disturbed in his thoughts, and after he had carefully closed the gate again, without saying a word he sank into a corner, constantly mumbling his prayers. Less taciturn was Jaekel the Fool, a short, somewhat bow-legged fellow, with a large, red, laughing face, and an enormous leg-of-mutton hand, which he now stretched out of the wide sleeve of his gaily-chequered ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... for conversation—ladies, for instance, people in society, the upper ten—all these sets have some topic or other. It is the thing, but somehow people of the middle-class, like you and I, seem constrained and taciturn. How does that come about, batuchka? Have we no social interests? Or is it, rather, owing to our being too straightforward to mislead one another? I don't know. What is your opinion, pray? But do, I beg, remove your cap; one would really fancy ...

— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... his mother home, taciturn as ever. At first there was quite a company; but as they went their several ways to their home, at last Little Darby and his mother were left alone in the piney path, and made the last part of their way alone. Now and then the old woman's eyes ...

— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... these things we had plodded further and further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our spirits began to droop. All my mellowness ...

— Alone • Norman Douglas

... step forward. Unobserved among the other boys, he has now frequented the Academy's school for six years already, where, always taciturn and silent, he stood by his drawing-board. His answer was "yes" or "no," a nod or a shake of the head; but mildness shone from his features, and good-nature was in every expression. The picture shows us Albert as a candidate for confirmation. He is now seventeen years of age—not a ...

— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... five rubbers. Lessingham was by far the most expert player, and he and Philippa in the end were the winners. The two men stood together for a moment or two at the sideboard, helping themselves to whisky and soda. Griffiths had become more taciturn than ever, and even Philippa was forced to admit that the latter part of the evening ...

— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... move, mapped the situation to their companions as its features developed. With each triumph on the arete, bursts of commendation and surprise came from the usually taciturn men watching the struggle with growing wonder. Bucks, apprehensive of delays in the track-opening on the hill, sent Callahan back in the car with instructions to pick a gang of ten men and pack them somewhom across the snow to the mine spur, that they might be ready to meet the climbing party ...

— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... always coldly civil to each other, when in the presence of others, and were regarded by their companions with respect, though, I imagine, never with any cordial liking. So they grew up to be grave, taciturn men, still retaining the same strong resemblance of face and figure, though time had somewhat altered the features, by fixing a different expression on each, giving to John a fierce resolution, and to James a lurking distrustfulness of look. These years made less change in Mrs. ...

— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift; Praises and presents came, and nourishing food—till at last, among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but looked on each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of ...

— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... triumph enviable in all eyes when Lydia consented to like it with the chicken. Dunham plundered his own and Staniford's common stock of dainties for her dessert; the first officer agreed and applauded right and left; Staniford alone sat taciturn and inoperative, watching her face furtively. Once her eyes wandered to the side of the table where he and Dunham sat; then she colored and dropped ...

— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... do help him! please do!" she kept saying to herself. Somehow, all her sufferings and the children's were light to her, in comparison, as she listened to that big, taciturn man groan, and him sore ...

— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... Madge declared exultingly—the second of this band of sisters—and, as far as I could observe, on first acquaintance, the brightest. Marion, the elder, was extremely pretty and gentle; and Bertie, the third, taciturn and unprepossessing, yet evidently sensible. She it was who alone ...

— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... with the flattering homage a slow, taciturn nature often pays a quick, vivacious one. It was only when problems concerning the factory were touched upon that his tongue lost its stiffness. Under an unswerving loyalty to his employers was growing a discontent with certain existing conditions. ...

— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... into the canal. Whisperings and murmurings were heard all round the cutter's decks. Obadiah Coble shrugged up his shoulders, as he took an extra quid—Dick Short walked about with lips compressed, more taciturn than ever—Jansen shook his head, muttering, "Te tog is no tog"—Bill Spurey had to repeat to the ship's company the legend of his coming on board over and over again. The only persons who appeared not to have lost their courage were Jemmy Ducks and poor Smallbones, who had been put ...

— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... partition run through it, and, as soon as the busy trainmen discovered ladies on board, they unceremoniously drove the more bibulous passengers, protesting, into the forward compartment. This left Hope in comparative peace, her remaining neighbors quiet, taciturn men, whom she looked at through the folds of her veil during the long, slow, exasperating journey, mentally guessing at their various occupations. It was an exceedingly tedious, monotonous trip, the train slackening up, and jerking forward, apparently ...

— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... having found his guest taciturn, had himself become genial, and now remarked as he entered: "How do you find the punch? Is it ...

— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... but full of charm for some connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in which she said,—"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly accepted Miss Glynn's invitation for the intervening days before school opened, the new Adelle ...

— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry sorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a fast walker and full of endurance. The mail-rider was taciturn, a natural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely road, and has nothing whatever to think of. He had been in the war sixteen months, in Hugh White's regiment,—reckon ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... that went by was filled with apprehension, and punctuated with false alarms. It was evident that the colonel had not yet heard the full story, and it was just as evident that the portion of it that he had heard had disturbed him almost beyond precedent. He was taciturn in speech, and severe and formal in manner. To misuse and neglect the flag of his country was, indeed, no ...

— The Flag • Homer Greene

... loving eyes could possibly have recognised the newcomers. It is not unlikely that the remaining passengers mistook them for tramps. The rivals, morbidly suspicious of each other, taciturn to the point of unfriendliness, had indeed chartered a locomotive—not jointly by intention, but because of provoking necessity. There was but one engine to be had. It is safe to say that while they travelled many sore ...

— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon

... had not the manners of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled, but was always at work in the daytime, and always reading in the evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do, would ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... shack, Old Tom, was an ill-favored, taciturn man who would have naught to do with any of his neighbors, and asked only that they keep out of his path and leave him alone. He even evinced an aversion to dogs and to little children, driving them away from his shack whenever he found them ...

— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... thus at evening. "Let us run after Graffam, and have some fun," the boys would say on returning home; and then it was wonderful to see the change which had been wrought in this mournful-looking, taciturn man of the morning. Sometimes he was in a rage, repaying their assaults with fearful oaths and bitter curses; but it was a thing more general to find him in merry mood, and then he was himself a boy, pitching his companions about in the snow, or talking ...

— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell

... wind of this business, Denstroude will find a boat for him readily enough—ay, and men, too, now that the Colonel is at feud with you. Many of your people visit the mainland every night, and in their cups the inhabitants of Usk are not taciturn. An idle word spoken over an inn-table may bring an armed company thundering about your gates. You should have set sentinels, ...

— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell's mispronunciation, were in the habit of calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. ...

— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... be broken. Several times he approached the subject, but usually sheered off before he had gone far. Of shrugs and winks he offered plenty, enough to keep the youngster tantalized almost beyond endurance. Nor was it possible to force his confidence, for he was of a surly, taciturn disposition, given to ...

— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... Scarcely would Madariaga open his lips before the German's head began nodding in agreement, anticipating his words. If he said anything funny, his clerk's laugh would break forth in scandalous roars. With Desnoyers he appeared more taciturn, working without stopping for hours at a time. As soon as he saw the manager entering the office he would leap from his seat, holding himself erect with military precision. He was always ready to do anything whatever. Unasked, he spied on the workmen, reporting their carelessness and ...

— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... mirth of his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked in the factory, suspected the cause of his trouble, and once ventured to rally him on "the girl ...

— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... worsted, had retired from the field in tears, refusing to have anything further to do with Eleanor or her booth. At this juncture Miss Tebbs had appeared on the scene, and peace was restored, although Edna was still taciturn and sulky, and displayed little interest in what went ...

— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... bell of the red-brick school clamored loudly of mornings; and dark, taciturn Mexican children, and paler, noisier children from the mining end of town, bubbled out of every door. Seven Vigils obeyed the daily summons, clad, boy and girl, in cotton stuff of precisely the hue of their skin. Bobbing through ...

— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... that valet turned on poor Kennaway (for that was the detective's name) and laid him flat on the grass. Such a snarl of rage I never heard. The man seemed transformed in an instant from a silent, reserved, taciturn servant to a very maniac, fighting with teeth and claw, cursing and swearing horribly, and as strong ...

— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... The taciturn Indian made no attempt at speech, but gave an expressive gesture, and the young officer turned ...

— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room, where, taciturn as ever, severe, martial, he stood at attention, shoulders back, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he was making, with amazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces for the benefit of the little boy in ...

— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... when any one said a kind word as to their doings, that he would take as a compliment. It was they who were there to do the work of the day, which horses and men could only look at. He was a sincere, honest, taciturn, and withal, affectionate man, who could on an occasion be very angry with those who offended him. He knew well what he could do, and never attempted that which was beyond his power. "How are you, Mr. ...

— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... by Zeus, for he lacks both." This thrust came from Alcibiades. But now the taciturn tragedian Euripides began to speak: "Allow me to say something both about Zeus and about Prometheus; and don't think me discourteous if I cite my great teacher Aeschylus when I ...

— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... air, books, and writing materials. His requests were not granted, but he went on asking all the same. He accustomed himself to speaking to the new jailer, although the latter was, if possible, more taciturn than the old one; but still, to speak to a man, even though mute, was something. Dantes spoke for the sake of hearing his own voice; he had tried to speak when alone, but the sound of his voice terrified him. Often, before ...

— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... nature I am a taciturn man; Silent John I am named by my friends. I am a glum body, a reserved creature. These things you will have already noticed. But now I will commit to you it secret, known only to my dearest friends. Uncommunicative as I am by nature (he ...

— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... dramatiser. There are, in this novel, indeed, many potentially dramatic crises; the trouble is that they are too numerous and individually too small to be suitable for theatrical presentment. Moreover, they are crises affecting a taciturn and inarticulate race,[3] a fact which places further difficulties in the way of the playwright. In all these cases, in short, the bankruptcy portrayed is a matter of slow development, with no great outstanding moments, and is consequently ...

— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... before he arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom he calls the 'flower of Glenfaba' (that's me), and after talking nonsense to him all day and playing chess with him all the evening I have to put him to bed laughing, and come back to my own room to finish my letter with an easier mind. For the last half-hour the aurora ...

— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... every mouth did the work; but because our personal impressions of him do not correspond with our conceptions of a powerful man, we abate or withdraw our admiration, and attribute his success to lucky accident. This blear-eyed, taciturn, timid man, whose knowledge of many things is manifestly imperfect, whose inaptitude for many things is apparent, can HE be the creator of such glorious works? Can HE be the large and patient thinker, the delicate humourist, ...

— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... Colonel occasionally went to see her; but he was nervous and constrained, with little to say for himself, and Marjorie always did her best to show to a disadvantage when he was there. "He's such a crabby old thing," she would say, when Miles grew enthusiastic over the grave, taciturn officer,—"besides, he hates girls, you know he does, and I'm not going to knuckle under to him." Her brother had explained that the Colonel's ideas were old-fashioned, so she sometimes talked slang on purpose ...

— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... took Lucy to see "Romeo and Juliet." The confidence and enthusiasm of Romeo merely threw him into a deeper despair of his own ability as a suitor, and made him even more taciturn and stumbling of speech than ever. His silence grew heavier and heavier, until at last Lucy threw out her never-failing life-line. She asked ...

— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... afternoon at three o'clock, to drink his vahze of Loewenbraeu and read the papers. The latter done, he would sit in silence, thinking, thinking, planning, planning. Not often did he say a word, even to Fraeulein Mizzi, his favourite kellnerin. So taciturn was he, in truth, that his rare utterances were carefully entered in the archives of the cafe and are now preserved there. By the courtesy of Dr. Adolph Himmelheber, the present curator, I am permitted to transcribe a few, the imperfect German ...

— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... that the young man should actually have taken it upon himself to lecture Miss Jessop once, when they were alone, for some remarks she had made to Hodden as she sat in her deck-chair, with Hodden loquacious on her right and Buel taciturn on her left. What right had Buel to find fault with a free and independent citizen of another country? Evidently none. It might have been expected that Miss Jessop, rising to the occasion, would have taught the young man his place, ...

— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... since the death of my uncle Geoffrey, but she had maintained a silent and reserved habit; and Mrs. Balk was of opinion that she had had some great misfortune. She had persistently refused all intercourse with the people at The Mere. Squire Maryon, himself a cold and taciturn man, had once or twice showed a disposition to be friendly, but she had sternly repulsed all such overtures. Mrs. Balk was of opinion that Miss Ringwood was not "quite right," as she expressed it, on some topics; especially did she seem impressed with ...

— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... exerted an extraordinary influence on me, and one hard to describe. He was great, grim, and taciturn to behold, yet with a good heart, and not devoid of humour. He was gouty, and yet not irritable. He continually recurs to me while reading Icelandic sagas, and as a kind of man who would now be quite out of the age anywhere. ...

— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... out of the town, and in a very beautiful country. After proceeding some distance on the high road, we turned off, and were presently in one of those mazes of lanes for which England is famous; the stranger at first seemed inclined to be taciturn; a few observations, however, which I made, appeared to rouse him, and he soon exhibited not only considerable powers of conversation, but stores of information which surprised me. So pleased did I become with my new acquaintance, ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... less taciturn. With shrill voice, uplifted in solemn chant, he sang the great spheral circus-song, and the undying glory of the Ring. Of its timeless beginning he sang, of its fashioning by cosmic forces, and of its harmony ...

— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... that dolorously go In exile, and already their brown eyes Are heavy with the poison of the air. Here never note of amorous bird consoles Their drooping hearts; here never the gay songs Of their Abruzzi sound to gladden these Pathetic hands. But taciturn they toil, Reaping the harvests for their unknowrn lords; And when the weary labor is performed, Taciturn they retire; and not till then Their bagpipes crown the joys of the return, Swelling the heart with their familiar strain. Alas! not all ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... this relieves me; my way is clear; the trouble is ended. I will detain neither of you longer.' We all rose to leave," concludes Mr. Welles. "Chase and myself came downstairs together. He was moody and taciturn. Someone stopped him on the lower stairs, and ...

— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... doorway of the room with a lamp in her hand. She had a taciturn face with a firm chin. The light fell on her brown hair with its reddish shades of color, and on her pallid cheeks. She held out her hand to Christophe stiffly with the elbow close against her side: he took it without looking at her. He was ...

— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... inclined to be taciturn. Every now and then her eyes would "shoot," as Grace called the queer expression, and when the lights were still on, and this peculiar look could be noticed, her friends made no apology for ...

— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... the Jesuits, also accompanied the Bishop. His close, black soutane contrasted oddly with the gray, loose gown of the Recollet. He was a meditative, taciturn man,—seeming rather to watch the others than to join in the lively conversation that went on around him. Anything but cordiality and brotherly love reigned between the Jesuits and the Order of St. Francis, but the Superiors were ...

— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... his wife. A week he remained at home with her, then returned to the Olive S. and took up his command and its duties as if nothing had happened. But what had happened changed his whole life. He became more taciturn, a trifle less charitable, a little harder and more worldly. Before the catastrophe he had been interested in business success and the making of money chiefly because of his plans for his daughter's future. Now he worked even harder because it helped him ...

— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... The same welcome, the same homely atmosphere, were here as in the other Y.M. centres. One felt, one was made to feel, that his was the right to enter and stay and enjoy himself each in his own way, and that is why the Y.M. is so popular, and why both the taciturn and the jocular find their way by common consent ...

— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams

... much surprised by the contents of this missive. Indeed, it so completely broke a chain of deep theological speculation that he deserted his study for the street. Here he met an officer of the church, a man somewhat advanced in years, whom he had come to regard as rather reserved and taciturn in disposition. But in his perplexity he exhibited Mrs. Arnot's letter, ...

— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... the LIME-TREE is placid, familiar and jovial; the BEECH, elegant and agile; the BIRCH, white, reserved and restless; the WILLOW, stunted, dishevelled and plaintive; the FIR-TREE, tall, lean and taciturn; the CYPRESS, tragic; the CHESTNUT-TREE, pretentious and rather dandified; the POPLAR, sprightly, cumbersome, talkative. Some emerge slowly from their trunks, torpidly stretching themselves, as though they had been imprisoned or asleep for ages; others ...

— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... a somewhat sullen and taciturn man of middle age, who had more the appearance of an Austrian than a Brazilian, and with a swinging gait and an uprightness of bearing which were ...

— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... Afterwards, to be sure, his wife would come, complaining that her husband had been drunk, and so had fixed the price too low; but, if only a ten-kopek piece were added then the matter would be settled. But now it appeared that Petrovich was in a sober condition, and therefore rough, taciturn, and inclined to demand, Satan only knows what price. Akaky Akakiyevich felt this, and would gladly have beat a retreat, but he was in for it. Petrovich screwed up his one eye very intently at him, and Akaky Akakiyevich involuntarily said, "How do ...

— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... inconsequent and rambling. For a considerable time it led nowhere. Miss Ironsyde was taciturn. It occupied all her energies to conceal the fact that she was suffering a good deal of physical pain. She made no original suggestions. Churchouse, according to his wont, generalised; but it was through a generalisation that ...

— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... was silent and taciturn. When I awoke next morning at daybreak he had disappeared, presumably to procure reindeer for the return journey. But the season was now so far advanced that the ispravnik called during the day to beg me not to risk a spring journey to Yakutsk. It was far better, he averred, to remain ...

— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... she said as he attempted to get up, and she placed a stool by him. And so Pelle had his coffee in bed, as he had dreamed it was to happen when Father Lasse remarried; and he could not go on feeling angry. But he was still burning with shame, and that made him taciturn. ...

— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... start was made, Fogg was taciturn and gloomy-looking, but attended strictly to his duty. Ralph voted him to be a capital fireman when he wanted to be. As an hour after midnight they spurted past Hopeville forty minutes to the good, he could not help shouting over a delighted word of ...

— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... ships sailed in to Port Royal the little fort was found precisely as it had been left. Not even the furniture had been disturbed, and old Membertou, the Indian chief, welcomed the white men back with taciturn joy. Pere La Fleche assembles the savages, tells them the story of the Christian faith, then to the beat of drum and chant of "Te Deum" receives, one {42} afternoon, twenty naked converts into the folds of the church. ...

— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... voices of syrens," said Murgatroyd, speaking for the first time since the Astronef had landed; for this big, grizzled, taciturn Yorkshireman, who looked upon the whole cruise through Space as a mad and almost impious adventure, which nothing but his hereditary loyalty to his master's name and family could have persuaded him to share in, had grown more and more silent as the millions of miles between the Astronef ...

— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... betrayed; for rude and rough as his nature was, there was a kind of decorum in it, too, that kept him within limits of his own. So he went back to his chair, his pipe, and his tumbler, and was gruffer and more taciturn than ever for the rest of the evening. And after the children went to bed, he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the vast tropic spider, who was particularly busy in adding to the intricacies of his web; until he fell asleep with his eyes fixed in that direction, and the extinguished ...

— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the guard. His coat-of-arms, that of the house of Friedwald, was richly emblazoned upon the housings of his courser. Whence had he come? The attendants and equerries had not seen him in the camp. Only the taciturn armorer of Friedwald looked complacently after him, stroking his great beard, as one well satisfied. As this late-comer approached the scene of strife the flanks of the guard were ...

— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... I had for disquiet on this passage was the want of society. The captain and mate could spin their yarns and discuss subjects of nautical philosophy; but the mate, naturally unsocial and taciturn, seldom spoke to me, and the captain never honored me by entering into familiar conversation, excepting when he had indulged in an extra glass, and Mr. Campbell was not on deck. At such times, being in a garrulous humor, he would, as a sort of "Hogson's choice," address himself to me, ...

— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... still fairly cheap and its solace made up for many privations. Nor was Arnold's absence regretted. He had never been popular, and on the few occasions when he appeared among them, he was so moody and taciturn that his absence was felt as a relief. When on duty with the corps, however, he was always in good spirits. He seemed to delight in action and was ever ready to volunteer for any dangerous work, such as crawling up close to the German outposts to ascertain their precise positions. He ...

— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... an interlude the fugitive hoped with confidence to have lost himself in a taciturn and apathetic wilderness of peak-broken land where his discovery would be as haphazard an undertaking as the accurate ...

— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... Joan's staid looking maid. Though he obtained only a casual glimpse of her, he fancied that she was distressed about something, and it occurred to him after he was in the room and the door was closed that perhaps she wished to give him a message. Bosko, the taciturn Albanian whom he had now definitely appointed as his confidential attendant, was standing near the table with a bundle of documents ...

— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... soon as the busy trainmen discovered ladies on board, they unceremoniously drove the more bibulous passengers, protesting, into the forward compartment. This left Hope in comparative peace, her remaining neighbors quiet, taciturn men, whom she looked at through the folds of her veil during the long, slow, exasperating journey, mentally guessing at their various occupations. It was an exceedingly tedious, monotonous trip, the train slackening up, and jerking forward, apparently without slightest reason; then occasionally ...

— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... sheep"—girls among them, perhaps, in peril like Hester, men assailed by the same vile impulses that had made a brute of Philip Meryon. During the preceding months Mary's whole personality had developed with great rapidity, after a somewhat taciturn and slowly ripening youth. The need, enforced upon her by love itself, of asserting herself even against the mother she adored; the shadow of Meynell's cloud upon her, and her suffering under it, during ...

— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he would have averted his eyes from the spectacle, however alluring, and continued on his way without a pause. But now, as he had not yet settled down to genuine hard work, he felt justified in turning aside and looking into the matter. The fact that the chauffeur, who seemed to be a taciturn man, lacking the conversational graces, manifestly objected to an audience, deterred him not at all. One cannot have everything in this world, and the Kid and his attendant thick-necks were content to watch the process of mending the tire, without demanding the additional joy of sparkling ...

— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... tidying my mistress's room, and have had hard work I promise you," replied the girl, impudently. "Mayhap you will give me a help whilst you wait, Sir Taciturn? This is the fifth basket of rubbish I have borne from the demoiselle ...

— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... had kept throwing at Mlle. Blanche and her mother; and it had occurred to me that he must have had some previous acquaintance with the pair. I had even surmised that the Frenchman too must have met Mr. Astley before. Astley was a man so shy, reserved, and taciturn in his manner that one might have looked for anything from him. At all events the Frenchman accorded him only the slightest of greetings, and scarcely even looked at him. Certainly he did not seem to be afraid of him; which was intelligible enough. But why did Mlle. Blanche also never look ...

— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... and enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street. There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would walk alone ...

— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... with an inattentive manner, and apparently wrapped up in such a taciturn concern for his engines that he seemed to have lost the use of speech. When addressed directly his only answer would be a grunt or a hoot, according to the distance. For all the years he had been in the Sofala he had never been known ...

— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... to the window when we entered, without saying a word. Determining to let his taciturn humor have its way, I asked him no questions, but looked around the room to see what information it would give me (and rooms often do give such information) about the character and habits of the ...

— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... mouthfuls at a time to get on faster. But, whether he liked it or not, this was a rest as well as a breakfast hour and he had to wait till it pleased our guide to move on, which came to pass in an hour. The three Icelanders, just as taciturn as their comrade the hunted, never spoke, and ate their ...

— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... one holding his rifle, the other his duck-gun, the butts of both, resting on the floor. At each moment their anxiety increased, and it seemed an age before the succor they had sent for could arrive. How long, moreover, would these taciturn and forbidding-mannered savages wait before they gave some indication of overt hostility, and even if nothing were done prior to the arrival of the fishing party, would these latter be in sufficient force to awe them into ...

— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... been rare, and never followed by long expansiveness. Our wounded soldier of the fourth year of the War did not like to speak of what he had done nor of what he had seen. What may be the reasons for his silence? In seeking to interpret them we penetrate a little into the psychology of this taciturn man. ...

— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... the rough-looking and taciturn sailor, set foot, for a short while, on his native land, after six years of an exile which had made of him at five and twenty a prematurely ...

— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... senior marine officer of the 'Blonde,' was a reserved and taciturn man. He was quiet and gentlemanlike, always very neat in his dress; rather severe, still kind to his men. His aloofness was in no wise due to lack of ideas, nor, I should say, to pride - unless, perhaps, it were the pride which some men feel in suppressing all emotion by habitual restraint of ...

— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... future poet, then in the tenth year of his age. The wild and solitary aspect of the place inspired the boy with an enthusiasm beyond his years, leaving an impression which was never afterwards effaced, and which affected his future life and writings. As Petrarch grew up, unlike the haughty, taciturn, and sarcastic Dante, he seems to have made friends wherever he went. With splendid talents, engaging manners, a handsome person, and an affectionate and generous disposition, he became the darling of his age, a man whom princes delighted to honor. At the ...

— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... religious views he was exceedingly taciturn. He had no taste for metaphysical or theological discussions, although his library contained a large number of standard works on these subjects. Religion itself he never alluded to but with the deepest respect. Talking to me of Christianity, ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... had to hear stranger things yet. It came out that this stern, grim, wind-tanned, rough, sea-salted, taciturn sailor of sixty-five was not only an artist, but a lover as well. In Haiphong, when they got there after a course of most unprofitable peregrinations (during which the ship was nearly lost twice), he got himself, in Mr. Burns' own words, "mixed up" with some woman. Mr. Burns had had no personal ...

— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... for an hour drank the breath of the hillsides. Paula was at first taciturn. Very unlike herself she dabbled her fingers over the boat-side, and any light remark that she made was addressed to her cousin. Annabel exerted herself to converse, chiefly telling of the excursions that had been made with Paula during the ...

— Thyrza • George Gissing

... servant called Yuditch, just such another tall, thin, taciturn person as his master. They say that this man Yuditch was partly responsible for Ivan Andreevitch's strange behaviour with Anna Pavlovna; they say he discovered my great-grandmother's guilty intrigue with one of my great-grandfather's ...

— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... said Nick. "I have been playing piquet with Lamarque most of the time since I arrived. He is one of the pleasantest men I have met in Louisiana, although a little taciturn, as you perceive, and more than a little deaf. I think he does not like Auguste. He seems to have known him ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to the town one day. He was apparently a Spanish mestizo, declared himself the son of the dead stranger, and established himself in that far-off corner of the world. He began to farm the land and devoted himself especially to the cultivation of indigo. Don Saturnino was a taciturn young man, violent and sometimes cruel, but very active and industrious. He built a wall around his father's grave and, from time to time, went all alone to visit it. A few years later he married a young girl from Manila who bore him a son, ...

— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... made a striking trio of contrasts as they sat one evening over their port and walnuts in a private room of a coffee-house, where they had met to discuss the problems convulsing the unfortunate country. Madison had the look of a student, a taciturn intellectual visage. He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great precision. Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new ...

— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... was of the most delightful, his voice was tender and deep, his eye spoke eloquently of her beauty. Blaisette had never known him in such a compelling mood. Her foolish, weak little head was turned; his gross flattery was nectar to her greedy vanity. He was generally so taciturn, so cold, so aloof. And Blaisette plumed herself on being the cause of this wonderful unbending of his. By supper time they had advanced into the thick of a serious flirtation: and more than one person remarked on the ...

— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... was never talkative; but he was no more taciturn this morning than was their guest. The boy ate his breakfast with downcast eyes and only said timidly, at the end of ...

— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... and Monsieur Misson, who wrote precisely a century later, note almost in the same words "a perpetual use of tobacco"; and the latter suspects that this is what makes "the generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thoughtful, and so melancholy." In Queen Elizabeth's time, the ladies of the court "would not scruple to blow a pipe together very socially." In 1614 it was asserted that tobacco was sold openly ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means than nods and shakes of the head. ...

— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... sensibility, irritability, profligacy, but also note that it differs materially in the proportion of all its parts, from the European brain. Judging the character of the Indian from the aforesaid representation, we should say that he was cunning, excitable, treacherous, fitful, taciturn, or violently demonstrative. His constitution is very susceptible to diseases of the bowels and blood. His appetite is ungovernable, and his love of stimulants is strong. Syphilitic poison, small-pox, and strong drink will annihilate all these tribes sooner than gunpowder. Their physical traits ...

— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... went, none clearly knew. Folks said, to fight the French; but when he returned suddenly some twenty years later, he said little about sea-fights, or indeed on any other subject; nor did many care to question him, for he came back a stern, taciturn man, apparently with no great wealth, but also without seeming to want for much, and at any rate indisposed to take the world into his confidence. His father had died meanwhile, so he quietly assumed the mastership at Lantrig, nursed his failing mother tenderly ...

— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Grid, who dwelt in a cave in the desert, and that, wooing her, he prevailed upon her to become his wife. The offspring of this union between Odin (mind) and Grid (matter) was Vidar, a son as strong as he was taciturn, whom the ancients considered a personification of the primaeval forest or of the ...

— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... the name evokes a taciturn tyrant, devising in the crypts of a palace infamies so monstrous that to describe them new ...

— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... Look at Sally, who used to be such an angular and hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathed smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... to the shore, occupy a house close to the water, and keep the Malays off till the boats come ashore to fetch you off. Your crew has been very carefully picked. I have consulted the warrant officers, and they have selected the most taciturn men in the ship. There is to be no smoking; of course the men can chew as much as they like; but the smell of tobacco smoke would at once deter any native from entering a hut. If a Malay should come in and try to escape, ...

— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... young man (introduced to Presley as Julian Lambert) with Presley's cousin Beatrice, one of the twin daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Cedarquist; his brother Stephen, whose hair was straight as an Indian's, but of a pallid straw color, with Beatrice's sister; Gerard himself, taciturn, bearded, rotund, loud of breath, escorted Mrs. Cedarquist. Besides these, there were one or two other couples, whose names Presley did ...

— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... where he took them to the bank their L200 was in and saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California—Mr. Twist was taciturn. ...

— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... not recollect Hawthorne's talking much at the table. Indeed, he was a very taciturn man. One day, tired of seeing him sitting immovable on the sofa in the hall, as I was learning some verses to recite at the evening class for recitation formed by Charles A. Dana, I daringly took my book, ...

— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... theory that he was engaged that night, and she had been in a fair way to convince him that he was not really engaged that night—except morally to her, since he had accosted her—when the quarrel had supervened and it had dawned on her that he had been in the taciturn and cautious ...

— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... between him and them that jovial and careless familiarity usual amongst persons who share the chances of a perilous profession. He did not repulse advances, but he made none; and although an Andalusian, he was often taciturn. If he at times threw off his melancholy, it was to run into the opposite extreme, and abandon himself to a gaiety as violent as it was factitious. Then he would drink like a fish, dance like a madman, and quarrel about every thing and ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... upon the well-regulated mind of Mr. Pickwick. Intent upon the resolution he had formed, of exposing the real character of the nefarious Jingle, in any quarter in which he might be pursuing his fraudulent designs, he sat at first taciturn and contemplative, brooding over the means by which his purpose could be best attained. By degrees his attention grew more and more attracted by the objects around him; and at last he derived as much enjoyment from the ride, as if it had been undertaken for the pleasantest ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... no reply, but sat smoking his pipe and looking into the fire. As he was sometimes inclined to be taciturn, Tom made no attempt to continue the conversation; and after moving out and shifting the picket-pegs so as to give the horses a fresh range of grass to munch during the night, he returned to the fire, wrapped himself ...

— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... expensive but comfortable tavern. Its dimensions were goodly, its position a sheltered one, its kitchens ample and well-managed, and its October ale beyond reproach. At first the little man in black doublet and hosen was inclined to be moody and taciturn; the public whipping, apparently, had seared his kindly and humane temperament. But jolly Dan poured oil—not to say ale—on the wounds and eased them. As it was neither dinner-time nor supper-time, the sailor ordered a repast ...

— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... looking on, I was joined by Adam Stallman, one of the senior mates of the Harold. I have slightly mentioned him before. He was of a somewhat grave and taciturn disposition, but generous and kind, and as brave and honourable as any knight sans peur et sans reproche. He read much and thought more, and was ready to give good advice when asked for it; but innate modesty prevented him from volunteering to afford it, except on rare occasions, when he saw that ...

— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... crossing the Rapidan for the Wilderness, expressed to a visitor his impression of the impulse and the spectacle: Said he: "I never saw any thing like it:" language which seems curiously undertoned, considering its application; but from the taciturn Commander it was equivalent to a superlative ...

— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... under such circumstances, thus uncommunicative and unaffectionate? All these reflections occurred to the mind of the sensitive Henry, as he sat watching, and occasionally addressing a remark to, his taciturn brother, until he became fairly bewildered in his efforts to find a clue to his conduct. The horrible dread which had first suggested itself, of the partial overthrow of intellect, had passed away, but to this had succeeded a discovery, attended by quite as much concern ...

— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... got leave of absence; set out homewards, for recovery of health. Was at Paris through summer and autumn: very taciturn in society; 'preferred pretty women to any man of science;' would sententiously say a strong thing now and then, 'bitter but not without BONHOMIE,' shaking slightly his yellow wig. Disdainful, to how high a degree, of AKAKIA brabbles, and Voltaire gossip for or against! In ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of this ravishing landscape that Sir John awoke. For the first time in his life, perhaps, the morose and taciturn Englishman smiled at nature. He fancied himself in one of those beautiful valleys of Thessaly celebrated by Virgil, beside the sweet slopes of Lignon sung by Urfe, whose birthplace, in spite of what the biographers say, was ...

— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... tactics; I paid very little heed to her, and never went to see her unless she asked me very pressingly to do so. All compliments and attentions from me to her had ceased. SHE courted me, and I accepted her courtship in unresponsive silence. I played the part of a taciturn and reserved man, who preferred reading some ancient and abstruse treatise on metaphysics to even the charms of her society—and often, when she urgently desired my company, I would sit in her drawing-room, turning over the leaves of a book and ...

— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... whom thought has never stirred—have died, and what they have done, we also shall be able to do. It may not be so difficult, may not be so terrible, as our fears whisper. The dead keep their secrets, and in a little while we shall be as wise as they—and as taciturn. ...

— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... Shuswaps and Siwashes, fat, ill-smelling, insolent, and plainly highly amused in their beady, watchful, black, ferret eyes at the mad ways of this white race; a still more ill-smelling Chinaman; and a taciturn, grizzled, ragged fellow, paying no attention to the fat squaw, keeping his observations and his thoughts inside his high-boots, but likely as not to turn out the man who {107} would conduct the squaw to the bank or the ...

— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... they relish story-telling with as much zest as the Wild Arabs, they did not express their pleasure by any of those boisterous emotions of joy and satisfaction which, in civilized countries, and among men of a less taciturn disposition, are accorded to a good story well told. They neither shouted, nor clapped their hands, nor gave any other indication of pleasure. It is a strong as well as universal trait of the Indian that he is perfectly master of his feelings, never suffering them under any circumstances ...

— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... through the little bridge gate, the greetings between him and MacPhairrson were brief and quiet. They were fellows both in the taciturn brotherhood of the woods. To Stumpy and Ebenezer, who nosed affectionately at his legs, he paid no attention beyond a careless touch of caress. Even to Ananias-and-Sapphira, who had hurriedly clambered from MacPhairrson's ...

— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... must have almost mistaken me for a taciturn lord chamberlain," said the Baron, occupying immediately the Grand Duke's ...

— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... was doubtless sullen in court the next morning; she was resentful of the policeman's talk, she was oppressed and discouraged and therefore taciturn. She herself said afterwards that she "often got still that way." She so sharply felt the disgrace of arrest, after her long struggle for respectability, that she gave a false name and became involved in a story to ...

— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... sentinelled the gate of the great kraal, Imvungayo, conferred a moment among themselves, and immediately two men were sent to learn the royal pleasure as to the request. Laurence Stanninghame, awaiting their return, was taciturn and moody, and as he gazed around his one thought was lest his scheme should miscarry. The sun had just gone below the western peaks, and a radiant afterglow lingered upon the dazzling snow ridges, flooding ...

— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... with many of the French officers, and soon became a favorite among them. He met Gernois, whom he found to be a taciturn, dyspeptic-looking man of about forty, having little or no social intercourse with ...

— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... me a taciturn humor that nothing could overcome; he respected it scrupulously. I did not reply to his questions and he dropped the subject; he was satisfied that I had forgotten my mistress. Nevertheless, I went to the chase and appeared at the table and was as convivial ...

— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... Tom, as he is indifferently called, is a gentleman of some importance locally, for he is the channel of communication between the Kaipara settlers and the outside world. He is a man of ferocious aspect, black-bearded to the eyes, taciturn, and rough in demeanour. In his hot youth, he is credited with having borne his part in certain questionable proceedings in the South ...

— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... advanced Christianity, and then broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the Carthusians at Eisenach, weary and wan with many a vigil, somber and taciturn, toiling up the rugged steps to a heaven beyond the common heaven; when he talked with the young priests at the towns where he studied, and all praised the life of a monk to this young seeker after perfect ...

— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... of his education had been to make him into a shy man: he could not get on with people; with an unquenchable thirst for love in his heart, he had never yet dared to look a woman in the face. Robust, rosy-cheeked, bearded, and taciturn, he produced a strange impression on his companions, who did not suspect that this outwardly austere man was inwardly almost a child. He appeared to them to be a queer kind of pedant; they did not care ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... von Haugwitz, in his honesty and sagacity; for this reason, he will not altogether give him up, and he listens still to his advice, although Haugwitz is no longer at the head of the foreign department. Because the king himself is taciturn, and thinks and feels more in his head and heart than is uttered by his lips, Beyme's eloquence and quick perception fill him with respect; and because he is so very modest, and always believes others to be more sagacious than himself, he esteems Lombard's ...

— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... for her here. As the price of his political defeat, Walter had scant relish for the triumph he had scored in love. He was surly, taciturn, or else loud with reproaches and criminations, which grew more vehement and contumelious if she answered, seeking to exculpate or justify herself; and if she were silent, her submission seemed to exasperate him and to develop a crafty ingenuity in finding fault. ...

— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... in the hut throughout the entire noon-hour, and on these occasions their finely discreet and taciturn old host placed food before them. Goat's milk was brought from an earthenware vessel having its place on a wooden hook under the eaves of the house; and there was a delicious stew of dried goat's flesh, served with a sauce which contained just a ...

— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... answers from the man. Sometimes, weary of seeking information unsuccessfully, Tim would deliver it himself, and would talk all evening about his past hard life. After some of its sad disclosures he noticed that his companion was less taciturn, and he seized such opportunities for wringing from him something of his views ...

— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... the woman. It had been with him that I first made acquaintance; we were both engaged on journalistic work, reporting, you know, on different papers—and we came across each other once or twice in that way. He was a saturnine, queer-tempered fellow, taciturn at times, and at other times possessed by a wry sense of humour which made him excellent company, though it kept one in a state of alert disquiet. He would say things with that particular twist to them which made one look up, startled, wondering whether ...

— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... facts were fresher in men's minds. Percy did all the farm-work by day and taught school by night until, in his twenty-first year, he was sent to the Military Academy by the President himself, who had known his father from the days of Donelson. It was told of the tall, taciturn young man that he seriously contemplated resigning during his fourth class year when he found that he could not send home the little savings from his cadet pay. If the rule of the sacred commandment could but be made to work both ways, and days would ...

— Under Fire • Charles King

... Letter, which found me here about a week ago, and gave a full solution to my bibliopolic difficulties. However sore your eyes, or however taciturn your mood, there is no delay of writing when any service is to be done by it! In fact you are very good to me, and always were, in all manner of ways; for which I do, as I ought, thank the Upper Powers and you. That truly has been and is one of the ...

— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... was by fatigue and sorrow, I threw myself on my tutor's bed, and soon went off into a kind of semi-sleep, troubled by dreams, erotic and sinister. I was awakened by the taciturn Criton, who had entered the room and presented to me, on a silver salver, a sort of curling paper, whereon a few badly written words were scribbled in pencil. Someone expected me at once outside the castle. The note was signed "Friar Ange, unworthy Capuchin." I went as quickly as I could, ...

— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... a teacher in the north of France, enjoyed an excellent reputation throughout the whole country. He was a person of intelligence, quiet, very religious, a little taciturn; he had married in the district of Boislinot, where he exercised his profession. He had had three children, who had died of consumption, one after the other. From this time he seemed to bestow ...

— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... on the coins; statues were in the streets. Commodus, to whom all confiscated property accrued, was in ever- increasing need of funds to defray the titanic expense of the games that he lavished on Rome and the "presents" with which he studiously nursed the army's loyalty. So it was wise to be taciturn; expedient to choose one's friends deliberately; not far removed from madness to be seen in company with those whose antecedents might suggest the possibility of a political intrigue. But it was also unwise to woo solitude; a solitary ...

— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... a taciturn Indian woman, who refused to furnish us with either fuel or forage, although we tried to pay in advance and offered her silver. Nevertheless, we proceeded to pitch our tents and took advantage of the sheltering stone wall of her corral for our camp fire. After peace had ...

— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... was a widower of a very taciturn disposition. His treatment of his four daughters was unusually severe, almost cruel, and they not unnaturally felt disposed to resent it. Being charming girls with every virtue and many accomplishments, it is not surprising that each had a fond admirer. But the father forbade the young men to call ...

— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... was bartering furs for hiagua shells to a native of the sea-coast. At another, a brave skilled in wood-work had his stock of bows and arrows spread out before him, and an admiring crowd were standing around looking on. But the taciturn brave sat coolly polishing and staining his arrows as if he were totally unconscious of spectators, until the magical word "buy" was mentioned, when he at once awoke to life and drove a bargain in bow and quiver ...

— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... over there, in the near shadow of the Rock Valley, was where Black Hawk, dissatisfied, revengeful, dwelt with his British band, gathering swiftly about him the younger, fighting warriors of every tribe his influence could reach. He had been at the fort but two days before, a tall, straight, taciturn Indian; no chief by birth, yet a born leader of men, defiant in speech, and insolent of demeanor in spite of the presence also at the council of his people's true representative, ...

— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... some of the notices of Wildfell Hall. I wish my sister felt the unfavourable ones less keenly. She does not say much, for she is of a remarkably taciturn, still, thoughtful nature, reserved even with her nearest of kin, but I cannot avoid seeing that her spirits are depressed sometimes. The fact is, neither she nor any of us expected that view to be taken of the book ...

— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... white too; and her simple dress or wrapper being light blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily, and got ...

— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... Norse and romantic landmarks, until there was no longer any hope of his ever returning to them. But when from this promontory of advanced thought he looked back upon his idyllic love-stories of peasant lads and lasses, and his taciturn saga heroes, with their predatory self-assertion, he saw that he had done with them forever; that they could never more enlist his former interest. On the other hand, the problems of modern contemporary life, of which he had now gained quite a new comprehension, tempted him. The romantic ...

— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... extraordinary treatments, while the other, taller and more robust, although much younger, was Isagani, one of the poets, or at least rimesters, who that year came from the Ateneo, [6] a curious character, ordinarily quite taciturn and uncommunicative. The man talking with them was the rich Capitan Basilio, who was returning from ...

— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... place of the gay talk-fests that filled their evenings, they began to hold long pessimistic discussions about their future on the island in case rescue were indefinitely delayed. Taciturn periods fell upon them. Frank Merrill showed only a slight seriousness. Billy Fairfax, however, wore a look permanently sobered. Pete Murphy became subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved, almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of sea and sky. These ...

— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... moved her, kept constantly alert by the rapid changes of her caprice, he had come to have eyes and ears only for her imperious youth. If she ran off with Guy Tyrrell or with Stephen Fearwell,—a mere boy,—he grew grave, meditative, taciturn; when she returned he resumed his role of obsequious courtier without either reserve or concealment. And who can be more obsequious to a pretty schoolgirl ...

— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... Taciturn, like most men of the oppressed races, Benito nodded, while his wife sat silent in her great red and yellow reboso. Ned leaned carelessly upon the oar, but his face was well hid by the sombrero, and his heart was throbbing. When the light of the lantern passed over him he felt as if he ...

— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the old fellow refreshed his energies with the glass of whiskey which was never far from his elbow after banking hours, while the young one cultivated the local excess of continual tea. And all this time the rascally Stingaree ranged the district, with or without his taciturn accomplice, covering great distances in fabulous time, lurking none knew where, and springing on the unwary in the last places in ...

— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... had the square forehead, the high cheek-bones, the compressed lips, and, in fact, the physiognomy of an Indian, relieved, however, by a firm, benevolent Saxon eye. Like the red men, too, his foot fell lightly upon the ground, and turned neither to the right nor left. He was habitually taciturn, his face grave, he spoke slowly and in low tones, and he seldom laughed. I observed of him what I have often noted as peculiar to border men of high attributes: he entertained the strongest attachment for the Indians, extolled ...

— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston

... poor man, with steel and other weapons:—and we see he did it with sharp insight, good forecast; now and then in a wildly leonine or AQUILINE manner. A tall hook-nosed man, of lean, sharp, rather taciturn aspect; nose and look are very aquiline; and there is a cloudy sorrow in those old eyes, which seems capable of sudden effulgence to a dangerous extent. He was a considerable, diplomatist too: very great with the Kaiser, Old Friedrich III. (Max's father, Charles V.'s Great-Grandfather); [How ...

— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... many thoughts, Sir Roger de Launay, whose taciturn and easy temperament disinclined him for argument and kept him aloof from discussion whenever he could avoid it, sat alone one evening in his own room which adjoined the King's library, writing a few special letters for his Majesty which were of too friendly a nature to be dealt with ...

— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... I soothed, although hardly at ease myself. "She is evidently of the taciturn sort. We don't need to keep these servants, you know. I 'll hunt up some more cheerful in town tomorrow. Why, by Jove, it's ten o'clock ...

— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... found him a shade less taciturn than usual to-night. He felt vaguely that he now had an ally of his own flesh and blood in the house, a spirit sufficiently kindred to prefer his society to theirs, and ...

— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to ...

— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... eyes were china-blue, and were always absolutely fixed, wide open, on the person she spoke to; her nose was inclined to be red at the tip. She had a kind, hearty, sharp mode of talking, but did not exercise it much, being on the whole taciturn. She was bustling and nervous, not particularly refined, not quite, I imagine, what is called 'a lady'. I supposed her, if I thought of the matter at all, to be very old, but perhaps she may have been, when we knew her first, some forty-five ...

— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... attention; he examined every thing, and seemed to engrave them on his soul. It was near nightfall when he returned with his generals from this long ride to his headquarters. He had all day been taciturn and absorbed, and none of his generals had been permitted to participate in his plans and observations. He had only sometimes directed their attention by a laconic word or by a wave of his hand to some ...

— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... men-at-arms, the famous archers, Talbot at their head, had shown their backs; at Jargeau, sheltered by the good walls of a fortified town, they had suffered themselves to be taken; at Patay they had fled as fast as their legs would carry them, fled before a girl. This was hard to be borne, and these taciturn English were forever pondering over the disgrace. They had been afraid of a girl, and it was not very certain but that, chained as she was, they felt fear of her still, though, seemingly, not of her, but of the devil, whose agent she was. At least, they ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... to read; but when the illuminated capitals of an old book were presented to him, he quickly learned his letters. This fact, and his being taught to read out of a black-letter Bible, are said to have accounted for his facility in the imitation of antiquities. Pensive and taciturn, he picked up education at a charity-school, until apprenticed to a scrivener, when he began that battle of life which ended to ...

— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the sweet foolishness must have shown upon his face, for when he reached his destination, Blake's concierge, usually a taciturn individual, offered him a welcome as he stepped from the brilliant sunshine into the dim cool hallway, and gave him the information he needed ...

— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... honest Hutchins: taciturn, a little touchy perhaps, grown grey in the service of the company, and manifesting quite a bulldog-like devotion to his ...

— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... called him Dworro, while Rooney Machowl named him Dwarry. This diversity of pronunciation, however, seemed a matter of no consequence to the stolid boatman, who, when directly addressed, answered to any name that people chose to give him. He was taciturn—never spoke save when spoken to; and at such times used English so broken that it was difficult to put it together so as to make sense. He was there only in capacity of owner and guardian of the boat. Those who hired it would gladly have ...

— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... by their crews, who had gone to the same point of attraction, and new arrivals were constantly swelling the tide of gold-seekers. Here Will Osten found his father's agent—a staid old gentleman of Spanish extraction, who, being infirm as well as old, was fever-proof. Being somewhat taciturn, however, and rendered irritable by the upheavings of social life which were going on around him, he only vouchsafed the information that the estate which belonged to the late Mr Osten was near the goldfields; that it was not a rich one by any ...

— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne