|
|
|
More "Timidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as ye say," returned Thorward, "and reserving the matter of timidity for future discussion, what reply have ye to make ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... indulged becomes doubt realized. To determine to do anything is half the battle. Courage is victory, timidity is defeat. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... whom he held, in silence, the trembling slate was the perpetrator. As I saw the moment approach, an unspeakable timidity swept over me. I reflected that no one had seen me, that no one could accuse me. Nothing could be easier or safer than to deny, nothing more perplexing to the enemy, nothing less perilous for the culprit. A flood of plausible ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out, making her way to Hilary's. With every step she became more uncertain. The fear of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of seeming meddlesome; timidity at touching anything so awkward; distrust, even ignorance, of her sister's character, which was like, yet so very unlike, her own; a real itch to get the matter settled, so that nothing whatever should come of it—all this she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the ladder and entrusted herself to Gerhardt's escort, was very young-looking for an anchorhold: slim, fair, and frail in appearance, with some timidity of manner. They set out ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... had grown upon her with the married years; a timidity based upon loss of trust in her womanly powers, loss of the natural arrogance of beauty. Holding her head ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... may prevent him from being a philosopher in the old and noble sense of the word; but they sharpen his sense for many a psychological problem, and make him the spokesman of many an inarticulate soul. Animal timidity and animal illusion are deep in the heart of all of us. Practice may compel us to bow to the conventions of the intellect, as to those of polite society; but secretly, in our moments of immersion in ourselves, we may find them a great nuisance, even a vain nightmare. ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... that, it is not at all difficult to form a very real impression of the man. He was one of those strange, unbalanced creatures that never reach maturity; he was a child all his short life; he had the generosity, the affection, the impulsiveness of a child, and he had, too, the timidity, the waywardness, the excitability of a child. If a project came into his mind, he flung himself into it with the whole force of his nature; it was imperatively necessary that he should at once execute his design. No considerations of prudence or common-sense availed to check him; ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been in a transient state of volcanic activity. Instances of the same phenomenon occurred in the years 1672, 1756, and 1768; but the facts were generally doubted by naturalists, and considered as electrical appearances, magnified by popular ignorance and timidity. A remarkable example took place in France in the year 1790. Between nine and ten o'clock at night, on the 24th of July, a luminous ball was seen traversing the atmosphere with great rapidity, and leaving behind it a train of light; a loud explosion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... he kept on saying, as they came to the awkward places, where Max felt as if he would give anything for a candle, but he mastered his timidity, and contrived to pass over the different gaps ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... weapon down on the table and hastily rearranged her dishevelled hair, and then she said in a still and ominous voice, more indicative of aggressive temerity than shrinking timidity: ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... imperatorem habebant. [48] Difficillimum in primis, like difficillimum omnium; that is, the most difficult among those that were the first or foremost in difficulty. [49] The one—namely, to be good in council—usually produces timidity; the other—namely, to be bold in battle—rashness. Alterum—alterum, takes up the things mentioned before, but in an inverse order; respecting which, see Zumpt, S 700, note. [50] Erat for the usual ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... could I desire? What more could the modesty and timidity of a young girl concede ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... of my timidity, I seized my bunch of keys, I selected the one I wanted, I guided it into the lock, turned it twice, and, pushing the door with all my might, sent it banging ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking "Cauldstaneslap ways." Frank took his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... why you must go into society," replied Fink, severely. "You must get rid of this miserable timidity as soon as possible. Can you waltz? Have you any remote conception of the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and the image of Henry Mowers; he was going away; she might never see him again. A vague sentiment, composed of pleasure, pity, admiration, and ambition, but having the semblance only of timidity in her rosy face and downcast eyes, made her yield her shrinking form, for one moment, to his trembling and passionate caress, and the next, she ran as swiftly as a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Europe. He was not prepared to see everything couleur de rose now. His was quite unlike the frame of mind of the ordinary holiday-seeker, who, partly from a voluntary optimism, and partly from the change of food and habit, the exhilaration caused by novel surroundings, and timidity at the unaccustomed sounds he hears in his ears, is determined to be pleased with everything. Very temperamental was Smollett, and his frame of mind at the time was that of one determined to be pleased with nothing. We know little enough about Smollett intime. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Roosevelt was waging in every hour of his political career. It was a middle-of-the-road fight, not because of any timidity or slack-fibered thinking which prevented a committal to one extreme or the other, but because of a stern conviction that in the golden middle course was to be found truth and the right. It was an inevitable ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... this man of the world pleased even Pomponia. As to Lygia, she listened, confused and flushed, without boldness to raise her eyes. But a wayward smile began to quiver at the corners of her lips, and on her face a struggle was evident between the timidity of a maiden and the wish to answer; but clearly the wish was victorious, for, looking quickly at Petronius, she answered him all at once with the words of that same Nausikaa, quoting them at one breath, and a little like a ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the one hand, and timidity on the other, were the parents of these great follies. The presidential succession was the mainspring of the first movement and of the opposition thereto, while that and party majority in Congress were the motives of the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... of the lower Mississippi country, are necessarily exposed, whilst there in the summer season, to many causes of disease. It will be advisable for such to have a prudent care of their health, and yet, a care distinct from that finical timidity which renders them liable to early attacks ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... curiously submissive. Indeed, on the last occasion, she even ventured to address me, on her own account, with regard to some household matter that needed attention. Though this was done with an almost extraordinary timidity, I hailed it with happiness, as being the first word, voluntarily spoken, since the critical moment, when I had caught her unbarring the back door, to go out among those waiting brutes. I wondered whether she was aware of her attempt, and how near a thing it had been; ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... and timidity which had marked her demeanor at her interview with Mercy in the French cottage re-appeared in her tone and manner as she spoke those words. The changes—mostly changes for the worse—wrought in her by the suffering ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... All her timidity vanished—her hanging of the head, her silence, her blushes. Instead, there leaped into her eyes that light which Richard Travis had never seen before—the light of a Conway ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... It assumes to be written by Paul, but there are some indications that this name was borrowed by the real author. This assumption of a great name, so common in this age, as in the books of Daniel, Wisdom of Solomon, Enoch, and others, marks a timidity, a deference to authority of the past. Only the greatest, like Jesus and Paul, dared to speak ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... mother's hastiness of manner and his father's neglect. His principles were high and true, his conduct excellent, and as he had never given any cause for anxiety, he was almost always overlooked by the whole family. Nor was he clever, and the consciousness of this added to his timidity, which being unfortunately physical as well as mental, caused him to be universally looked down upon by his brothers. Even Marian began to share the feeling when she saw him turn pale and start back from the verge of a precipitous chalk pit where she could stand ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... changed so little that he took her hand in sudden timidity, recalling the days when he had sold her chickens before her hen-house door. But when he had settled her in one of the cane rocking-chairs beside the stove, his confidence returned and he responded heartily ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... night he had intended to see Mr. Swancourt again, but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an interview particularly distasteful. Perhaps there was another and less honest reason. He decided to put it off. Whatever of moral timidity or obliquity may have lain in such a decision, no perception of it was strong enough to detain him. He wrote a note in his room, which stated simply that he did not feel happy in the house after Mr. Swancourt's sudden veto on what he had favoured a few hours before; but that he hoped a time ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... in existence, pledged themselves, that come what may, they would resist the extension of slavery over every foot of territory where it was not then established by law. There was no doubt or hesitation or timidity in their resolution, though they knew they were entering into a contest with an enemy that had never been defeated, that had dominated all parties, and would resist to the uttermost, even to war, any attempt to curb the political power of the most infamous institution that ever existed among men. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... encampment. It is believed that Suleiman never knew the fact which had been communicated to Furriqh; but news was brought to him that the Mezzeni intended to pursue us with an increased force; and this quite accounts for all the anxiety and timidity which he evinced during the afternoon and evening preceding his death. It appears that the Mezzeni, bent on accomplishing their purpose, gathered together their force, and, following us at dromedary speed, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... this I felt the blood mount to my face, and my face burn. I imagined a thousand absurdities; I thought myself beset by evil spirits; I fancied myself tempted by Pepita, who was doubtless about to let me understand that she knew I loved her. Then my timidity gave place to haughtiness, and I looked her steadily in the face. There must have been something laughable in my look, but either Pepita did not observe it, or, if she did, she concealed the fact with amiable discretion; for she exclaimed, in ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... with Celeste. There is a strange indecision and timidity which I cannot fathom. The thing, however, is abandoned; and, for a few months, I ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Bay, or Chesapeake Bay, would have impaired our national jurisdiction over those waters. Senator Frye of Maine took the lead in a rub-a-dub agitation in the presence of which some Democratic Senators showed marked timidity. The administration of public services by congressional committees has the incurable defect that it reflects the particular interests and attachments of the committeemen. Presidential administration is so circumstanced that it tends to ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... generally successful for a time, because it is practised at first with timidity and caution: but the prosperity of the liar is of short duration; the reception of one story is always an incitement to the forgery of another less probable; and he goes on to triumph over tacit credulity, till pride or reason rises up against him, and his companions will no longer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... one entertain any feeling of timidity on commencing the use of this instrument, as its operation is perfectly simple and harmless, and, with the fluids which we recommend, is never attended with any strangling, choking, pain, or other disagreeable ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... ready, was placed on the table, and Jaqueline appeared to preside at it. She received the young captain with less frankness than she might generally have bestowed on her father's friends. There was a slight timidity in her manner, which, in spite of herself, she could not help exhibiting, and a blush rose for a moment to her cheek as ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... arrangements were liberal in the extreme, and more than satisfied, almost surprised, my father. Even Fritz lifted up his eyebrows and whistled. I alone did not care about anything. I was bewitched,—in a dream,—a kind of despair. I had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness, and I did not see how to get out of it. I clung to my own home-people that fortnight as I had never done before. Their voices, their ways were all so pleasant and familiar to me, after the constraint in which I had been living. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a fault extremely common with some people, which I would have you avoid. When their opinion is asked upon any subject, they will give it with so apparent a diffidence and timidity, that one cannot, without the utmost pain, listen to them; especially if they are known to be men of universal knowledge. "Your Lordship will pardon me," says one of this stamp, "if I should not be able to speak to the case in hand, so well as it might be wished."—"I'll venture ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... felt the inrush of fear, the overwhelming timidity of inexperience held at bay by pride alone . . . again she knew the tormenting question which she had confronted in that dim old glass at the Palazzo Santonini on the day when she had heard of the ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... she felt a kindness and grace in him which was not condescension, and which almost dispelled the timidity which, being part of her nature, so unduly beset her at all times when she addressed or was addressed by a stranger. John Oxon, bowing his bright curls, and seeming ever to mock with his smiles, had caused her to be overcome with shy awkwardness and blushes; but this man, who seemed ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... face looked encouragement; but at the crucial moment he always held back. So much was at stake, and it was so essential that his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded stupidity, timidity, intolerance. The imaginative eye, the furrowed brow, were what he sought. He must reveal himself only to a heart versed in the tortuous motions of the human will; and he began to hate the dull benevolence of the average ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... account of timidity, would prefer coming at an appointed time to the vestry to converse with us, to calling on us in our own house. 2. The very fact of appointing a time for seeing people, to converse with them in private concerning the things of eternity, has brought some, who, humanly speaking, never would have called ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... young, for even a loud word alarmed him, which, combined with his mysterious arrival, and an involuntary affection, induced his master to transfer him from the kennel to the drawing-room. From that time York acquired confidence, and lost his timidity; he first walked out with the nursemaids and children, and then accompanied his master. The latter went one morning to a rushy field, to look at some newly born foals; and there York pointed to a snipe. The bird rose, and pitched some hundred ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... never seen the hounds, nor, till the following summer, was she to know the import of her instinctive timidity. Roaming, hungry, and venturesome, she had chanced at nightfall to catch a glimpse, during an occasional gleam of moonlight, of a large trout struggling frantically on the surface of the water not far from the angler, had heard the click of the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... a dainty little cow of most placid disposition. Nothing disturbs her placidity, incites her to hurry, or bewilders her. Cure the dove of its timidity and shrinking and you will have a good prototype of Parilla, who, taking life easily and affably, is fat and amiable. When she brought home her firstborn, mooing plaintively, he, big and fat for his age, walked into the byre ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... herself made the response with a steady voice, and her eyes glittered with wild fire as she gazed upon her bridegroom. He remarked a kind of incoherence in her expressions as they rode home-ward, which surprised him at the time. Arrived at his house, she shrunk upon the threshold: but this was the timidity of a maiden. When they were alone he clasped her hand—it was as cold as ice! He ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... not knowing what was required of her, she turned to Alessandro, the chief executioner, and asked what she was to do; he told her to bestride the plank and lie prone upon it; which she did with great trouble and timidity; but as she was unable, on account of the fullness of her bust, to lay her neck upon the block, this had to be raised by placing a billet of wood underneath it; all this time the poor woman, suffering ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... should here as elsewhere, offer with timidity their advice and their experience. Yes they should try to let the young people search for it as if they were seeking fruit hidden under the shadow of leaves. If their counsel is rejected, they must show neither surprise nor ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... some timidity. Conscious of her faults, and expecting the word of truth to be directed to her heart, she had at that moment rather have escaped from it. But her mamma, taking her hands into hers, and sitting down on a garden stool that was nigh, she felt that the words would be ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... Francisco,—they were to be found in many parts, always for the one purpose,—to resist interference with the enforcement of brothel slavery upon Chinese women. American men undertook this part of the business, because a certain timidity in the Chinese character when dealing with American women, and a fear of arousing race-prejudice, unfitted the Chinaman for coping with the American women,—Miss Culbertson, the pioneer, now sainted, ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... armament against the Dorian island of Me'los, which had provoked the enmity of Athens by its attachment to Sparta, and which was compelled, after a vigorous siege, to surrender at discretion. Meanwhile the feeble resistance of Sparta, and her apparent timidity, encouraged Athens to resume a project of aggrandizement which she had once before undertaken, but had been obliged to relinquish. This was no less than the virtual conquest of Sicily, whose important cities, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... camels in a circle with their heads facing inward. In the centre is placed a pile of chopped straw; as each camel ducks his head and takes a mouthful, and then elevates his head again while munching it with great gusto, wearing meanwhile an expression of intense satisfaction mingled with timidity, as though he thinks the enjoyment too good to last long, they look as cosey and fussy as a gathering of Puritanical grand-dames drinking tea and gossiping over the latest news. Within a mile of the Ispahan gate are two other gates, and between them is an area ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... art can only be at best a keen stimulus, at worst a drugging pleasure? Is the dead weight of society altogether to crush their delight in life? What is society? What is it but the accumulated emanations of the fear and timidity and shyness that beset human beings whenever they are gathered together? And to this accumulation are those who are not artists to bring nothing but fear and shyness and timidity to make the shadow over ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... for Greece, resolving to follow him thither; presently determining to stand neuter; then bent on retiring to the Pompeians in Sicily; and, when after all he had joined their camp in Greece, discovering such timidity and discontent as to draw from Pompey the bitter reproof, "I wish Cicero would go over to the enemy, that he may ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... system of study is popular, and has all the glitter of novelty, many insincere persons will enroll their names. Some will seek only entertainment, and will be satisfied with the popular lecture alone. Others, through timidity and lack of self-confidence, may attend the class but will not attempt the paper work or the examination. But in every community are scores of earnest, hungry students anxious to learn but knowing not how ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... she said, softly. There was a note of timidity in her voice, new to Halfman, and he turned ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and it was a bitter morning in March when Dundee took another of his many farewells before he left his wife to attend the Convention at Edinburgh. It was only a month since he had come down from London, disheartened for the moment by the treachery of Royalists and the timidity of James, and he had found relief in administrating municipal affairs as Provost of Dundee. If it had been possible in consistence with his loyalty to the Jacobite cause, and the commission he had received from James, Dundee would have gladly withdrawn ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... very trenchant, but its weakness is due, I think, more to timidity of statement than to lack of perception. Paley does see that a character may be "well-drawn" without necessarily being "pleasing"; and even that he may be eminently pleasing as a part of the play ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... to stand undaunted before his fellow-citizens, and give an account of the faith that is in him. It is no argument against oratory to point to the Disraelis of both countries, and say that a gift possessed by such men cannot be a valuable one. It is the unmanly timidity and shamefacedness of the rest of us that give to such men their preposterous importance. It were a calamity to America if, in the present rage for ball-playing and boat-rowing, which we heartily rejoice in, the debating society should be forgotten. Let us rather end the sway ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Somerville returned to the parlor, she was quite a different being. She entered, stealing along by her mother's side with noiseless step, and sweet timidity; her hair was prettily adjusted, and a soft blush mantled on her damask cheek. Mr. Somerville accompanied the ladies, and introduced me regularly to them. There were many kind inquiries and much sympathy expressed, on the subject of my nautical accident, and some ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... I am to fear; you know I would not turn my back to save my life; but this evening some strange feeling possesses me, and forbids me to go further. Madame, call it terror, timidity, panic, what you will, I confess that for the first time in my life ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of Anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his remarkable work. Laws, he wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose, real justice would gradually be evolved. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... incendiaries propose to princes, to engage them into unnecessary wars with their neighbours." France would not go to war, and much less the Danes, the Swedes, and the Hollanders. James was calumniated for his timidity and cowardice; yet, says Gerbier, King James merited much of his people, though ill-requited, choosing rather to suffer an eclipse of his personal reputation, than to bring into such hazard the reputation and force of his kingdoms in a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Cosmas, Isidore Virgil of Salzburg's assertion of it in the eighth century Its revival by William of Conches and Albert the Great in the thirteenth Surrender of it by Nicolas d'Oresme Fate of Peter of Abano and Cecco d' Ascoli Timidity of Pierre d'Ailly and Tostatus Theological hindrance of Columbus Pope Alexander VI's demarcation line Cautious conservatism of Gregory Reysch Magellan ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... on early marriages; and the maid who married before she was sixteen received the "King's gift" of twenty livres, in addition to her ordinary dowry. Bachelors who refused to marry were rendered as uncomfortable as possible, and were taxed for their abstinence or timidity. Children were likewise made a good asset, and blessed was the man whose house was full of them. Thus runs an edict of the time: "...In future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... an air of high self-possession in marked contrast to her timidity and indecision of the previous day. Amherst thought she looked taller, more majestic; so readily may the upward slant of a soft chin, the firmer line of yielding brows, add a cubit to the outward woman. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... tried the experiment before the sixth illustrated the fact that touch was not absolutely necessary to cause the leaves to shrivel up or shrink through seeming fear. Our host even intimated that when the mimosa had become familiar with a congenial person its timidity would vanish, and it could be handled gently by that individual without outraging its sensibility. Of this, however, we saw no positive evidence. If Mr. Darwin had supplemented his chapters on the monkey by a paper relating to the mimosa, he might possibly have ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... hospital in Plassans, a dissecting room to which he was almost the only visitor; a large, bright, quiet room, in which for more than twenty years every unclaimed body had passed under his scalpel. A modest man besides, of a timidity that had long since become shyness, it had been sufficient for him to maintain a correspondence with his old professors and his new friends, concerning the very remarkable papers which he from time to time sent to the Academy of Medicine. He was ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... very little competition. Nobody wanted a high-boy except for commercial possibilities, and about the time the bidding reached thirty-five dollars a foreshadowing timidity began to overspread the assembly. An autumn wind came up and set the bare woodbine sprays to beating on the window, to the tune of nearing snow. Summer buyers seemed far away. When one considered the drifted leaves and the cold sky, it looked as if full purses ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... whether it was prudent discreation or rather, fearful and narrow-minded timidity, that deterred me from the great resolve of abandoning my family and my sphere of activity, to alone remain true to Elsje. It was for many years a hard and fearful struggle. It was indeed the hardest period ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... enormous, overhanging, frightful. These big ones generally conceal a fine disposition, a kindliness that borders on weakness and a gentleness that savors of timidity. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... newly organized and has not yet won that authority which self-confidence gives, it is, of necessity, looked upon by its subjects with contempt. Nor is it honoured through any sentiment of loyalty, for a tyranny is, in the nature of the case, hated; nor does it lead its subjects by fear, for timidity deprives it of the power to speak out openly. And when the enemy is handicapped in point of valour and of discipline, their defeat is ready at hand. With great contempt, therefore, as I said, we should go against this enemy of ours. For it ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... drawn too much to one side or sent ungainly to this side and to that in an exhausting effort to keep a straight course. He lay back against his mother and regarded Eleanor out of half-shut eyes. She mystified him. Her timidity when he had first spoken to her had seemed to him then to be her chief characteristic and it had caused him to feel tenderly for her: he would be her protector. But she was not always timid. He had discovered courage in her and something uncommonly ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... this juncture the Sabine women, from the outrage on whom the war originated, with hair dishevelled and garments rent, the timidity of their sex being overcome by such dreadful scenes, had the courage to throw themselves amid the flying weapons, and making a rush across, to part the incensed armies, and assuage their fury; imploring their ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... established with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,—perfectly frank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure—these, and not the unshrinking gaze and ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wagoners who had drawn up at the door. Conversation became general, and it was evident that the wagoners shared the sentiments of the landlord and his wife with regard to Mr. Dunn. They regarded the cook with awe, and after proffering him a pint with respectful timidity, offered to give ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... so hardened that she did not affect a little timidity at sight of me, looking away even more quickly than she looked up, while I walked slowly over to her and took the garden chair beside her. That gave me a view of her sketch, which was a violent little "lay-in" ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover's hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d'Aiglemont received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... infrequent rebuffs of that lady producing in his mind only temporary misgiving, that his present doubts bewildered him. He was less of a coxcomb than might seem to follow from this statement, albeit there was no timidity and little burning passion in his feeling toward her. His was simply the cool masculine assurance of a man selfish enough to regard even love in a cold-blooded manner. He approved of his own choice socially, financially, and aesthetically; and since ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Masha jumped up at once and closed the piano. She went up to the window, and for a long while stared into the garden; Lutchkov did not stir from his seat, and still remained silent. Impatience began to take the place of timidity in Masha's soul. 'What is it?' she wondered, 'won't you... or can't you?' It was Lutchkov's turn to feel shy. He was conscious again of his miserable, overwhelming diffidence; already he was raging!... 'It was the devil's own notion to have anything to do with the wretched girl,' he muttered ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... delay in the marriage—about which Henriette would never stop talking. She begrudged the time, because she had got the idea that little Gervaise was six months younger than she otherwise would have been. "That shows your timidity again," she would say. "The idea of your having ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... them to him. Zillah had been exciting him by her agitation and her suffering, and had, last of all, been rousing him gradually up to a pitch of the most intense excitement, by the conversation which she had brought forward, by her timidity, her reluctance, her strange questionings, and her general agitation. To a task which required the utmost coolness of feeling, and calm impartiality of judgment, he brought a feverish heart, a heated brain, and an unreasoning fear of some terrific ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... his daughters this deformed one had rendered him the most absolute obedience; of her alone he could say that, apart from her bodily weakness, she had never given him a moment's distress. In a family where high courage was the rule her timidity was a by-word; she would turn pale at the least word of anger. But she was brave now, as a dove to ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... kind usage. The memory of the suffering will remain; but the feeling of attachment to the master will also remain, or rather be increased. The temper of a young dog must be almost as carefully studied as that of a human being. Timidity may be encouraged, and eagerness may be restrained, but affection must be the tie that binds him to his master, and renders him ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... bashfully silent, Miss Eve! I make all due allowances for natural timidity, and shall say no more at present—though, as silence universally 'gives consent—'" "If you please, sir," interrupted Eve, with a slight motion of her parasol, that implied a check. "I presume our habits and opinions, notwithstanding you seem to think them so consonant with each ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... dwell. It lacked the unique horror of Dr. Fu-Manchu's unforgettable countenance, but possessed a sort of animal malignancy which the latter lacked.... He approached within three or four feet of the bed, peering—peering. Then, with a timidity which spoke well for Nayland Smith's reputation, he paused and beckoned to some one who evidently stood in the doorway behind him. As he did so I saw that the legs of his trousers were caked with greenish-brown mud ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... settle this matter underground. We must fight in the open, in the light. John must know. You must be brave, girl. This is no time for timidity and tears. You know and I know that right and truth are on our side. We'll risk it in a single throw." Upon determining to act thus, he was acting as only a man acts who has a wide and definite knowledge of men and affairs. "Come; the sooner it is over the better. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... reveries. To all it must appear a striking proof of the flourishing state of navigation in the present age, and a singular illustration of its vast progress since the early nautical efforts of mankind; that whereas the ancients coasted with timidity along the shores of the Mediterranean, and thought it a great effort to run across the narrow sea which separates Crete from Egypt, Great Britain, without hesitation, sends out a fleet to plant a settlement near ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... "Character" seemed distinctly the richest and the pleasantest thing in Missouri. He rode in a little closer to his companion, drawn to him irresistibly, recognising in him the sweet, untutored poetry of a wildwood nature, whose young timidity was trembling and steadying into the placating, magnetic assurance of a boy, fresh-hearted as a berry. Steering had encountered the same sort of poetry in other unspoiled boys, splendid child-men whom he had known in other walks of life, and ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... as the young girl pressed closer to his side, explaining the necessity, pointing out that it was to be her last little fling at the education for which she had planned so long, her timidity where his mother was concerned, and her desire to enter the family ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... descending stealthily and slowly, his one free arm pressing a silken bundle to his breast. Even to my nostrils there was wafted the fragrance of attar of roses, and with the exhalations of perfume came a gentle sigh of timidity ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... at the levee by two black servants with a carriage. I noticed particularly, that, although the negroes touched their hats, and inquired how he was (by which I concluded he had been absent for some time), he did not deign to answer their inquiries. From their timidity, it was evident that he was an overbearing man, and the imperial haughtiness manifested in giving them his orders, confirmed this impression. This individual was one of those who condemned the demonstration I have noticed, when the boat first ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... crown which was hers by right. I have a very pleasant recollection of this visit. I do not know how it happened but I remained speechless at this lead from the Queen. She brought the subject up a second time and my timidity still prevented my responding. I ought to have had many things to say to one so obviously eager to listen. This Queen of Denmark, with her eighty years, was the most delightful old lady imaginable. Erect, slight, alert of mind and unfaltering ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... to her brow as she gave expression to this resolution, and, for a moment, a sense of maidenly reserve and timidity oppressed her. The next she tossed back her pretty ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... which, indeed, went oddly with their whole physique. It was as though creatures built for a normal life of easy give and take with their fellows had fallen upon some unfitting and jarring experience. One striking difference, indeed, there was between them, for amid the brother's timidity and sweetness there lay, clearly to be felt and seen, the consciousness of the priest—nascent and immature, but already ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the story to speak for itself, I should like to state, in justice to my friend, that during the whole of my acquaintance with him, which began in our college days, I never saw anything to indicate the morbid timidity and weakness of character that seem to have marked him as a boy. Reserved he undoubtedly was, with a taste for solitude that made him shrink from the society of all but a small circle, and with a sensitive and shy nature ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... old fortress stood was merely joined to it by a rugged and nearly impassable ledge of rocks. The castle itself was of considerable size and strongly built, so that it could well withstand the gales which, from time to time, circled round it. Dermot had but little natural timidity or shyness; yet he felt somewhat awed when, having missed the back approach used by the servants of the establishment, he found himself at the entrance-hall, in which a number of well-dressed persons were ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... seen a nose with a broad back, whether arched or rectilinear, that did not belong to an extraordinary man. Such a nose was possessed by Swift, Caesar Borgia, Titian, etc. Small nostrils are usually an indubitable sign of unenterprising timidity. The open, breathing nostril is as certain a token ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the peace of families, chilling the mental confidence of husband and wife, adding immeasurably to the difficulties which every searcher into truth has to encounter, and diffusing far and wide intellectual timidity, disingenuousness, and hypocrisy."—Lecky. ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... and he fell into other and less compassionate hands. At the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck with a heavy whip, he for the first time turned upon his tormentors. To use his own words, "I felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, and from a downcast boy, with the timidity of one weak as a lamb, to become all at office like a raging lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however, subdued, and the next morning, together with his mother, a tenderly nurtured and delicate woman, severely scourged. On seeing his mother rudely stripped and thrown ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... design, and took a warm interest in it. He would lend, he said, his best assistance to convey the villain to England, and would undertake that the ministers of the vengeance of James should find a secure asylum in France. Burnet was well aware of his danger: but timidity was not among his faults. He published a courageous answer to the charges which had been brought against him at Edinburgh. He knew, he said, that it was intended to execute him without a trial: but his trust was in the King of Kings, to whom innocent blood would not cry ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... speeches of egregious folly. His subjects did not err far when they nicknamed their Scottish master and their "dear dead Queen," his predecessor, "King Elizabeth and Queen James." Yet justice requires the admission that the chief root of James's many failings was his intense, unreasoning, constitutional timidity, which would have been ludicrous if it had been less pitiful. He could not see a drawn sword without shuddering, even if drawn for his own defence; and when knighting a man, it was necessary for the Lord Chamberlain to come to his Majesty's help, and guide the blade, lest the recipient of the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... the human being, the psychic reactions to danger and combat have all been thus determined. That man is bearded while woman is not,—that woman has potentially functional breasts while man has not,—the aggressive pugnacity of man contrasted with the more passive timidity of woman, have all been evolved in the sex struggle, surviving because most effective in that struggle. These so-called secondary sexual characteristics are an expression of the influence of the internal secretion of the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... below, through the carriages and luggage being brought together by the servants for the day's journey. Then breakfast in another painted chamber, damp-stained and of desolate proportions; and then the departure, which, to her timidity and sense of not being grand enough for her place in the ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier (who himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the Marshalsea) would present himself to report that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... only to the capital originally invested, but also in ratio to the energy, time, and genius he had himself expended. It was not the affair of a moment. It was not the affair of half-measures, of timidity. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... brunette complexion, and the jetty locks which clustered around its brow and neck, proclaimed him the native of a warmer and brighter climate. Half laughing, yet blushing with shame, the boy looked with arch timidity in his lady's face, as if deprecating the expected reproof; but she smiled affectionately ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... girl, he forced his son to marry her. Out of fear, Ucay consented to do as his father bade him. But the beautiful young witch to whom he had already pledged his love became angry with him for his timidity, and so she resolved to change the city into a forest of beautiful trees. Her fickle lover she transformed into a monkey, who should live in the tallest tree, and who should not be able to recover his human shape till five centuries had ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... mouse," he thought to himself, as though he were seeing her for the first time, "preparing to run off into the wainscot" He was conscious, too, of her quiet clothes and shy preoccupied timidity—all of it he seemed to see for the first time, a disguise for some purpose as secret, perhaps, as ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... unwillingly, with cord and linen. I reached the mill—the boat. The miller rowed me to the shore. I knew I could not approach the king; but I bethought me of you, madam—for they say—they say, you love him well." At these words Jocelyne hesitated, with a mixture of feelings, in which bashful timidity struggled with her jealousy of the great lady ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... redemption; and because it seemed to him to be the commencement of a new system of plunder, and that too by a system of plunder not characterised by the straightforward course which bold offenders followed, but marked with that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter. He believed that government was committing great injustice, and would yet fail in its aim; that the country was against this injustice, and that Ireland after it had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... this view; and he underwent, in four successive years, the annual examination before the Stuttgard Commission, to which young men destined for the Church are subjected in that country. Schiller's temper was naturally devout; with a delicacy of feeling which tended towards bashfulness and timidity, there was mingled in him a fervid impetuosity, which was ever struggling through its concealment, and indicating that he felt deeply and strongly, as well as delicately. Such a turn of mind easily took the form of religion, prescribed ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... blamed Robin Mielleux for disorders which their own compliance had encouraged, and the instigators of which they had several times slavishly congratulated. They reproached him for having imperilled the Republic by a weakness which was really theirs and a timidity which they themselves had imposed upon him. Some of them began to doubt whether it was not to their interest to believe in Pyrot's innocence rather than in his guilt, and thenceforward they felt a bitter anguish at the thought that the unhappy man might have ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... is a certain feeling of timidity in entering a reference room which is sometimes hard to overcome in children accustomed to a special ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Power, strangely mingled with timidity; ingenuity, frequently misdirected; ugliness, the result of a false ideal of beauty—these in general characterize the architecture of our immediate past; an architecture "without ancestry or hope of posterity," an architecture devoid of coherence or conviction; ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and it is indispensable to you. You may believe me. And as to conscience, you must excuse me. You don't define it quite properly. It is not conscience that interferes with you, but timidity, I believe. You live outside of society. You are bashful, and awkward. Youare dimly conscious of all this, and it is this consciousness that you mistake for conscience. In this case there can be no question about conscience. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... gladness the role of her consoler. He did everything he could think of to please them, finding all of them charming, though Jacqueline never ceased to be the one he preferred, a preference which she might easily have inferred from the poor lad's unusual timidity and awkwardness when he was brought into contact with her. But she paid no attention to his devotion, accepting himself and all he did for her as, in some ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... power, or timidly concealed themselves. They had been trained in the schools which Samuel had established, and were probably teachers of the people on theological subjects, and hence an antagonistic force to idolatrous kings. Their great defect in the time of Ahab was timidity. There was needed some one who under all circumstances would be undaunted, and would not hesitate to tell the truth even to the king and queen, however unpleasant it might be. So this rough, fierce, unlettered man of few words was sent by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... grew up in times of comparative quiet, when she did not so much care who ruled over her, and negatively, at least, they honored the Church. They may now hate the foreign rule, but there are many considerations of timidity, and many effects of education, to temper their hate. They may dislike the priests, but they revere the Church. The young men of to-day are bred in a different school, and all their thoughts are of opposition to the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... especially in France and Germany, unable to strengthen itself by intermarriage with the noblesse, they retained that timidity which is the fruit of the insecurity of trade; and had to submit to a more and more centralised despotism, and grow up as they could, in the face of exasperating hindrances to wealth, to education, to the possession, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... there is, I trust, a Spirit prevailing, which will never submit to Slavery. The Compliance of New York in making annual Provision for a military Force designed to carry Acts of Tyranny into Execution: The Timidity of some Colonies and the Silence of others is discouraging: But the active Vigilance, the manly Generosity and the Steady Perseverance of Virginia and South Carolina, gives us Reason to hope, that the Fire of true Patriotism will at length spread throughout the Continent; the Consequence ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... silent when in the company of others than the children. When she replied to a question it was without timidity, but in few, well-chosen words. Yet her manner did not lack cheerfulness; she impressed no one as being unhappy, and alone with the twins she was often gay enough. She was self-possessed, and had the manners of a lady, though ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... words which, she imagined, such a young woman might have uttered with sincerity sounded unreal in her own mouth. And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech; while she kept on interrupting herself with: "You're sure you aren't cold? You aren't too hot? You don't want to sit and ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... speeches made, petitions and remonstrances sent, public action fearlessly sifted and criticised; in short, because he held a steady faith in men's humane promptings when ultimately reached, he 'cried aloud' to them by every access, and 'spared not' to call them from their timidity and time-serving to manly ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a feeling of timidity that I accompanied my mother through several streets to the school taught by Miss Edmonds. My mother accompanied me to relieve me from any awkwardness I might feel in presenting myself for admission. It was a select school for girls. As my education had thus far been entirely conducted by my ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... countrymen and marked as pariahs because they have listened to the white man's gospel—could be brought within the Legation area. In consequence of this hardly any Chinese Protestants have as yet come in. Of course circumstance, the force of example, and a timidity in the face of the growing irritation, have at length broken down this weak-kneed attitude, but people have not yet finished discussing it. For instance, there is a remarkable story about the well-known S——, who ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... her head before the tender triumph of his glance. Truth had asserted herself, as with Dora she must have done in any stress, but now of a sudden found herself silenced by a timidity as charming as it was new in the strong and well poised temperament of the girl who, a moment before so brave, now stood trembling and blushing beneath her ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... and there it lies. The writer of the letter who was then my enemy is now my friend. The chief character in the book, Crozier, was an Irishman, with all the Irishman's cleverness, sensitiveness, audacity, and timidity; for both those latter qualities are characteristic of the Irish race, and as I am half Irish I can understand why I suppressed a letter and why Crozier did. Crozier is the type of man that comes occasionally to the Dominion of Canada; and Kitty Tynan is the sort of girl that the great West ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... never infallible, and it would occasionally happen that Mr. Barker experimentalised with the timidity or forbearance of the wrong person, in which case a summons to a Police-office, was, on more than one occasion, followed by a committal to prison. It was not in the power of trifles such as these, however, to subdue the freedom of his spirit. As soon as they passed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of Rome, through the females and the slaves, that faith had spread its roots in every direction. Some secrecy, however, attached to the profession of a religion so often proscribed. Who should presume to tear away the mask which prudence or timidity had taken up? A delator, or professional informer, was an infamous character. To deal with the noble and illustrious, the descendants of the Marcelli and the Gracchi, there must be nothing less than a great state officer, supported by the censor and the senate, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... afraid to put forth buds, And there is timidity in the grass; The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds, And whether next week will pass Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush Of barberry ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... Virtues named by the said Philosopher. The first is called Courage, which is sword and bridle to moderate our boldness and timidity in things which are the ruin of our life. The second is Temperance, which is the law and bridle of our gluttony and of our undue abstinence in those things requisite for the preservation of our life. The ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... that I was very fortunate to be able to have such expensive things to wear, and that many girls had to be content with two ball-dresses, or in some instances with one. I was glad to put myself entirely in her hands, for I felt that she knew about such matters. My own sensations were a mixture of timidity, bewilderment, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... face of astonishment made a half movement towards the window before she understood. There was some timidity in her glance at Hilda and in her mechanical smile. "Oh," she said, "I see what you mean; and I don't wonder. I am so literal—I have ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... I don't—?" She had paused, not from the faintest shade of timidity, but clearly for the pleasure ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... good nature for weakness. For now something unusual happened to the little bee. Suddenly her depression passed and gave way, not to alarm or timidity, but to a calm courage. She straightened up, lifted her lovely, transparent wings, uttered her high clear buzz, and said with a gleam in ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... as it smells to-night. It's so long ago!" She came quickly towards me and asked "Do you hate me now?" but did not wait for the answer. She threw herself in a chair near me and fixed her eyes on me. It was strange to see her face grave and wrung with agitation; yet she was better thus, the new timidity became ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... murderous bird then perched upon a palm-tree, whose branches, before erect, have ever drooped, and croaked the truth into Adam's ear: hence it has ever been of evil augury to mankind. The hoopoe, which the French absurdly call coq de montagne, also trotted by the path-side without timidity; and the butcher-bird impudently reviewed the caravan from its vantage-ground, a commanding tree. The large swift shot screaming overhead; and the cries of the troops of Merops, with silver-lined wings, resembled ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... repetitions, soon made me used to it; and before long, I tied my reef-point as quickly and expertly as the best of them; never making what they call a "granny- knot," and slipt down on deck by the bare stays, instead of the shrouds. It is surprising, how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going aloft. For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth's diameter, and I felt as fearless on the royal yard, as Sam Patch on the cliff of Niagara. To my amazement, also, I found, that running up the rigging at sea, especially during ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Caroline I would rather check in her perhaps too great regard for admiration; and Ellen is at present too young, and in much too delicate health, to go out with me as much as you will, even before you are what is termed introduced: besides which, her natural reserve and timidity banish all fears on that account for her. But for you, Emmeline, I do sometimes feel fearful that, in the indulgence of uncontrolled feeling, you will forget you are not quite such an independent being as you were at Oakwood. Many of your ideas are ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... his seat, the exultant light went out of his eyes, his limbs relaxed, the windows and the sunlight cleared to vulgar day, and his face flushed with timidity. He sat down with a feeling of melancholy in his heart, as if something divine had faded out of ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... She had been brought up on horseback herself, and insisted on teaching the children to regard danger as a diversion—not that that was difficult, for they were naturally daring. She would have punished them promptly on the slightest suspicion of timidity. "Only base-born people were cowardly," she scornfully maintained. "No lady ever shows a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... also from diffidence, which led me to think I might have been premature in dedicating a work to you before ascertaining that you approved of it. Indeed, even now I send you "Adelaide" with a feeling of timidity. You know yourself what changes the lapse of some years brings forth in an artist who continues to make progress; the greater the advances we make in art, the less are we satisfied with our works ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... questions which make up the Irish problem has arisen again and again within the circle of the English-speaking races. As a nation we have a body of experience applicable to the case of Ireland incomparably greater than that possessed by any other race in the world. If, from timidity, prejudice, or sheer neglect, we fail to use it, we shall earn the heavy censure reserved for those who sin ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... that he read daily. He kept in close touch with the international situation, he fumed constantly at the inactivity of his own government in view of her state of unpreparedness for a war into which she must sooner or later be inevitably plunged. He lost all patience with what he considered the timidity of the President, and what he called the stupidity of congress. Was not the youngest and the reddest and the best of the Butler blood at the fighting line, ready at any moment to be spilled to the death ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... the perversity of my nature I persevered in my resolution not to see her. Then, as I should have expected, I got no further answers. 'She is disgusted,' I said to myself, 'with what she thinks my timidity in making no more definite advances'; and I resolved to seek her and make her acquaintance and—what? I did not know, nor do I now know, what might have come of it. I know only that I passed days and days trying to meet her, and all in vain; she was invisible as well as inaudible. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... had produced no one in any responsible position who understood the nature of the convulsion through which we were passing; and endless discussion had resulted (as must always be the case) in fatal indecision and timidity. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... American sweetheart," she whispered, and, approaching him with a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm. "Do you still think ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... easy and too prolonged possession of power, for power, when it is too easily attained and too securely held, is a great corrupter. Lord Halifax gives a description of The Trimmer, by which term he meant, of course, not a man of vacillation or timidity, but the man who deliberately "trims" the boat of State and endeavours to keep her on an even keel. When he sees that there are too many people, or too much cargo, on one side, with the result that the boat is heeling over, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... one," rejoined Clotilde, with increasing timidity; "some one whom you know perfectly well, and ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... entered, and received me with an easy self-possession that showed no trace of the reserve and timidity which foreigners ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... native troops and the mine laborers will be able to wipe us out, themselves," von Schlichten said. "For the timidity and stupidity of our enemies, Allah make us truly thankful, amen. It's something no commander should depend on, but be glad when it happens. If Firkked had had a couple of regiments on hand outside the ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... that he was ill fitted for such a task, and that he was much more qualified for cleaning the plates than for preaching. However, yielding to the superior's reiterated order, he began to discourse with simplicity and timidity; but God, proposing to place conspicuously the lamp which was hidden under the bushel, he continued his discourse with so much eloquence, and showed himself to possess so profoundly learned a doctrine, that the audience ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... wider separation which is about to take place between us affects me, you may partly conceive, though not feel it in the same degree with which it oppresses my heart. If you reflect seriously on what I have undergone with you two children in your tender years, you will not accuse me of timidity, but, on the contrary, do me the justice to own that I am, and ever have been, a man with the heart to venture every thing, though indeed I always employed the greatest circumspection and precaution. Against accidents it is impossible to provide, for God only sees into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... however, a person of powerful common sense, had persuaded Mrs. Lessways that the truest kindness would be to give Florrie a trial. Florrie was very strong, and she had been brought up to work hard, and she enjoyed working hard. "Don't you, Florrie?" "Yes, aunt," with a delightful smiling, whispering timidity. She was the eldest of a family of ten, and had always assisted her mother in the management of a half-crown house and the nurture of a regiment of infants. But at thirteen and a half a girl ought to be earning money for her parents. Bless you! She knew what a ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... keen sense of pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some—possibly unintentional—wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl—who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to be gentle and obedient—was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila's waiting-maid. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... coming to a crisis, paused. Miss Wilkeson interpreted his silence as another attack of timidity. Time was valuable to her, and this kind of conversation might be kept up all night, and amount to nothing. She resolved ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... have been excessive to be distinguished in that age. In the Latin-English of Dr. Johnson, "It is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours." This failing must be regarded as a blot on ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... She brushed her timidity away and with the same gesture accepted Donnegan as something more than a dangerous vagrant. She took the lamp from the hands of the crone and sent her about her business, disregarding the mutterings and the warnings which trailed behind the departing form. Now she faced Donnegan, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... disposed to call her at a distance a woman of commanding presence; but never, after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice, of practised effect, or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence, the sweet feminine timidity, and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... drove directly to the bathing house of the town, and the little girls took their first lesson in swimming. They all thought it "very nice," even Grace soon forgetting her timidity in the quiet water and with her father to ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... and preclude a dangerous partiality, let us ask ourselves how in the event of mediation we could be an impartial pacificator, behaving as we have hitherto done. The attitude of our Government has been strictly neutral, neutral to the verge of utter self-abnegation; and, as some regard it, timidity. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... with an arm about the other's waist, and very merry until abreast of us, when they were as silent and downcast as if they had been passing by their sovereign queen or the Great Mogul. Their curiosity and timidity combined were quite amusing. We speculated upon the astonishment that would have seized upon their simple, innocent hearts, had they beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our city ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... called back; then, as the mare stumbled into a trot, "Well, come out and see us—if ye kin spare time from the jedge's." The latter clause seemed to be an afterthought intended with humor, for Bowlder accompanied it with the loud laughter of sylvan timidity, risking a joke. Harkless nodded without the least apprehension of his meaning, and waved farewell as Bowlder finally turned his attention to the mare. When the flop, flop of her hoofs had died out, the journalist realized ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... she would make no changes in religion, but "she had now told the lords distinctly that she would not recognise any of the laws which had been passed in the minority,[70] and she intended to act boldly; timidity would only encourage the people to be insolent;" "the lords were all quarrelling among themselves, and accusing one another; she could not learn the truth on any point of the late conspiracy; she did not know who were guilty ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... making nails. I say, a full-grown man; for I fear he can never grow any larger, physically or mentally. As I put my hand on his shoulders in a familiar way, to make myself at home with him, and to remove the timidity with which my sudden appearance seemed to inspire him, by a pleasant word or two of greeting, his flesh felt case-hardened into all the induration of toiling manhood, and as unsusceptible of growth as the anvil ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... imagine, Cornish pirates became as naught. Such mental vibration as I had was now gone toward a tale of fashion in the days when Queen Anne was still alive. Of a consequence, I again sought the bookshop and stifling my timidity, I demanded such volumes as might set me most agreeably to ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... friend. So popular was Abel Willard and so well known his character as a peacemaker and well-wisher to his country, that he might have remained unmolested and respected among his neighbors in spite of his royalist opinions; but, whether led by family ties or natural timidity, he sought refuge in Boston, and quick-coming events made it impossible for him to return. At the departure of the British forces for Halifax, he accompanied them. A letter from Edmund Quincy to his daughter Mrs. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... guests huddled close to the doorway; the lower end of the floor was crowded! the upper end deserted; but by degrees the lines of white muslin and pink and blue sateen extended, dotted with the darker figures of men in black suits. The conversation grew louder as the timidity of the early moments wore off. Groups at a distance called back and forth; conversations were carried on at top voice. Once, even a whole party hurried across the floor from one side of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... been discovered, and his sacrifice of yesterday had gone for naught, that he stood before her, stammering, but without the power to say a word. Luckily for him, his utter embarrassment seemed to reassure her, and to calm that timidity which his brusque man-like irruption might well produce in the inexperienced, contemplative mind of the recluse. Her voice was very sweet, albeit ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... his native place almost completely; no echo of its conversation is to be found in his tales or his journals. Such an echo would possibly not have been especially melodious, and if we regret the shyness and stiffness, the reserve, the timidity, the suspicion, or whatever it was, that kept him from knowing what there was to be known, it is not because we have any very definite assurance that his gains would have been great. Still, since a beautiful writer was growing up in Salem, it is a pity that he ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... a kindness and grace in him which was not condescension, and which almost dispelled the timidity which, being part of her nature, so unduly beset her at all times when she addressed or was addressed by a stranger. John Oxon, bowing his bright curls, and seeming ever to mock with his smiles, had caused her to be overcome ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said I. 'The timidity of the knock shows that my visitor is one of two classes of persons—an autograph-hunter or a client, one of the two. You see I give you a chance to win. It may be an autograph-hunter, but I think it is a client. If it were a creditor, he would ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... rosy face, bore her baby to the front, followed by another mother with less timidity. A little girl tip-toed along the aisle, and a boy, "just turned eight" trod heavily forward. Then Thomas Strong also arose, and silently took his place on the front seat alongside the mothers with the ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... had themselves claimed. The Spaniards crashed through the bulwark, as though it had been a wall of glass. The Eletto was first to mount the rampart; the next instant he was shot dead, while his followers, undismayed, sprang over his body, and poured into the streets. The fatal gap, due to timidity and carelessness, let in the destructive tide. Champagny, seeing that the enemies had all crossed the barrier; leaped over a garden wall, passed through a house into a narrow lane, and thence to the nearest station of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... themselves to twice the trouble you desire, not to carry your point, but to defeat it; and in obviating needless objections, neglect the main business. If they do what you want, it is neither at the time nor in the manner that you wish. This timidity amounts to treachery; for by always anticipating some misfortune or disgrace, they realise their unmeaning apprehensions. The little bears sway in their minds over the great: a small inconvenience outweighs a solid and indispensable advantage; and their ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... their charter, the society could employ missionaries only in "the plantations, colonies, and factories belonging to the kingdom of Great Britain"; while they seem not to have been ready to consider the question touching the lands. The timidity or the lack of appreciation of the purely spiritual and ecclesiastical character of the Episcopate as such, which then prevailed, is painfully noticeable in the fact that, in the letter which communicated the ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... ascended the hill on which the village is built Father Damien showed me on our left the chicken farm. The lepers are justly proud of it, and before many days I had a fine fowl sent me for dinner, which, after a little natural timidity, I ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... bed, bundles of clothing, blankets, sheets, and comforters, while I brought up the rear, dragging Flora's wagon, in which she was seated. My poor sister was quite cheerful, and did not seem to be disturbed by any timidity. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... Martha—Mrs. Tully— returned for a several days' visit, and that Paula resumed the driving of Duddy and Fuddy in the high, one-seated Stude-baker trap. Duddy and Fuddy were spirited trotters, but Mrs. Tully, despite her elderliness and avoirdupois, was without timidity when Paula ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Extra Session of Congress had rekindled the war fever in the country; and the constant chatter about the suffering Cuban and the duty of the United States, the black iniquity of the Speaker and the timidity of the President, were wearying to the more evenly balanced members of the community. "You say that we need a war," said Betty contemptuously one day, "that it will shake us up and do us good. If we had fallen as low as that, no war could lift us, certainly not the act of bullying a small ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... with plans for the relief of Thaddeus. The idea of visiting the coffee-house to which she knew the Misses Dundas directed their letters, and of asking questions about a young and handsome man, made her timidity shrink. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... quarrel between a man and an usher, the latter of whom had prevented the former from entering on finding that the admission ticket which he tendered was an old one, with its original date scratched out. The man, very rough at the outset, had then refrained from insisting, as if indeed sudden timidity had come upon him. And in this ill-dressed fellow Pierre was astonished to recognise Salvat, the journeyman engineer, whom he had seen going off in search of work that same morning. This time it was certainly he, tall, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... taste of the intoxication of triumph, his first deep inspiration of ambition. He recalled his arrival in New York, his timidity, his dread lest he should be unable to make a living—"Poor boy," they used to say at home, "he will have to be supported. He is too much of a dreamer." He remembered his explorations of those now familiar streets—how acutely conscious he had ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... and had been succeeded, in what may be called the subordinate Secretaryship of State, by Sir William Trumball, a learned civilian and an experienced diplomatist, of moderate opinions, and of temper cautious to timidity. [602] The malecontents were emboldened by the lenity of the administration. William had scarcely sailed for the Continent when they held a great meeting at one of their favourite haunts, the Old King's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rescuer's adventures, nor much of the mare herself. Yet the girl's eyes sparkled, and her whole aspect was changed in the last hour. She seemed, as far as he could judge, to be in a state of the utmost excitement; she had shaken off the timidity which her brother's temper too often imposed on her, and with it her reticence and her shyness before strangers. All the Irish humour in her fluttered to the surface, and her tongue ran with an incredible gaiety. Uncle Ulick, the O'Beirnes, the buckeens, laughed frank admiration—sometimes ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... courage for Joseph to go to Pilate and avow his sympathy with a condemned criminal. The love must have been very true which was forced to speak by disaster and death. And to us the strongest motive for stiffening our vacillating timidity into an iron fortitude, and fortifying us strongly against the fear of what man can do to us, is to be found in gazing upon His dying love who met and conquered all evils and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... satisfied with the conduct of his allies guarding Ciudad Rodrigo, and returned to resume command in that region. In the same despatch he complains bitterly of the niggardly policy of his government in regard to money and supplies. The same timidity on the part of ministers at home appears in a letter from Liverpool, almost forbidding him to accept the command-in-chief of the Spanish armies, which, however, was conferred upon him later in this year.[49] At present, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... intimated that she had lost some one, and that I was to supply his place. All I know is that, after weeping a great deal, she finished by taking me in her arms and covering me with kisses. I had before suspected, from the absence of any of that bashful timidity found in a young girl, that she was a widow, and such I learned from ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... longer a boy—less of a boy, in fact, than Tom, if one may judge from the thoughtfulness of his face, which is somewhat paler, too, than one could wish; but his figure, though slight, is well knit and active, and all his old timidity has disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint fun, with which his face twinkles all over, as he listens to the broken talk between the other two, in which he ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... ought to be told. It is cowardly timidity for those of us who know them, to keep them from the Christian public. Heroes and heroines answer to the roll-call of A.M.A. workers. I have met them and mingled with them, the past three years, and I know the sinew and fibre of their courageous ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... Captain himself replied to these questions, and the conversation becoming interesting, invited his new acquaintances on board; they immediately complied, and even when the whole crew surrounded them and overwhelmed them with questions, betrayed no symptom of the timidity universal ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... demand carried with it rather the air of menace than entreaty; that the vain detail of his services, and the recompense due to them, was an injurious reproach; that to grant what had been so haughtily demanded would argue in the monarch both weakness and timidity; in a word, that to remit the punishment inflicted by my predecessors would be to condemn their judgment. Lastly, one told me in a whisper, 'His whole family are enemies to your house.' By these means the ministers prevailed. The young lord took the refusal so ill, that he retired from court, ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... "Immortals are but mortal after all, with all the timidity and weaknesses of mortality. But I agree to the proposition, and if you wish it I'll prepare to give ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... is worth nothing at all. How can I tell?" he thought, with the heart-sickness of a great timidity. Now that he had left it there, it seemed to him so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, to dream that he, a little lad with bare feet who barely knew his letters, could do anything at which great painters, real artists, could ever deign to look. Yet he took heart as he went by the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... readers that timidity was neither the captain's virtue nor his defect. But he made an effort to do what ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... was quite still, as if in worship, and perhaps it was; her face was inclined slightly upward, looking to the heavens and towards Rome. But that face—there was the picture! It was so young, so infantine, so modest; and yet, the youth and the timidity were elevated and refined by the earnest doubt, the preternatural terror, the unearthly hope, which dwelt upon her forehead—her parted lip, and her wistful and kindled eye. There was a sublimity in her loneliness ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... earthquake in San Francisco,—they were to be found in many parts, always for the one purpose,—to resist interference with the enforcement of brothel slavery upon Chinese women. American men undertook this part of the business, because a certain timidity in the Chinese character when dealing with American women, and a fear of arousing race-prejudice, unfitted the Chinaman for coping with the American women,—Miss Culbertson, the pioneer, now sainted, Miss Lake, Miss Cameron and Miss Davis, who have fought their brave battles for ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... discretion of a brave man. South Carolina will soon learn how much she has undervalued the people of the Free States. Because they prefer law to bowie-knives and revolvers, she has too lightly reckoned on their caution and timidity. She will find, that, though slow to kindle, they are as slow to yield, and that they are willing to risk their lives for the defence of law, though not for the breach of it. They are beginning to question the value of a peace that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... different and inferior; to what degree the fine abandon of words spoken and actions performed in thought was replaced by a shivering prudence keeping guard on one side, and on the other a deplorable timidity trying ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... didactic. The little tragedy that takes place amongst this homely group of people makes quite a moving play, thanks to the skill with which the types are depicted—the bourgeois father and mother, with their mixture of timidity and self-interest; the manly, straightforward young politician, resolute to carry on the work that has sapped his brother's life; the warped, de-humanised nature of the journalist; the sturdy common-sense of the yeoman farmer; and the ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... is only a "splinter;" and our "liberal" friends warn us not to rely upon it as a promise of the ballot to woman. What it is, we know full better than others. We recognize its meagerness; we see in it the timidity of politicians; but beyond and through it all, we farther see its promise of the future. We see in it the thin edge of the entering wedge which shall break woman's slavery in pieces and make us at last a nation truly free—a nation in which the caste of sex shall fall down by the caste of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to create around him an atmosphere constituted by persons whose ideals resemble his own. But it is not so with the erotic symbolist. He is nearly always alone. He is predisposed to isolation from the outset, for it would seem to be on a basis of excessive shyness and timidity that the manifestations of erotic symbolism are most likely to develop. When at length the symbolist realizes his own aspirations—which seem to him for the most part an altogether new phenomenon in the world—and at the same time realizes the wide degree in which they deviate from ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... had to weave about seventy-three yards of a kind of check for 3s., and a full week's work rarely brought him more than 5s. It seems astonishing that a man should stick year after year to such labour as this. But there is a strong adhesiveness, mingled with timidity, in some men, which helps to keep them down. In the front room of the cottage there was not a single article of furniture left, so far as I can remember. The weaver's wife was in the little kitchen, and, knowing the gentleman who was with me, she invited us forward. She was ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... the house radiant,—Lady Ruth and Wingrave were alone. She watched him close the door and turn towards her, with a new timidity. The color came and went in her pale cheeks, her eyes were no longer tired. When he turned towards her, she leaned to him with a little seductive movement of her body. Her hands stole ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their spirit of enterprise, that the softness of the female heart found irresistible. Nor less on the other hand did the knights regard the sex to whose service and defence they were sworn, as the objects of their perpetual deference. They approached them with a sort of gallant timidity, listened to their behests with submission, and thought the longest courtship and devotion nobly recompensed by the final ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... moment all the girl's timidity was gone. If the man had been startled when she had announced her name, he displayed perfect ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... grown out of all this timidity, and would have acquitted herself more acceptably in meeting, if she had met with consideration and kindness from the elders and influential members of the Society. But, for reasons not clearly explained, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... our fears, and the awe-struck faces we all presented, but it was many hours ere some of us recovered ourselves, and for this show of timidity Gatty ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... The child, limited in experience, loves to come in touch with the things he knows about. It soothes his tenderness, allays his fears, makes him feel at home in the world,—and he hates to feel strange,—it calms his timidity, and satisfies his heart. The home and the people who live in it; the food, the clothing, and shelter of everyday life; the garden, the plant in it, or the live ant or toad; the friendly dog and cat, the road or street near by, the brook, the hill, the sky—these are a part of his world, and ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... had gathered round the man, but with the timidity which characterises that class in such emergencies, they would not touch him. As I crossed the court, and they made way for me, the Spaniard, who was still standing, though in a strange and distorted fashion, turned ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... other side of the streak certainly commit acts at dinner which are rather ugly. Goodness knows what is the reason. Possibly the cynic would discover in our greater refinement a curious form of snobbishness, the sort of timidity about accomplishing before other people a natural function which in other aspects of life is certainly ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... closely beneath the high bank that her tall chimneys almost swept the overhanging branches; then, stealing from the treacherous shoal, she sped her way through the middle of the vast waters, as if ashamed of her former timidity. Here she shot through the narrow cut-off, and there left her foaming surge in the centre of the ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... to give a detailed account of the labors of a small band of enfranchised females for the liberation of their enslaved and suffering sisters, whose weakness and timidity had hitherto prevented their rising and throwing off the yoke of the oppressor, man. So eloquently did she rehearse her tale, so still and patient was her listener, that she felt confident of gaining a new coaedjutor in the ranks of female reform. As she finished her recital, she directed a sharp, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... was more than physical. It caused a sudden uprush of his old timidity and he stood irresolute, in everybody's way, spying at the distant golden head. It seemed as if they had wanted to avoid him, they had gone so quickly, just bowed and been carried on—if only Chrystie would look back and smile. Standing on his toes, jostled and elbowed, he caught ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... uncompleted cantilever arm, one of them thought something was about to fall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall, he was unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for having shown timidity. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... had long been ready, was placed on the table, and Jaqueline appeared to preside at it. She received the young captain with less frankness than she might generally have bestowed on her father's friends. There was a slight timidity in her manner, which, in spite of herself, she could not help exhibiting, and a blush rose for a moment to her cheek as she replied to ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... With shrinking and timidity the Browning girl is unacquainted. As experience grows, these sensations may sadly touch her, but she will not have been prepared for them; no reason for feeling either had entered her dream ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... protection; but then came the warning, or rather threat, of some hidden mischief that must inevitably follow the disclosure. "Surely, in her own home, she might venture to walk unattended. The beggar she had known for some time in his periodical visits; and though she felt an unaccountable timidity in his presence, yet she certainly was minded to make an experiment of the adventure; but"——And in this happy state of doubt and fluctuation she remained until eventide, when a calm bright moon, as it again rose over the hill, saw Alice at the casement of her own chamber, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the bank he swerved and passed along, but not from timidity; it lacked seven minutes of the time Mr. Gibbs had set, and Dick had learned that a busy man is often almost as much annoyed by a premature caller as by one who ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... interests were bounded by himself, any day he might lose his life; it became a habit of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... to see that all the alterations proposed are evidences of timidity. You may be sure that I do [? not] wish to publish, what those for whom I write do not like to have published. But print me half a dozen copies in the original state, and lay them up for me. It concludes ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... never a general, though a great soldier; never, naturally, a good courtier, although he had always a good idea of being so. He was never a good partizan, although all his life engaged in intrigues. That air of pride and timidity which your see in his private life, is turned in business into an apologetic manner. He always believed he had need of it; and this, combined with his 'Maxims,' which show little faith in virtue, and his habitual custom, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... with mournful sympathy, and took both her hands in his. She pressed them to her lips, and when she raised her head, her timidity had given place ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... doubtless, had an important meaning. Perhaps the pilgrimage may be divided into four parts: 1. The convert flying from the wrath to come; instructed at the Interpreter's house; relieved of his burden at the cross; ascends the Hill Difficulty; overcomes his timidity; and, 2. Enters a church at the House Beautiful; and, as a private member, continues his journey, until, 3. He meets Evangelist, near Vanity Fair, and is found fit to become an itinerant preacher; in which calling he suffers ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... back shyly. "No, let us both go." She added, with a smile to cover her timidity, "Two ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... don't know," said Carrie, when he had concluded, her interest and desire to shine dramatically struggling with her timidity for the mastery. "I might go if you thought I'd ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... recognize the dress she wore, a pale yellow, that he had admired when he first saw her. It was Nellie, unmistakably; if it were she of the brown duster, she had discarded it, perhaps for greater freedom. He was near enough to call out now, but a sudden nervous timidity overcame him; his lips grew dry. What should he say to her? How account for his presence? "Miss Nellie, one moment!" he ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Mr. Merensky. In person the Basutus are thin and weakly when compared to the stalwart Zulu, and it is their consciousness of inferiority both to the white men, and their black brethren, that, together with their natural timidity, makes them submit as easily as they do to the yoke of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... very exactly her hours of recitation and at last she came, her arms filled with books, moving with such stately step she seemed a woman, tall and sedate. She perceived Jack waiting, but was not alarmed, for she comprehended something of his goodness and timidity. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... and has been stigmatised by 'the enlightened ones' as 'the reaction.' They say that the earlier nature-worship, which they call Pantheistic, speaks the true and genuine man; the later and more consciously Christian mood they regard as the product, not of deepened experience, but of timidity, or at least as the sign of decreasing insight. It is not so that I would interpret it. Wordsworth and his sister, with their rare gift of soul and eye, saw further into nature, and felt it more profoundly than common men can, and had no doubt found there something ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... shoulders, a part of it on each side being carelessly platted, and sometimes rolled up into an awkward lump, instead of being neatly tied on the top of the head, as the Esquimaux women in most other parts are accustomed to wear it. The youngest female had much natural bashfulness and timidity, and we considered her to be the only unmarried one, as she differed from the other three in not being tattooed upon the face. Two of them had their hands tattooed also, and the old woman had a few marks of the same kind about each wrist. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Caesar; next, on Pompey's sailing for Greece, resolving to follow him thither; presently determining to stand neuter; then bent on retiring to the Pompeians in Sicily; and, when after all he had joined their camp in Greece, discovering such timidity and discontent as to draw from Pompey the bitter reproof, "I wish Cicero would go over to the enemy, that he may learn ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... extended through a wider field of adventure. The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the same;—a broken narrative—a redundancy of minute description—bursts of unequal and energetic poetry—and a general tone of spirit and animation, unchecked by timidity or affectation, and unchastised by any great delicacy of taste, or ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... in the epic of Gilgamesh we find Etana in the nether world. According to Jastrow, this attempted ascension was an offence against the gods, and his fall was his punishment. We are not told, however, that Etana had the impious desire of Ezekiel's first man, and if he fell, it was through his own timidity (contrast Ezek. xxviii. 16). But certainly the myth does help us to imagine a story in which, for some sin against the gods, some favoured hero was hurled down from the divine abode, and such a story may some day ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... How far they acted under orders and against their own judgment of what was sensible and sound in fighting-risks I do not know. General Trenchard, their supreme chief, believed in an aggressive policy at all costs, and was a Napoleon in this war of the skies, intolerant of timidity, not squeamish of heavy losses if the balance were tipped against the enemy. Some young flying-men complained to me bitterly that they were expected to fly or die over the German lines, whatever the weather or whatever the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the fashion for the whole North in chef d'oeuvres of the quills of the porcupine. She is a most observant "old wife." Watching, fascinated, the lightning play of the machine, "Much hard that, I think, harder than bead-work, eh?" Conquering her timidity, she at last glides across to find out how the dickens when you strike capital "A" at one end of the keyboard, it finds itself in the writing next to small "o" at the other end. There is something uncanny about it, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... himself as if he had received a blow, and relaxed his grasp of Walter's hand; but Walter, struck with the sensitive timidity which unkindness had caused, and sorry to have given him pain in all his troubles, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... when she said, "No," that Miss Pilbeam, despite her father's wrongs, began to soften a little. The upsetter of policemen was certainly good-looking; and his manner towards her so nicely balanced between boldness and timidity that a slight feeling of sadness at his lack of moral character ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... our comfort for the timidity of the poor, weak flesh which still shudders at death. If thou art a Christian, then know that thy Lord Jesus Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. Therefore, death hath no more dominion over thee, who art baptized ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the Portuguese in India was founded by three great men, Duarte Pacheco, Francisco de Almeyda, and Alfonso de Albuquerque; after whom scarcely was there a single successor who did not decline from their great character, having either a mixture of timidity with their valour, or of covetousness with their moderation, in which the vices predominated. In gaining this Indian crown, Pacheco alone acted with that fiery heat which melted the arms and riches of the zamorin; only Almeyda could ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... barbarous, and he had never taken advantage of his skill with the gloves as the average man might very probably have done. To fight was to lower one's self-respect enormously, he thought. It was not a matter of timidity, but of very strong conviction—an entrenchment that had saved him from wreaking vengeance—in the hour when another man would have killed. But there, in that room in his home, he had stood face to face with a black, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... mean between timidity and foolhardiness, has to do with evils. All evils are objects of fear; but there are some evils that even the brave man does right to fear—as disgrace. Poverty or disease he ought not to fear. Yet, he will not acquire the reputation of courage from not fearing these, nor will he acquire ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... occupied by the German army," said the lieutenant, then, smiling a little at the maire's timidity. Was he wondering if a German burgomeister would submit as tamely were it a German village that had witnessed the arrival of invading troops? Probably not! Few German officers in those days thought it possible that an ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who for twenty years had been the town mystery, lost something of his timidity, and his shadowy personality, submerged in a sea of doubts, came forth to look at the world. With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... during the guerilla war. The first of these three lay in the fact that the strategy was a conformation to the enemy's movements. This naturally gave him time to think and to develop his counter-move, with all advantages in the balance. No. 2 is to be found in the timidity of certain of the column commanders. Men who proverbially take every opportunity of sacrificing the main issue to pursue some subsidiary policy. Men whom De Wet loves, and whom he plays with, decoys, and bluffs until he achieves his object. Men whose heart will ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... miserably, eating little, ashamed of his pennilessness, and made use of his talents only through great despair, wishing by any means to win that idle life which is the best all for those whose minds are occupied. The Florentine, out of bravado, came to the court gallantly attired, and from the timidity of youth and misfortune dared not ask his money from the king, who, seeing him thus dressed, believed him well with everything. The courtiers and the ladies used all to admire his beautiful works, and also their author; but of money he ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... life. True, it had its ludicrous side; but how is one to enjoy the humour of an amusing situation alone? and, to tell the truth, the six foot of plush and powder before me was somewhat alarming to my female timidity. I hear now the man's startled "I beg your ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... wrote. The liberation of Sir John, Greisengesang's uneasy narrative, last of all, the scene between Seraphina and the Prince, had decided the conspirators to take a step of bold timidity. There had been a period of bustle, liveried messengers speeding here and there with notes; and at half-past ten in the morning, about an hour before its usual hour, the council of Grunewald sat ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imploring God's guidance and blessing in all their ways, and then read a short portion of Scripture, with an occasional word or two of simple explanation, and offer, himself, a short and simple prayer. In some cases, teachers are disposed to postpone this duty a day or two, from timidity or other causes, hoping that after becoming acquainted a little with the school, and having completed their more important arrangements, they shall find it easier to begin. But this is a sad mistake. The longer it is postponed, the more difficult and trying it will be. And ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Indolence and timidity have united to popularise among us a flaccid latitudinarianism, which thinks itself a benign tolerance for the opinions of others. It is in truth only a pretentious form of being without settled opinions of our own, and without any desire to settle them. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... improvements and imaginary railroads and canals, for which neither surveys nor estimates had been made, to serve the dream-built cities of the speculator. If Mr. Lincoln had had more experience in the getting and use of dollars and more acquaintance with the shrinking timidity of large sums, he would have tried to dissipate these illusions of grandeur. But he went with the crowd, every member of ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... some degree lacked the heroic quality. He was not a John Knox or a Martin Luther. Each time his name is mentioned he shows timidity, and a disposition to remain hidden. Even in the noble deed of the day Jesus died, it is almost certain that Nicodemus was inspired to his part by ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... accusation made against Lieut.-Col. Dennis in this charge be correct, that he did so remove his force from the shelter of the steamer for the purpose of attacking an enemy, whose numbers he knew to be overwhelming—the proceeding savours rather of rashness than of timidity. Had Lieut.-Col. Dennis been the coward which his accusers would have the public believe, he would in such a case have eagerly availed himself of the remonstrances which it is stated were made to him, to return with the men under his command to the ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... himself seen all that he ought to have been able to see from his own standpoints? Can any of us do so? The force of early bias and education, the force of intellectual surroundings, the force of natural timidity, the force of dulness, were things which he could appreciate and make allowance for in any other age, and among any other people than his own; but as belonging to England and the Nineteenth Century they had no place in his theory of Nature; they were inconceivable, unnatural, unpardonable, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... disturbance of mind, also excessive self-esteem and pride in the very things for which a man ought to be despised. I need not mention obstinate persistence in wrong-doing, or frivolity which cannot remain constant to one point; besides all this, there is headlong rashness, there is timidity which never gives us trustworthy counsel, and the numberless errors with which we struggle, the rashness of the most cowardly, the quarrels of our best friends, and that most common evil of trusting in what is ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... the two young persons, as they slowly paced the terrace. Both felt embarrassed: Jocelyn longing to give utterance to his feelings, but restrained by timidity—Aveline trembling lest more might be said than she ought to hear, or if obliged to hear, than she could rightly answer. Thus they walked on in silence. But it was a silence more eloquent than words, since each comprehended what the other felt. How much they would have said was proclaimed ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... McPherson was ordered to do. If Sherman had seen this clearly at the time, it is inconceivable that he would have sent less than one fourth of his army to execute the all-important part of the plan. And now he judges McPherson as manifesting timidity ( 2) because he did not at the critical moment attempt to accomplish, with his comparatively small force, what Sherman should have ordered to be done by ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, "Tarry a while." Opportunism says, "This is a good spot." Timidity asks, "How difficult ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... touches that body now. Two gentlemen of highest official and social standing and of large wealth, brothers in their faith in Jesus, and also in their timidity, now take steps at once to have the precious body of their dear friend tenderly cared for without regard to expense. So He is laid away in a new tomb in a garden among the flowers of the spring time. The last touch is one of ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... and after the first few steps the feeling of timidity began to wear off, and Celia descended more quickly till, about fifty feet from the top, some distance under where the fringe of ferns hung, and where it had seemed quite dark from above, but was really a pleasant greenish twilight, she found beneath her feet a few loose ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... and CV in which the fight is renewed and Ravan severely reprimands his charioteer for timidity and want of confidence in his master's prowess, and orders him to charge straight at Rama on ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... architecture that his Holiness is continually having done, he almost always seeks Michael Angelo's advice and judgment, frequently sending the artists to seek him at his house. It grieves me, and it grieves also his Holiness, that by reason of a certain natural timidity, or let us say respect and reverence, which some call pride, Michael Angelo does not profit by the goodwill, kindness, and liberality of so great a Pontiff and so much his friend. As I first heard from the most ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... or Chesapeake Bay, would have impaired our national jurisdiction over those waters. Senator Frye of Maine took the lead in a rub-a-dub agitation in the presence of which some Democratic Senators showed marked timidity. The administration of public services by congressional committees has the incurable defect that it reflects the particular interests and attachments of the committeemen. Presidential administration is so circumstanced that it tends to be nationally minded; ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Already the Americans purchase, not only silks and fancy articles in France, but also even cotton goods of the superior qualities; the only obstacle which prevents the French from making still more rapid advancement than is at present the case, is first timidity of capitalists, deficiency of knowledge of the higher order of business, and extreme slowness in proceeding with any grand national operation, as for instance, her railroads, in which she has not only seen England surpass her ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... next morning, that if the recital she had heard were true, she was afraid Anastasia's company tired me, as she very well knew that when I really loved I cast timidity to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sudden fire that blazed at her from his. "Unless I consent to be a cripple all my days," she said, with a curious timidity wholly ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... light, direct hint of the parents toward a possible marriage? The idea of marriage roams continually in houses with grown-up girls, and takes every shape and disguise, and employs every subterfuge. A dread of compromising myself took hold of me as well as an extreme timidity before the obstinately correct and reserved attitude of the Misses Louise and Pauline. To choose one of them in preference to the other seemed to me as difficult as choosing between two drops of water; and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... same impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely to find the old footmarks and follow them. Habit only makes the path easier to traverse, and thus the unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant, may perpetuate itself in a timidity which shames the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unpleasing circumstance, even under an intention only of marrying him, to find my friendship stronger for another; what then would it have been under the most sacred of all engagements, that of marriage? What wretchedness would have been the portion of both, had timidity, decorum, or false honor, carried me, with this partiality in my heart, to fulfill those views, entered into from compliance to my family, and continued from a false idea of propriety, and weak fear of the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... but they mistrusted it. There were alarming symptoms in the steadfastness of the resistance, and others not less serious in the cowardice of adherents. Not one of the new Ministers appointed during the morning had taken possession of his Ministry—a significant timidity on the part of people ordinarily so prompt to throw themselves upon such things. M. Roulier, in particular, had disappeared, no one knew where—a sign of tempest. Putting Louis Bonaparte on one side, the coup d'etat continued ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... apprised of the design, and took a warm interest in it. He would lend, he said, his best assistance to convey the villain to England, and would undertake that the ministers of the vengeance of James should find a secure asylum in France. Burnet was well aware of his danger: but timidity was not among his faults. He published a courageous answer to the charges which had been brought against him at Edinburgh. He knew, he said, that it was intended to execute him without a trial: but his trust was in the King of Kings, to whom innocent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with solicitude on Chia Lien's drunken fit the day before. The moment therefore it was light, she hastily crossed over, and sent for Chia Lien to repair to dowager lady Chia's apartments. Chia Lien was thus compelled to suppress all timidity and to repair to the front part of the mansion and fall on his knees at the feet of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... his timidity, as a person of political aspirations, in treating the subject of slavery in a practical manner, reduced his conduct to the verge of cowardice, if not of duplicity. While writing to Dr. Price in this assured tone, and urging him to exhort the young men of the College ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... should have been there to welcome the child— his conscience rather smote him that he was not—but it was the minister's unbroken habit of years to spend Saturday evening alone in his study. And it might be that, with a certain timidity, inherent in his character, he shrank from this first meeting, and wished to put off as long as possible what must inevitably be awkward, and might be very painful. So, in darkness and rain, unwelcomed save by his own ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... circumscribed by the hostile intentions of the other World Powers, by the existing territorial conditions, and by the armed force which is at the back of both. Our policy must necessarily be determined by the consideration of these conditions. We must accurately, and without bias or timidity, examine the circumstances which turn the scale when the forces which concern us are ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... speculated about him with Cyn. But yet—she sometimes felt that a certain something that had been on the wire was lacking now; that Clem, while realizing all her old expectations of "C," was not exactly what "C" had been to her. One reason of this she knew was her own inability to conquer a sort of timidity she felt in his presence, a timidity from which Cyn was certainly free. Well aware that beside the gay and brilliant Cyn she was nowhere, Nattie had a sensitive fear that he might be disappointed in her. But she ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... and protection against personal violence, but no favor. Powers and pre-eminences conferred on them are daggers put into the hands of assassins, to be plunged into our own bosoms in the moment the thrust can go home to the heart. Moderation can never reclaim them. They deem it timidity, and despise without fearing the tameness from which it flows. Backed by England, they never lose the hope that their day is to come, when the terrorism of their earlier power is to be merged in the more gratifying system,of deportation and the guillotine. Being now hors de combat ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... peculiarly the gift of an American. He went on from one sentence to another with rhythmic tones and unerring pronunciation. He never faltered, never repeated his words, never fell into those vile half-muttered hems and haws by which an Englishman in such a position so generally betrays his timidity. But during the whole time of my remaining in the room he did not give expression to a single thought. He went on from one soft platitude to another, and uttered words from which I would defy any one of his audience to carry away ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... these fears, that which is only the effect of motives much nearer at hand; such as the feebleness of their machine, the mildness of their temperament, the slender energy of their souls, their natural timidity, the ideas imbibed in their education, the fear of consequences immediately resulting from criminal actions, the physical evils attendant on unbridled irregularities: these are the true motives that restrain them; not the notions of a future life: which ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... seat he placed her at the window, and sat down opposite. It was her introduction to railway travel, and when the train moved off, and the locomotive sounded its prolonged shriek of departure, Regina started up, but, as if ashamed of her timidity, coloured and bit her lip. Observing that she appeared interested in watching the country through which they sped, Mr. Palma drew a book from his valise, and soon became so absorbed in the contents that he forgot tie silent figure on the seat ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... tobacco." "Then all our visitors left, except four interesting young peasant girls, who still lingered." "They had all pleasant voices." "We listened to them with much pleasure; there was so much sweetness and feeling in their melody. Zachariah made up for his brother's timidity. Full of fun, what dreadful faces the young Gipsy would pull, they were absolutely frightful; then he would twist and turn his body into all sorts of serpentine contortions. If spoken to he would suddenly, with a hop, skip, and a jump alight in his tent as if he had tumbled from the sky, and, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
