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More "Bashfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rise from a first fall; but an elderly formed speaker has not an equal chance. Mr. Hamilton,(515) Lord Abercorn's heir, but by no means so laconic, had more success. Though his first essay, ii was not at all dashed by bashfulness; and though he might have blushed for discovering so much personal rancour to Mr. Fox, he rather seemed to be impatient ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... involuntarily fell on their faces before her, according to the custom of the Asiatics, and the noble Achaemenidae bowed low and reverentially; for it seemed as if Nitetis has laid aside all her former bashfulness and timidity with her simple Egyptian dress, and with the splendid silken garments of a Persian princess, flashing as they were with gold and jewels, had clothed herself in the majesty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... expression at once simple and profound. People who said they did not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground, or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would most people say, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... ate heavy meat three times a day, but took little or no exercise. The pimples on his face became worse and worse. He grew peevish and nervous. He hated girls, and when in their society was a very bull-calf for bashfulness and awkward self-consciousness. At times the strangest and most morbid fancies took possession of him, chief of which was that every one was looking at him while he ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... mere good fortune owe. No chance it was secured me thy regards, But Virgil first, that best of men and bards, And then kind Varius mentioned what I was. Before you brought, with many a faltering pause, Dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness Robbed me of utterance) I did not profess That I was sprung of lineage old and great, Or used to canter round my own estate On Satureian barb, but what and who I was as plainly told. As usual, you Brief answer make me. I retire, and then, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... that Topham has suddenly come out as a juggler, and swallows candles, and does wonderful things with the poker very well indeed, but with a bashfulness ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... myself with its contents I was obliged again to submit to the officious intervention of my indefatigable servitor. Various other dishes followed, the chief manifesting the most hospitable importunity in pressing us to partake, and to remove all bashfulness on our part, set us no despicable example in his ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with extremely long arms and legs, and mouth, that, although shaded by a faint outline of a mustache, invariably suggested an alligator, opened the door of Mrs. Simonson's rooms, opposite, and seeing Nattie, started back in a sort of nervous bashfulness. Recovering himself, he then darted out with such impetuosity that his foot caught in a rug, he fell, and went headlong down stairs, dragging with him a fire-bucket, at which he clutched in a vain effort to save himself, the two jointly making a noise that ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... the door entered with the caution of veterans in an enemy's country, and with a bashfulness that was painful to contemplate. They stood before the bar, they glanced cautiously to the right, and gently inclined their heads backward, until only a line of eyes and noses were visible ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... in one form of speech, or have one set of manners at home, and another abroad, because in moments of confusion or bashfulness, such as every young person feels sometimes who is sensitive and modest, the habitual mode of expression will ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... demeanour which the forms of society rather dictatorially prescribe. But certain it is, that the lady smiled; then put her finger upon her lip, with a striking recollection of what was due to herself; and finally retired, in oyster-like bashfulness, to the very back of the counter. The sad-dog sort of feeling came strongly upon John Dounce: he lingered—the lady in blue made no sign. He coughed—still she came ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a brunette, lent a yet brighter glow to her sparkling dark eyes, and contrasted well with the glossy black ringlets which shaded her animated countenance. At this moment, however, her little head was carried somewhat haughtily, and there was a sort of something not unlike bashfulness or awkwardness in her manner which seemed hardly natural to it. The truth was, Miss Dalton had come very unwillingly to share in the festivities of Woodthorpe Hall. She was not acquainted with Mrs. Beauchamp, and report said she was a very dignified ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... as he understood it, the good things of this world had been bestowed upon him. He was a proud man, with but few intimacies,—with a few dear friendships which were the solace of his life,—altogether gracious in his speech, if it were not for an apparent bashfulness among strangers; never assuming aught, deferring much to others outwardly, and showing his pride chiefly by a certain impalpable noli me tangere, which just sufficed to make itself felt and obeyed at the first approach of any personal freedom. He was a handsome man,—if an ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... the old woman's grand-daughter; but that at the same time she had always esteemed herself much more than might have been expected of a gitana. Her mother bade her say truly, was she very fond of Don Juan? With great bashfulness and with downcast eyes she replied that, having considered herself a gipsy, and that she should better her condition by marrying a knight of Santiago, and one of such station as Don Juan de Carcamo, and having, moreover, learned ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... one response, either verbally or mentally, did Jacquelina make. The priest passed over her silence, naturally ascribing it to bashfulness, and honestly taking her consent ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... word is sweet. I see not why your lip should shrink from it; If the word burns it,—what would the kiss do? Oh! let it not your bashfulness affright; Have you not, all this time, insensibly, Left badinage aside, and unalarmed Glided from smile to sigh,—from sigh to weeping? Glide gently, imperceptibly, still onward— From tear ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... cried O'Connor indignantly. "Ain't I payin' the good woman a compliment, when I say that she had pity on me bashfulness, and came to me help when I was ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the brown hair and the slim fingers as he was meant to look at them. Yet in his smiling good humour there was not a trace of bashfulness or diffidence. He was perfectly at his ease, with something of a proud self-reliant consciousness in every movement; nothing in his manner could have reminded a spectator of the traditional apprentice making timid love ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... autocrat in intellect, revelling in all the confidence of his own great powers, a somewhat nearer observation enabled a common acquaintance at Venice[1] to detect, under all this, traces of that self-distrust and bashfulness which had marked him as a boy, and which never entirely forsook him through the whole ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... it to no want of modesty that, for once, I sink the graceful bashfulness of the virgin, and assume the more forward deportment of the queen. When all appear to possess such merit, how can I slight all but one by my decision? Let me rather leave it to the immortal Vishnu to decide who is most worthy to reign over this our kingdom of Souffra. Let Vishnu prompt you to ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... so that she will not run away. The go-between returns the following day and claims her guerdon. Several cases passed under my observation, in which the husband was unable to use his marital rights for weeks owing to the timorousness and bashfulness of his youthful spouse. In no case was anything but patience and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... after a few courteous words, came back to the blue eyes and brown hair; still he kept his look fixed upon her, and his tones grew sweeter and lower as he became more interested in talk, until this poor, dear Helen, what with surprise, and the bashfulness natural to one who had seen little of the gay world, and the stirring of deep, confused sympathies with this suffering father, whose heart seemed so full of kindness, felt her cheeks glowing with unwonted flame, and betrayed the pleasing trouble ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... she said, "and looking with light-mindedness after gallant gentlemen! Mistress Margery should see to this and watch more closely, or we shall have unseemly stories told. You, sister, with your modest face and bashfulness! I had not thought it ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... back; the play demanded Mrs. Gilmore. The sick-room door was so near that Ramsey knew her mother was inside it, by her shadow on its glass. Suddenly, just as Hugh was about to say she need not hurry in—whereupon she would have vanished like a light blown out—she faced him. "D'you ever suffer from bashfulness—diffidence?" ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... old Mis' Henshaw," she whispered to Frank; "she's the'r regular stan'-by at shouting. When they begin to call up mourners she commences to clap 'er hands an' shout, then the rest get over their bashfulness an' the fun begins. We may see a lot of excitement if the town-people don't come and freeze 'em out with their ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... "Welcome and good cheer to thee! By Allah, from the day I saw thee sleep hath not been sweet to me nor hath food been pleasant." Quoth I, "Such hath also been my case: and I am thy slave, thy negro slave." Then we sat down to converse and I hung my head earthwards in bashfulness, but she delayed not long ere she set before me a tray of the most exquisite viands, marinated meats, fritters soaked in bee's[FN536] honeys and chickens stuffed with sugar and pistachio nuts, whereof we ate till we were satisfied. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the little figure before him in silence for some time, and when the temporary absence of Mr. Home from the room relieved him from the half-laughing bashfulness, which was all he knew of timidity—-"Mother, I see a young lady in the present society to whom I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... club where these fraternal sentiments were expressed there is a lady who sits on the platform. When anyone makes what she considers a good speech she embraces him on both cheeks. She is by no means ugly, and I had serious thoughts of making a few observations myself in view of the reward. That bashfulness, however, which has been my bane through life, prevented me. The lady occasionally speaks herself, and is fond of giving her own experiences. "I was on my way to this club," she said, "the other evening, when I observed ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... save a young man with thick gauntlets standing guard over an iron wheel valve in a big pipe that ran along the deck. A stout, iron-grey man in uniform was leaning against the sky-light on the poop-deck as we came past the funnels. With a slight bashfulness Mr. Carville turned, and making a vague introductory gesture, pronounced our names. I caught the words "Chief Officer" and "come to have a look round!" There was a little further parley, in which the "Old Man," "stores," ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... she had commenced her explanation, with a firm intention to do justice to Paul, the bashfulness of her sex held her tongue tied, at the very moment her desire to speak was the strongest. An effort conquered the weakness, and the warm-hearted, generous-minded girl succeeded in commanding ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... early youth, and having rejected, owing to this sort of bashfulness and fear, which he was unable to overcome, the very advantageous and honourable alliances which had presented themselves, he married a Mademoiselle Colette Passage, who had recently settled down in ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... to lose them in his turn. Here rills of oily eloquence in soft Meanders lubricate the course they take; The modest speaker is asham'd and grieved To engross a moment's notice; and yet begs. Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts, However trivial all that he conceives. Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise; The dearth of information and good sense, That it foretells us, always comes to pass. Cataracts of declamation thunder here; There forests of no meaning spread the page, In which all comprehension wanders ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... repeat the question, Why was I created thus? I stand alone, and why? I know it is my own self that makes me so; but how can I make myself otherwise? I have tried very, very hard to overcome my—what shall I call it? bashfulness? It seems as though it could not be wholly that. I have seen those the world called bashful, but they were not at all like myself. Oh, no; I am wretched at times on account of this ——. When I see myself all alone—different from those around me—I cannot stay the burning tear though I would ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... Pilling, whose bashfulness was manifest only in the presence of women, had the utmost calmness before his pupils. He walked quietly to the door and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... rid of the major, I desired to change my clothing before supper, and was shown to a snug little room up stairs by a damsel of such exquisite beauty and bashfulness, that my whole soul seemed melting within me, so quickly did her charms enslave me. In answer to a question that hung trembling upon my lips, and which I had only power to put in broken accents, for she passed me the candle, and as she did so, I touched ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... unexpected by Blanche, but it was done with such a noble grace by the boy, and with an air of such delicate refinement, while a glow of boyish bashfulness swept over his fine face, that the most fastidious could not have found in it just cause for resentment, much less the guileless and innocent ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... dropped from my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I sat again before her parlour organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red fingers, while she, beside me, made ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... exposed in this manner, were to remain pure and spotless, can she, without horror, reflect that she becomes, the sport of the imagination of the licentious youths to whom she so abandons herself? It were to be wished," adds he, "that our damsels (I mean those who preserve any vestige of bashfulness), might, concealed in a private corner, hear sometimes the conversation of those very men to whom they yield themselves with so little reserve ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... to herself, deliberately and calmly, without the slightest particle of hesitation or bashfulness. She told herself that what her relations were perpetually impressing upon her concerning the desirableness of her marrying and making a home of her own, was perfectly just and true. It would undoubtedly be a good thing for her to marry; her life was neither very pleasant ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... this irresoluteness should be attributed. He has never been a warrior, though very much a soldier. He has never, through his own effort, succeeded in being a good courtier, though he has always intended to be one. That air of bashfulness and of shyness which you observe in him in social life has given him in matters of business an apologetic air. He has always fancied that he needed to apologize; and this—in conjunction with his 'Maximes,' ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... countenance seemed to be that of deep sorrow and perplexity, belonging to her part, over which wandered at times an air of irony or ridicule, as if she were secretly scorning the whole exhibition, and even herself for condescending to become part of it. Above all, a sense of bashfulness had cast upon her cheek a colour, which, though sufficiently slight, was more than her countenance was used to display; and when the spectators beheld, in the splendour and grace of a rich Oriental dress, her whom ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... already," she said, putting her little hand into the huge hand of Yashvin, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of keeping with his immense frame and coarse face. "We met last year at the races. Give them to me," she said, with a rapid movement snatching from Vronsky the photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at him with flashing eyes. "Were the races good this year? Instead ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... having bidden "so long" to Mr Philp, and pocketed his three-and-sixpence, steered up the street in the direction of Rilla Farm, nervously stealing glimpses of himself in the shop windows as he went. As he hove in sight of the Custom House, however, this bashfulness gave way of a sudden to bewilderment. For there, at the foot of the steps leading up to its old-fashioned doorway lounged his mate, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... milk teeth, these having resigned in favor of their successors, who have not yet presented their credentials. He is rather old for an enfant terrible, and quite too young to have grown into the bashfulness of adolescence; but he has some of the qualities of both these engaging periods of development, The member of the Haouse calls him "Bub," invariably, such term I take to be an abbreviation of "Beelzeb," as "bus" is the short form of "omnibus." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you did, you black thing, you?" said Julia, who in her grief for her favorite, and her anger at Aunt Judy, forgot the stranger, and her bashfulness, too. "You were careless, I know you were," she continued, "or you never could have tipped the coffee over in ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... the two most distant points in order to penetrate to the core of art, and who now, in the joy of their discovery, fraternally clasped hands. This joy alone enables me to accept your admiring exclamations without bashfulness; for I feel that when you praise my gifts and my achievements you express thereby only your joy at having met me at the core of art. Be thanked for the pleasure you ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Sergius and smiled tauntingly; and another who turned her face away, and seemed to be trying to hide it in the close inspection of a great bunch of fleece. But both the forwardness of the one and the bashfulness of the other were wasted upon the visitor. As a matter of fact, he was so lost in wonder at his courage and self-control as to be well past observing the idiosyncrasies of slaves; and, if his own attitude ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... joy, Margaret saw Peter waiting for them under guard, and dressed also in the Christian garments which they had begged might be supplied to him at their cost. She sprang to his side, none hindering her, and, forgetting her bashfulness, suffered him to embrace her before them all, asking him how he had fared ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... that took place that night between the woodsman and the little tailoress we shall present no record. That he pleaded his case well and earnestly, and without a great deal of bashfulness, will be readily believed by those who have made his acquaintance. That the woman, in her lonely circumstances, and with her hungry heart, could lightly refuse the offer of his hand and life was an impossibility. From the hour of his last previous ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... were passing out. Their latter speeches had scarce been understood by Ambrose, even if he heard them, so full was he of conflicting feelings, now ready to cast himself before their feet, and entreat the Dean to help him to guidance, now withheld by bashfulness, unwillingness to interrupt, and ingenuous shame at appearing like an eavesdropper towards such dignified and venerable personages. Had he obeyed his first impulse, mayhap his career had been made safer ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... eyes half closed, her eyebrows quivering, her bosom agitated by hurried breathing and wetted by tears of joy, restlessly moving one foot, as if scratching the ground, and betraying the struggle between bashfulness and love by alternate blushes and paleness. Then, in a low sweet gentle voice, she uttered these words: "O gracious sir, why do you, having just delivered me from a terrible death, now overwhelm me in ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... made it plain that the porcupine was amusing itself by swinging in the tree-top. Any other of the woods folk would have chosen for their recreation a less conspicuous spot than this poplar-top thrust out over the open field. But the porcupine feared nobody, and was quite untroubled by bashfulness. He cared not a jot who heard, saw, or derided him. It was a pleasant world; and for all that had ever been shown him to the contrary, it belonged ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... boy's modesty—barriers strong as steel, which once broken down become as though they never were; while a woman even in her virgin innocence, is always offering unconscious invitation, always revealing ways of seeming approach, always giving to the stalled boy, arguments against his bashfulness—arguments which may prove absurd or not when he acts upon them. It is the way of a maid with a man, Nature's way—but a perilous way for such a time ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... which she had that morning been practising with Clara. It was very kind, and Marian knew it; for Caroline had said that she never liked that duet, and was heartily tired of it; but all the acknowledgement her strange bashfulness would allow her to make was a grateful look, and a ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the shortcomings of the Middle Ages, there was then a healthy sensualism, that sprang from a rugged and happy native disposition among the people, and that Christianity was unable to suppress. The hypocritical prudery and bashfulness; the secret lustfulness, prevalent to-day, that hesitates and balks at calling things by their right name, and to speak about natural things in a natural way;—all that was foreign to the Middle Ages. Neither was that age familiar with the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Amy, in an agony of bashfulness, "I don't like Conway Benton one bit more than any of the rest of you, and you know it. I think it is mean for you ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... too—you like me best." She helped out the white man's bashfulness. But as her interlocutor, appalled, laid no claim to the sentiment, she lifted the mittened hand to her eyes, and from under it scanned the white face through the lightly falling snow. The other hand, still held out to the comfort of the smoke, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... "I was," says he, "about seventeen, when I first came to town; an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings out of the country with one: however, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who used to resort thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... I had discovered that, in spite of my bashfulness, I loved every single girl I had ever seen—not even excepting good black Bess in my mother's kitchen, who concocted such admirable turnovers and seedcakes. But at that time, sooner than have acknowledged such a weakness, I ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... humane disposition,—honesty, and a good heart;— are such as any one may boldly lay claim to, without fear of being taxed with vanity or ostentation.—And if individuals in private stations, on any occasion are called upon to lay aside their bashfulness and modest dissidence, and come forward into public view, it must surely be, when by their exertions they can essentially contribute to promote measures which are calculated to increase the happiness and prosperity ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... them the tender heart, the quick feelings, the earnestness, the modesty, the conscientiousness, the reverence for the good opinion of their fellow-men, which is the beginning of eternal life. Do you not see it in the young? Modesty, bashfulness, shame-facedness—as the good old English word was—that is the very beginning of all goodness in boys and girls. It is the very material out of which all other goodness is made; and those who laugh at, or torment, young people for being modest and bashful, are doing the devil's work, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... acquire support against his brother, cannot be decided, for Cerialis parried his proposal with a salutary snub and treated it as a boy's day-dream. Realizing that older men despised his youth, Domitian gave up even those functions of government which he had hitherto performed. Aping bashfulness and simple tastes, he hid his feelings under a cloak of impenetrable reserve, professing literary tastes and a passion for poetry. Thus he concealed his real self and withdrew from all rivalry with his brother, whose gentler and altogether ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the progress in virginal purity, and the temperate diet so helpful in preserving thy virginity uncontaminated. And where is now that grave deportment, and that modest mien, and that plain attire which so become a virgin, and that beautiful blush of bashfulness, and that comely paleness—the delicate bloom of abstinence and vigils, that outshines every ruddier glow. How often in prayer that thou mightest keep unspotted thy virginal purity hast thou poured forth thy tears! How many letters hast thou indited to holy ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... While visiting at the rectory Turner regularly attended church in proper form; and finally he wrote a note to Mr. Trimmer, alluding to his affection for one of the rector's kinswomen, and suggesting: "If Miss —— would but waive bashfulness, or in other words make an offer instead of expecting one, the same [Lodge] might change occupiers." But Turner was doomed to disappointment, and never made another attempt at matrimony. In 1814 Turner commenced his contributions ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... exceedingly genial soul, this young man, and wholly free of affectation. It seemed to Carrie he was as yet only overcoming the last traces of the bashfulness of youth. He did not seem apt at conversation, but he had the merit of being well dressed and wholly courageous. Carrie felt as if it were not going to be hard ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... bar the palace door; While the mass of men are poor, Naked truth grows more and more Uncontrolled; You had never yet, I guess, Any praise for bashfulness, You can visit sans ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... encouragement. What little bashfulness he had once possessed he had certainly left behind in San Francisco, for he leaned over the front of the box and smiled familiarly ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met, carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good morning with the prettiest air of bashfulness and good humour imaginable. One of them, a rosy, beautiful child, who proudly informed us that she was six years old, put down her jug at a cottage-gate and ran on before to show us the way, delighted ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... in the coach on the way to our house my father began to laugh and marvel which had been the most shy, the gallant or the lady, telling my mother she need never reproach the English with bashfulness ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off. Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to say a Frenchman has no word for home. But the conclusion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... when Zeokinizul, having ask'd her what she wanted, view'd her for some Time without speaking a Word more. Tho' she was prepared to act her Part, she could not forbear blushing, tho' more out of Spite than Bashfulness. And as she could not presume to speak first, after staying about a Quarter of an Hour in the Apartment, she made a low Courtesy, and withdrew, full of Confusion ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... to whom I've been engaged for ever so long, but secretly. This is the third start I have made, but each time I have turned back again. If it were not for the disgrace of it, and the reproaches I should have to take from my mother, it would be the same story over again. This bashfulness of mine is an inborn weakness, and it's not easy to get the better of it. Each time I go to knock on the door, it is as if some one were holding back my hand. But courage, Antonius, is half the battle! There is no help for it, you must go on. I should ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... suffered suffocation than allowed the simple phrase—"your servant," to proceed from his mouth. He was altogether as inflexible with respect to the attitudes of his body; for, either through obstinacy or bashfulness, he sat upright without motion, insomuch that he provoked the mirth of a certain wag, who, addressing himself to the lieutenant, asked whether that was the commodore himself, or the wooden lion that used to stand at his gate?—an image, to which, it must be owned, Mr. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... you," she said. "It was very kind of you to collect me so many, they please me very much. I wish I knew of something that you would like as well as I like these, and if I can, I will give it to you, or ask mamma to help me." The boy not being troubled with bashfulness, immediately said, that of all things he should like a regular rigged boat, a ship, "a little-un" that would swim. The girl put her finger in her mouth and said "she didn't know." "Are you going to have a boat?" said every little voice, "oh, what fun we shall have." "Yes," said our peace-making ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... passenger on the Mayflower was Priscilla Mullins, daughter of William Mullins, a maiden of unusual beauty, just blooming into womanhood. The gallant widower fell in love with Priscilla, but for some reason which does not clearly appear, but probably bashfulness, he sent another to do his courting. Standish himself was about thirty-seven years of age, and doubtless showed the effect of his hard service in the wars. Nevertheless, he might have won Priscilla had he gone ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... availing himself of the opportunities afforded by his situation, to involve his pupil in the toils of a mutual passion. Honour and gratitude alike forbade such a line of conduct, even had it been consistent with the natural bashfulness, simplicity, and innocence of his disposition. To sigh and suffer in secret, to form resolutions of separating himself from a situation so fraught with danger, and to postpone from day to day the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... among the helpless sick. Females of rank seemed to forget their natural bashfulness, and committed the care of their persons, indiscriminately, to men and women of the lowest order. No longer were women, relatives or friends, found in the houses of mourning, to share the grief of the survivors; no longer was the corpse accompanied to the grave by neighbors and a numerous train ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... now went back to his tree, whither he was slowly followed by Margery; the girl yielding to a feverish desire to accompany him, at the very time she was half restrained by maiden bashfulness; though anxiety and the wish to learn the worst ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... are many. The woman of literary distinction and the possessor of an honored name may be invincibly shy and afraid to speak; while her next neighbor, knowing her fame perhaps, and anxious to make her acquaintance, misconstrues shyness for pride—a masquerade which bashfulness sometimes plays; so two people, with volumes to say to each other, remain silent as fishes, until the kindly magician comes along, and, by the open sesame of an introduction, unlocks the treasure which has been so deftly hidden. A woman ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... circuit of the room three times she was vastly enjoying herself. She danced round and square dances with her various admirers for the next hour, and when the country dance was at its height she found herself tripping alone between the long files with no return of bashfulness and no less grace than Lady Mary herself; forgetting that there could be no better preparation for grace in the ball-room than years of ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... blush'd down to his fingers ends—a tear of sentimental bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle Toby—and a tear of sorrow for his brother's misfortunes, started into his eye, and ran sweetly down his cheek together; my uncle Toby's kindled as one lamp does at another; and taking hold of the breast of Trim's coat (which had been that of Le Fever's) ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... suspense, when Andrew, who mistook my hesitation for bashfulness, proceeded to exhort me to lay it aside. "Speak till him—speak till him, Mr. Francis—he's no provost yet, though they say he'll be my lord neist year. Speak till him, then—he'll gie ye a decent answer for as rich as he is, unless ye were wanting siller frae ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... daughter had behaved, told him he must not regard the coyness of a young girl; that she doubted not but Maria would soon be convinced what was her true happiness; and that a little perseverance and assiduity on his side, and authority on theirs, would remove all the scruples, bashfulness alone had created in her: 'No, madam,' answered he, with some impatience, 'there is somewhat more than all this you have mentioned, against me;—there is a rooted detestation to me in the very soul of Maria, which as I cannot but despair of being ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... buckeye, hung on a plaited horse-hair string that had been constructed by small Jennie with long and infinite patience. Miss Lavinia's commendations threw both donor and constructor into an agony of bashfulness from which Pete took refuge in Rose Mary's skirts and Jennie behind her mother's chair. But at this juncture the arrival on the scene of action of young Bob Nickols with a whole two-horse wagon-load of ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Bashfulness was not a characteristic of these old-time red men, who had a special name of many letters for themselves, which, being interpreted, meant "Men surpassing all others." They trace their origin from the serpent-haired God, Atotarhon, and other traditions attribute ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... beside them impulses of merely a selfish and instinctive nature hold up their heads, as if they were of nobler origin. There is an incurable vulgar side of human nature which, when he cannot help but show it, the poet should never handle without a certain bashfulness; but instead of this Beaumont and Fletcher throw no veil whatever over nature. They express every thing bluntly in words; they make the spectator the unwilling confidant of all that more noble minds endeavour ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... henchman and factotum, although not regularly so employed. His chief object in life was apparently to get as much amusement as possible out of that experience, and he was quite unhampered by over-nice notions of delicacy or bashfulness. But, withal, Mr. Larrabee was a very honest and loyal person, strong in his likes and dislikes, devoted to David, for whom he had the greatest admiration, and he had taken a fancy to our friend, stoutly maintaining that he "wa'n't no more stuck-up ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... from any malitious ill-natur'd Coyness, as some imagine, but from an ingenuous modesty and bashfulness, which usually accompanies, and is a proof of Simplicity: Tis very rare, says Pliny, to find a man so exquisitely skillful, as to be able to show those Features in a Picture which he hides, and I think it to be so difficult a task, that none but the most excellent Wits can attempt it with ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... mode of speech in which the most ludicrous French, in the most barbarous accent, was uttered in alternate bursts of loud abruptness and languishing drawl. Sudden, grotesque playfulness was succeeded by equally sudden and grotesque bashfulness; now an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm, defying all decorum, and then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and terrified suspicion of imaginary improprieties. Tittering shyness, all giggle-goggle and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... grinning and laughing, like an oaf, as I then, in my spite, thought. Indeed the countess said, encouragingly to me, but severely in persons of birth, "Lady Davers, you are as much too teazing, as Mrs. B. is too bashful. But you are a happy man, Mr. B., that your lady's bashfulness is the principal mark by which we can judge she is not of quality." Lord Jackey, in the language of some character in a play, cried out, "A palpable hit, by Jupiter!" and laughed egregiously, running about from one to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... it, or take it Ahshum, v. feed him, or give him something to eat Ahgahwahta, n. a shadow Ahwashema, prep. beyond Ahgwewin, n. a garment Ahgookayowh, n. a bait, or something to allure animals to a snare Ahgahjewin, n. bashfulness Ahquahnebesohn, n. rainbow Azhenekahdaig, } n. name of a thing or place. In asking a question Adahming, } we say what is the name of ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... them organized a small military company; I was elected quarter-master and, later, lieutenant. I now know that that was because we were considered 'rich,' Also in Wisconsin I overcame some of my extreme bashfulness in regard to girls, derived from babyhood experiences. In fact, one reason I decided to leave Wisconsin was the fear that the friendship with one girl might become too serious; I was ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... account, as if it were by accident that I got you for my friend; for no kind of accident threw you in my way. That best of men, Virgil, long ago, and after him, Varius, told you what I was. When first I came into your presence, I spoke a few words in a broken manner (for childish bashfulness hindered me from speaking more); I did not tell you that I was the issue of an illustrious father: I did not [pretend] that I rode about the country on a Satureian horse, but plainly what I really was; you answer (as ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... of Reine Vincart had come to his lips, a feeling of bashfulness, in addition to his ordinary timidity, had prevented him from interrogating Claudet concerning the character of this mysterious queen of the woods. Like all novices in love-affairs Julien dreaded that his feelings should be divined, at the mere mention ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is very remarkable that in the child's bashfulness we find a native nervous response to the presence of persons. And it is curious to note that, besides the general gregariousness which many animals have, they show in many instances special responses of the presence of creatures of their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs seem to recognise dogs by ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... meet in the street other boys of my age, very proud of their slip of a sweetheart, who would exultingly show me love-letters, photographs, and flowers, and who asked me if I hadn't a sweetheart with whom to correspond. A feeling of inexplicable bashfulness tied my tongue, and I only replied with an enigmatic and haughty smile. And when they questioned me as to what I thought of the beauty of their little maidens, I would shrug my shoulders and disdainfully call them ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of his profile almost moved her to laughter. She glanced through the pages ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and the son, yet, regardless of consequences, I ventured, uninvited, to enter the house. In order to shake off the restraint which I felt my society imposed, I found it absolutely necessary to divest myself of bashfulness, and to exert such conversational powers as I possessed. I succeeded so well that the discourse soon became lively and animated; and what chiefly delighted me was, that she, for whose sake I had committed my present rudeness, became radiant with smiles. I had been all eagerness to seek ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... curious nation, we English! Stendhal says that our two most patent vices are bashfulness and cant. That is to say, we are afraid to say what we think, and when we have gained the courage to speak, we say more than we think. We are really an emotional nation at heart, easily moved and liking to be moved; we are largely swayed by feeling, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... when she arrived, and the two set to work in earnest, buttering great piles of tea-cakes and toasted muffins, which were all set forth in tempting array when the children began to appear at the door, looking in with some bashfulness at first, but plucking up courage after sundry peeps at the good things, they came trooping in, in goodly numbers—a motly throng, ranging in point of age, from about seven to fourteen, and in point of condition, from ragged and torn urchins, with dirty faces ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... tale did Glen miss. With her arms upon the table, and her hands supporting her cheeks, she kept her eyes fixed earnestly upon her lover's face. Her bashfulness had departed, and she only saw in the young man across the table her ideal type of a hero. She had no realization of the beautiful picture she presented, with the light falling softly upon her hair and ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... behold than to experience;—but, upon being kindly treated by his gentle partner, he recovers, in the galop finale, feeling truly grateful to the guardian spirit that has conducted him through the purgatory. Ladies, be gentle with youthful bashfulness—it often arises from pure feelings, modest diffidence, or unselfishness;—such, unlike many proficient dancers, carry their brains in their hats, and not in their boots:—weigh your "fantastic-toes" against them, and see which are ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... chair and left the table; she rose with him and came around the side. He stopped on his way to the door, looking at her with awkward bashfulness as she stood there flushed and brilliant in her tossed state, scarcely a ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... censure himself. Judith gave him her hand, but it was quite as much in gladness as with regret, while the two Delawares were not sorry to find he was leaving them. Of the whole party, Hetty alone betrayed any real feeling. Bashfulness, and the timidity of her sex and character, kept even her aloof, so that Hurry entered the canoe, where Deerslayer was already waiting for him, before she ventured near enough to be observed. Then, indeed, the girl came into the Ark and approached its end, just as the little ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... afraid. And indeed her delicate conscience was another grace in his eyes. He loved her more than ever for the honesty that must confess all its little sins. Sweet Leam! Leam having to confess! Leam! she who was almost too modest for an ordinary lover's comfort, needing to be tamed out of her savage bashfulness, not to be reproved for transgressing the proper reticence of an English maid. It was a pretty play, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... not consider my cousin the best of guides on all occasions; but he can lead the way to the top of our tower as well as a wiser man," said Hilda, observing the Spaniard's look of anger, and at the same time, from maiden bashfulness, not sorry to have Lawrence as an escort. Up they went, therefore, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... if I could conquer my bashfulness and make use of it. Filomena treated the proposal as quite natural, and put the guitar and the mandoline on the chest of drawers, though there would have been plenty of room for them on the bed with me; she ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... the young woman would be an avowal of enmity. Here was his opportunity. Harry set his face over the hopper and cradled industriously. He thought he was displaying proper firmness, but his hand trembled, his heart beat like a plunger, and he was the victim of an ignoble bashfulness. Chris approached with some timidity; but Maori bounded up to the young man, making elephantine overtures of friendliness, which were resented by Harry's cattle-dog Cop, who walked round and round the mastiff in narrowing circles, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... guest?" The next moment she perceived the Knight, and stood fixed in mute admiration; while Huldbrand gazed upon her lovely form, and tried to impress her image on his mind, thinking that he must avail himself of her amazement to do so, and that in a moment she would shrink away in a fit of bashfulness. But it proved otherwise. After looking at him a good while, she came up to him familiarly, knelt down beside him, and playing with a golden medal that hung from his rich chain, she said: "So, thou kind, thou beautiful guest! hast thou found us out in our poor hut ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and loose about their 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. None ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... was a universal and unanimous silence, due to uncontrollable female bashfulness, for the duration of several minutes, until the chairwoman exhorted someone to have the courage of her opinions. And the ice being once fractured, one Amurath succeeded another in disjointed commentaries, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... British navy have not as yet rendered themselves especially remarkable by their bashfulness, and I was neither much better nor much worse than my neighbours in that respect; but I was so taken aback when I entered the tent and my eyes met those of its occupant, that I could only bow somewhat awkwardly, blushing like ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... doxy now seizes hold of, to the infinite amusement of his Excellency the Governor, his Secretary, and various courtiers, as likewise myself. The lady herself is not quite a Desert maiden, skipping like a young roe over the mountains, in untutored innocence or coyish bashfulness. She is young, it is true, but full-blown and bloated, very big about, and excessively dirty and nasty. The favourite of the Mudeer is besides almost as black as a Negress, with a pock-marked face. After dodging about ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... liked to do it," replied Jimmy, and then overcome by a sudden and unaccountable fit of bashfulness he ran hastily ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." The term [Greek: anaideian], translated "importunity," signifies freedom from the bashfulness which cannot ask a second time. The shamefacedness which prevents a modest man from importuning a fellow-creature for a gift, after the first request has been refused, is out of place in the intercourse between an empty ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... retarding maturity and lengthening the period of growth and preparation as much as possible. But purity and innocence may be prolonged too late; innocence is really no more becoming to adults than a rattle or a rubber consoler, and the bashfulness that hampers this discussion, that permits it only in a furtive silly sort of way, has its ugly consequences in shames and cruelties, in miserable households and pitiful crises, in the production ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... name of Reine Vincart had come to his lips, a feeling of bashfulness, in addition to his ordinary timidity, had prevented him from interrogating Claudet concerning the character of this mysterious queen of the woods. Like all novices in love-affairs Julien dreaded that his feelings should be divined, at the mere mention ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... slight to the doctor. No such scruples restrained Leff, who squatted on his heels at the edge of the creek, washing his linen and listening over his shoulder. By the second Sunday they had mastered their bashfulness and both came shuffling their hats in awkward hands and sitting side by side on a log. Leff, who had never been to church in his life, was inclined to treat the occasion as one for furtive amusement, at intervals casting a ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... sidewalks. He was naturally diligent, active, quick-witted, and of good, though maybe a little too scholarly address; quick of temper, it is true, and uniting his quickness of temper with a certain bashfulness,—an unlucky combination, since, as a consequence, nobody had to get out of its way; but he was generous in fact and in speech, and never held malice a moment. But, besides the heavy odds which his small secret seemed to be against him, stopping him from ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the letter dropped from my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farm boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumb tentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red hands, while she, beside ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... cause of worry is bashfulness. One who is bashful finds in his intercourse with his fellows many worries. His hands and feet are too large, he blushes at a word, he doesn't know what to say or how, he is confused if attention is directed his way, his thoughts fly to the ends of the earth ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... plunged ahead; eager to tear the foe to pieces; but when they saw him there, grim fearless, mighty of jaw, tireless of limb, ready to die if need be, but sure of this, he would not die alone—well, those great Danes—all three of them—were stricken, as the rest had been, with a sudden bashfulness: Yes, they would go right in presently—not now, but as soon as they had got their breath; they were not afraid of a Wolf, oh, no. I could read their courage in their voices. They knew perfectly well that the first Dog to ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... however, set forth his grievance quite confidently. He even sat down, though he had not been invited to do so, as he was wont to do in the bygone happy days when they were official colleagues together. It was Meyer's custom never to look those whom he was addressing in the face, which bashfulness deprived him, of course, of the advantage of being able to read from their countenances what impression he was making upon them. He was therefore greatly surprised when, on finishing his speech, his Honour Judge Bordacsi roared at him in ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... rayahs, impute it to no want of modesty that, for once, I sink the graceful bashfulness of the virgin, and assume the more forward deportment of the queen. When all appear to possess such merit, how can I slight all but one by my decision? Let me rather leave it to the immortal Vishnu to decide who is most worthy to reign over this our kingdom ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of twenty-two, happened to be dining there, and he overheard her reading Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady aloud behind the bar. When Farquhar, much struck by her musical delivery and expression, pressed her to resume her reading, the tall and graceful girl consented with hesitation and bashfulness; although she afterwards confessed, 'I longed to be at it, and only needed a decent entreaty.' The dramatist quickly acquainted Sir John Vanbrugh with the jewel he had thus accidentally found, and she obtained through him an engagement at the Theatre Royal as 'Candiope' ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... frugal—potatoes, pork, green tea, flapjacks and drips, which is probably glucose flavored with essences—they gave me of their best, as even the poorest settlers do. One might travel the wide world over to find their equal in kindly hospitality. Perhaps the woman noticed my bashfulness, for she laughed as ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of generation depends so much on agreeable sensation, that, where the object is disgustful, neither voluntary exertion nor irritation can effect the purpose; which is also liable to be interrupted by the pain of fear or bashfulness. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... getting over his bashfulness, now that the secret was out, "it was all about treating those who were ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... she said. "It was very kind of you to collect me so many, they please me very much. I wish I knew of something that you would like as well as I like these, and if I can, I will give it to you, or ask mamma to help me." The boy not being troubled with bashfulness, immediately said, that of all things he should like a regular rigged boat, a ship, "a little-un" that would swim. The girl put her finger in her mouth and said "she didn't know." "Are you going to have a boat?" ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... some of them." But I said, "A visitor is [naturally] bashful; do thou begin." "True," answered she and recited some of the choicest verses of the poets, past and present, so that I knew not whether more to marvel at her beauty and grace or at the charm of her diction. Then said she, "Is thy bashfulness gone?" "Yes, by Allah!" answered I. "Then, if thou wilt," rejoined she, "recite us somewhat." So I repeated to her a number of poems by old writers, and she applauded, saying, "By Allah I did not look to find such culture among ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... accommodation ladder I saw nothing save a young man with thick gauntlets standing guard over an iron wheel valve in a big pipe that ran along the deck. A stout, iron-grey man in uniform was leaning against the sky-light on the poop-deck as we came past the funnels. With a slight bashfulness Mr. Carville turned, and making a vague introductory gesture, pronounced our names. I caught the words "Chief Officer" and "come to have a look round!" There was a little further parley, in which the "Old Man," "stores," and "The Second" bore some part. I did not pay much attention to the conversation, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... drawn by white horses, and driven by a curled and scented charioteer. In it, that he might be the better seen, stood a young man, tall, ruddy-faced, and clad in royal attire, who looked downward as though from bashfulness, but all the while scanned the crowd out of the corners of his dim blue eyes shaded by lids devoid of lashes. For a moment Miriam felt those eyes rest upon her, and knew that she was the subject of some jest which their owner addressed to the exquisite charioteer, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... Dick to congratulate him and examine the piece, he stood with a mingled feeling of bashfulness and delight at his unexpected good fortune. Recovering himself suddenly, he seized his old rifle, and dropping quietly to the outskirts of the crowd, while the men were still busy handling and discussing ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... bashfulness, and now gazed all over the room, evidently much impressed by its blue ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... our ideas and beliefs does not indicate an established confidence in them but often half-distrust, which we try to hide from ourselves, just as one who suffers from bashfulness offsets his sense of inferiority and awkwardness by rude aggression. If, for example, religious beliefs had been really firmly established there would have been no need of "aids to faith"; and so with ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... commanded Mr. Bryan, inwardly highly amused at the girl's bashfulness in venturing in when she saw a ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... married now, babes?" said the Advocate, and I tried to answer him as we made our way to the vestry—I stumbling and self-abased, Irma with the certainty and calmness of a widow at least thrice removed from the first bashfulness of a bride. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... you will say his gentry sits as ill upon him as if he had bought it with his penny. He hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits; and to furnish each mistress would make him run besides his wits, if he had any to lose. He accounts bashfulness the wickedest thing in the world, and therefore studies impudence. If all men were of his mind all honesty would be out of fashion. He withers his clothes on a stage, as a saleman is forced to do his suits in Birchin Lane; and when the play is done, if you mark his rising, 'tis ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... be introduced are many. The woman of literary distinction and the possessor of an honored name may be invincibly shy and afraid to speak; while her next neighbor, knowing her fame perhaps, and anxious to make her acquaintance, misconstrues shyness for pride—a masquerade which bashfulness sometimes plays; so two people, with volumes to say to each other, remain silent as fishes, until the kindly magician comes along, and, by the open sesame of an introduction, unlocks the treasure which has been so deftly hidden. A woman of fashion may enter an assembly of thinkers and ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... be practical, or scientific, or literary, or artistic, or musical, or religious, and this interest, which draws both toward itself at the same time draws them toward each other. Hence a person, who from bashfulness or any other reason is kept from intimate fellowship with others, will often find the best way to approach them, not to force himself into their companionship, against his will and probably against theirs; but to acquire skill as a musician, or reader, or student ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... of a king came in the afternoon with a tail of a hundred vertebrae: he was a milder specimen than usual; he had neither Mambrino's helmet nor beadle's cloak, and perhaps his bashfulness in the presence of strangers arose from a consciousness that his head-gear and robes were not in keeping with his station. But he did not fail to grumble at his "dash;" indeed, he must be more than African ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... which may accordingly be defined as "the fear whereby a man is induced to avoid an evil which he regards as future by encountering a lesser evil" (III. xxviii.). But if the evil which he fears be shame, timidity becomes "bashfulness." Lastly, if the desire to avoid a future evil be checked by the fear of another evil, so that the man knows not which to choose, fear becomes "consternation," especially if both the evils feared ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... sorry that I asked you to meet me, and didn't call," began Jude with the bashfulness of a lover. "But I thought it would save time if ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... shame, half with bashfulness, to be thus singled out, but considering it my duty to be as great a blackguard as my companions, I joined in the chorus of ridicule and insult in a manner which effectually disabused the poor lady of her suspicion that I was any ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... an uncommon sight!" she laughed, too much absorbed with thoughts of Sybil, to notice the extra warmth of his greeting, or a certain change of manner, that was a mingling of boldness, bashfulness, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... prepared for a struggle to the death. In other words, I summoned my faithful retainers, and told them that I was now going to follow those elephants to the edge of the world, if necessary. They showed a certain bashfulness about the business, but they did not gainsay me, because they dared not. Ever since I had prepared with all due solemnity to execute the rebellious Gobo they had conceived a great respect ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... and softness, looked out from beneath the rich, long lashes, as he peered curiously into the apartment. A gay robe of scarlet and yellow plaid, carefully made and neatly fitted, set off to advantage the dark and rich style of his beauty; and a certain comic air of assurance, blended with bashfulness, showed that he had been not unused to being petted and noticed ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to us that this feature need not be reckoned as a sign of exogamy. It is often, so far as we have observed, only a stereotyped form to express bashfulness.] ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... eyes on me, and so did the audience, confound them! To be the focus of so many eyes was trying to my modesty; for, although unacquainted with bettermost society, still, below any little manner that I had acquired, there was, and always will be, an under stratum of bashfulness, or sheepishness, or mauvaise honte, call it which you will; and the torture, the breaking on the wheel, with which a man of that temperament perceives the eyes of a whole courthouse, for instance, attracted ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sorry the lot fell upon me; for I was always bashful, and never thought much of myself but once. I think my bashfulness was mostly owing to my knowing myself to be not very good-looking. I believe that I am not considered a bad-looking old man; indeed, people who remember me at twenty-five say that I have grown handsome every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... side with Rudin on the same little path; afterwards she felt more at ease. He began to question her about her occupations and how she liked the country. She replied not without timidity, but without that hasty bashfulness which is so often taken for modesty. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... time that he saw her among so many ladies of arrogant bearing and striking presence, he felt attracted towards her by force of contrast. The bashfulness, the modesty, the insignificance of the girl impressed him. She was small, her face offered no other beauty than that of youth, her body had the charm of delicacy. Like himself, the poor girl was there out ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to assume an entirely opposite style of deportment; and, finding my companion hails from Little Athens, is acquainted with several of my three hundred and sixty-five cousins, and in every way a respectable and respectful member of society, I put my bashfulness in my pocket, and plunge into a long conversation on the war, the weather, music, Carlyle, skating, genius, hoops, and the immortality ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... often tried to say to you personally what I am about to write, but was prevented by a kind of almost clownish bashfulness. Now that I am not in your presence I shall speak out more boldly: a letter does not blush. I am inflamed with an inconceivably ardent desire, and one, as I think, of which I have no reason to be ashamed, that in a history written by you ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... withal, but useth plainly her own with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and following of other excellent doth lead her unto, and if she want at any time (as being imperfect she must) yet let her borrow with such bashfulness that it may appear, that if either the mould of our own tongue could serve us to fashion a word of our own, or if the old denizened words could content and ease this need we would not ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... to my married friends, I have often chuckled over the bashfulness, contending with love, which distinguishes the YOUNG FATHER. In the pride of his heart, perhaps, when his little man has first given evidence of that degree of mental exertion called 'taking notice,' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... shutters of the Day:—in other words, more than a dozen hours had passed. Corporal Brock had been relieved by Mr. Redcap, the latter by Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed gentleman; Mrs. John Hayes, in spite of her sorrows and bashfulness, had followed the example of her husband, and fallen asleep by his side—slept for many hours—and awakened still under the guardianship of Mr. Brock's troop; and all parties began anxiously to expect the return of the ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He ate heavy meat three times a day, but took little or no exercise. The pimples on his face became worse and worse. He grew peevish and nervous. He hated girls, and when in their society was a very bull-calf for bashfulness and awkward self-consciousness. At times the strangest and most morbid fancies took possession of him, chief of which was that every one was looking at him while he was ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Something between bashfulness and pride produced conduct which could not but appear like arrant haughtiness to the villagers, who had looked forward eagerly to seeing their young landlord. If Marian tried to bring him to speak to some poor old man, his answer was, "Give him this half-crown, then, that will do just ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... When redeemed by grace the fashionable dress and proud look give place to a sweet Christian modesty. A humble heart and a fashionable dress are incompatible. Shamefacedness is derived from aidos in the Greek, and has "modesty" and "bashfulness" ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... myself in nankeen pantaloons and a sky-blue coat (then the height of fashion), and set forth to tout for dancers among all the members of the genteel population, who, not being notorious Puritans, had also not been so obliging as to take tickets for the ball. There never was any pride or bashfulness about me. Excepting certain periods of suspense and anxiety, I am as even-tempered a Rogue as you have met with anywhere since the days of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the House of Commons which was elected in 1708. But the House of Commons was not the field for him. The bashfulness of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate. He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great writer should fail as a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... neck in a sudden wave, and was imperceptibly absorbed in the paleness of her skin, like a dying ember. Hanne's blood came and went in the same way for the merest trifle. Johanna had inherited her mother's bashfulness and unspeakable charm, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... reminds me," exclaimed Tom, who with a ludicrous mixture of pleasure, bashfulness, and mock anger, had been listening to what he evidently deemed a high encomium; "that we hav'nt drinked yet; have you quit drink, Archer, since I was to York? What'll you take, Mr. Forester? Gin? yes, I have ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... of his simple, sensitive soul cut open and exposed to gaze. Not even the medical man before him could fail of sudden pity at witnessing what was written on his face—-all the dignity, the simplicity, the reticence, all the bashfulness of a man brought up helplessly against the knife. He could not—or perhaps would not—answer such a question even from the man before him, whom he suddenly had come to trust and respect as ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... modest almost to bashfulness, was once asked by a country apothecary, of a contrary character, in a public and crowded assembly, and in a tone of voice sufficient to catch the attention of the whole company, "How it happened that the patriarchs lived to such extreme old age?" To which question the clergyman replied, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... room. The Count approached me with a frank and friendly air; I endeavored to be self-possessed and began to introduce myself, but he anticipated me. We sat down. His conversation, which was easy and agreeable, soon dissipated my awkward bashfulness; and I was already beginning to recover my usual composure, when the Countess suddenly entered, and I became more confused than ever. She was indeed beautiful. The Count presented me. I wished to appear at ease, but the more I ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... together over his jokes, mildly, as befitted persons for whom a sense of humour might conceivably be a Satanic snare, and trembled together at his dangers. Mary's affection was free from anything so degrading as passion, and she felt no bashfulness in reading Jamie's love-letters to his parents; she was too frank to suspect that there might be in them anything for her eyes alone, and too candid to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... one of them could marry her, before she learned of right and wrong, vast property, enough to buy pardons for a thousand Doones, would be at their mercy. And since I was come to know Lorna better, and she to know me thoroughly—many things had been outspoken, which her early bashfulness had kept covered from me. Attempts I mean to pledge her love to this one, or that other; some of which perhaps might have been successful, if there had ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... cost, and that, having once joined in social interests, he was able to pursue them with more or less pleasure. He was about sixty, and not young-looking for his years, yet so undying is the spirit of youth, and bashfulness has such a power of survival, that I felt all the time as if one must try to make the occasion easy for some one who was young and new to the affairs of social life. He asked politely if I would like ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Patsy's faithful companion, for the boy had lost his former bashfulness and fear of girls, and had grown to feel at ease even in the society of Beth and Louise. The four had many excursions and picnics into the country together; but Kenneth and Patsy were recognized as especial chums, and the other girls did ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... half turned away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of his profile almost moved her to laughter. She glanced through the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... unselfish at the same time, his glance is projected downwards; and all things that are illumined by this double ray of light, nature conjures to discharge their strength, to reveal their most hidden secret, and this through bashfulness. It is more than a mere figure of speech to say that he surprised Nature with that glance, that he caught her naked; that is why she would conceal her shame by seeming precisely the reverse. What has hitherto been ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... propitiated Henleigh by promising him a beautiful saddle and bridle. It was only the two eldest girls who had known him as a continual presence; and the intervening years had overlaid their infantine memories with a bashfulness which Grandcourt's bearing was not likely to dissipate. He and Lydia occasionally, in the presence of the servants, made a conventional remark; otherwise they never spoke; and the stagnant thought ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Mr. Silton, "there are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... myself, as though Thy friendship I to mere good fortune owe. No chance it was secured me thy regards, But Virgil first, that best of men and bards, And then kind Varius mentioned what I was. Before you brought, with many a faltering pause, Dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness Robbed me of utterance) I did not profess That I was sprung of lineage old and great, Or used to canter round my own estate On Satureian barb, but what and who I was as plainly told. As usual, you Brief answer make me. I retire, and then, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... submit to the officious intervention of my indefatigable servitor. Various other dishes followed, the chief manifesting the most hospitable importunity in pressing us to partake, and to remove all bashfulness on our part, set us no despicable example in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... heavens while on our feet we took the old buffalo-robe and a couple of rugs out to a straw-pile that had been hauled in to protect our winter perennials. There we indecorously reposed on our backs and went stargazing in comfort. And Gershom even forgot that painful bashfulness of his when he fell to talking about the planets. He slipped out of his shell ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... that I never availed myself of his kind invitation. I say singular, for the extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight interest for me; and I had discernment enough to perceive that yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those calm, quiet lips, and my after-course might have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... if possible, to ask people questions, rather than to meditate impressive answers. Asking other people questions about things to which they are likely to know the answers is one of the shortest cuts to popularity and esteem. It is wonderful to reflect how much distress personal bashfulness causes people, how much they would give to be rid of it, and yet how very little trouble they ever take to acquiring any method of dealing with the difficulty. I see a good deal of undergraduates, and am often aware that they are friendly and responsive, but without any power of giving ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the verses induce us to believe that he never told his love; but, as we have already surmised, was prevented by his bashfulness. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... the laugh against Doubleday, and I, despite my bashfulness, was indiscreet enough ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... laughter, but Nan's earnestness could not be shaken. She was pleading for Maud's future, for Maud's happiness, and neither ignorance nor bashfulness had power to check her. She insisted on the wickedness of the present steward with such determination, that Gervase was forced to come ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... folly hath wrought! Of a truth there's no call to complain of blindness in thy speech now, Master Alden. But still I have noted that if thou canst drive a bashful youth out of his bashfulness, there are no bounds to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to oblige that I comply. That, said the other, clearly I descry; I'm well persuaded, thou art always kind; But still I think thou would'st not be inclined; In such a scene to take the leading part, Thy bashfulness would counteract thy heart. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... apartment. Lord Evandale and she met with mutual embarrassment, which Lady Margaret, who only knew in general that their union had been postponed by her granddaughter's indisposition, set down to the bashfulness of a bride and bridegroom, and, to place them at ease, began to talk to Lady Emily on indifferent topics. At this moment Edith, with a countenance as pale as death, muttered, rather than whispered, to Lord Evandale a request to speak with him. He offered his arm, and supported her into the small ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the tablet of his memory the fact that Diana passed daily down the little path on her errand of bounty, and that there he had the chance of again seeing her. He fancied that he had so much to say to her; but as he found that his bashfulness would deprive him of the power of utterance, he determined to commit his sentiments to paper. That night he composed and destroyed some fifty letters. He did not dare to say openly, "I love you," ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... cheap ones, the beautiful and the ugly, gave them large sums of money, changed them almost every week, and in general, he treated the women better than the men. He laughed at them, said to them disgraceful and offensive words, but he could never, even when half-drunk, rid himself of a certain bashfulness in their presence. They all, even the most brazen-faced, the strongest and the most shameless, seemed to him weak and defenseless, like small children. Always ready to thrash any man, he never laid a hand on women, although when irritated by something he sometimes ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... all thrones, principalities, and powers, the foe of tyrants, the friend of good emperors, and the intimate of magicians, and magnificently apparelled; outwardly he was an incorrigible little sloven, who suffered in all social exigencies from the direst bashfulness, and wished nothing so much as to shrink out of the sight of men if they spoke to him. He could not help revealing sometimes to the kindness of his father and mother the world of foolish dreams one half of him lived in, while the other ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... was regarded as a sort of autocrat in intellect, revelling in all the confidence of his own great powers, a somewhat nearer observation enabled a common acquaintance at Venice[1] to detect, under all this, traces of that self-distrust and bashfulness which had marked him as a boy, and which never entirely forsook him through ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that a young lady who entered the coach soon after we left Shrewsbury, about eighteen years of age, with a serene and modest countenance, displayed considerable historical knowledge of the custom, without one touch of bashfulness."[11] ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... which had all the airs and graces of a village coquette, together with the bashfulness of a school miss, seemed to Katie and Dolores, but especially Katie, a very rich and wondrous thing. She always knew that Mrs. Russell was a gushing, sentimental creature, but had never before seen her so deeply affected. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... do very well," said a gentleman who had joined the expedition like myself to see the scene. "He is a shrewd chap, and not troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, 'James Griffin,' among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The chairman looked up, and said, 'Surely that is not your name you ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... kiss! The word is sweet. I see not why your lip should shrink from it; If the word burns it,—what would the kiss do? Oh! let it not your bashfulness affright; Have you not, all this time, insensibly, Left badinage aside, and unalarmed Glided from smile to sigh,—from sigh to weeping? Glide gently, imperceptibly, still onward— From tear to kiss,—a ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... description of the music. "Cherubino is not here directly expressing his feelings; he is depicting them in a romance, and he is in the presence of the Countess, toward whom he glances with all the bashfulness of boyish passion. The song is in ballad form, to suit the situation, the voice executing the clear, lovely melody, while the stringed instruments carry on a simple accompaniment pizzicato, to imitate the guitar: this delicate outline is, however, shaded and animated in a wonderful degree ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that she will not run away. The go-between returns the following day and claims her guerdon. Several cases passed under my observation, in which the husband was unable to use his marital rights for weeks owing to the timorousness and bashfulness of his youthful spouse. In no case was anything but patience and gentleness displayed ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Harum's confidential henchman and factotum, although not regularly so employed. His chief object in life was apparently to get as much amusement as possible out of that experience, and he was quite unhampered by over-nice notions of delicacy or bashfulness. But, withal, Mr. Larrabee was a very honest and loyal person, strong in his likes and dislikes, devoted to David, for whom he had the greatest admiration, and he had taken a fancy to our friend, stoutly maintaining ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... suspended his poetry: but he was soon called back to labour by the death of the Chancellor, for his place then became vacant; and though the Lord Hardwicke delayed for some time to give it away, Thomson's bashfulness or pride, or some other motive perhaps not more laudable, withheld him from soliciting; and the new Chancellor would not give him what he would not ask. He now relapsed to his former indigence; but ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the fine instincts of women his infirmity was especially conspicuous, and he drifted into misogyny through bashfulness and pride; and yet misogyny was incompatible with his scheme of life and his ambition. He felt himself to be worthy of the full diapason of home life; he desired to be as other men were, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... queer voice; the dolls could hardly understand him at first, but when his bashfulness wore off, ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... of the crew were examined, but nothing was elicited from them. Each of them was asked what had passed between Ben and himself, but the conversation related entirely to fish and fishing. Mat Mogmore seemed to be slightly confused, which was attributed to bashfulness, for his statements were as square as ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... She entered with bashfulness, as I thought; in a pretty confusion, for having carried her apprehensions too far. Sullen and slow moved she towards the tea-table.—Dorcas present, busy in tea-cup preparations. I took her reluctant ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... with ourselves for the perhaps not unwilful slights of those whose approbation we wish to engage; so my sister found out a reason much to Mr. Lovelace's advantage for his not improving the opportunity that was given him.—It was bashfulness, truly, in him. [Bashfulness in Mr. Lovelace, my dear!]—Indeed, gay and lively as he is, he has not the look of an impudent man. But, I fancy, it is many, many years ago since he ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... little fairy groups that a painter could imagine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not more than six, and lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the house, and singing at every chamber-door; but my sudden appearance frightened them into mute bashfulness. They remained for a moment playing on their lips with their fingers, and now and then stealing a shy glance, from under their eyebrows, until, as if by one impulse, they scampered away, and as they turned an angle ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... about seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, "an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Gaston de Bois led a sort of hermit-like life in the gloomy and empty chateau of his ancestors. He chafed in his confinement, like a caged lion ready to break loose from bondage. But the lion freed might take refuge in his native woods, while Gaston, if he rushed forth into the world, knew that his bashfulness, his stammering, his near-sightedness, would render society a more intolerable prison than ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... delicate organization the fact that, at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral without his cheeks rivalling the most vivid stripe in it. They flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he should never marry ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... idea which had been growing in his mind all that morning, and it had driven out of him every ounce of bashfulness. ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... yellow. The canyon of the street, widening below us, ended in a rich meadowland, dotted with villas and trees. Beyond, the Mediterranean rose to the horizon. While the Artist was "taking it," the usual crowd gathered around: children whose lack of bashfulness indicated that many city people were here for the season or that tourists did find their way up to Cagnes; women always eager to gossip with strangers, especially with those from lands across the sea; old men proud to tell you that their city ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... bidden "so long" to Mr Philp, and pocketed his three-and-sixpence, steered up the street in the direction of Rilla Farm, nervously stealing glimpses of himself in the shop windows as he went. As he hove in sight of the Custom House, however, this bashfulness gave way of a sudden to bewilderment. For there, at the foot of the steps leading up to its old-fashioned doorway lounged his mate, Mr Tregaskis, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Madame Guillaume and Virginie, to whom the draper had not yet confided his disappointment, cast meaning glances at Joseph Lebas, who was extremely embarrassed. The young assistant's bashfulness commended him to his mother-in-law's good graces. The matron became so cheerful that she smiled as she looked at her husband, and allowed herself some little pleasantries of time-honored acceptance in such simple ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... aloud. Grimm and Suard laugh heartily about it, and my dear Comte de Greuze does not notice it. Marmontel finds the example worthy to be imitated, and you, madame, make two of your most beautiful virtues do battle, bashfulness and politeness, and in this suffering you find me a little monster more embarrassing than odious. Dinner is announced. They leave the table and in the cafe all speak at the same time. M. Necker thinks everything well, bows his head ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... quite white, who were universally regarded by myself, and the natives in general, as far as related to their complexions, as deformed. Our women too were in my eyes at least uncommonly graceful, alert, and modest to a degree of bashfulness; nor do I remember to have ever heard of an instance of incontinence amongst them before marriage. They are also remarkably cheerful. Indeed cheerfulness and affability are two of the leading characteristics ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... fashion, paused, expecting my answer; but, though what she had said made a strong impression upon me, I durst not lay open to her the bottom of my heart; I only turned to her, and fetched a deep sigh without saying any thing. Is it bashfulness, said she, that keeps you from speaking? or is it want of confidence in me? Do not doubt the effect of my promise. I could mention to you an infinite number of young men of your acquaintance, that have been in the same condition with you, and have received relief from me. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... he has given to boys the boon of plenty, to young men merriment, and to the old security. But now, Scipio, that I have come to touch on your merits, I fear lest either your own noble modesty or my own native bashfulness may close my mouth. But I cannot refrain from touching on a very few of the many virtues which we so justly admire in you. Citizens whom he has saved, show with me that you ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... up to him with an expression at once of eagerness and timidity. Confidence and maiden bashfulness spoke equally in the delight which glowed upon her features. The bright eyes and sun-burned features of the youth were flushed with the feeling of happy triumph and assuring love. The relation of the two was sufficiently evident from their ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one might have thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight of the Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because she was in a manner compelled to do so, for ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... to bashfulness, encouraged the shameless coquette to add: "Maybe you liked me better as Bud?" Jeff was scarlet as he replied: "I liked Bud first-rate, but Bud'll remember what I said about his sister." Then he quite spoiled the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... fence of colloquial skirmish. My admiration had, in reality, been addressed to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, her spirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it was,—the mere possibility that I, so very a child, should have called up the most transitory sense of bashfulness or confusion upon any female cheek, first,—and suddenly, as with a flash of lightning, penetrating some utter darkness, illuminated to my own startled consciousness, never again to be obscured, the pure and powerful ideal of womanhood and womanly excellence. This was, in a proper sense, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... know he was such a puppy!" said John to himself, as he stood in a sort of angry bashfulness, envying the man that was so ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is restraint and a rather stupid bashfulness. I have seen a wounded youngster flush apprehensively and only peck his mother in return for her sobbing embrace. That is not Bert's way. He knows—he is not a fool—that his mother looks a trifle absurd as, with bonnet awry, she surges perspiringly past the sentries, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... consolation in philosophical and religious studies. Once a year, says Horace Walpole, the good old man was carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious chef-d'oeuvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatler, refers to Wren's vexations, and attributes them to his modesty and bashfulness. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... little bashfulness he had once possessed he had certainly left behind in San Francisco, for he leaned over the front of the box and ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... her cheek from pale to red, And red to pale, as through her ears Those winged words like arrows sped, What could such be but maiden fears? So bright the tear in Beauty's eye, Love half regrets to kiss it dry; So sweet the blush of Bashfulness, Even Pity scarce can wish ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... who was never troubled with bashfulness, went up and seated herself beside Lady Isabel. "Good ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was rather too intimate a description, but bashfulness or diffidence she knew were not among Mr. Arranstoun's ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... meanwhile, pressed obtrusively around me. My protector held them back. I was half wild with embarrassment. I'm naturally a reserved and somewhat sensitive girl, and this American publicity made me crimson with bashfulness. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... any thing else she may need. Before a week is over you shall be mine host of the Keswick Inn. And now," she concluded, gayly, "go and make your arrangements with Susan, and don't let any foolish bashfulness on her part prevent you from hastening matters. It would not do for you to let this chance slip through your fingers. I will see that she is ready. Her ladyship has something for her too, and will not let her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... to see me later on in the day after the marriage, and there was no bashfulness about either of them then. They came hand-in-hand, with the girl's father and mother and some friends, and she told me it was all her fault: ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... colour to rise, and he was about to move out of its influence, when he was stopped by his grand-mother with one hand, while with the other she divided the hair upon his forehead, which was now crimson with bashfulness, while she added, with a mixture of proud affection and firm resolution,—"Ay, look at him well, my sister, for on a fairer face thine eye never rested. I too, when I first saw him, after a long separation, felt ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... His bashfulness fell from him as a garment. He took the message, saying he would keep it, so that it might not be lost. Then he piloted the two girls and Mrs. Putnam to the spot where Mary had been ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... not conceive why he lived in this narrow street, in this comfortless lodging, why he was so little to be seen in society, or how he employed himself. Without employment, in solitude, he was happy: only he felt out of humour with himself at his own bashfulness, which withheld him from trying to become nearer acquainted with this beauteous being, notwithstanding the friendliness with which she had several times greeted and thankt him. He knew not that she would often gaze over at him with eyes no less lovesick than his ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... on and on and by degrees you begin to feel more and more at home. Your bashfulness is wearing off. The coherent power of speech has returned to you and you have exchanged views with her on the relative merits of the better known brands of chewing gum and which kind holds the flavor longest, and you have swapped ideas on the issue of whether ladies should or should not smoke ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... a smile that made us feel we had never quarreled, never parted, but were at home in the Wilderness. I need not tell the answer. I had got quit of my bashfulness on the subject of Gretna Green and postchaises with a vengeance; and then and there I suggested a trip to that delectable region, and scorned all the objections she attempted to make about our respective fathers, and family quarrels, and all the chimeras that disappear before the breath ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... now quite conquering his bashfulness, for at the moment he forgot where he was, and saw nobody that was by. "Two guineas!" cried he, clapping his hands together,—"O, Lightfoot! O, mother!" Then, recollecting himself, he saw his mistress, whom ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... any one of the ultimate and awful embrace in which he clasped her body. He regretted—I knew it—his whispered confidence to me that evening, and up to his death he kept the horrible affair sacred to himself, with tenacious bashfulness. So we see Farfadet continuing to live his airy existence with the living likeness of that fair hair, which he only leaves for the scarce monosyllables of his contact with us. Corporal Bertrand has still the same soldierly and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... not," said Catharine, with a smile, which enchanted the king, for there was quite as much graceful coquetry as bashfulness on ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... the part of an ingenuous young man; after they had come before the judges, he was not able to say what he had intended, so much did his modesty confuse him there through his bashfulness. ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... rise as if to meet me half-way, and her gesture was quite sufficient to encourage me to approach. She received me with a blushing look and tremulous lip, which I perceived, and which increased my own bashfulness. The strangeness of our situation was so embarrassing, that we remained some time without finding a word to say to each other. At last, with a timid and scarcely intelligible gesture, she motioned to me to sit down on the hay, not far from ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... lift the veil, nor expose the conduct of children among themselves. And all this because adults have filled their heads with those impurities which surfeit their own. What could more effectually wear off that natural delicacy, that maiden purity and bashfulness, which form the main barriers against the influx of vitiated Amativeness? How often do those whose modesty has been worn smooth, even take pleasure in thus saying and doing things to raise the blush on the cheek of youth and innocence, merely to witness ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Bridge, I drove to a confectioner's in Tverskaia Street, and, much as I should have liked it to be supposed that it was the newspapers which most interested me, I had no choice but to begin falling upon tartlet after tartlet. In fact, for all my bashfulness before a gentleman who kept regarding me with some curiosity from behind a newspaper, I ate with great swiftness a tartlet of each of the eight different sorts which ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... great debility to struggle with the vigorous nature of his wife, and humiliating himself before his wife's virtue he resolved to let things take their course, relying a little upon the modesty, religion, and bashfulness of Blanche, but he always slept with one eye open, for he suspected that God had perhaps made virginities to be taken like partridges, to be spitted and roasted. One wet morning, when the weather was that in which the snails make their tracks, a melancholy time, and suitable to reverie, Blanche ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... striking up the opening bars of the Lancers; upon which several gentlemen amongst the assembly, which now numbered about forty, ran out into the open and took up positions, like colour-sergeants at drill, to be presently joined, in some bashfulness, by such ladies as ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... myself and others took particular notice how those who were present dined; but to speak truth—whether for joy or sorrow I cannot tell—there was not one of them that half filled his belly; and certainly it could not have been from modesty or bashfulness before the King, for there was not one among them but had dined with his majesty many ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... as Lady Laura always recommended patience, and more than once expressed her opinion that a young member would be better to sit in silence at least for one session, he was not driven to the mortification of feeling that he was incurring her contempt by his bashfulness. As regarded the men among whom he lived, I think he was almost annoyed at finding that no one seemed to expect that he should speak. Barrington Erle, when he had first talked of sending Phineas down to Loughshane, had predicted for him all manner ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... and the consequence was, that he became a lion in Riverdale. The minister invited him to tea, as well as other prominent persons, for the sake of hearing his story; but Bobby declined the polite invitations from sheer bashfulness. He had not brass enough to make himself a hero; besides, the remembrance of his journey was ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... natural bent of his pupil's capacity; and, taking that for his guide, to imitate the conduct of Socrates with his two scholars Theopompus and Ephorus, who, after remarking the lively genius of the former, and the mild and timid bashfulness of the latter, is reported to have said that he applied a spur to the one, and a curb to the other. The Orations now extant, which bear the name of Sulpicius, are supposed to have been written after his decease by ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the fence he could see the gray roof of the Hermit's cabin, silvered with the radiance of the full moon. At no time was Kagh troubled with bashfulness and now, under the influence of that flooding radiance, he decided to investigate the cabin and the clearing. The fence, ending in a rough wall of field stone, made a capital highway along which he shuffled ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... and have brought my heart safe thro' such a continued fire as never poor knight errant was exposed to; waited on at every stage by blooming country girls, full of spirit and coquetry, without any of the village bashfulness of England, and dressed like the shepherdesses of romance. A man of adventure might make a pleasant journey ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... crossing, and to ignore the young woman would be an avowal of enmity. Here was his opportunity. Harry set his face over the hopper and cradled industriously. He thought he was displaying proper firmness, but his hand trembled, his heart beat like a plunger, and he was the victim of an ignoble bashfulness. Chris approached with some timidity; but Maori bounded up to the young man, making elephantine overtures of friendliness, which were resented by Harry's cattle-dog Cop, who walked round and round the mastiff in narrowing circles, bristling like a cat ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... scarcely been settled when the door opened, and revealed the subject of discussion. Wearing a broad grin of mingled pride and bashfulness, and looking very stiff and awkward in one of the brightest tweed suits ever seen off the stage, Spike stood for a moment in the doorway to let his appearance sink into the spectator, ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
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