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More "Reticence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happened that they were alone, as a great dinner party had been postponed at the last moment owing to some Royal indisposition. Lord Chelsford in his wife's presence was careful to treat me as an ordinary guest; but directly she had left the room and we were alone he abandoned his reticence. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kicking the logs in the fireplace, suddenly swept down upon us and bundled us all into the road, leaving Miss Mullins alone. Then he walked aside with Judge Thompson for a few moments; returned to us, autocratically demanded of the party a complete reticence towards Miss Mullins on the subject matter under discussion, re-entered the station, re-appeared with the young lady, suppressed a faint idiotic cheer which broke from us at the spectacle of her innocent face once ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by right of nature on the tongues of Moors—they said and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... the avenue, had purposely avoided going down to meet him at the gate, had taken the bridle-path through her father's grounds instead, with the certainty that he would follow her. She only half intimated the reasons why she acted thus, but her partial reticence was the most charming portion of her revelations, and as he listened Cary was in a very ecstacy of delight. She knew that he would follow her! What adorable feminine ingenuousness in the confession! What consciousness ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... door creaked again, Mrs. Munn sailed away, and her son hung himself farther over the window-sill. Evidently he had inherited none of his mother's reticence. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... little mother that my sister Fanny inherited her vivid dark beauty, her reticence, her fortitude in suffering, her fearlessness in the presence of danger, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... was dealing at the last with the prisoner's evidence in her own behalf, and that mercifully enough, though with less reticence than had characterized the earlier portions of his address. He did not think it possible or even desirable to forget that this was the evidence of a woman upon trial for her life. It must not be discredited ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... at the frankness with which Kennedy spoke, but absolutely amazed at the coolness of Jermyn. At first he said absolutely nothing. He seemed to be as set in his reticence as he had been ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... incidents it exhibits no dramatic power, and little skill of characterization in the portraiture of its personages. And not only does a matter-of-fact air pervade the narrative, but the tale is told with such reticence of fact as well as of feeling, that it reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he took up the book of what it is that makes the horror of such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... his father was in his private office. His father greeted him pleasantly, but not effusively; in fact, any marked exhibition of approval or disapproval was foreign to the Sawyer character, while the Quincys were equally notable for their reticence ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... to time, to keep possession of them in order to feel their force as she wished to do. She said nothing to her husband on the subject, with an instinctive sense that it would be very difficult to handle. And Sir Tom, too, avoided it. But it was impossible to pursue the same reticence with Lady Randolph, who now and then insisted on opening it up. When the end of her visit arrived she sent for Lucy into her own room, to speak ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... diplomatic proceeding. If you went the right way about it, you could get anything out of her without committing yourself in the slightest way; whereas, if you set to work wrongly, you might not only be foundered by a provoking reticence, which she could assume at times, but might, also, some day hear that your secret intentions and machiavellian conduct were the common talk ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Sydney was well content with the result of the trial as far as it had gone. There had been no reference of any kind to his sister Lettice; and, as he knew that this was due in some measure to the reticence of the defence, it would have argued a want of generosity on his part to talk of the cruelty of the prisoner in stopping his wife's allowance because she had molested him in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all her virtues, had not that of reticence, and her mother had soon learnt from her what had been said that night in their bedroom about Charley. But this violation of confidence, if it was a violation, was hardly necessary to make Mrs. Woodward aware of what was passing in her daughter's bosom. When Katie ceased to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... these days to learn anything," she said. "But I—I didn't used to be! Truly I didn't! I used to be so alive, so strong! I believed in everything, myself most of all! Truly I did!" She paused, wondering at her lack of reticence. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... little gesture with her pretty hand as if to dismiss the subject; and, after wondering a moment at the girl's singular reticence after her previous frankness, Andras thought only of enjoying her grace and charm, until the Tzigana gave him her hand and bade him good-night, begging him to remember that she would be very happy and proud to receive ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... your intended speech is a sensible one, the present is as good a time, and Bedford Square as good a place, as you are likely to find for it. If it is otherwise, confess that you have decided to leave it unsaid. But do not postpone it. Reticence is always an error—even on the treasury bench. It is doubly erroneous in dealing with me; for I have ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... What more can I say?" Noemi exclaimed rather irritably, and went to the open window as if to ascertain the intention of the clouds. Giovanni took a step towards her, determined to conquer her reticence. She had a presentiment of this, and, as an expedient, she asked what his predictions concerning ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... relief. Happily the loss of the day had not made me the bearer of stale tidings. So I made answer with proper reticence, saying that I had news, but it was for Lord Cornwallis's ear first of all. None the less, if the commissary-general were ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... he tried Cardington on the subject of Emmet, but found him uncommunicative, almost brusque, in his reticence. Leigh suspected that the subject might be a sore one with him, and that he thoroughly disapproved of Miss Wycliffe's odd charity. When a talker is silent, his silence has the tactile quality of Egyptian darkness, and so it now appeared ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Bedford County, whom Palmer introduced as Jake. Jake had a continuous smile. Sometimes it expanded but never contracted. The smile was a fixture and it became Jake greatly. He rarely spoke, the smile sort of atoned for his reticence as it assured those addressing him that Jake was not ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... hoped by the reticence of her tone to ward off further excess of sympathy. "I am no longer bound to your Church, Mr. Smith. I should not be honest if I did not tell you ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... account of the supper served by Martha, makes no mention of Simon or his house. It is noticeable that the synoptic writers say very little about this home in Bethany. Farrar has aptly remarked (p. 483): "We seem to trace in the Synoptists a special reticence about the family at Bethany. The house in which they take a prominent position is called 'the house of Simon the leper'; Mary is called simply 'a woman' by St. Matthew and St. Mark (Matt. 26:6, 7; Mark 14:3); and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... kneeling by one of those black yawning holes, often to be found in ruins, intent upon fastening a small packet to a stone; he understood all in a moment, and drew back far enough to secure that no one molested her. There was something in this reticence of hers that touched him greatly; it showed so entirely that she had learnt the lesson of loyalty which his father's influence had impressed, and likewise one of self-dependence. What was right for her to do for her mother and Queen might not be right for him, as an Englishman, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a lover, but it laughs at him none the less in his extravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he has something of the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would even like to show the sincerity of his devotion by some piece of open heroism. Why should he conceal a discovery which has transformed the world ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... says," replied the small baker's boy with the dignified reticence of superior knowledge, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... loves to travel in large flocks, when household duties are over for the season; but although the same has been reported of the bluebird, I have never myself seen such a thing, and am satisfied that, as a rule, this gentle spirit finds a family party of six or seven company enough. His reticence, as we cheerfully admit, is nothing to quarrel with; it is all well-bred, and not in the least unkindly; in fact, we like it, on the whole, rather better than the robin's pertness and garrulity; but, none the less, its natural consequence is that the bird has small concern ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Works, 840-l. Hermetics speak with reserve of secret fire, living and philosophical, 775-u. Hero, less noble to describe than be a, 349-l. Heroditus described Bal's temple at Babylon, 590-l. Heroditus excuses himself for reticence concerning the Mysteries, 380-m. Heroditus testifies concerning the doctrines of Zoroaster, 617-l. Herodotus speaks reservedly of the Mysteries of Isis, 405-m. Hieroglyphics believed to have been ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... questions as to who had killed the man, and why he had been shot. But Inspector Tinkler was the most wary of officials, and pending the inquest and the verdict of twelve good men and true, he declined to commit himself to an opinion. The result of this reticence was that the reporters had to fall back on their inventive faculties, and next morning published three theories, side by side, concerning the murder, so that the Beorminster Chronicle containing these suppositions ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... marshal the following, and proclaim the Style of the Departed; but that it was ordered by authority that, as in her life her name and honours had been kept secret, so likewise in her death she was to remain an Unknown Lady. How such a reticence was found to jump with the dictates of the law, which required a registry of all dead persons in the parish-books, I know not; but in that time there were many things suffered to the Great which to the meaner kind would have been sternly denied; and, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... be too late for her 'bus, and Gwen stayed for a chat. She often spent half an hour with the old lady, trying sometimes to get at more of her past history, always feeling that she was met by reticence, never liking to press roughly ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of view of Anaxagoras. The very fact that no expression of his opinion concerning the gods has been transmitted affords food for thought. Presumably there was none; but this very fact is notable when we bear in mind that the earlier naturalists show no such reticence. Add to this that, if there is any place and any time in which we might expect a complete emancipation from popular belief, combined with a decided disinclination to give expression to it, it is Athens under Pericles. Men like Pericles and his friends represent ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A day or two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, he tackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of a praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice look blank with amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing certain incidents in his friendship with Krafft, under ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... impressively. "Do you realize what a shadow may be thrown upon your sister's memory by this reticence on your part? Her death was suggestive enough without the complications you mention. In justice to your relationship you should speak. If, as I think, the money is really meant for you, say so. The subterfuge may be difficult of explanation, but it will not hurt her memory as much as this ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... thrifty, hardworking, law-loving people, fond of good cheer and strong drink, of shrewd, blunt speech, and a stubborn reticence, when speech would be useless or foolish; a people clean-living, faithful to friend and kinsman, truthful, hospitable, liking to make a fair show, but not vain or boastful; a people with perhaps little play of fancy or great range of thought, but cool-thinking, resolute, ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... stifle it as is too often the case. Of course great judgment is required in this development, or the personality will become marked mannerism, than which nothing could be worse. True art always displays a certain reticence; excess at either end of the gamut of emotion is avoided. Calmness is not coldness, and passion carried too far becomes caricature. Tone must be developed also, but it should always be borne in mind that exertion is not power; a mistake too frequently made. ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... this tedious illness is the only allusion which Seneca has made to the circumstances of his childhood. The ancient writers, even the ancient poets, but rarely refer, even in the most cursory manner, to their early years. The cause of this reticence offers a curious problem for our inquiry, but the fact is indisputable. Whereas there is scarcely a single modern poet who has not lingered with undisguised feelings of happiness over the gentle memories of his childhood, not one of the ancient poets has systematically touched upon the theme ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... be better acquainted with you, Miss Meredith," he said a little stiffly, sincerity struggling through natural reticence, like a light through a fog. "I'm no lady's man, as you probably know, but I had to come and thank you to-night. Desmond's quite my finest officer—no disrespect to your brother; he knows it as well as ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... indeed are the reasons put forward, either in the House of Commons or elsewhere, in favour of the actual Home Rule Bill of 1893. As to the merits of this definite measure Ministerialists show a singular reticence. It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own inherent merits. But to a critic of the new constitution another explanation suggests itself. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... of his almost vanished limp. These things are not symptoms of indolence. They are symptoms of nerves. And Desire knew something of nerves. What she did not know, in the present case, was their exciting cause. Neither could she understand this new reticence on the part of their victim nor his reluctance to admit the obvious. She puzzled much about these problems while the lazy one rested in the sun and the quiet, golden days wrought the magic of ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... were speaking open-heartedly. What a good thing it is to be frank and speak without reticence, without the shame and guilt of not knowing what one is saying and for each to go straight to the other. ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... actions always held his tongue about them, those who reaped the benefits would hardly say very much either. Now the people, according to your system, stand in need of examples, and how are they to hear of them amid this general reticence? Again, there is this poor pontooner of ours, who saved the whole French army, and who was never able to tell his tale to any purpose; suppose that he had lost the use of his limbs, would the consciousness of what he had done have found ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt upon Mr. Wallace's originality, or to question his claim to the honour of being one of the originators ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... mouth of gracious lips unsmiling, a little triste. Compunctions smote him; with his crude and clumsy banter he had contrived to tune her thoughts to sadness. He would have given worlds to undo that blunder; to show her that he had meant neither a rudeness nor a wish to desecrate her reticence, but only an indirect assurance of gratitude to her for suffering him and willingness to serve her within the compass of his poverty-stricken powers. For in retrospect his invitation assumed the proportions of an importunity, an egregious piece of presumption: ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the man who had suffered so much for his patriotic and independent opinions. As I naturally could not attach much value to the political importance of my past career, he imagined this arose from suspicious reticence, and encouraged me by the assurance that, although great mistakes and even offences might have been committed in this respect, these only affected those who, while they had remained in Germany, had not been made ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... awful inevitableness of a Greek tragedy, the action moves towards the closing doom. It is sad beyond words, and we are grateful for Mrs. Ward's noble reticence. "The tyrant river that she loved had received her, had taken life, and then had borne her on its swirl of waters, straight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a human prey upon the beach. There, beating against the gravelly bank, in a soft helplessness, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... to be communicative about Monsieur de Merri would have passed away. But meanwhile, what was the cause of that unwillingness? Did he know, after all, what had occurred at La Fleche, and had he begun to suspect me? I inwardly cursed his reticence, and went soon to bed, that I ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... reticence, expressing itself on occasions as resistance, it seems an inappropriate response to the needs and opportunities of our day and age and one of the many factors responsible for the alienation between young and old which is popularly termed the "generation ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... Was but to rest awhile within her court; Where first as sullen as a beast new-caged, And waiting to be treated like a wolf, Because I knew my deeds were known, I found, Instead of scornful pity or pure scorn, Such fine reserve and noble reticence, Manners so kind, yet stately, such a grace Of tenderest courtesy, that I began To glance behind me at my former life, And find that it had been the wolf's indeed: And oft I talked with Dubric, the high saint, Who, with mild heat of holy oratory, Subdued me somewhat to ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... had but lately left Cambridge for a small College living. Meynell—an old Balliol scholar—bore the marks of Jowett and Caird still deep upon him, except, perhaps, for a certain deliberate throwing over, here and there, of the typical Oxford tradition—its measure and reticence, its scholarly balancing of this against that. A tone as of one driven to extremities—a deep yet never personal exasperation—the poised quiet of a man turning to look a hostile host in the face—again ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... If the men spoke to one another it was in subdued tones or whispers. Two of the horsemen trotted on a hundred yards in advance, like skirmishers thrown out in front of an attacking force. There was something in all this mysterious precaution and reticence which bewildered and exasperated Lynde, who noted every detail. Mary, in a transient spasm of backing, had fallen to the rear; the young man could no longer see the girl, but ever before his eyes was the piteous, unslippered little foot with its ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Berlin, from Madrid and London to Constantinople and St. Petersburg; the 'vie intime' of the eighteenth century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate wit of Voltaire. Who is there ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... feather-weight of gloating, and turned to her sister-in-law with a whimsical remark about the preposterousness of one of the costumes passing. Arnold sulked in silence until Judith, emerging from her usual self-contained reticence, made her first advance to him. "Let's us all go there by the railing where we can look down into the central court," she suggested, and having a nodded permission from their elders, the three children ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... him to a young lion. Mentally he was slow, but his judgment was clear and accurate. Above all, he was honest, and knew not fear of man, beast, or devil. His life in Styria, hedged about by ceremonious conventions, had given him an undue portion of dignity and reticence, but that could easily be polished down by friction with the rougher side of the world. Except myself and his mother, he had never known ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... playing an elusive game; he kept out of sight, or, at any rate, avoided all intercourse with the two friends, and on the rare occasions when they met he was to Gifford tantalizingly uncommunicative. That something was evidently behind his reticence made it all the more unsatisfactory, since the result was that Gifford had no object in going to Wynford Place, for he had nothing to tell. Indeed he learnt more from the Morristons than from Henshaw. The police had concluded ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... he expected her confidence. He called upon her several times in this expectation; but each time there was more perceptible an indefinable something which prevented it. In fact, he felt mortified by Elizabeth's reticence. People had confidently expected that Miss Hallam would explain her conduct to him; some had even said, they were ready to resume friendly relations with her if the rector's attitude in the matter appeared to warrant it. It will easily ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... as they did the new, but they most of them came earliest in some field or other and found—or thought—it necessary to clear the top of the soil before they sank shaft or spade into it. Moreover, they accepted almost without challenge the current inhibitions of gentility, reticence, cheerfulness. They confined themselves to the emotions and the ideas and the language, for the most part, of the respectable; they disregarded the stormier or stealthier behavior of mankind or veiled it with discreet periphrasis; they sweetened their narratives wherever ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase "my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship. Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... of sixty a reaction came over Laurier; first noticeable in less enthusiasm and more reticence at the Imperial Conferences. The French-Canadian who had lost a segment of his idolatrous following in Quebec because of clashes with the clergy and the sending of a contingent to the South African War, began to resist the cold machinations of the Chamberlain ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... its way into print some years ago. Apropos of Napoleon, an old friend of Landor's told me that, while in London, the Prince was in the habit of calling upon him after dinner. He would sip cafe noir, smoke a cigar, ply his host with every conceivable question, but otherwise maintain a dignified reticence. It seems then that Louis Napoleon is indebted to nature, as well as to art, for his masterly ability in keeping his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... pleasantry which might wound or even fatigue his companions, never indulges in those profanities and indecencies unhappily too common in the speech of the lower orders in European countries. This admirable reticence, this nobility and simplicity of manner, do they owe it to education? Not at all; it is the gift of nature. In some respects nature has been very liberal to the Turkish people; but all the gifts she has bestowed upon them, their ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... her for a minute in mute rage. It was not the first time he had found himself hard against the immutable reticence of the Indian in ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... private claims to modest respect were so great as hers are known to be," said the same critic, "with such self-denial fling off their protection in her resolution to lay hold of the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina, in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed absolutely on the side of the libertine hero—so much invitation was thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... conversations Tartaglia seems to have had something of Boswell's gift. He gives an abstract of an eventful dialogue with his host on March 25, 1539, which Cardan begins by a gentle reproach anent his guest's reticence in the matter of the rule of the cosa and the cubus equal to the numerus. Tartaglia's reply to this complaint seems reasonable enough (it must be borne in mind that he is his own reporter), and certainly helps to absolve him from the charge sometimes made against him that he was nothing ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... everything. So far from trading confidences, she had told him only that she was bound straight on to Hongkong; that curiosity alone had led her to travel second-class, "for the delightful change, you know, from all such formality"; and that she was "really more French than English." Her reticence had the charm of an incognito; and taking this leaf from her book, he gave himself out as a large, vaguely important person journeying ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... "This curious reticence on my part, is simply attributable to pure ignorance. Until affliction lay heavy on me, my father, my uncle, and my grandfather were hardly better known to me, in their true characters, than if they had been strangers passing in the street. ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth herself or by Farfrae either. Reasoning on the cause of their reticence he concluded that, estimating him by his past, the throbbing pair were afraid to broach the subject, and looked upon him as an irksome obstacle whom they would be heartily glad to get out of the way. Embittered as he was ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... car to the Siebensternstrasse. His idea of Peter's manner of living those days was exceedingly vague. He had respected Peter's reticence, after the manner of men with each other. Peter had once mentioned a boy he was looking after, in excuse for leaving so soon after the accident. That ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... skilful response; "but her reticence must have been to save you, for the girl never seems ashamed of anything she does. I imagine she hated to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually reticent where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and discrimination—qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of this journalistic aspirant. For it must be assumed that in some of its later developments journalism has entirely cast off the reticence and the modesty which successive generations of censors have constantly held to have been characteristic of an age that is past. Indeed, while it is established that in 1850 the critics of the day fixed their thoughts with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... to Drake that the mistake might have been purposely made from a prevision of the awkwardness of the meeting. The dinner, prefaced inauspiciously, failed to remove the awkwardness, since the reticence under which Drake and Mallinson laboured, gradually spread and enveloped Conway. A forced conversation of a curiously impersonal sort dragged from course to course. Absolute strangers would have exhibited less restraint; for the ghost of an old comradeship made the fourth at the feast ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... language, and the shame and confusion that we would not, and even dare not, trail across a friend's mind? So often the heart holds more than ever should be poured out into another's ear. There are in life strained silences that we could not break if we would. And there is a law of reticence that true love and unselfishness will always respect. If my brother hath joy, am I to cloud it with my grief? If he hath sorrow, am I to add my sorrow unto his? When our precious earthly fellowship has been put to its last high uses in the ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... "the infamous," first entered at Caius 29th June 1667, migrating to St. John's, where he entered 2nd February 1668-69. Thomas Baker for once abandons his decorous reticence and states of Oates: "He was a lyar from the beginning, he stole and cheated his taylor of a gown, which he denied with horrid imprecations, and afterwards at a communion, being admonisht and advised by his Tutor, confest ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... the Naiads," etc., omitting, however, his poem to Curio in its first and best version, and some of his smaller pieces. This edition, too, contained an account of Akenside's life by his friend, so short and so cold as either to say little for Dyson's heart, or a great deal for his modesty and reticence. His uniform and munificent kindness to the poet during his lifetime, however, determines us in favour of the latter ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... were very wonderful, and she had a wide range of sympathies, keen insight into character, and great power of describing it by a few vivid words. She had, however, no reticence or reserve, she made many enemies by her unbounded frankness, and she often fatigued or overwhelmed by her exuberant animal spirits and by the torrent of her words. At the same time, unlike most great talkers, she possessed to a very eminent degree the gifts of learning from ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Coningsby, which I advised him to read. Have you read it? The children still wonder what Miss Charlesworth meant when she said that she didn't mean what she said. I tell them it is a new way of thinking of young England. I have exercised the children's minds greatly on the doctrine of Puseyitical reticence (that is not the word) but I find that children, who are great in the kingdom of Heaven, are all for blurting out what they mean. Farewell for the present. Ever yours, E. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed yields to compassion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of the rules. He ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... I have writ you often. Rest of our household, Talolo, cook; Pulu, kitchen boy, good, steady, industrious lads; Henry, back again from Savaii, where his love affair seems not to have prospered, with what looks like a spear-wound in the back of his head, of which Mr. Reticence says nothing; Simi, Manuele, and two other labourers outdoors. Lafaele is provost of the live-stock, whereof now, three milk-cows, one bull-calf, one heifer, Jack, Macfarlane, the mare, Harold, Tifaga Jack, Donald and Edinburgh—seven horses—O, and the stallion—eight horses; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his feet, and Mr. Die was very proud of him. Mr. Die was proud of him, and proud also of his own advice. He said nothing about it even to Harcourt himself, for to Mr. Die had been given the gift of reticence; but his old eye twinkled as his wisdom was confessed by the youth at his feet. "In politics one should always look forward," he said, as he held up to the light the glass of old port which he was about to sip; "in real life ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... what the smiles meant on the false faces of those women-friends of mine who had met me in the park. An ordinary man, in Michael's place, would have mentioned my own encouragement of him as a sufficient excuse. He, with the inbred delicacy and reticence of a gentleman, had taken all the blame on himself. Indignant and ashamed, I advanced to the breakfast-room, bent on instantly justifying him. Drawing aside the curtain, I was startled by a sound as of a person sobbing. I cautiously looked ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... your name... which I am never to speak, by which I am never to call the highest that I know!" There is no return indicated in this of any doubt of him. Elsa is in this moment certainly all trust. It is but an expression of love chafing a little at the reticence which seems a barrier one must naturally wish away, if hearts are to flow freely together. Hardly warningly, just lovingly, he interrupts her: "Elsa!"—"How sweetly" she remarks enviously, "my name drops ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... little troubled as she was by sensitiveness, guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully avoiding Mary in order that she might not be disturbed ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... caressingly upon the banker's shoulder as she spoke. It was not a time for reticence; it was not an occasion upon which to be put off by any girlish fear ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... among us, seek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of the practices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects. The great apparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very strongly with our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquire whether the result of this activity is a truer type of practical Christianity than is found in our select gatherings. I think I understand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... her own part in them, she shrank into a state of distress which seemed to plead with him to refrain from even the tenderest touch on her feelings. It was a peculiarity of their friendship that silence and absence had always mysteriously fostered its growth; and he now felt that her reticence deepened the understanding between them as the freest confidences might ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... day and its associations were sacred to her. She affected no solemnity and seemed under no constraint, only her thought and bearing had a somewhat soberer coloring, like the shading of a picture. To his mind it was but another example of her entire reticence in regard to herself, while her smiling face seemed as ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... on our street, but it takes a bit more study to get at the secret. There is a certain reticence about us. It would take an earthquake to cause much fraternization along Pine Street. Perhaps it is because three houses out of every four bear the tablets of doctors. The average layman fears to stop and ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... incomplete explanation. He had inherited the Englishman's reticence, which forbade him to point out that his father sprang from an old family of standing and had, for some reason which his son had never learned, quarreled bitterly with his English relatives. Coming ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... content with feminalities, and sufficiently intelligent to talk well upon every-day affairs. In her society he smiled at her, said "Yes," good-humoredly, to almost everything, and found slight incentive to depart from his usual reticence. She had learned the limits of her range, and knew that within it there was entire liberty, beyond it a will like adamant. They got on admirably together, for she craved nothing further in the way of liberty and companionship than was accorded her, while he soon recognized that ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... left much alone: and as out of the full head the mouth speaks, so is the full heart more prone to speak at such periods of confidence as these. Lucy, when she first thought of her own state, determined to endow herself with a powerful gift of reticence. She would never tell her love, certainly; but neither would she let concealment feed on her damask cheek, nor would she ever be found for a moment sitting like Patience on a monument. She would fight her own fight bravely within her own bosom, and conquer her ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a little hurt by being questioned. She missed the reticence of a gentleman. Then she reproached herself for not understanding that his frank curiosity was a delicate appeal to her confidence in him, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required rather than skill, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... and accepted escort. At the academy she had never been in the habit of discussing her private affairs with her mates, and so perhaps was spared what might have become an annoyance. While she listened to much gossip, she seldom repeated it, and, by reason of a certain dignified reticence among even her most intimate schoolgirl friends, no one felt free to tell her of the opinions current among them regarding herself and Manson. For this reason a little deviation from the usual rule, made one day by ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... confiding. I should judge that men, whose foolish blabbing brought them to destruction, when wholesome silence could have ensured their safety, well deserved to atone upon the gallows for their breach of reticence. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... watched him over the piano with an amusement not untinged with malice. She was a tall fair girl, with several kinds of cleverness. She did her hair quite beautifully, and she had a remarkable, effective, useful reticence. Her father declared that Dora took in a great deal more than she ever gave out—an accomplishment, in Mr Milburn's eyes, on the soundest basis. She looked remarkably pretty and had remarkably good style, and as she proceeded with her ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in Boston, in 1745, and died in 1806. He lived in a large wooden house on Tremont Street, near Hollis Street, and was a near neighbor of Crane, Lovering and the Bradlees. He was a man of unusual reticence, but noted for courage and patriotism. From 1773 till his death, he kept a vow never to drink tea. In 1797 he married Mary, the sister of Joseph Hiller, the first collector of the port of Salem, and was the father of Captain John Fenno, a pioneer ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... quite at her ease—the theme being too personal to suit her. In fact, there usually seemed to be too much personality in Rosamund's conversation—a certain artificial indifference to convention, which she, Eileen, did not feel any desire to disregard. For the elements of reticence and of delicacy were inherent in her; the training of a young girl had formalised them into rules. But since her debut she had witnessed and heard so many violations of convention that now she philosophically accepted such, when ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Reticence was natural to him; he refrained from questioning her, and thought instead of some harmless subject of conversation. Her painting? But she had abandoned painting. Her money? she had lost it! ... that was the trouble she was in. He had warned her against ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... his fingertips together and smiled. "Peggy is right," said he, "although I don't wholly approve of her modern lack of reticence in metaphor. Oliver is coming out true gold from the fire. He's a capital fellow. And he spoke of you, my dear Marmaduke, in the kindest way in the world. He has a tremendous ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... in his rich, Irish brogue, which affected his hearer, as it did every one else, with such singular sentiments in contrast with his remarkable countenance, all traces of punctilious restraint and artificial reticence vanished, and with the mien of one who proposes to extract all the entertainment possible from an undreamed-of experience, the lady urged Dennis ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... that wise government consists in restraining men from injuring one another and leaving them free to regulate their own pursuits, the inaugural address contains no declaration of purpose or policies. No such reticence marks Jefferson's private letters, which are, indeed, the best expression of his political philosophy. Nowhere is the governing purpose of his Administration stated more clearly than in a letter written just before ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire usually do; but the house did not allow itself to be betrayed into unseemly enthusiasm. There was an involuntary laugh now and then, and once somebody said bravo, but as a general thing a discreet reticence prevailed, and the actors might have gone through the piece on their heads in an extravagant desire to elicit signs of approval: they would only have received a cool little round of applause when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... which Mother Frances Helen belonged. To make further investigation into the history of all the Sisters who ever stayed at B—— through the kindness of the late Mr. S—— would have been a task impossible for its vastness, and almost certainly futile through the natural reticence of their communities with regard to any matters likely ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... youngest members of a large family. Besides, all the Harpers had grown up in full knowledge of and sympathy with their parents' anxieties. Living as they did, in closest family union, it would have been all but impossible to prevent its being so, save by some forced and unnatural reticence, the evil of which would have been greater than the risk of saddening the children ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... war. The train stopt at a station in the State of Maine. The General was standing on the rear platform of the last car. At that time, as you know, he had a great reputation for silence—for it was before he had made his series of brilliant speeches before the New England Society. They spoke of his reticence—a quality which New Englanders admire so much—in others. Suddenly there was a commotion in the crowd, and as it opened a large, tall, gaunt-looking woman came rushing toward the car, out of breath. Taking her spectacles off from the top of her head and putting them on her ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... watching him, seen something creep into his eyes when he glanced in her direction. He was, however, for the most part, almost unduly cautious in his conversation, and she now and then wondered whether his reticence ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... restrictions will again be prescribed for them.' It is not wonderful that the declaration of an impending abrogation of Law was misinterpreted, and converted into a licence for Antinomianism. Mirza Jani mentions, but with some reticence, the unseemly conduct of some of ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... things, one of Nature's gentlemen, whom the rough world will never disguise nor the sea life change. He would be thirty-five years of age now, I remember, but he has not lost his boyish face, and there is the same shy reticence which he never could conquer. He has come here according to his promise. A ship lies in the offing, and he would have me go to it. How little he knows of my true condition in this dreadful place. How may a woman go when a ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... across, to allow for the current, he was told. The trader offered to help him when he was ready. Garth thanking him, privately resolved to cross before the Settlement was astir next morning. He saw that his own reticence in answering questions inspired the three simultaneously with the idea that he was a detective from outside, in pursuit of Herbert Mabyn for some early sin; and he let it go ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... tell you—not a person mentioned the Lusitania at the tea-party, which was, I suppose, a handsome effort at reticence, since the lady of the house was an American, and the Stars and Stripes, in little, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... comical reticence, 'I never allow myself to criticise the conduct of a person who honors me with the gift ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... did in some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to a press that has always possessed a considerable turn for reticence, that wanted things personal indeed in the modern fashion. Yet not too personal. It was embarrassing, I say, to be inexorably confronted with Mr. Butteridge's great heart, to see it laid open in relentlesss self-vivisection, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... A third time they called and appealed to Mr. Sharp, the capitalist of the firm, who promised to use his best endeavours to induce his mechanical partner to take the matter in hand. But Mr. Roberts, notwithstanding his reticence, had been occupied in carefully pondering the subject since Mr. Ashton's first interview with him. The very difficulty of the problem to be solved had tempted him boldly to grapple with it, though he would not hold out the slightest expectation to the cotton-spinners ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... drawer of the check. Allen's prayers, songs, and exhortations, with which he interested the praying dupes who gathered to his house, were assuredly bogus, and, after being continued for two or three days, they were abandoned, and thereafter, in drunken obliviousness or cunning reticence, the 'wickedest man' passed his time, avoiding visitors, and talking only when compelled to do so. What he purposes to do hereafter will be learned in the course of this article. So much for Alien's falsely ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... situation, and I therefore had to conduct myself with the utmost circumspection lest I should say or do something which would nullify the good effect which I had unwittingly produced. By adopting an attitude of extreme reticence, however, and allowing the others to do all the talking, I gradually attained to the knowledge that I am regarded as the reincarnated Manco; and now our copper-coloured friends are all on fire with ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the earlier part of the tale does not turn up again as the real culprit, though the Baron is certain that every reader must expect him to do so, and must feel quite sure that, in spite of the author's reticence on the subject, it was he who really committed the murder, and escaped even the author's detection, unless, out of sheer soft-heartedness towards the puppets of his own creation, JAMES PAYN knowingly let him off at the last moment. The judicial portion of the novel, including the scene in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... boyhood life had been spent in close association with men who wrested a scanty living from an ungrateful soil. Although a poet by instinct, he was not afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving the brutal aspects of peasant life a place upon his canvas. In emphasizing the characteristics of reticence and naivete he really discovered the Norwegian peasant for literary purposes. Beneath the words spoken by his characters we are constantly made to realize that there are depths of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... Dru was reorganizing, he now and then saw Gloria. She often wondered why Philip did not tell her something of his plans, and at times she felt hurt at his reticence. She did not know that he would have trusted her with his life without hesitation, but that his sense of duty sealed his lips when it came ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... that he was not gaining in the estimation of Mr. Raynes by his reticence, he decided that he could not make the matter much ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... a consciousness of ever-present danger haunted every thinking mind. The candor of the outspoken was regarded with doubt, and the reticence of the more cautious, with distrust. It was a trying time for sensitive, impressionable natures with nothing to do. Perhaps all this may account for the persistency with which I sat in my open window. I was thus sitting one night—a ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... in the simplest way of this absorbing passion, as of something about which no reticence was needed; it was too sacred not to be mentioned; it would be wrong not to utter freely to all the world what was doubtless the best thing the world possessed. Thus Kenmure made Laura his model ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... gape. The patient dead were sacrificed; they had no shrines, for people were literally ashamed of mourning. When they had hustled all sensibility out of their lives they invented the fiction that they felt too much to utter. Adela said nothing to her sisters; this reticence was part of the virtue it was her idea to practise for them. SHE was to be their mother, a direct deputy and representative. Before the vision of that other woman parading in such a character she felt capable of ingenuities, of deep diplomacies. ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... measurable number of days from the horror of school. Already I was sick with fear, and in place of my dreams I distressed myself by visualising the scenes of the life I dreaded—the Meat Market, the dusty shadows of the gymnasium, the sombre reticence of the great hall. All that my lost tranquillity had given me was a keener sense of my own being; my smallness, my ugliness, my helplessness in the face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to dull my emotions in unpleasant circumstances and thus achieve a ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Bainrothe's power. Unless I could prove that he had removed the treasure for unworthy uses—why speak of it at all? I should only irritate and set him on his guard by such allusions; whereas, by a course of reticence, I still might learn, as she had suggested, the truth when ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... young man for the services a trusted lieutenant could render. His plans, however, his future programme of reorganization—if he had any definite plans—the General kept to himself. It was not mere reticence. But there was an atmosphere about the old statesman as though he had withdrawn himself to a higher altitude to think his thoughts and formulate his plans alone. If he had heard of the intimacy of Harlan ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... had a dreadful overhauling of my conduct as a son the other night; and my wife stripped me of my illusions and made me admit I had been a detestable bad one. Of one thing in particular she convicted me in my own eyes: I mean, a most unkind reticence, which hung on me then, and I confess still hangs on me now, when I try to assure you that I do love you. - ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... folding her hands in her lap and assuming an air of resolute reticence. But her eyes dwelt now with an imperfectly disguised kindness on the tall fair girl who pleaded for justice and saw no justice in the answers that she got. But the more Aunt Maria inclined to like May Gaston, the more determined was she not to palter ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... them, though they were not usually confidential in its full sense. But the divergence of their emotions on Stephen's account had produced an estrangement which just at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... suffered, no doubt;—but with Spartan consistency he so hid his trouble from the world that no one knew that he suffered. Those with whom he lived, and who speculated often and wondered much as to who he was, never dreamed that the silent man's reticence was a burden to himself. At no special conjuncture of his life, at no period which could be marked with the finger of the observer, did he glaringly abstain from any statement which at the moment might be ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... was very intelligent about the heat in New York, and tactful in keeping the one-sided talk from falling. Barbara said nothing after a few faint attempts to take part in it, and Langbourne made briefer and briefer answers. His reticence seemed only to heighten Juliet Bingham's satisfaction, and she said, with a final supremacy, that she had been intending to go out with Mr. Dickery to a business meeting of the book-club, but they would ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... I had taken him by surprise. The instinct of professional reticence made him pause before ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... and that chilled her; but then it would not be for long, and that comforted her, and yet even when the day should come for the great doors of Clifford Hall to fly open to her, would not a sad, reproachful look from dear Mr. Hope somewhat imbitter her cup of happiness? Deceit, and even reticence, did not come so natural to her as they do to many women: she was not weak, and she was frank, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... making a brave effort to keep back the words which strove to escape, and he was rewarded for his reticence by his comrade ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... women of her class and bringing-up, Cecilia's qualities of reticence and subtlety, the delicate treading of her spirit, were seen to advantage in a situation such as this. Unlike Stephen, who had shown at once that he had something on his mind, she received Hilary with that exact shade of friendly, intimate, yet ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... luck! They themselves have got through fairly well; the probabilities are, then, that their children will get through fairly well too. So they, metaphorically speaking, fold their hands and listen, and, when any part of the truth breaks through the reticence of intimate conversation, they shake their heads solemnly, strive to look shocked—and often are; or else they make a joke of it—believing that their children regard the question in the same reasonable light as they do themselves. But ignorance ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Sir Timothy?" he said. "I fear Lady Mary may be deeply shocked and hurt at being thus excluded from your confidence in so serious a case. Should anything go wrong," he added bluntly, "it would be difficult to account to her even for my own reticence." ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... she drove was serious-looking and professional—in point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist on mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary, she kept her veil down—and it was a very thick one. But Dr. Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar occurrence with him—people are often ashamed to have it known they consult ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyse that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward; and will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow you to ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... the bishop, driven in his perplexity beyond all carefulness of reticence. "My dear, I do wish you wouldn't,—I do indeed. If you would ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... her sense of humour, and I maintained a dignified reticence, which unhappily she regarded as mere sullenness, until we reached the ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... despite the radiance of the autumn morning. Blaise, repentant of his overindulgence, and still feeling the humiliation of the easy capture made of him by four scurvy knaves, had taken refuge in one of those moods of pious reflection which he attributed to maternal influence. Piqued at this reticence, the maid, Jeannotte, maintained a sulky silence. The two boys, devoted to their mistress, now faithfully reflected ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of this mild outburst as soon as it was uttered. But it was true enough, and he could not help saying it. There was something about this girl that broke down his reticence, made him want to talk, made him feel sure he ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... again be prescribed for them.' It is not wonderful that the declaration of an impending abrogation of Law was misinterpreted, and converted into a licence for Antinomianism. Mirza Jani mentions, but with some reticence, the unseemly conduct of some ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... took his own words seriously, even when he was mad, and his conduct was sure to belie them before long. He was the precursor of an impassioned and serious age, going to extremes in idea and placing deeds after words. In spite of occasional reticence dictated by sound sense, Voltaire had abandoned himself entirely in his old age to that school of philosophy, young, ardent, full of hope and illusions, which would fain pull down everything before it knew what it could set up, and the actions ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... yet both knew that it might entail an obligation of sacrifice. But the sacrifices, were they needful, would be made, and they would not be mentioned. It may be, indeed, that the very knowledge of their friendship's strength constrained them to a particular reticence in their words ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... finding utterance in the words. It is a delicate thing for a man to speak about himself, and his own religious experience. Our English reticence, our social habits, and many other even less worthy hindrances rise in the way; and I should be the last man to urge Christian people to cast their pearls before swine, or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his reticence, he had snubbed Kate and turned disdainfully from Jack's polite proffers to guide him through the review. He had studied Davis all through the manoeuvres with a furtive, fascinated attention, which Mrs. Atterbury remarked with complacency, attributing it to awe. At the dinner-table, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... thoughtful. The captain's reticence, coupled with the fact that he had made two or three attempts to get rid of him that afternoon, was suspicious. He wondered whether Joan Hartley was the expected guest; the captain's unwillingness to talk ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... and turned ostentatiously away. I believe he was half ashamed of his brutality; for when another person made the same inquiry, although he still refused the information, he condescended to answer, and even to justify his reticence in a voice loud enough for me to hear. It was, he said, his principle not to tell people where they were to dine; for one answer led to many other questions, as what o'clock it was? or, how soon should we be there? and he could not afford ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... theme being too personal to suit her. In fact, there usually seemed to be too much personality in Rosamund's conversation—a certain artificial indifference to convention, which she, Eileen, did not feel any desire to disregard. For the elements of reticence and of delicacy were inherent in her; the training of a young girl had formalised them into rules. But since her debut she had witnessed and heard so many violations of convention that now she philosophically accepted such, when they came from her elders, merely reserving her own convictions ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... a great many calls from upper-classmen the first term, and Hugh had been astonished at Carl's reticence and silence. Carl, the flippant, the voluble, the "wise-cracker," lost his tongue the minute a man wearing a fraternity pin entered the room. Hugh was forced to entertain the all-important guest. Carl ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... happiness. He wanted to talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to a press that has always possessed a considerable turn for reticence, that wanted things personal indeed in the modern fashion. Yet not too personal. It was embarrassing, I say, to be inexorably confronted with Mr. Butteridge's great heart, to see it laid open in relentlesss self-vivisection, and its pulsating ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... sensible as to recognize the impassable gulf between them, and that he did not go moaning along the brink, thus making a spectacle of himself, and becoming an annoyance to her. Indeed, she sincerely respected him for his reticence and self-control, but she also misjudged him; for he was so patient and strong, and went forward with his duties so quietly and steadily, that she was inclined to believe that his feelings toward her were not very deep, or else that he was so constituted that affairs of the heart ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... He was indefatigable, breezy, and deliberately indiscreet. He tells much, and what he does not tell he leaves you to infer, without risk of going astray. Mr. William Nelson Cromwell, of New York; the general counsel of the Company, offset Varilla's loquacity by a proper amount of reticence. Bunau-Varilla hurried over from Paris, and had interviews with President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay, but could not draw them into his conspiracy. The President told him that, at the utmost, he would only order American warships, which were on the Panama ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... had been lessened, and she was annoyed to find that she cared whether he had been lessened or not. She would also have liked to know the reason for his proposed departure. Undoubtedly it had to do with Anne Alison. His very reticence proved it. Perhaps she was going, too.... Anne Alison.... At the very thought of the girl, Valerie's resentment welled up anew. Jealousy knows no law. The reflection that it was at her instance that Anthony had gone as footman to the house where Anne was housemaid rode her with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... symmetrical detail offers a suspicion of mere mechanism, yet it is no less evident that after longer study the charms of this exquisite structure tell with a lasting power. Too subtle to extort admiration at first, it bewitches a student of architecture who notes the scholarly reticence of its detail, the masterly way in which, as a rule, the construction is legitimately ornamented and the decoration made an integral part of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... glided by. The end of the month was approaching, and still Philip Hamlyn stayed on, and was a very frequent visitor at Leet Hall. Little doubt that Miss Monk was his attraction, and the parish began to say so without reticence. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... knowledge and masses of facts, so digested, combined and arranged, that he had them at his easy command to defend the past or to help him onward to fresh conquests in the fields of truth. Yet such was his modesty and reticence in regard to himself that none outside of his household were aware of his resources, and his attainments were only known when displayed in self-defense. Then they never failed to be ample for the occasion, as every opponent had reason ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... when she propounded her idea, to find Mrs. Durward seemed quite as unwilling to part with her as were both her husband and son. Apparently the alteration in her manner, with its curiously augmented reticence, was no indication of any personal antipathy, and Sara felt proportionately ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Press, that brought James, for instance, into communication with Mrs. Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the little Nicholases, the little Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on. That great class to which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a certain candour, a still more certain reticence. This ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thought a good deal about this, and felt convinced that Peter must have had some idea of the event that was likely to follow from his mission to the Bagnio. But he was much perplexed in attempting to account for his reticence in the matter. Altogether, there was mystery about it which he could not see through, so he wisely gave up thinking about it, and braced his energies to the carrying out of his own little plot. This was, to lead Hugh Sommers to his daughter and assist them to escape in the boat, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... personality and not to stifle it as is too often the case. Of course great judgment is required in this development, or the personality will become marked mannerism, than which nothing could be worse. True art always displays a certain reticence; excess at either end of the gamut of emotion is avoided. Calmness is not coldness, and passion carried too far becomes caricature. Tone must be developed also, but it should always be borne in mind that exertion is not power; a mistake too frequently made. ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... Gladstone, rebuking Mr. Chaplain, said that it was the first time in a public career extending over nearly half a century, he had been accused of a disinclination to meet his opponents in a fair fight, and promised him that neither he nor his friends would have reason to complain of his reticence. Tories and Liberals knew he had not shrunk from meeting the public on this question. He was glad that there was a tremendous feeling abroad upon this Eastern question. He had been told that by the pamphlet he wrote and the speech he delivered, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... or so ago. But a month or so ago the secrets came. Oh, I know him so well. He is trying to hide that there are any secrets lest his reticence should hurt me. But we have been so much together, so much to each other—how should I not know?" And again she leaned forward with her hands clasped tightly together upon her knees and a look of great distress lying like a shadow upon ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... of the St. John family was a boy. If the little ladies were his sisters, both must be dead; if not, I did not know who they were. I felt very angry with the housekeeper for her sulky reticence. I was also not highly pleased by her manner of treating me, for she evidently took me for one of the Sunday-school boys. I fear it was partly a shabby pride on this point which led me to "tip" her with half-a-crown on my own account when we were taking leave. In a moment she became civil to slavishness, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... my interest, but as I glanced at Mrs. Todd I saw that she was confused by sudden affectionate feeling and unmistakable desire for reticence. ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... unused to grandeur that vulgarity always spoiled his effects. When he hied him from the pawnshop, laden with booty, he must e'en cram what he could not wear into his pockets; and doubtless his vulgar lack of reticence made detection easier. Cartouche, on the other hand, had an unfailing sense of proportion, and was never more dressed than became the perfect dandy. He was elegant, he was polished, he was joyous. He drank wine, while the other soaked himself in beer; ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... like to think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness. Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I felt that I could not face his ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Monseigneur Czaski, came too sometimes at tea-time. He was a charming talker, but I always felt as if he were saying exactly what he meant to and what he wanted me to repeat to W. I am never quite sure with Italians. There is always a certain reticence under their extremely natural, rather exuberant manner. Monseigneur Czaski was not an Italian by birth—a Pole, but I don't know that they ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... aware of that, but, my dear sir, this is an extremely delicate and difficult business. As Mr. Penreath's professional adviser, I must beg of you to exercise more reticence." ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... the red cloak, and kept it around her in the day-time because he gave it to her. I have learned that she was never lawfully adopted, and that my uncle has made no will. Still she must be something to him, but certainly not his lawful child, or why his reticence with regard to her. I am the only near relative bearing the Crompton name. I have made myself very necessary to him—am in fact, in a way, a son of the house. He is very much broken, and if he dies ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... humain au nom de la pudeur, ce n'est au contraire qu'hypocrisie ou peur. The late Mr. Grote had reason to lament that when describing such institutions as the far-famed of Thebes, the Sacred Band annihilated at Chaeroneia, he was compelled to a reticence which permitted him to touch only the surface of the subject. This was inevitable under the present rule of Cant[FN359] in a book intended for the public: but the same does not apply to my version of The Nights, and now I proceed to discuss the matter ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... in her chair, motionless, while before her mind's eye rose the altered face of the woman who, deceived for long, was deceived no more—who knew! With her there had been no self-respecting reticence, no decency of secret tears. She had heaped insult upon the woman who had wronged her, she had led her husband a ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... women," he thought, "she is the strangest. Are my skill and effort to be wasted on a girl?" But guessing correctly all at once and rightly attributing her reticence to preparation and distrust of himself, he stopped ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... except, perhaps, the muscular divine. Even in the grouping and narration of its old incidents it exhibits no dramatic power, and little skill of characterization in the portraiture of its personages. And not only does a matter-of-fact air pervade the narrative, but the tale is told with such reticence of fact as well as of feeling, that it reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he took up the book of what it is that makes the horror ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... (They think this reticence unfriendly, and are wondering whether they ought not to retire hurt, when MISS SUSAN enters in her bombazine, wraps, and bonnet. She starts at sight of them, and has the bearing of a ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... insisted on, the day before, i.e., that the Senate could not try a case on its merits, in this case he was evidently strongly in favour of repealing the decision of the Court of Justice, and that Selenin, in spite of his characteristic reticence, stated the opposite opinion with quite unexpected warmth. The warmth, which surprised Nekhludoff, evinced by the usually self-controlled Selenin, was due to his knowledge of the director's shabbiness in money matters, and the fact, which had accidentally come ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... sor." The janitor-valet had previous experiences with Maitland's generosity in grateful memory; and shut his lips tightly in promise of virtuous reticence. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... communicative about Monsieur de Merri would have passed away. But meanwhile, what was the cause of that unwillingness? Did he know, after all, what had occurred at La Fleche, and had he begun to suspect me? I inwardly cursed his reticence, and went soon to bed, that I ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"—Diana winced as she remembered her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Foretdechene—"and I am especially pleased to see you elegantly ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... ways the distinction and the difference was apparent to Mary. The dignity of a gentleman and a man of the world was partly shorn away: the gentleman portion, which comprised kindness and reticence, had vanished, the man of the world remained, typified by a familiarity which assumed that this and that, understood but not to be mentioned, shall be taken for granted: a spurious equalization perched ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... of reticence had vanished altogether before such unexpected and (he could not but think) un-English friendliness. He unburdened his ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... solitary. Hallam Tennyson's biography of the laureate resents the opinion that his father was unsocial, but really leaves the commonly-received opinion unrefuted. Tennyson's reticence and love of contemplation and aloneness amounted to a passion. He was not a man of the people. He fled from tourists as if they brought a plague with them. He did nothing but dream. You might as easily catch the whip-poor-will, whose ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... circumstances, rather a surprise to his hearers when he said, after smoking half through his first cigar, that he thought he should walk up to the hotel in the new town, because he fancied there was a man there he knew. As to his name, he thought it was Pilkington, but wasn't sure. Taunted with reticence, he said it was nothing but business. As Rosalind could easily conceive that Gerry might not want to introduce all the Pilkingtons he chanced across to his family, she didn't press for explanation. "He'll very likely call round to see your young man, chick, when he's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... took his leave of Major Pendennis; the Chevalier not a little puzzled at the old fellow's prudence; and the valet, to say the truth, to the full as much perplexed at his master's reticence. For Mr. Morgan, in his capacity of accomplished valet, moved here and there in a house as silent as a shadow; and, as it so happened, during the latter part of his master's conversation with his visitor, had been standing very ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marriages of inclination in high places. Believe me, your popularity is doubled. And the strange fellow himself, having money in his pocket and that voice of his in magnificent order, is to be seen everywhere, smiling mysteriously and observing a most significant reticence when he is pressed to say that he spoke at your request and to your pattern. But for your Majesty's own letters I should not have ventured to be a dissenter from the received opinion; if you bid ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... not imitate the wise reticence of Tabourot's saving clause, but pronounces authoritatively for the ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... friendliness, even among relations, is counted as showing softness. The mother of the lads was a handsome, broad-shouldered woman who had been a beauty in her day. She mostly used to spare time for seeing her tall fellows off, but she never waved to them. In spite of this reticence, it must not be supposed that the family were unkindly: more gentle and helpful men never lived, and there was not one of them who had not done some brave thing. It may be worth while to tell a story illustrative ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... that the best readers are those who move least in literary circles, who are unprejudiced one way or the other by their personal likes or dislikes of literary men. How detestable are personal paragraphs about authors—often, alas! autobiographical titbits. We expect a little more reticence: we expect the author to say what he has to say in his book, and not in his talks about his book and himself. We expect him to express himself and suppress himself. "Respect the books," says Judah the Pious, "or you show disrespect to the writer." No, not to the writer, but ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... indifferent age—quite the opposite—but spontaneous questions are less frequent. Possibly they are crowded out by other interests, possibly bits of desultory information satisfy for the moment; and there is always the gradual adoption of reticence which takes place as ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt upon Mr. Wallace's originality, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... mixing sentiment with her sympathy. By the light of the late confessions, his life and character looked very different to her now. His apparent contentment was resignation; his cheerfulness, a manly contempt for complaint; his reserve, the modest reticence of one who, having done a hard duty well, desires no praise for it. Like all enthusiastic persons, Christie had a hearty admiration for self-sacrifice and self-control; and, while she learned to see David's virtues, she also exaggerated ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the full head the mouth speaks, so is the full heart more prone to speak at such periods of confidence as these. Lucy, when she first thought of her own state, determined to endow herself with a powerful gift of reticence. She would never tell her love, certainly; but neither would she let concealment feed on her damask cheek, nor would she ever be found for a moment sitting like Patience on a monument. She would fight her own fight bravely within her own bosom, and conquer her enemy altogether. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... up last month for repairs." And Mrs. Plume at nine that night, knowing nothing of this, yet surprised at her husband's pertinacity, stuck to her story. She was sure Wren was consulting or winding or doing something with a watch, and, sorely perplexed and marveling much at the reticence of his company commanders, who seemed to know something they would not speak of, Wren sent for Doty. He had decided on another interview ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... uneasiness always leapt up within his heart when her name was mentioned, and that was very rarely, for his father never spoke of her, and old Betto, the head servant, but seldom, and then with such evident sadness and reticence, that an undefined, though none the less crushing fear, had haunted him from childhood upwards. As he stepped out so bravely this soft spring evening, the look of disquietude did not remain long on his face. At twenty-four life has not ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... it. From Laura she has heard all the family dissatisfactions and numberless descriptions of Violet. From Eugene she has learned that Miss Violet was offered to him, and there is no doubt in her mind but that she was forced upon Floyd. She cannot forgive him for his reticence those last few days, but her patience is infinite. The wheel of fate revolves, happily; it can never remain at one event, but must go on to the next. The Ascotts' house is a perfect godsend to her, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... egotism so subtile, so capacious and frank, as permits him to take up the grandest character in history into the hollow of his hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's face.[G] But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and are not subsequently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... easily satisfied, and this unusual reticence goaded him to desperation. His mother had warned him not to trouble Dan with questions till he was quite well; but this prospect of approaching departure made him resolve to have a full, clear, and satisfactory account of the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Decision. My life's last and greatest door stood ajar. What with all my dreaming, studying, and teaching was I going to do in this fierce fight? Despite all my youthful conceit and bumptiousness, I found developed beneath it all a reticence and new fear of forwardness, which sprang from searching criticisms of motive and high ideals of efficiency; but contrary to my dream of racial solidarity and notwithstanding my deep desire to serve and follow and think, rather than to ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... surprised, rather than pained, by Hoichi's reticence: he felt it to be unnatural, and suspected something wrong. He feared that the blind lad had been bewitched or deluded by some evil spirits. He did not ask any more questions; but he privately instructed the men-servants of the temple to keep watch upon Hoichi's ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... intime' of the eighteenth century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humour ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... nationality had tried to engage him in conversation, but without avail. His replies to their questions had been brief, though gravely courteous, and in the Latin tongue. The purity of his speech, his cultivated manners, his reticence, served to stimulate their curiosity the more. Such as observed him closely were struck by an incongruity between his demeanor, which had the ease and grace of a patrician, and certain points of his person. Thus his arms were disproportionately long; and when, to steady himself against the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... education! Out of which there might have come incalculable damage to the young man, had his natural assimilative powers, to extract benefit from all things, been less considerable. As it was, he gained self-help from it; gained reticence, the power to keep his own counsel; and did not let the hypocrisy take hold of him, or be other than a hateful compulsory masquerade. At an uncommonly early age, he stands before us accomplished in endurance, for one thing; a very bright young Stoic of his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... and while, with his glance quickly turning from the father to the daughter, he sat waiting for the effect of his appeal. "It is not your want of means," said Mr. Wentworth, after a period of severe reticence. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... she had given, while playing at the piano, upon learning he was leaving for Hickwood. Her reticence and the strangeness of the final affair of the necklaces, in connection with this present development, left him almost ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... was in almost complete ignorance. Bessie wrote to her, of course, and so did her uncle once or twice, but they did not tell her much of what she wanted to know. Bessie's letters were, it is true, full of allusions to what Captain Niel was doing, but she did not go beyond that. Her reticence, however, told her observant sister more than her words. Why was she so reticent? No doubt because things still hung in the balance. Then Jess would think of what it all meant for her, and now and again give way to ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Kentuckian is curious to learn the details, about which, for some reason, the Mexican has hitherto preserved silence. His reticence has been due to an injunction of the doctor, who, still under some anxiety about the recovery of his patient, forbade imparting to him particulars that might have an injurious effect on his nervous system, sadly debilitated by the shock it ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the middle of his little grass plot and looked through his glass again. That night there was, so to say, nothing remote about the sky, save its distance. It had none of the reticence of clouds. It made you think of a bed of golden bells, each invisible stalk trying on its own account to help forward some Spring. As he had said, he did not know one star from another, nor a planet for a planet ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... we pay too high a price for our British reticence: perhaps we keep a few foolish and gushing people in order, stifle effusiveness, and dry up unctuousness; but we do so at the price of silencing a much larger number of simple and direct people, and lose much variety of characteristics and interchange of sincere ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and the sub-ego below, with the latter's constant reminders that mind is a mere excrescence, often warped or ill-directed, at the apex of the perfect body, is almost negligible. Even, when moral their lack of reticence, their practical logic, their habit of facing every fact pertaining to life, psychical and physical, as squarely as they face a simple question of hunger and thirst, above all their almost complete lack of that modern, development, called romance, which ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... who never visited the East, could have so well depicted the tropical landscapes in which he has placed these tawny tigers and majestic lions. The drawings, like the sculptures, impress us with their air of absolute veracity, and, even in their most dramatic moments, suggest a reticence behind. Barye does not exhaust himself or his subject, yet he seems to have said the last word in this direction of art, and I cannot imagine that his profound and searching genius will ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... often mystified her. He seemed ubiquitous. In one single fortnight he had sent her letters from Paris, Stockholm, Hamburg, Vienna and Constanza. His huge circle of friends was unequalled. In almost every city on the Continent he knew somebody, and he was a perfect encyclopaedia of travel. His strange reticence, however, always increased the mystery surrounding him. Those vague whispers concerning him had reached her ears, and she often wondered whether half she heard concerning ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... comfort of the soldiers. In this noble work she came to realize how many other hearts besides her own carried a burden, and to feel a kinship of sorrow with them. Her engagement to Manson seemed to be generally known and the common burden soon obliterated her first girlish reticence concerning it. ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... and next to nothing of his father. And because of the apparent mystery with which the Prince was surrounded before his son: his mother's reluctance in speaking of him, the serfs' sign for avoidance of the evil-eye when the master was mentioned, even Monsieur Ludmillo's careful reticence on the subject, Michael came, by degrees, to play a foremost part in his son's imaginings: a part at once heroic and terrible. Ivan knew very well that his father was not a good man: that he frequently ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... case—corrupt good manners. If your intended speech is a sensible one, the present is as good a time, and Bedford Square as good a place, as you are likely to find for it. If it is otherwise, confess that you have decided to leave it unsaid. But do not postpone it. Reticence is always an error—even on the treasury bench. It is doubly erroneous in dealing with me; for I have a constitutional antipathy ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... together, making a brave effort to keep back the words which strove to escape, and he was rewarded for his reticence by ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... question is still sub judice, and I must therefore speak of it with some reticence. But all who are interested in M. Zola's origin and career will do well to read the admirable volume written by M. Jacques Dhur, and entitled 'Le Pere d'Emile Zola,' which the Societe Libre d'Edition ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... went westwards, the story of his disappointments, doubts, hopes, veerings, and final despair. Hyacinth spoke unwillingly at first, giving no more than necessary answers to the questions. Then, because he found that reticence called down on him fresh and more detailed inquiries, and also because the priest's evident and sympathetic interest redeemed a prying curiosity from offensiveness, he told his tale more freely. Very soon there was no more need of questioning, and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... same reticence at the settlement, tho he was received with a demonstration that was ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... that," exclaimed Ernest Wilton, pained at the interpretation put upon his reticence in accepting the offer of the position made him. "Nothing was further from my thoughts. I am too well acquainted with the open-handedness of the mining fraternity in the Golden State and elsewhere ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the commander, and equally of the young officer schooling himself to the ways of the service, is the seeking of means to break down the natural timidity and reticence of the great ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Notice the reticence with which the mere fact of the murder is stated—no details given. Keats wants the prevailing feeling to be one of pity ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... "Khovanchtchina" are full, that makes Wagner seem plebeian and bourgeois. Peasant-like though the music is, reeking of the soil, rude and powerful, it still seems to refer to a mind of a prouder, finer sort than that of the other man. The reticence, the directness, the innocence of any theatricality, the avoidance of all that is purely effective, the dignity of expression, the salt and irony, the round, full ring of every detail are good and fortifying after the scoriac inundations of Wagner's genius. The gaunt ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... I fear you are inclined to concealment and to reticence, qualities a young girl should not cultivate—I am now speaking for dear Sister Maria Beroth—and I hope you will carefully consider the advantages you will derive from cultivating a more ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... of Orange neither by word or look indicated that all this was new to him, and the king remained in ignorance of how completely he had betrayed the plans of himself and Philip. It was his presence of mind and reticence, while listening to this astounding relation, that gained for the Prince of Orange the title of William the Silent. Horror struck at the plot he had discovered, the prince from that moment threw himself into the cause of the Protestants of the Netherlands, and speedily became ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... obtained intimations of the conspiracy of their enemies by letters from Germany, Spain, and Italy, before any tidings of it reached the ears of their spies carefully posted in every part of the kingdom. So close a reticence augured ill for the permanence of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... report upon my election, I have come to tell everything to you, as to a confessor, a priest, begging you not to divulge a word of this conversation, even in the interest of my cause. I ask nothing but that, my dear colleague,—absolute reticence on this subject; for the rest I rely upon your justice ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... with frightful evidence a boundless ambition and thirst after greatness, regardless of all means and consequences. Thus, in the preface to Machiavelli's Florentine history, in which he blames his predecessors Leonardo, Aretino and Poggio for their too considerate reticence with regard to the political parties in the city: 'They erred greatly and showed that they understood little the ambition of men and the desire to perpetuate a name. How many who could distinguish themselves by nothing praiseworthy, strove to do so by infamous deeds! ' Those writers did ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... suppose Harry did not care to spell so elegantly for Mrs. Mountain as for his lady-mother, what affair is that of the present biographer, century, reader? And as for your objection that Mr. Warrington, in the above communication to his mother, showed some little hypocrisy and reticence in his dealings with that venerable person, I dare say, young folks, you in your time have written more than one prim letter to your papas and mammas in which not quite all the transactions of your lives were narrated, or if narrated, were exhibited in the most favourable ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that whilst her father made the most guarded references to all their exploits and clothed them with garments of euphemism, his daughter never attempted any such disguise. The psychologist would find in Mr. Briggerland's reticence the embryo of a once dominant rectitude, no trace of which remained ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... was made. Our feelings were so intense as we said farewell that my native reserve and reticence forbid me to describe them. But we parted one night in June, with a tear in the throat and a catch in the eye. As he strode from the park, I looked upward and saw in the brown crags above me some graceful animal silhouetted against an opal sky. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... perfected, but doubtless they are, for they have been much together during the Christmas weeks. The Barstows, as you probably know, are still among the most prominent people of North Carolina. Adelaide is young yet and we respect her reticence, but her mother and I have both given our consent and Professor Barstow has every reason to be satisfied with the reception he invariably receives ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... is not," answered Donna Tullia, and the reply pacified the old man; but she herself was thinking what supreme reticence Giovanni had shown in the matter of his marriage, and she wondered whether the Prince ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... made final report that Joan's case was beyond their powers, and recommended that it be put into the hands of the learned and illustrious doctors of the University of Poitiers. Then they retired from the field, leaving behind them this little item of testimony, wrung from them by Joan's wise reticence: they said she was a "gentle and simple little shepherdess, very candid, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... English boy's reticence was this frank confession! and yet what English boy was ever more ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Bat. Tombstones and oysters is plumb raucous institutions to what I'll be from now on." He turned to the others with the utmost gravity. "You folks will pardon any seemin' reticence on my part, I hope. But there's times when Bat takes holt an' runs the outfit—an' this ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... acquainted with you, Miss Meredith," he said a little stiffly, sincerity struggling through natural reticence, like a light through a fog. "I'm no lady's man, as you probably know, but I had to come and thank you to-night. Desmond's quite my finest officer—no disrespect to your brother; he knows it as well as ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... no further explanation, and he could not persuade her to alter her determination. In fact, he was led to see at last, that there was more behind than she had the will or power to reveal to him; something in her reticence ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... must be interrogated concerning the nature of his business. The big and the little man, once inside the hostel, which is their club as well, are on an equality. I did not remind my questioner of this—I merely smiled and said nothing, and he of course understood and respected my reticence. With a pleasant nod and a condescending let-us-say-no-more-about-it wave of the hand he ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... meal progressed, Big Jerry began to ply the visitor with questions, and press him to talk on many subjects connected with the wide world of men; and, as Donald's natural reticence yielded to the naive interrogations, he answered with a readiness which somewhat surprised even himself. The child ate little; but sat with her elbows on the table, her firmly rounded chin resting on her clasped ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... by avowal. In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more desirable than in confidence and reticence toward those ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... limit a figure may be constructed of almost any dimensions. The sculptors who construct them, male and female, hairdressers and milliners, are very skilful, and figures are constructed of noble dimensions, sometimes with voluptuous expansion, sometimes with classic reticence, sometimes with dishevelled negligence which becomes very dishevelled indeed when long out of the sculptor's hands. Colours indeed are added, but not the colours which we used to love. The taste ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... with it. Had he been less interested in Elsa and more concerned about his rehabilitation, self-analysis would have astonished Warrington. The blunt speech, the irritability in argument, the stupid pauses, the painful study of cunning phrases, the suspicion and reticence that figuratively encrust the hearts of shy and lonely men, these vanished under her warm if careless glances. For the first time in ten years a woman of the right sort was showing interest in him. True, there had been other women, but these ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... a Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at last he finally allowed himself to be drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices, hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr. Sonneschein's eloquence ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... composed in the hope, vain as it happened, that the KAISER would break his long silence and sign it. It is the author's theory that it is the inner camarilla, working for a speedy restoration of the monarchy, that is responsible for the certainly uncharacteristic reticence of Amerongen. Mr. TALBOT also interviewed HINDENBERG, whom he found a "broken-down, inconsequential, garrulous example of senility" LUDENDORFF, who was very stiff and proud and rude; and the fiancee of the man who sank the Lusitania. His general idea of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... enjoyed a new pleasure, the reward of my prowess, in the now loosened tongue of Mr. Sim. Candlish was still obdurately taciturn: it was the man's nature; but Sim, having finally appraised and approved me, displayed without reticence a rather garrulous habit of mind and a pretty talent for narration. The pair were old and close companions, co-existing in these endless moors in a brotherhood of silence such as I have heard attributed to the trappers of the West. It seems ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the chair whence he had risen to receive her, and Miss Pilgrim through her tears saw him shrivel in a gust of utter terror. All his mask of complacency, of kindly power, of reticence of spirit fell from him; he gulped, and his mouth sagged slack. She moved a pace ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... curious and inquisitive of mortals, importuned her in a thousand ways, seeking to discover her secret; but she was a person both faithful and discreet. Of her interview and journey he got only such news as was already published on the housetops. At such reticence he took umbrage; he grumbled, sulked, and would not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was more shy of autobiographical revelations. His biographers are continually reduced to gleaning stray hints, here and there, concerning his private life. [5] And therefore we can measure by this emergence from a habitual personal reticence the soreness with which he now published work unworthy of his genius. "Mr Garrick," Fielding tells us, speaking of this distressed winter of 1742-3 "... asked me one Evening, if I had any play by me; telling me he was desirous of appearing in a new Part [and] ... as I was full as desirous ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... tap the fender again with his foot. "Let me think," he replied. "I recognize that you must regard my reticence as peculiar, Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... half-measures, cannot endure temporising, and are impatient for the order to advance against any odds. Major F.H. Crawford had more of the temperament of a Hotspur than of a Fabius, but he nevertheless possessed qualities of patience, reticence, discretion, and coolness which enabled him to render invaluable service to the Ulster cause in an enterprise that would certainly have miscarried in the hands of a man endowed only with impetuosity and reckless courage. If the story of his adventures in ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... Of course during his absence Bill had written home regularly, but his letters had been models of discretion and confined to matters of the strictest personal interest. Since his return quite a number of temporary coldnesses had arisen as a result of his obstinate reticence, and the retired station-master, after several attacks both in front and flank had ignominiously failed, flew into a rage and said he didn't believe there was any Navy left to tell about, the Germans having sunk it all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... hand caressingly upon the banker's shoulder as she spoke. It was not a time for reticence; it was not an occasion upon which to be put off by any girlish fear ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... with his work,[14] but also by persons whose studies and opinions have been worthy of all respect. Our estimate, however, does not abate a jot of our intense interest in his Book and affection for his memory. And we have a strong feeling that, owing partly to his reticence, and partly to the great disadvantages under which the Book was committed to writing, we have in it a singularly imperfect ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... toujours!" Silence may have been the best policy on the morrow of the catastrophe of 1870, when one single indiscretion might have set Europe aflame. But after forty-four years, and under entirely altered conditions, an ostrich policy of reticence, a cowardly policy of mental reservation, cannot be the best means ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... world was at his feet, and Mr. Die was very proud of him. Mr. Die was proud of him, and proud also of his own advice. He said nothing about it even to Harcourt himself, for to Mr. Die had been given the gift of reticence; but his old eye twinkled as his wisdom was confessed by the youth at his feet. "In politics one should always look forward," he said, as he held up to the light the glass of old port which he was about to sip; "in real life it is better ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... shoulders. His mother likened him to a young lion. Mentally he was slow, but his judgment was clear and accurate. Above all, he was honest, and knew not fear of man, beast, or devil. His life in Styria, hedged about by ceremonious conventions, had given him an undue portion of dignity and reticence, but that could easily be polished down by friction with the rougher side of the world. Except myself and his mother, he had ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... father for any ambition, for any exigency of circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and she preserved silence about him, while keeping me ignorant. Thus without any preparation for the disclosure, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... have developed great strength and accuracy of wrist, and with this the power of composition and design, purity and accuracy of outline, and good chiaroscuro. But the whole race is deficient in a sense of color. Its work is marked by crudeness and harshness, or at the best reticence—splendor without softness or inoffensiveness without charm. In cases where much is attempted in color—as in what is undoubtedly one of the best of contemporary paintings, Knille's Tannhaeuser and Venus in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... own lost offspring had forever goaded her, and to him, with each maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having herself once got the lash, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... contemplating; of the coyote that was bothering and the possibility of trapping him. There was no dearth of topics of mutual interest. Nevertheless, Mormon Joe knew that she was holding something in reserve and wondered at this reticence. It came finally when they had finished and still ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... turning, she suddenly became aware that while she scanned the face of nature her companion had been scanning hers. What he saw there she could not tell, but all restraint had vanished from his manner, all reticence from his speech, for with the old ardor in his eye, the old impetuosity in his voice, he said, leaning down as if to read her heart, "This is the moment I have waited for so long. For now you see what ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... the frankness with which Kennedy spoke, but absolutely amazed at the coolness of Jermyn. At first he said absolutely nothing. He seemed to be as set in his reticence as he had ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... simple childlike conversation. He never raises his voice in anger, never lets drop a pleasantry which might wound or even fatigue his companions, never indulges in those profanities and indecencies unhappily too common in the speech of the lower orders in European countries. This admirable reticence, this nobility and simplicity of manner, do they owe it to education? Not at all; it is the gift of nature. In some respects nature has been very liberal to the Turkish people; but all the gifts she has bestowed upon them, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
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