"Coy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the rise of Hampstead Heath. It was paled in, and had immediately before it a verdant lawn skirted with a variety of picturesque trees. Here Steevens lived, embosomed in books, shrubs and trees, being either too coy or too unsociable to mingle with his neighbours. His habits were indeed peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated, as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... Why be coy about an opening like that? "Clyde, what do you know about Edwin Scott?" That let him spin any yarn ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... give it a relish. There was an abundance of beautiful trout in the lake, but no one could catch them. W. C. Graves tells how he went fishing two or three different times, but without success. The lake was not frozen over at first, and fish were frequently seen; but they were too coy and wary to approach such bait as was offered. Soon thick ice covered the water, and after that no one attempted to fish. In fact, the entire party seemed dazed by the terrible ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... the society was the advancement of universal brotherhood, of liberty and equality, the annihilation of those arbitrary barriers called national frontiers—in short, a society for the encouragement of the millennium, which, however, appeared to be coy. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... great marvels can I work, 30 All the powers of Hell that lurk Favour me exceedingly, As deeds impossible shall attest Of awful shape, Miracles most manifest 35 Such that all shall see and gape, Visibly and invisibly. For I'll make a lady coy, Though love's guerdon she defer, If her lover look on her, 40 The very breath of life enjoy; And two lovers, love's curse under Kept asunder, Will I leave to grieve apart, And achieve by this my art 45 Things at which you'll gaze in wonder. ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... chequer'd scene display, And part admit and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's fond address, Nor quite indulges ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... moon, and stars. Apple of my eye, did I say?—I'd give the apples of my eyes to make sauce for the cockles of your heart. Mrs. Fay, darling, don't be coy. Ha! I have you fast!" and he gripped ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... O'Hana, in which the maiden was coy and willing, the lover circumspect and eager, or at least thought he was, those around the pair were soon well informed; that is, with the exception of the most interested—O'Iwa and Kwaiba. The marked neglect which now ensued O'Iwa took in wifely fashion; and attributing it to ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... remoteness hidden it from the eyes of the world. I fancied as she came—'twas all in a flash—that into this rare creation He had breathed a spirit harmonious with the afflatus of its conception. And being thus overcome and preoccupied, I left the maid's coy lips escape me, but kissed her long, slender-fingered hand, which she withdrew, at once, to give to John Cather, who was most warm and voluble in greeting. I was by this hurt; but John Cather was differently affected: it seemed he did not care. He must be off to the hills, says he, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... curiosity regarding the increase of railway fares, but when invited to "name the day" Mr. BONAR LAW remained coy. Suggestions for postponements in the interests of this or that class of holiday-maker finally goaded him into asking sarcastically, "Why not until after Christmas?" Whereupon the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... though Bel-imperia seeme thus coy, Let reason holde you in your wonted ioy: In time the sauage bull sustaines the yoake, In time all haggard hawkes will stoope to lure, In time small wedges cleaue the hardest oake, In time the [hardest] flint is pearst with softest shower; And she in time will fall from her disdaine, ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... shore. Since the great Pan expired, and through the roar Of the Ionian waters broke a dread Voice which proclaimed "the Mighty Pan is dead." How much died with him! false or true—the dream Was beautiful which peopled every stream With more than finny tenants, and adorned The woods and waters with coy nymphs that scorned Pursuing Deities, or in the embrace Of gods brought forth the high heroic race 10 Whose names are on the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the shadow of the room. She was trembling, and as she leaned toward him she was very different from the coy girl who had so long held him aloof. He took her ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... not coy, but use your lungs, And while ye may, cry "Waiter!" For having held just now your tongues, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... face! In Memory's dim eye it yet appears Crowned, as it then seemed, with a chearful grace. Young prattling Maiden, on the Thames' fair side, Enlivening pleasant Sunbury with your smiles, Time may have changed you: coy reserve, or pride, To sullen looks reduced those mirthful wiles. I will not 'bate one smile on that clear brow, But take of Time a rigorous account, When next I see you; and Maria now Must be the Thing she was. To ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lightning reached the waves:— Wherein his thwarted speed appeared more awful As, brought within the scope of comprehension, Its progress and its purpose could be gauged. Spluttering Amyntas rose, Hipparchus near him Who cried 'Why coy of kisses, lovely lad? I ne'er would harm thee; art thou not ashamed To treat thy conquest thus?' He shouted partly to drown the sea's noise, chiefly The nearing Delphis to disarm. His voice lost its assurance while he spoke, And, as he finished, quick to escape he turned; Thy son's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... even as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone, A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy, Yet in thy place for subtle thought's employ The golden magic clung, a light that shone And filled me with thy joy. Before me like a mist that streamed and fell All names and shapes of antique beauty passed In garlanded procession with the swell Of flutes between the beechen ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in scenes of agony. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... to play the harp execrably, but it was agreed that her arms were the most beautiful in France, and we had to endure the harsh scraping of her nails over the strings so that she might have an opportunity of removing her gloves like a coy little girl. What can I say of the others, except that they vied with one another in all those affectations and fatuous insincerities, by which all the men childishly allowed themselves to be duped. One alone was really pretty, said nothing, and gave pleasure by her very lack of artificiality. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... down, and the dancing began, to the flamenco music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the fandango, the bolero, the malaguena, the chaquera vella; all the classical dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the woman yielding in passionate ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is a coy maid— She has a habit quaint Of making eyes at millionaires And winking at ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the man upstairs; Mrs. Kirkpatrick trying hard to look as if nothing had happened, for she particularly wished 'to prepare' Lady Cumnor; that is to say, to give her version of Mr Gibson's extreme urgency, and her own coy unwillingness. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be so hot, my Valour's coy, And shall be courted when you want it next. [Puts up ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... wild and coy, Fickle, mysterious, and shy . . . And so we lost you, Love and I! And now, at last, because we find Your golden footprints, Love the boy, Dreams you are near . . . but Love is blind! Yet, surely Sorrow's arms unwind From this tired heart, and dark distress Fades softly . . . softly from ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... How do I lament thy downfall? Thy ruin could never be meditated by any who meant well to English liberty. No modern lyceum will ever equal thy glory: whether in soft pastorals thou didst sing the flames of pampered apprentices and coy cook maids; or mournful ditties of departing lovers; or if to Maeonian strains thou raisedst thy voice, to record the stratagems, the arduous exploits, and the nocturnal scalade of needy heroes, the terror of your peaceful citizens, describing the ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... even felt that it was very possible for Arthur to love the gentle little girl who smoothed his pillows so tenderly and whose fingers threaded so lovingly the damp, brown locks when she thought he, Thornton, was not looking on. She was very coy of him and very distant towards him, too, for she had not forgotten his sin, and she treated him at first with a reserve for which he could not account. But, as the days went on, and Arthur grew so sick that his parishioners ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... tale. So romantic is it that I shall be forced to pry into the coy recesses of the mind in order to exhibit a connected, reasonable affair, not only of a man and his wife prosperously seated in the mean of things, nel mezzo del cammin in space as well as time—for the Macartneys belonged to the middle class, and were well on to the middle of life themselves—, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... allude to him in public as His Reverence!" Olive sighed. "It is almost as bad as her coy flirtation with him, during sermon time. If I were in his ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... newspapers containing sonnets, poems, odes, triolets, and such like, conspicuously marked with blue or red pencil tracings and all aimed, in a poetic sense, at Miss Woppit's virgin heart. This was the subtle work of the gifted Jake Dodsley! This was his ingenious way of storming the citadel of the coy maiden's affections. ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... congress appointed commissioners to visit the Arkansas territory accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. This expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly, M'Coy, Wash Hood, and John Bell. See the different reports of the commissioners, and their journal, in the documents of congress, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... hunt the deer, With a hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! It was the spring-time of the year, Hey ho, Dolly shut her eyes! King Rufus was a bully boy, He hunted all the day for joy, Sweet Dolly she was ever coy: And who would e'er be wise That looked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this state of things only served to make the man more eager to talk with the lady. She was not anxious for his attention. Ah! She was coy, and the acquaintance was to have the zest of being no lightly won friendship. All the better. He watched her as she talked, noted every charm of lash and lid and curving lip; stared so continually that she finally gave up looking his way at all, even when she was obliged to answer ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... youth gay, Rough rivals, essay To rive and riddle each butt, Sage sires stand by, And coy maidens cry, To welcome ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... he was the victim of a plot which his friends, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. M'Coy and Mr. Power had disclosed to Mrs. Kernan in the parlour. The idea been Mr. Power's, but its development was entrusted to Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Kernan came of Protestant stock and, though he had been converted to the Catholic ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Laura's coy smile hinted many things. "I should say so. Since the very first day in church. He said—but I don't like to tell you what ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... young people strolled out into the garden, and Katie, as was her wont, insisted on Harry Norman rowing her over to her damp paradise in the middle of the river. He attempted, vainly, to induce Gertrude to accompany them. Gertrude was either coy with her lover, or indifferent; for very few were the occasions on which she could be induced to gratify him with the rapture of a tete-a-tete encounter. So that, in fact, Harry Norman's Sunday visits were generally moments of expected bliss of which ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says she's going to the ladies' room. She doesn't act coy about it, the way most girls do when they're sitting ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... in the Rue du Doyenne, could know nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to the utmost—all along the line, as the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of the rhyming couplet was not more displeasing to Milton's ear than the continued emphatic bark of a series of short sentences. Accustomed as he was to the heavy-armed processional manner of scholarly Renaissance prose, he felt it an indignity to "lie at the mercy of a coy, flirting style; to be girded with frumps and curtal jibes, by one who makes sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were confiscate." Later on in the Apology he returns to this grievance, and describes how his ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... I then felt my first real passion. I thought I had loved before, but no, it was only a dream; the dream of the village schoolboy, who saw heaven in the bright eyes of his coy class-mate; or perhaps at the family picnic, in some romantic dell, had tasted the rosy cheek of his ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... why should I repine, Since all the roving birds are mine? The thrush and linnet in the vale, The sweet sequester'd nightingale, The bulfinch, wren, and wood-lark, all Obey my summons when I call: O! could I form some cunning snare To catch the coy, coquetting fair, In Cupid's filmy web so fine, The pretty girls should all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... the illusive glitter of fashion as though it was a crown of glory, and could impart dignity and peace to its wearer. We hunt after pleasure as though it could be found by searching. Pleasure comes of itself. It must never be wooed. She is a coy maid, and ever eludes her flattering followers. She will come and abide with us when we use wisely the world and its good things. But we must put things to their true use, else pleasure will keep away. Oh, how much might we enjoy life if we would put ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... see it without being rude; but the blindness of egotism and vast self-appreciation was upon him and he thought her only charmingly coy; probably with the intent to thus conceal her love ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... matter's not so far gone As you suppose: Two words t' a bargain: That may be done, and time enough, When you have given downright proof; And yet 'tis no fantastic pique 545 I have to love, nor coy dislike: 'Tis no implicit, nice aversion T' your conversation, mein, or person, But a just fear, lest you should prove False and perfidious in love:, 550 For if I thought you could be true, I could love twice as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... poultice, and put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl's eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning were as far from her as was active, tumultuous ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... and dwelt in the tents of those besotted people, till thou hast become a partaker in their follies. How could I dream that he would have made scruples about a few years' youth or age, when the advantages of the match were so evident? And thou knowest, there would have been no moving yonder coy wench to be so frank as this coming Countess here, who hangs on our arms as dead a weight as a wool pack. I loved the lad too, and would have done him a kindness: to wed him to this old woman was to ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... may have been gathered from the few remarks which he had found it possible to introduce in the course of the evening, was a young gentleman of a peculiarly solid form of intellect, coy and retiring before the mysterious and the uncommon, with a constitutional dislike of paradox. During the restaurant dinner he had been forced to listen in almost absolute silence to a strange tissue ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... great readers and are knowing and knowledgeable. Those who drift away from country life are for the most part men who hustle after the coy damsel fortune by searching for minerals, and just as many who have succeeded in that arduous passion settle quietly on the land. Each may and does desire amendments to and amelioration in his lot. There is still left to all the healthy ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... be undone. The wise—and they included all his social world and many who were not of it—could see just how he had been living. The article which accompanied the pictures told how he had followed Jennie from Cleveland to Chicago, how she had been coy and distant and that he had to court her a long time to win her consent. This was to explain their living together on the North Side. Lester realized that this was an asinine attempt to sugar-coat the true story and it made him angry. Still he preferred to have it that ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... with a shake of the eyeglass, to shift and sidle again, as if distinctly excited by the subject. But it was as if his very excitement made the poor gentleman a trifle coy. "Are ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... vatsohever. All I shall 'ave ze honour of showing you will be perform by simple Sloight of 'and, or Ledger-dee-Mang! (He invites any member of the Audience to step up and assist him, but the spectators remain coy.) I see zat I 'ave not to-night so larsh an orjence to select from as usual, still I 'ope——(Here one of the obvious Confederates slouches up, and joins him on the platform. ) Ah, zat is goot! I am vair moch oblige to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... you must be how Benedick is in love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference.' They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said: 'No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock.' 'But are you sure,' said Ursula, 'that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?' Hero replied: 'So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick, never to let Beatrice know of it.' ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... we must all be prepared for trials in this rugged world, but then, according to my experience, we are the better for them in the end. If the lady is obdurate or coy, or if her friends throw obstacles in the way, or if want of means exist, we must try to win her by greater attention, or sometimes by pretended indifference, or we must set to work to overcome the obstacles, or to gain the means which are wanting, and we shall enjoy ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... spirits of the Spring sweet breeze Came thronging round me, soft and coy, Light wood-nymphs sported in the trees, And laughing ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay listening to the soughing of the wind, and thinking of Mr. Jaffrey's illusion. It had amused me at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead, I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear, with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord let fly a peal of laughter. It had been a supper of copious wine, and the songs which rise from wine. Nature was excused ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me the beauty that is not too coy," is the Alpha and Omega of his personal creed. How should it have been otherwise? Knowing woman chiefly, as he obviously did, only in the ranks of the demi-monde, he was not likely to regard the fairest face, after the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... isolated circumstance. Pierre was torturing him with his accounts of daily rendezvous: if but for a moment, they were seeing each other every day, sometimes twice a day. And Virginie could speak to this man, though to himself she was coy and reserved as hardly to utter a sentence. Pierre caught these broken words while his cousin's complexion grew more and more livid, and then purple, as if some great effect were produced on his circulation ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reasonable and moderate conversation with that coy bucket I left my friend, and continued on my way with my basket, under Miss Pray's commission to purchase "dangle-berries" at the ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... as she'd got to them lines that the Boss began taking a good look at her. I saw him gazin' into her eyes like he'd taken out a search warrant. Don't know as I could blame him much, either. She was a top liner. Wasn't anything coy or kittenish about her. She stood up and gave him as good as he sent. Next I see him make the only fool play but one that I ever knew the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... deliciously fragrant. In the swampy hollows were yellow marsh marigolds and blue forget-me-nots; on the drier soil of the rising bank the wild hyacinths were just shaking open their bells, and heartsease here and there lifted coy heads to ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Nugent's journal or "Jamaica in 1801." I am persuaded that she must have been a most delightful little creature. She was very tiny, as she tells us herself, and had brown curly hair. She was a little coy about her age, which she confided to no one; by her own directions, it was omitted even from her tombstone, but from internal evidence we know that when her husband, Sir George Nugent, was appointed Governor of Jamaica on April 1, 1801 (how ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... insolent Betty Barnes has just now fired me anew, by reporting to me the following expressions of the hideous creature, Solmes—'That he is sure of the coy girl; and that with little labour to himself. That be I ever so averse to him beforehand, he can depend upon my principles; and it will be a pleasure to him to see by what pretty degrees I shall come ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... scratched gratingly on the tree trunk, and gazed up in ostentatious admiration at the coy Simon Cameron. The Persian, like all his kind, was foolishly open to admiration. Brice's look, his crooning voice, his entertaining fashion of scratching the tree for the cat's amusement all these proved a genuine lure. Down the tree started Simon Cameron, moving backward, ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... oft Meet a guerdon, coy and soft, And timid lovers sometimes find Reward both merciful and kind: Yet to the lips prefer the feet Seems to my mind ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores of the Hellespont—not ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in a hurry," said Bonteen. "I'll bet you a sovereign Finn votes with us yet. There's nothing like being a little coy to set off a girl's charms. I'll bet you a sovereign, Ratler, that Finn goes out into the lobby with you and me against ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... into a fervent description of many meetings with his coy subjects, and the tricks he was compelled to resort to in order to let them understand ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... long since been lost to the man's, as with bent head she listened intently, for the first time amazed at what she had been to a man whose ideals were of the highest and his ways beyond reproach. A coy upward lift of the proudly carried head—a mere glance of transient reply—too brief for the man to read—might have meant, "Have not I too been careful ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... fire always burned there on cool evenings, and moreover, he escaped the ragtime that nightly filled the community room where the piano was, the interminable arguments anent the European war, and the coy ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she minced her huge ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... bent me down. To you, Paolo, I could look, however, Were my hump made a mountain. Bless him, God! Pour everlasting bounties on his head! Make Croesus jealous of his treasury, Achilles of his arms, Endymion Of his fresh beauties,—though the coy one lay, Blushing beneath Diana's earliest kiss, On grassy Latmos; and may every good, Beyond man's sight, though in the ken of heaven, Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes; My heart is beating with a lighter ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... may not yet be generally accepted, and though Bishop Colenso's criticisms may still lie, formally, under ecclesiastical ban, yet the Church has not wholly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the scientific tempter; and many a coy divine, while "crying I will ne'er consent," has consented to the proposals of that scientific criticism which the memorialists renounce ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... seems to have had an ingenious and enterprising mind. At a General Court held at Boston, Sept. 6, 1638, it was voted that, "Whereas Emanuel Downing, Esq., hath brought over, at his great charges, all things fitting for taking wild fowl by way of duck-coy, this court, being desirous to encourage him and others in such designs as tend to the public good," &c., orders that liberty shall be given him to set up his duck-coy within the limits of Salem; and all persons are forbidden to ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... [Footnote 8: Coy as was the Brahman in the adoption of the new gods he was wise enough to give them some place in his pantheon, or he would have offended his laity. Thus he recognizes K[a]l[i] as well as Cr[i]; in fact he prefers to recognize the female divinities ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... ecstasy that 'tis the most beautiful Snuff he ever put to his Nose. He bought a Pound of it, for which De Suaso charged him at the moderate rate of Four Guineas; and desires to know his Lodging, that he may send his Friends to buy some of this Incomparable Mixture. The Artful Rogue then affects the Coy, says that his Stock of the Snuff is very low, and by degrees raises his price to Eleven Pistoles a Pound, until the English in Brussels have been half-poisoned with his filthy Remnant; when there comes upon the scene a certain Mr. Dubiggin, a rich old English Merchant ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... usage in her, grew very distastefull to Anastasio, and so unsufferable, that after a long time of fruitlesse service, requited still with nothing but coy disdaine; desperate resolutions entred into his brain, and often he was minded to kill himselfe. But better thoughts supplanting those furious passions, he abstained from any such violent act; and governed ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... anything which is necessary to the health and well-being of any other group, is bound to be pursued, wooed, bribed, paid. The monopolistic class, or sex, in turn, learns to withhold, to barter, to become "uncertain, coy and hard to please," to enhance and raise the price of her commodity, even though the economic basis of the transaction be utterly concealed or disguised. All this is exactly as natural and inevitable as a group of wage ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... though Belimperia seem thus coy Let reason hold you in your wonted joy; In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke, In time all Haggard Hawkes will stoop to lure, In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake, In time the flint is pearst with softest shower, And she in time will fall from her disdain, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... never could she be alone. Was she insensible to this presence? It seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half conscious of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceived an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutual understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundred leagues—carrying, across mound and hollow, communication by prayer and wish. Ginevra gradually became ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... tenant in the chicken-coop, once a gay and dapper young cock, bearing him so bravely among the coy hens. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... for his master. He was among the fleetest, and after some coy dallying he stood still until the athletic Sioux came beside him. He vaulted upon his back, and then accepted the seeming ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... the world! Their ears To one demand alone are coy; They will not give us love and tears, They bring us light and warmth ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Love. 20 In tender accents, faint and low, Well-pleas'd I hear the whisper'd 'No!' The whispered 'No'—how little meant! Sweet Falsehood that endears Consent! For on those lovely lips the while 25 Dawns the soft relenting smile, And tempts with feign'd dissuasion coy The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... How enchantingly coy the dear girl had been yesterday! Taking down a Continental Bradshaw from one of the bookshelves, he looked up the route to Milan. She had chosen Rome, Naples and Capri for the honeymoon, and of course she should have her own way! Unable to control his impatience ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... Rosamond was in a tower Kept, as Danae, in a tower; But yet love, who subtle is, Crept to that, and came to this: Be ye lock'd up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides: Or those babies in your eyes, In their crystal nurseries; Notwithstanding love will win, Or else force a passage in; And as coy be as you can. Gifts will get ye, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... should the campus be your joy, And whispered loves your lips employ, What time the twilight shadows gather, And tryst you keep with the maiden coy. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... prisoner there he kept her, In his hands her life did lie; Cupid's bands did tie them faster By the liking of an eye. In his courteous company was all her joy, To favour him in anything she was not coy. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... have meddled in the concerns of men, prying into their plans, and arresting their execution. By my soul, I had not thought you so ready or so apt; but how do you reconcile it to your notions of propriety to be abroad at an hour which is something late for a coy damsel? Munro, you must look to these rare doings, or they will work you some difficulty ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... clasping her hands, and looking solemnly up to heaven. "If, in my eager acquiescence, I seem unmaidenly, forgive me; but I dare not be coy, Eugene; we have no time for conventional reserve, and I must act as becomes a brave and trusting woman, for every moment is fraught with danger. I am surrounded by spies, even of my own household, and, until I hear the blessing of the priest, I ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Columbine disappears, the jest is frozen on the Clown's lips, and the hand of the filching Pantaloon is arrested in the act. Wherever death looks, there is silence and trembling. But although on every man he will one day or another look, he is coy of revealing himself till the appointed time. He makes his approaches like an Indian warrior, under covers and ambushes. We have our parts to play, and he remains hooded till they are played out. We are agitated by our passions, we busily pursue our ambitions, we are acquiring money ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... for no other figure could be mistaken for hers. By all the gods ever worshipped here, she is the loveliest woman I ever saw, but as coy as a maid of fifteen. The fact that she secludes herself so rigidly only stimulates curiosity, and I have sworn a solemn oath to make her acquaintance; for it is something novel in my experience to have my overtures rejected, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to that which shelters thee! Oh, could mine but acquire that livery Of countless charms thy mind and body show so! Or him, now famous grown—thou mad'st him grow so— Thy knight, in some dread combat could I see! Oh, could I be released from Amadis By exercise of such coy chastity As led thee gentle Quixote to dismiss! Then would my heavy sorrow turn to joy; None would I envy, all would envy me, And happiness be ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... master a few pieces that they can render without the notes. This relieves one of that time-worn excuse—"I haven't my notes." This is also the case with those who sing. By ceasing to urge performers, the company will be freed from much of that repeated, coy refusal that only needs ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... paroxysms of anger. Still he kept on working. Then all of a sudden the transplendent sun sailed from its clouds and poured upon him its genial beams. He had at last found the golden Chersonese. His pockets, so long cobwebbed, now bulged with money. Publishers, who had been coy, now fought for him. All the world—or nearly all—sang his praises. [502] Lastly came the K.C.M.G., an honour that was conferred upon him owing in large measure to the noble persistency of the Standard newspaper, which in season and out ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... "Girls are uncommon coy critters," said he, with a grave smile in his eyes. He handed back the child, and once more was absorbed in the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the rising sun, Forth from my burning heart the words shall run. Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear, With discord dark and drear, And all the choir that is of love the foe.— The season had returned when soft winds blow, The season friendly to young lovers coy, Which bids them clothe their joy In divers garbs and many a masked disguise. Then I to track the game 'neath April skies Went forth in raiment strange apparelled, And by kind fate was led Unto the spot where stayed my soul's desire. The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Doc Bennet! I tried all afternoon yesterday to locate the lithersome Clip. Took a coy little jaunt of two miles afoot - some one said she had a friend out Bentley way, but I did not locate her. Hope Doc has ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... came to me, my darling, whom I despaired of ever seeing again—she came shy and coy, I thought, but love was shining from ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... many cares and sorrows were many of these apparently happy creatures weighed down? Even the noble brow of the goddess Diana was not so unruffled as Homer describes it, her countenance expressed care and unrest, and in her great black eyes there glowed such fire as had never shone in the orbs of the coy goddess. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... O brown-eyed girl! Gathering violets near the woods, Whose coy young petals half unfurl The ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... was witty; and as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers, which, however, she was resolved to have, she was far from being coy when an occasion offered: she did not so much as make any terms: she was violent in her resentments, as well as in her attachments, which had exposed her to some inconveniences; and she had very indiscreetly quarrelled with a young girl whom ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... The coy and gentle being had from the first day so fully resigned herself never to step beyond the enchanted sphere where she found all her happiness, that, after six years of the tenderest intimacy, she still knew her lover only by the name of Roger. A print of the picture of the Psyche ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... for an Edifice in estimation, Never was any less presuming seen! It shrinks, so modestly, from observation! And hides behind all sorts of evergreen;— Like a coy Maid, design'd for filthy Man, Peeping, at his ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... she was coy, and would not believe That he did love her so; No, nor at any time would she ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... half of the sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome flirtings from side ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... "The muses are coy, and will only be wooed and won by some highly-favored suitors. The sciences are lofty, and will not stoop to the reach of ordinary capacities. But 'wisdom (by which the royal preacher means piety) is a loving spirit; she is easily seen of them that love her, and found ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... Lucy Lee is on Madison Avenue she insists on her coming right out with us. So I get my orders to round up Lucy Lee when I'm through at the office and tow her out home. Hence this openin' scene in the taxi where I finds myself being sized up coy and curious. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... quality was too hard for use, was for ever standing in admiration of its beauty and whiteness, as a member or two since expelled had been pleased to call it, and was as scrupulous of having it called in question as a coy damsel. I who had virtues, was cast out because the color of it, as seen through the spectacles of my enemies, was not as white as alabaster. Ah, I have wiped the sweat from my fevered brow, and thought what a wrong-headed world we had-many a time! Every ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... such a woman when yo'd come to be one as my een had never looked upon, and this year, ever sin' I saw yo' i' the kitchen corner sitting crouching behind my uncle, I as good as swore I'd have yo' for wife, or never wed at all. And it was not long ere yo' knowed it, for all yo' were so coy, and now yo' have the face—no, yo' have not the face—come, my darling, what is it?' for she was crying; and on his turning her wet blushing face towards him the better to look at it, she suddenly hid it in his breast. He lulled and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fear; terrorize, intimidate, cow, daunt, overawe, abash, deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c 909. Adj. fearing &c v.; frightened &c v.; in fear, in a fright &c n.; haunted with the fear of &c n.; afeard^. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, horror-struck; frightened to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... addressed to a class we never met - readers of Cassell's series and that class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don't recall that it was conscientious. Only, there's the house at Murrayfield and a dead body in it. Glad the BALLADS amused you. They failed to entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much account by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. RAHERO is for its length a perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... huntress Diana—at one time haughty, rapid, imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill. Harry watched and wondered at this young creature, and likened her in his mind to Artemis with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon the children of Niobe; at another time she was coy and melting as Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor: but crescent and brilliant, our young gentleman ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Laura, a Lady bred at Court, and Yet want complaisance enough to entertain A Gallant in private! this coy Humour Is not a-la-mode.—Be not so peevish with a Heart that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it would drop if released. Her lips were red with the rich, warm blood of youth and her cheeks bore the bloom of the peach. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Figure of Twinnes.] Ye haue yet another manner of speach when ye will seeme to make two of one, not thereunto constrained, which therefore we call the figure of Twynnes, the Greekes Endiadis thus. Not you coy dame your lowrs ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... go: you heare what he hath said Which was sometime his Generall: who loued him In a most deere particular. He call'd me Father: But what o'that? Go you that banish'd him A Mile before his Tent, fall downe, and knee The way into his mercy: Nay, if he coy'd To heare Cominius speake, Ile keepe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... it the previous day, so turning two or three corners, I came to the front gate. From the gate to the entrance the walk was paved with granite. When I had passed to the entrance in the rikisha, this walk made so outlandishly a loud noise that I had felt coy. On my way to the school, I met a number of the students in uniforms of cotton drill and they all entered this gate. Some of them were taller than I and looked much stronger. When I thought of teaching fellows of this ilk, I was impressed with a queer sort of uneasiness. My card was taken ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... and when we appeared on the scene I fancy, from all I could gather, that though there were still many obstacles in his path, success was by no means out of his reach. But now all this had changed; the coy Nyleptha smiled no more in his direction, and he was not slow to guess the cause. Infuriated and alarmed, he turned his attention to Sorais, only to find that he might as well try to woo a mountain side. With a bitter jest or two about his fickleness, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... cataracts of melody, pitched in a higher key, yet not unlike Niagara. You hear the cardinal's rich flute-like song of "What, what cheer!" ringing from a wild grapevine. Again he seems to say "Come, come here!" Whether it be an invitation to all mankind or just a message to his coy mate you know he learned it from the same teacher as Niagara, and their voices are alike full of rarest melody. The leisurely golden chant of the wood thrush, where the misty spray and cool shadows enfold you, seems like a spirit voice speaking audibly ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... man to attack by telling him he is powerful,—the drooping lashes that hint, "Ah, do not take advantage of this situation, or the consequences may be terrible, and will certainly be delicious,"—the delicate and shy, yet lingering touch,—the twenty stitches where nine would be plenty,—the one coy, but tender glance at parting,—all this soft witchcraft beset Griffith Gaunt, and told on him; but not as yet in the way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... you preach last Sunday," she said, glowing with interest. He began to look coy. Then her voice changed to something colder than the wind. "The most lamentable sairmon I ever listened to. Neither lairning nor inspiration. And a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Coy as he grows fond, she meets him With a modest show; Shaming truth with truthful seeming, While her ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... in prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... greater number of the party had been murdered off, things went on pretty smoothly, till one M'Coy, who had been employed in a distillery in Scotland, tried an experiment with the tea-root, and succeeded in producing a bottle of ardent spirits. This induced one Quintal to 'alter his kettle into a still,' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... whose skill in the chase procured them, but in vain did they look for the bowl of succatash or embroidered moccasins—the products of woman's labor—in token that their gifts were pleasing to the coy beauty. In vain, when the shades of evening fell, the softly breathed flute lamented in melancholy tones her cruelty. In vain, with tasteful hand, the sighing lover painted his face and person to ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... enough to think of that," answered Donna Tullia, with a blush that might have passed for the result of a coy shyness, but which was in reality caused by a certain annoyance ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... coming, apt, yielding, and willing to embrace, to take a green gown, with that shepherdess in Theocritus, Edyl. 27. to let their coats, &c., to play and dally, at such seasons, and to some, as they spy their advantage; and then coy, close again, so nice, so surly, so demure, you had much better tame a colt, catch or ride a wild horse, than get her favour, or win her love, not a look, not a smile, not a kiss for a kingdom. [5125]Aretine's Lucretia was an excellent artisan ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of the Atlantic: the 840 feet plain, at the mouth of the Santa Cruz, is seen extending horizontally far to the south; and I am informed by the Officers of the Survey, that bending round the head of Coy Inlet (sixty-five miles southward), it trends inland. Outliers of apparently the same height are seen forty miles farther south, inland of the river Gallegos; and a plain comes down to Cape Gregory (thirty-five miles southward), in the Strait of Magellan, which was estimated ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... generalizations. The phrase was hers, and he rolled it over a couple of times. Then, again, her engagement with St. Vincent crept into his thought, and he charmed the Virgin by asking her to sing. But she was coy, and only after Bishop had rendered the several score stanzas of "Flying Cloud" did she comply. Her voice, in a weakly way, probably registered an octave and a half; below that point it underwent strange metamorphoses, while on the upper levels ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the wireless installation; food experiences; "bus driver"; the air-tractor sledge; the Western sledging expedition; on tent pitching; his birthday; the relief party; winter work at the hut; wireless work; dredge constructed by; the home journey; account of Biology, work of the expedition Bird & Coy, Messrs. Birds, Antarctic, weight in relation to wing areas Birthday Camp Biscoe Island ........John, work Bishop and Clerk, islet Black Sunday Blair, J. H., Chief Officer on the 'Aurora' Blake, Cape ...... L R., work on Macquarie Island; ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Coy's S.M.; Galbraith on whom descended Colthart's wonderful knack of obtaining whatever he wanted; Storrer Mosh alias Morrison Storrar of A ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... your portrait shall figure in one of those oval frames ere long. I think I'll have you painted as chaste Diana, descended from the sky, despite her coldness, to lavish sweet kisses on Endymion. You shall take your place among those other goddesses, who were as coy and hard to please at first as yourself, and who are far greater ladies, my dear, than you ever will be. Your fall is at hand, and you must learn, as your betters have done before you, that there's no withstanding ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Bright-eyed grisettes flung coy looks at the young artist as he strode along, admiring his well-knit figure, his handsome boyish features chiseled as finely as a cameo, the crisp brown hair with a slight tendency to curl, his velvet jacket and flowing tie. Jack nodded ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... far she was, so full of grace, So innocent with coy caresses, So proud to step at my own pace, So rosy through her golden ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... spontaneous. He knew that he was personally responsible for the present enforcement; he believed that because of it, Henry Devereux didn't have a Chinaman's chance; he knew that if Mirabelle got her legacy, she would have Mr. Mix to thank for it. But Henry was too cheerful, and Mirabelle was too coy, and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... And then this coy young lady's very power of resistance began to give way. She had now battled for months against her own heart: first for her mother; then, in a far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and purity; and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... tremble into tears, eternal truths, draped in the garb of quaint and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their play,—sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently flirting their wings, pursued their coy mates from bough to bough. Through the raised curtain of the mist the sun—a white globe hardly too brilliant to be boldly looked at—illumined the dewy fields with its faint beams, till the cloud-streaked sky became ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... to overwhelm him for a moment. Certainly of late Marjorie had been uncertain, coy, and very hard to please. Marjorie had suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... "there will be a third attending us when we return, if thou hast been coy with the gentle Seti ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Isn't it fun to make believe like children? We don't often play, do we Philip? You must take my hand very gently, under the hay," pulling the cushion over her wrist. "I draw it away, you see, rather shyly, looking deliciously coy, and say: ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... south of the Mackenzie delta the Eskimo tell of a Supreme Goddess, Nuliayok, who was once a coy maiden and refused to marry a mortal. Wooed by a gull, she accompanied the bird to an inland home, to find instead of her dreams of delight a nest of sticks and rotten fish on a high-hung ledge. Jostled by the other fulmars, or gulls, who tried to push her off the rocks, she sent ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the sad plight of these two friends who were too coy or too perverse to know what was best for them, Johnnie suddenly slapped himself a whack on the thigh. A brilliant idea had flashed into his cranium. It proceeded to grow until he was ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... illusions live anew To stay the soul with coy caresses; But he who only loves the True Slays them again, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... person has been known to express an opinion to the effect that a naughty word would be quite luxurious. The lovers whom we love kiss when they meet or part, they talk plainly—unless the girls play the natural and delightful trick of being coy—and they behave in a manner which human beings understand. Supposing that the duke uses a language which ordinary dukes do not affect save in moments of extreme emotion, it is not tiresome, and, at the worst, it satisfies a convention which has not ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light thingummy aspen made. When pain and anguish wring the brow, She nothing ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... she broke her neck down stairs at a christening. To be sure I shall never meet with her fellow! But never you mind that; I do not doubt that I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and bashful as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss, whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into a millstone as another. Ay, ay; you will come to. The fish will snap at the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek, smooth, head, And kiss thy fair, large ears, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... in thither, and was shocked and affrighted when I saw the sheriff himself standing in the corner with his arm round my child her neck; he, however, presently let her go, and said, "Aha, reverend Abraham, what a coy little fool you have for a daughter! I wanted to greet her with a kiss, as I always used to do, and she struggled and cried out as if I had been some young fellow who had stolen in upon her, whereas I might be her father twice over." As I answered naught, he went ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... had escaped his notice that A Bad Un to Beat was in its third three-volume edition. It was a great thing, at all events, to know in what direction to aim, if he wished to succeed. If he worked hard, he thought, he might some day win the approval of the coy and retiring Miranda of Smart Society; that modest maiden might in his praise interrupt her task of disinterested advertisement, her philanthropic counsels to "go to Jumper's, and mind you ask for Mr. C. Jumper, who will show you the lovely blue paper with the yellow spots at ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... simple ways. Mind, I don't say you haven't done well for yourself, you have—a deal better than you deserve. But don't ever say you couldn't help it to me again! For if you do, I'll trounce you for it, do you hear? None of your coy airs for me! I won't put up with 'em. You'll behave yourself as long as you're in this house, or I'll know ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... as are Marvell's lines to his Coy Mistress, I have not the heart to omit them, so eminently characteristic are they of his style ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... now each passing moment give To the coy muse, with me she would not live In this dark city, nor would condescend 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, That often must have ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least-regarded matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures of ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... for him to finish, but waltzed right in. I danced straight up to that side of beef with the diamonds still on it, and flinging my arms about her, turned a coy ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... kin. At last, she instinctively felt that the burning gaze of a lover was bent upon her face, and, looking up, she saw only the sun in the sky, shining as though myriads needed his light. 'Alas!' she sighed, 'He is as lonely as I, and he shall be my lover;' but the sun was coy and timid. He gazed proudly at her from a great distance, and veiled himself behind a cloud when she would see him, that his brightness might not harm her; but he never came nigh. At last, when she was worn out ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... first sweet warning Of daylight come, is the cheerful song To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning. Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy, On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy, She reaches a hand to ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the trap kind, there is, perhaps, no one more novel and comical than the "Fool's Cap" crow-trap, which forms the subject of our present illustration. Crows are by no means easy of capture in any form of trap, and they are generally as coy and as shrewd in their approach to a trap as they are bold in their familiarity and disrespect for the sombre scarecrows in the com field. But this simple device will often mislead the smartest and shrewdest crow, and make a perfect fool of him, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Cease your Folly, Learn to ease me, No more teaze me. Love's but Reason When in Season: Nay, 'tis Duty, Youth and Beauty To improve In happy Love. Therefore, Molly, Cease your Folly, And instead of being coy, Give, O give your ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... had learned to draw his sword, wave it dramatically over his head, cheer for a few seconds in monkey talk, then break and dash to the rear. "Paterno" was an easy candidate for second honors. He gave a giddy dance and looked coy. ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... I was taken up to "Gibraltar" observation post to get a bird's-eye view of the line. Besides my old friends of the 29th Division I saw some of the new boys, especially the 1st Newfoundland Battalion under Colonel Burton, and the 2/1st Coy. of the London Regiment. This was the Newfoundlanders' first day in the trenches and they were very pleased with themselves. They could not understand why they were not allowed to sally forth at once and do the Turks in. The presence of these men from our oldest ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... guests were come. The Morses appeared first. He was a pleasant, hollow-chested little man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The daughter bore one ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... get those thousand francs! But though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and wary, affected great reluctance to part with her pet, invented a great offer made for him by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint that less than a thousand francs she could ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... pretty interesting soft maiden. The other, however, had attractions of a very different class: fine-featured, dark-eyed, coal-black-haired and tall; as she stood—her right hand holding the rude torch over her head, while the left gathered the folds of a long cloak under her bosom, with her eyes of coy expectation and merry amazement—she seemed more the ideal of a robber's daughter in some old romance, than a menial in a moorland farm-house. I attempted to salute her, but she held me at bay with her hand. "Hech, lad! ye're no blate—is it knievin' troots[A] ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various |
