"Coy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 in this kind, as she tells her own tale, "Though ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... crashing bodies and aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing pace, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... but requir'd with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,— Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... one solitary 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
... or relaxation after two sleepless nights under fire. "The Germans haven't any aeroplanes up to enable them to see us and no sausage balloons, either. Since our planes brought down those six in flames the day before the attack the others have been very coy." ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... orchis, taller and finer by far than those in the meadows, and 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 ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... quick-witted girl had revealed to her, in one startled wave of consciousness, the full extent of Lance's infirmity of temper. With the instinct of awakened tenderness came a sense of responsibility, and a vague premonition of danger. The coy blossom of her heart was scarce unfolded before it was chilled by approaching shadows. Fearful of, she knew not what, she hesitated. Every moment of Lance's stay was imperiled by a single word that might spring from his suppressed white lips; ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... little white hands more tightly in his own, and whispered sweet words to her that brought a bright flush to her face and a love light to her eyes. She drooped her head with the coy, pretty shyness of a bird, listening to words that seemed to her all ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... shine no hands destroy, God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses, Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy, Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses Ring forth gold of strains without alloy, Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy, Since the child whose head this dawn bedews is Sweet as once ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,"— "But seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... are 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 ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... to betray the secret reason which Martha had not yet discovered. After the strong words he had taken from her, she owed him a kindness, he thought; if she would only allow the impression that the matter was still undecided—that more time (which a coy young maiden might reasonably demand) had been granted! On the other hand, he feared that her clear, firm integrity of character would be repelled by the nature of his motive. He was beginning to feel, greatly to his own surprise, a ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... sudden fortune, she was at a loss how to explain his defection. She conjectured all things, and finally settled down to the conclusion that he was a coy young man, and had not been sufficiently encouraged by her. She remembered instances where he had exhibited signs of ardor—in one case so far as beginning to slip a hand around her waist—and she had repelled him. He was evidently waiting for ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... she wouldn't 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 place, I'd ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... for, as A. Van Buren Powell has said: "Everyone will grant that in photoplay writing 'The Idea's the thing.' The script of the beginner, carrying a brand-new idea, will find acceptance where the most technical technique in the world, disguising a revamped story, will fail to coax the coy check from its lair." ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Greene advanced and took possession of the battle-field, and sent detachments in pursuit of Stewart. A victory was claimed by both parties. Washington seemed to consider it as such for Greene. "Fortune," he said, in a letter to him, "must have been coy indeed, had she not yielded at last to so persevering a pursuer as you have been." Yet there was no victory in the case. The advantage evidently lay with the Americans. The contest had been a most sanguinary one. The loss of the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 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 ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... of spring! O brown-eyed girl! Gathering violets near the woods, Whose coy young petals half unfurl The mystery of ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... let Anna have six little girls here to supper to-night: Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler, and Alice Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grandfather thinks those kinds are contageous or outrageous or something dreadful and never keeps them in the house. Grandmother ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Athene; have we her approval? Nay, never blush, nor hide your face. Well, well, maidens will be coy; 'tis a delicate subject. But there, she nods consent. Now, off with you; and mind, the beaten ones must not be cross with the judge; I will not have the poor lad harmed. The prize of beauty ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the temperature actually was, it felt raw and chill after the close, stifling atmosphere of the midshipman's berth. It was very dark, for it was only just past the date of the new moon, and the thin silver sickle—which was all that the coy orb then showed of herself—had set some hours before; moreover, there was a thin veil of mist or sea fog hanging upon the surface of the water, through which only a few of the brighter stars could be faintly distinguished ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... seemed 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. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... 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 eye on the Bishop. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... something into their box and rejoiced exceedingly, and departed staggering under the weight. I gave them a good start, and then made the best of my way home; and all that night Duke Town howled, and sang, and thumped its tom-toms unceasingly; for I was told Egbo had come into the town. Egbo is very coy, even for a secret society spirit, and seems to loathe publicity; but when he is ensconced in this ark he utters sententious observations on the subject of current politics, and his word is law. The voice that comes out of the ark is very strange, and unlike a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... some sublimest mind, decay? Nor putrefaction's breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin?— 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids To watch their own repose? 25 Will they, when morning's beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave?— 30 Ianthe doth not sleep ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... out among the 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 a ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... claw'd away with Broad-Sides from any Female before, thou hast one Virtue I adore, good-Nature; I hate a coy demure Mistress, she's as troublesome as a Colt, I'll break none; no, give me a mad Mistress when mew'd, and in flying on[e] I dare trust upon the Wing, that whilst she's kind will come ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... it were best That this language you addressed Unto him who nightly came Down here from this balcony;— 'Tis enough for me to show All your lightness that I know, That less coy and cold to me Your pretended honour prove. If I am disdained, displaced, 'Tis another suits your taste, Not that you ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of the opposite sex, followed by efforts to attract that one's attention by "display" (strutting, decoration of the person, demonstrating one's prowess, especially in opposition to rivals). Then the male takes an aggressive attitude, the {148} female a coy attitude; the male woos, the female hangs back, and something analogous to pursuit and capture takes place, except that the capture may be ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... in your service, rattling a glass down with a vehemence which would have startled a Venus in marble to turn and recognise an adorer! Round and round the Ring I have driven for hours, on the chance of a look. Nay, marble is not so coy as froward beauty! And at the Queen's chapel have I not knelt at the Mass morning after morning, at the risk of being thought a Papist, for the sake of seeing you at prayers; and have envied the Romish dog who handed you the aspersoir as you went out? And you to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... said Ogilvy, "because she's been on a bat and supped somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your pretty paragon, Miss West, was ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... coy coil join loin toil soil foist boil coin cloy point broil joist hoist joint enjoy voice royal noise spoil moist avoid choice annoy doily employ ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... cried he, to that worthy, who peeped in at that moment; "you are right, it is better to plow away upon canvas blindfold, as our grandfathers—no, grandmothers—used, than to kill ourselves toiling after such coy ladies ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... continued oracularly, "there will be a third attending us when we return, if thou hast been coy with the gentle ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... studied Nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... mellow radiance—see her, in her fresh young beauty, seated at the old instrument, the moonlight falling on her bright hair; the sweet eyes averted from my too admiring gaze, veiled beneath the drooping lashes, cast down with a coy pretence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... herself, not even love, But an unwitting void thereof), Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the soldier acquiesced, plausibly. "Let us consider it as if it were in the air—a possible contingency. This is what I would say—My—'the lady we are speaking of' is by way of being a difficult lady—'uncertain, coy, and hard to please' as Scott says, you know—and it must be a very skilfully-dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface. She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it. Her husband was the most frightful brute and ruffian, you know. I was strongly ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "three black Graces," as they have been termed by one of the most pleasant companions of our time, Law and Physic hastened to do homage to Lord Etherington, represented by Mr. Meiklewham and Dr. Quackleben; while Divinity, as favourable, though more coy, in the person of the Reverend Mr. Simon Chatterly, stood on tiptoe to offer any service ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... "Robert dear," said the coy little maiden to her sweetheart, "I'm sure you love me; but give me some proof of it, darling. We can't marry on fifteen dollars ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... second tableland. A grey dimness was taking the place of the dark, and it had suddenly grown bitterly cold. Dawn in such high latitudes is not a thing of violent changes, but of slow and subtle gradations of light, of sudden, coy flushes of colour, of thin winds and bright fleeting hazes. He lay for a minute in the scrub of cloud-berries, the collar of his coat buttoned round his throat, and the morning wind, fresh from leagues of snow, blowing chill on his face. Behind was the slope alive with men who at any moment ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... 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
... 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, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, sisters, of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may some gentle muse With lucky words favour my destined urn, And, as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud: For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... beauty she to all appears And, lovely coy, she mocks all loveliness: And when he fronts her favor and her smile A-morn, the sun of day ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... also they must beautify, When in it there's scarce common honesty. Their bodies they must have tricked up and trim, Their inside full of filth up to the brim. Upon their clothes there must not be a spot, But is their lives more than one common blot. How nice, how coy are some about their diet, That can their crying souls with hogs'-meat quiet. All drest must to a hair be, else 'tis naught, While of the living bread they have no thought. Thus for their outside they are clean and nice, While their poor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to thee, Dame Ingeborg, If thou wilt not be coy and cold, A shirt, I trow, for me thou’lt sew, And array that shirt so fair ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... all the virtues would not suit in the presence of one whose favourite task it was to laugh his so-called virtues to scorn. Such, at least to begin with, was his honourable intention. But the subtle Wratislaw drew him from his retirement and skilfully elicited his coy principles. It was a cruel performance—a shameless one, had there been any spectator. The one would lay down a fine generous line of policy; the other would beg for a fact in confirmation. The one would haltingly detail some facts; the other would promptly convince him of their falsity. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... a secret, but a pow'rful Art, } Winds up the Spring of Life, and do's impart } Fresh Vital Heat to the transported Heart, } I'd have her Reason, and her Passions sway, Easy in Company, in private Gay. Coy to a Fop, to the deserving free, Still Constant to her self, and Just to me. A soul she shou'd have for great Actions fit, Prudence, and Wisdom to direct her Wit. Courage to look bold danger in the Face, No Fear, but only to be Proud, or Base: Quick to advise by an Emergence ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... and an ease of attitude implying the largest range of selection between the forms of Parisian idleness; and even Andora Macy, seated opposite, as in the place of co-hostess or companion, reflected, in coy grays and mauves, the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... cracks a few good jokes, but is mostly elaboration. Opus 8 is a fiery romanza appassionata. Opus 9 is a Scherzo-Caprice. This is probably his best work. It is dedicated to Liszt, and though extremely brilliant, is full of meaning. It has an interlude of tender romance. "Coy Maiden" is a graceful thing, but hardly deserves the punishment of so horrible a name. "A Gypsy Dance" is too long, but it is of good material. It has an interesting metre, three-quarter time with the first note dotted. There is a good effect gained by sustaining certain notes over several measures, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... to haste my carcase hence: Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy, And age he left in travail ever since; The wanton days that made me nice and coy Were but a dream, a shadow, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... The 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
... what request It gave assent, I never guessed. Some prayer of some hot heart, no doubt, To some coy maiden hereabout, Just as, maybe, With you, Sweet Heart, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... up a bit husky in evenin' dress. Talk about elbow dimples! And I was wishin' she'd forgot to do her hair that antique way, all piled up on her head, with a few coy ringlets over one ear. But she'd landscaped her facial scenery artistic, and she sure does know how to roll ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the females at first withdraw from the males; they are coy, and have to be sought out, and sometimes held by force. This tracking and grasping of the females by the males has given rise to many different characters in the latter, as, for instance, the larger eyes of the male bee, and especially of the males of the Ephemerids (May-flies), some species ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... I observed a feverish excitement in her manner, which assured me, even plainer than the coy sweetness displayed in our last interview, that her heart had been touched by her lover's attentions. Indeed, she hinted as much before she left, saying in a melancholy tone, when I had ended my story in the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... coy youth do, single-handed, against a woman who is determined to marry him? Like the beautiful young lady in the endless love-stories, who faints at the altar with her hard-hearted father, the Duke, on one side, and the relentless bridegroom, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... solemn! Was not the solitude enhanced by a glimpse she caught of a restless fawn, glancing in the distance across the avenue, as he silently changed the tree under which he slept?—Then the gentle breeze would enter her window, laden with sweet scents of which he had just been rifling the coy flowers beneath, in their dewy repose, tended and petted during the day by her own delicate hand!—Beautiful moon!—cold and chaste in thy skyey palace, studded with brilliant and innumerable gems, and shedding down thy rich and tender ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the 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 ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... introduced, but he had eyes only for Betsy. She gave him a coy look out of her china-blue eyes. Tilda smiled shyly at Sally. Both of the Johnston girls wore pretty linsey-woolsey dresses under their shawls and neat moccasins on their feet. Sally, looking down at her own soiled dress ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... covering him with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed I am to hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez I hev. It looks as though I 'd b'en doin' the coortin'. I did n't drame that I 'd b'en able ter ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... his Punch work was often irksome to him in the extreme, and many a time would he put Mark Lemon off—now, because he was so well in the swim with his novel then in hand that he begged hard to be let off, and again, because the Muse was coy and would not on any account be wooed. On one occasion he wrote explaining with what weariness he had been battening rhymes for three hours in his head, and could get nothing out: "I must beg you to excuse ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her. "Vigilance in watching opportunity," said Phelps, "tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... sound shall be In the reeds of Arcady, Evermore a low lament Of unrest and discontent, As the story is retold Of the nymph so coy and cold, Who with frightened feet outran ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... am he, And just as warm as he is chilling; Imagine, too, that thou art she, But quite as coy as she ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... as ever like a nervous intruder over the great snow peaks behind the steep hills black with forest that rose like a wall back of the little settlement of Sitka, parted for a moment, and the sun, a coy disdainful guest, flung a glittering mist over what Nature had intended to be one of the most enchanting spots on earth, until, in a fit of ill-temper—with one of the gods, no doubt—she gave it to Niobe as a permanent outlet ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... bell, (That iron tongue of death!) with solemn knell, On folly's errands as we vainly roam, Knocks at our hearts, and finds our thoughts from home! Men drop so fast, ere life's mid stage we tread, Few know so many friends alive, as dead. Yet, as immortal, in our up-hill chase We press coy fortune with unslacken'd pace; Our ardent labours for the toys we seek, Join night to day, and Sunday to the week: Our very joys are anxious, and expire Between satiety and fierce desire. Now what reward for all this grief and toil? But one; a female friend's endearing smile; A tender smile, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... in each. The instruction of Congress on this important point is much to be desired. For my part I think a temporary stipulation of that sort might be expedient. They mean to court us and in my opinion we should avoid being either too forward or too coy. I have no faith in any Court in Europe, but it would be improper to discover that sentiment. There are circumstances which induce me to believe, that Spain is turning her eyes to England for a more intimate connexion. They are the only two European powers, which have continental possessions ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Coy's S.M.; Galbraith on whom descended Colthart's wonderful knack of obtaining whatever he wanted; Storrer Mosh alias Morrison Storrar of ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... lecture course in the college do a rushing business. We just backed into the shafts and took the bit without a murmur. And maybe you think those girls didn't drive us. They seemed determined to make up for the drought of all the past. They were as coy and uncertain and as infernally hard to please as if they'd been used to getting one proposal a day and two on Sunday. Let one of us so much as drop over to Browning Hall to pass the time of day with one of the real heart-disturbers, and the particular vote that he was ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the man in her aunt's house, not expecting to meet him, and the lover had had an opportunity of speaking his mind freely. She also had spoken hers freely. She would not engage herself to him without her father's consent. With that consent she would do so,—oh, so willingly! She did not coy her love. He might be certain that she would give herself to no one else. Her heart was entirely his. But she had pledged herself to her father, and on no consideration would she break that pledge. She went on to say that after what had passed she thought that they had better ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... low voice; the sister was too florid and loud for my fancy. We played at whist, and in the intervals between the games we tested Jerry's wine. He has a singularly good selection. The florid nymph was reserved and coy at first, but as the wine mounted she rather astonished me by her choice of expletives. The merry one had become business-like, and that sweet smile was gone. As I looked at him I gradually understood that I had once more made a fool of myself, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... every joy. He envied not, he never thought of kings; Nor from those appetites sustained annoy, Which chance may frustrate, or indulgence cloy: Nor fate his calm and humble hopes beguiled; He mourned no recreant friend, nor mistress coy, For on his vows the blameless Phoebe smiled, And her alone he loved, and loved her ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... immobility is drawing the iron towards it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent. High-bred bitches will show sudden passions for low-bred or mongrel males. According to breeders and observers it is the female ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... won't say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No, no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could not ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the Italians, talk with their whole bodies,—hands, arms, head, trunk, and all. The ladies, as usual, were each supplied with that prime necessity, a fan; and it is astonishing what a weapon of coquetry it becomes in the delicate hands of a Spanish beauty. Its coy archness is beyond comparison, guided by the pliant wrist of the owner, concealing or revealing her eloquent glances and features. With her veil and her fan, a Spanish woman is armed cap-a-pie, and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... "All right, fellows! Just a minute, please! We've got a guest with us this evening, an honoured guest, fellows. Those of you who know football history know his name as well as you know the names of Heffelfinger and DeWitt and Coy and Brickley and—and many others in the Football Hall of Fame! I know you want to hear from him and I hope he will be willing to say a few words." Childers glanced at Doctor Proctor and the latter, smiling, shook his head energetically. "He ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bodily 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... breast, Love in each moment years and years of rest, Be calm, as being not. Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot. Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy. O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than heart can understand; Perturb my golden patience not with joy, Nor, through a wish, profane The peace that should pertain ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... waste time. Spies, and envious tongues, and vigilant eyes, are around us; and it is not often that I can baffle them as I have done now. Fairest, hear me!" and this time he succeeded in seizing the hand which vainly struggled against his clasp. "Nay, why so coy? what can female heart desire that my love cannot shower upon thine? Speak but the word, enchanting maiden, and I will bear thee from these scenes unseemly to thy gentle eyes. Amidst the pavilions of princes shalt thou repose; and, amidst gardens of the orange and the rose, shalt ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rouges," in 1814, when barely seventeen. He served until 1827, "twelve long years of peace," then resigned. Already in 1822 appeared a volume of 'Poemes' which was hardly noticed, although containing poetry since become important to the evolution of French verse: 'La Neige, le Coy, le Deluge, Elva, la Frigate', etc., again collected in 'Poemes antiques et modernes' (1826). Other poems were published after his death ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... be importunate I shall never break decorums. I shall die with confusion if I am forced to advance—oh no, I can never advance; I shall swoon if he should expect advances. No, I hope Sir Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the necessity of breaking her forms. I won't be too coy neither—I won't give him despair. But a little disdain is not amiss; a ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... was one bold with me too, Some coy thing would say rude, but 'tis no matter, I was to pay a Waiting womans ransom, And I have don't, and I would pay't again, Were I ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... fit you upon all occasions—masquerade, ball, or supper, Sir: you may perhaps wish to go out, as we say in the West, in coy.—happy to receive your commands at any time, prompt ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... with my cousin, Mr. Payton. I met you and Mrs. Moore for a moment, I remember quite well. You both looked almost too young to be married, I thought, but your little girl was about four years old. She was not at the party officially" (Aunt Mary smiled at her own coy wit), "but I met her with a boy much older, who was playing with her. I took a snapshot of them both together, standing by a swing which was in a ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... until at last, one day when I was being rowed across from Beaufort to Ladies' Island, I found myself, with delight, on the actual trail of a song. One of the oarsmen, a brisk young fellow, not a soldier, on being asked for his theory of the matter, dropped out a coy confession. "Some good sperituals," he said, "are start jess out o' curiosity. I been a-raise ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Jefferson county I built a chimney for a man named —— M'Coy; he had forty-seven laboring hands. Near where I was at work, M'Coy had ordered one of his slaves to set a post for a gate. When he came to look at it, he said the slave had not set it in the right place; and ordered him to strip, and lie down on his face; telling him that if he struggled, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... You reckon by, with shadowy hands, Lay benediction on the lands And landsmen, and the eve-jar's croak Summon ye, lightfoot fairy folk, To your activity full tide Over the empty earth and wide. Here be your food, fair nymph, and coy Of mortal ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Where Spring's coy steps in cold Canadia stray, And joyless seasons hold unequal sway, He saw the pine its daring mantle rear, Break the rude blast, and mock the brumal year, Shag the green zone that bounds the boreal skies, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... weather is prone to be coy, if not fickle, the manual part of transplanting should always be properly done. The plants should always be taken up with as little loss of roots as possible, be kept exposed to the air as short a time as possible, and when set in the ground have the soil packed firmly about their roots, so firmly ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... smarting. The one compensation he looked upon as given to him above Adam was the power of attraction, by which he could supplant him with others and rob him of their affection; so that, though he was no more charmed by Eve's rare beauty than he was won by her coy modesty, no sooner did he see that Adam's affection was turned toward her than he coveted her love and desired to boast of it as being his own. With this object in view, he began by enlisting Eve's sympathies with his forlorn position, inferring a certain similarity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to me, Without so much bother; Never let it be Given to another. Why this coy resistance? Wherefore keep such distance? Why hesitate so long to give that brief ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... Who yet are mobile as the breeze, Have you alone the right to be "Uncertain, coy and hard to please?" Our Ministerial Angels (GEORGE and kind)— Aren't they allowed, poor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... Men with pastimes the Twilight beguile, I watch your plump cheek till it dimples with joy: And observe, that whatever occasions the smile, You give me a glance; but provokingly coy. ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... ago, in that heroic time When I, a coy and modest youth, was shot Out on this dust-heap of careers and crime To try ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... we can do at present," Prescott concluded, will be to notify Lawyer Ripley or Chief Coy that we've seen ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... heart to try to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that girl was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most kind to Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she abandoned the ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy fascination about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to, even as any woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and resolved that she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies and indignant feelings that seemed to have established themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... in the nearest counties, to attend a great ball at Elmwood. The old house would be filled from garret to cellar, and the hospitable homes of nearby friends would open to take in the overflow of guests. Dames and maidens coy, clad in the quaint and picturesque colonial costume, with powdered hair and patches, in richly brocaded gowns and satin slippers, made stately courtesy to gay dandies and jovial squires arrayed in coats of many colors, broidered vests, knee breeches and ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours—after a period of coquetry and coy reluctance—were at his disposal; but the price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring—nothing less. And such was the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke—flinging scruples and fears aside, consented. One October day they took boat to Calais, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and, with shouts, songs, and laughter, encouraged each other to do their utmost. The flags of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations rippled and played in the soft breeze, sometimes drawing near caressingly together, again bending away, like two lovers coy to unite. The tight little boat of the Doctor would keep ahead, and the crimson and crossed flag of England would wave before me, and it seemed to say to the beautiful laggard astern, "Come on, come on; England leads the way." But was it not England's place to be in the front here? She won ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... turned away, and stared again. Three tables off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered, was Paul Riesling, and Paul was supposed to be in Akron, selling tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning at him and giggling. Babbitt felt that he had encountered something involved and harmful. Paul was talking with the rapt eagerness of a man who ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... effect it. Be thou no enemy to thyself; my wealth Shall weigh his titles down, and make you equals. Now for the means to assure him thine, observe me; Remember he's a courtier, and a soldier, And not to be trifled with; and therefore, when He comes to woo you, see you do not coy it. This mincing modesty hath spoil'd many a match By a first refusal, in vain ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chased the coy filling around a corner with my tongue, devoured every bit down to the last crumb and licked the stickiness off my fingers. Then I investigated the interior of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... 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, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 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 ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... third used 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 ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... weird stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It sounded ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... Governor and his Secretary were exchanging clothes they heard the Mayor in the hallway arguing with a large German chambermaid in an earnest and fatherly manner, punctuated by coy screams from ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers |
