"Coyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dark, poetic gravity of aspect, lighted by the deep, gleaming eye that recoiled with girlish coyness from contact with your gaze; of rare courtesy and kindliness in personal intercourse, yet so sensitive that his look and manner can be suggested by the word "glimmering;" giving you a sense of restrained impatience to be away; mostly silent in society, and speaking always with an appearance ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... you would have been tempted to suppose her a boy in disguise. Yet if you looked a moment longer, the woman in her shone out in every step and gesture. Her cheeks glowed with health and maidenly modesty; and her eyes, that flashed on you one moment almost defiantly, dropped the next in coyness and delicious confusion. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... somewhat of wildness in it, she flung out of the room, leaving him in a consternation impossible to describe, almost to conceive; her mother came in immediately after, and judging by his countenance how her daughter had behaved, told him he must not regard the coyness of a young girl; that she doubted not but Maria would soon be convinced what was her true happiness; and that a little perseverance and assiduity on his side, and authority on theirs, would remove all the scruples, bashfulness ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the nations had as yet known nothing of us and had not yet reflected on the relations which it might be their interest to establish with us. Most of them, therefore, listened to our propositions with coyness and reserve; old Frederic alone closing with us without hesitation. The negotiator of Portugal, indeed, signed a treaty with us, which his government did not ratify, and Tuscany was near a final agreement. Becoming ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to casuists how far the iniquity of a lie should be measured by its immediate purpose, or how far it is aggravated by the enormous mass of superincumbent falsehoods which it inevitably brings in its train. We cannot condemn very seriously the affected coyness which tries to conceal a desire for publication under an apparent yielding to extortion; but we must certainly admit that the stomach of any other human being of whom a record has been preserved would have revolted at the thought of wading through such a waste of falsification ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... for love * Of you, with vitals clean for you undight! And all I do t' outdrive you from my thought * 'Vails naught and 'gainst th' obsession loses might: Couldst for thy lover feel 'twould ease his soul; * E'en thy dear Phantom would his sprite delight! Then on my weakness lay not coyness-load * Nor in such breach of troth be traitor-wight: And, weet ye well, for this your land I fared * Hoping to 'joy the union-boon forthright: How many a stony wold for this I spanned; * How oft I waked when men kept watch o'night! To fare fro' another land for sight ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... exceedingly red in the face; his eyes appeared to be starting out of his head. Horrible thoughts occurred to him. He glared at Miller as if he were responsible for Bridget's departure, and with miserable sensations he began to put a new interpretation upon the coyness which he had found so seductive ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... rode away, leaving him greatly cast down. If he had thought there had been one bit of coyness in her words, one feminine flutter, one womanly attempt at deliberate lure and encouragement, he would have been elated. But he knew absolutely that it was the boy, and not the woman, who had so ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... th' ill-natur'd Crab produce The gentle Apples Winy Juice; The golden Fruit that worthy is Of Galetea's purple Kiss; He does the savage Hawthorn teach To bear the Medlar and the Pear, He bids the rustick Plumb to rear A noble Trunk, and be a Peach, Ev'n Daphnes Coyness he does mock, And weds the Cherry to her stock, Though she refus'd Apollo's suit; Ev'n she, that chast and Virgin-tree Now wonders at her self, to see That she's a Mother made, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... color showed itself in Lady Alice's delicate face. "He does know," she whispered, almost with the coyness ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... only waiting for a glance or a motion of encouragement; and I deliberately secluded myself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette smoke. I suppose it was the working of some obscure mannish vanity—of what in a woman would have defined itself as coyness and coquetry. If he wanted to speak—well, let him speak; I wouldn't help him. I could realise the processes of his mind even more clearly than those of my own—his desire, his hesitancy. He was too timid to leap the barriers; I must open a gate for him. He hovered ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... rejoining of their lives. But perhaps there had lingered in him a doubt of the quality of his reception, born of the manner of their parting; and her hesitation, while it shook his vanity, by no means bade him despair. After the first small shock, he had not failed to perceive the coyness of her; and why not? If her maiden's whim demanded a brief ritual of probationary wooing before verbally admitting him to her heart again, never fear but he would go through his paces with ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... portends: Begin where lightness will, in shame it ends. Love makes thee cunning; thou art current now, By being counterfeit: thy broken vow Deceit with her pied garters must rejoin, And with her stamp thou countenances must coin; Coyness, and pure deceits, for purities, And still a maid wilt seem in cozen'd eyes, And have an antic face to laugh within, While thy smooth looks make men digest thy sin, But since thy lips (least thought ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... hours? It is of the shortest. Yet twenty-four hours, ably and skilfully employed, may be worth a year in the hand of indolent or incapable agents.—Well—to the forest—to the forest, my gallant lords!—Orleans, my fair kinsman, lay aside that modesty, though it becomes you; mind not my Joan's coyness. The Loire may as soon avoid mingling with the Cher, as she from favouring your suit, or you from preferring it," he added, as the unhappy prince moved slowly on after his betrothed bride. "And now for your boar spears, gentlemen—for Allegre, my pricker, hath harboured one that ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... brushed and decked out for the occasion. His head, which nature had ornamented with the blackness of a crow, now shone with the whiteness of snow; and his bony hand, that so well became the saber, peered from beneath a ruffle with something like maiden coyness. The improvements of the dragoon went no further, excepting that his boots shone with more than holiday splendor, and his spurs glittered in the rays of the sun, as became the pure ore ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... speaks of glory and the force of love And thou not near, my maiden-minded dove! With all the coyness, all the beauty sheen Of thy rapt face? A fearless virgin-queen, A queen of peace art thou,—and on thy head The golden light of all thy hair is shed Most nimbus-like, and most suggestive too Of youthful ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... sooner will find out the beds of Snakes, And with my youthful blood warm their cold flesh, Letting them curle themselves about my Limbs, Than sleep one night with thee; this is not feign'd, Nor sounds it like the coyness of a Bride. ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... "proposal" passing between them; I can not conceive a condition of hesitancy and timidity leading up to a dam-bursting "avowal." They met, looked into each other's eyes, and each there read his fate: no coyness, no affectation, no fencing—they loved. Each at once felt a heart-rest in the other. Each had at last found the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... They were not, however, to be contented with one reel; so, after fruitlessly attempting to make the ladies join us, we sent over to the men's houses for the old Canadian wife of Pierre Lattinville and her two blooming daughters. They soon came, and after much coyness, blushing, and hesitation, at last stood up, and under the inspiring influence of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... not leave the Sultan angry with the Lady Bedrulbudour, said to him, "O King of the Age, this is the wont of most brides, on their wedding-day, to be shamefast and show somewhat of coyness. So be not vexed with her and after a day or two she will return to herself and proceed to speak with the folk; but now, O King of the Age, shame hindereth her from speaking. However, I purpose to go to her and see her." Accordingly she arose and donning her clothes, repaired to her ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... listen to! They rushed upon me, shrieking for the brilliants and money which they had brought me as an offering. How they scolded and called me a deceiver! I was only very beautiful and coquettish, and that was no deception! I charmed them with my coyness, and they brought me the most costly presents, because I was a virtuous woman. Now they reproached me, demanding a return of them all, which they had forced upon me of their own free will. I was obliged to ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... difference in this respect between the sexes; but during the latter part of the second period of childhood, boys are unquestionably more active. In general, the girl-child, when in love, displays far less coyness and reserve than the young woman. In this respect the difference between children and adults is most marked. A girl of eleven, for example, will not make any difficulties about the exchange of love-letters ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems and Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarante to keep the excitement going; there was old Methuselah, who had married his ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not surprised at her silence; he was prepared for a little coyness; in fact, for some resistance, and expected to have occasion for the specious eloquence always at his command. Of course, the result would be the same,—he had no doubt of that, and so in ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Anglo-Saxon side, while that of some small shreds of propriety was with the Latins. These appeared at times almost modest, perhaps because they were the conventional ballerine, and wore the old-fashioned ballet-skirt with its volumed gauze,—a coyness which the Englishry had greatly modified, through an exigency of the burlesque,—perhaps because indecorum seems, like blasphemy and untruth, somehow more graceful and becoming in southern ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... was neither a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul; that these must be lifted one by ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness. The soldier and the philosopher wisely avoided the temptation of this sensual paradise: where pleasure, assuming the character of religion, imperceptibly dissolved the firmness of manly virtue. But the groves of Daphne continued for many ages to enjoy the veneration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the old gardener produced no effect—not so much as to make him shut his toothless mouth. Then he remembered that the man was stone deaf. All that time the girl struggled, not with maidenly coyness, but like a pretty, dumb fury, kicking his shins now and then. He continued to hold her as if in a vice, his instinct telling him that were he to let her go she would fly at his eyes. But he was greatly humiliated by his position. At last she gave up. She was more exhausted than ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... dame du coeur of Damon. Damon thought her coyness was scorn; but one day he caught her bathing, and his delicacy on the occasion so enchanted her that she at once accepted his proffered love.—Thomson, Seasons ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... none of these things marred his fatuous felicity. It is even probable that in his gratuitous belief that his timid attentions had been too marked and impulsive, he attributed Cressy's flight to a maidenly coyness that pleasurably increased his admiration for her and his confidence in himself. In his abstraction of enjoyment and in the gathering darkness he ran against a fir-tree very much as he had done while walking with her, and he confusedly apologized to it as he had to her, and by ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... hand, and laughed at the confusion on the table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without that self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form of coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands en camarade, gazed ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... more than slightly skeptical. "Fortunately, however, he doesn't want you. Your technique is all wrong. Coyness and mock-modesty and stop-or-I'll-scream and playing hard to get have no appeal whatever to his psychology. What he needs—has ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... enough and time, This coyness, Binkie, were not crime. . . . But at my back I always hear——'" He wiped his forehead, which was unpleasantly damp. "What can I do? What can I do? I haven't any notions left, and I can't think connectedly, but I must do something, or I ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... you bear, can't you allow a woman just a little coyness? Don't you know we all love to sip our praise, and not be compelled to swallow it ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... The coyness thus affected by James could hardly impose on so astute a diplomatist as Noel de Caron, and the effect produced upon the policy of one of the Republic's chief allies by the Spanish marriages naturally made her statesmen shudder at the prospect of their other powerful friend coming thus ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... strange little laugh, and with an assumption of coyness, that was, however, still affected, stooped to pick a few berries ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... preserve our literary history from the Restoration. This silent labour he had been pursuing all his life, and published the first volume in his sixty-eighth year, the very year he died. But he was so sensible of the coyness of the public taste for what he calls, in a letter to a literary friend, "a tedious heavy book," that he gave it away to the publisher. "The volume, too large, brings me no profit. In good truth, the scheme was laid for ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... returned the Earl of March, who accompanied him, "whether it be not Caesar's coyness; he thrice refused the purple, and yet he ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... not deemed it necessary to indicate to the intelligent reader all of the theories which obtained in Five Forks during the erection of the building. Some of them may be readily imagined. That the "Hag" had, by artful coyness and systematic reticence, at last completely subjugated the "Fool," and that the new house was intended for the nuptial bower of the (predestined) unhappy pair, was, of course, the prevailing opinion. But when, after a reasonable time had elapsed, and the house ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... incline as most natural and best suiting what follows, is that Danger is the representative of the beloved one's masculine and other guardians—her husband, father, brother, mother, and so forth. Others, however, see in him only subjective obstacles—the coyness, or caprice, or coquettishness of the Beloved herself. But these never troubled a true lover to any great extent; and besides they seem to have been provided for by the arrows in the left hand of Love's bow-bearer, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of her attachment; it was shown in every word, every look, and every gesture. When Philip would take her hand, or encircle her waist with his arm, or even when he pressed her coral lips, there was no pretence of coyness on her part. She was too noble, too confiding; she felt that her happiness was centred in his love, and she lived but in his presence. Two months had thus passed away, when Father Seysen, who often called, and had paid much attention to Amine's ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the good woman had no idea that the rough gallantry of the young farmer guests was inappropriate, viewing it as the natural tribute to her guest's beauty, and mistaking genuine offence for mere coyness, until, finding it was real earnest, considerable affront was taken at "young madam's fine airs, and she only a poor kinswoman of my Lady's!" Quite as ill was it received that the young lady had remonstrated against the indigestible cakes and strange ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nose. 'Tis all straight, for what I know," said the widow gently, as with a trace of coyness she gave a hasty glance. "I don't know but what 'tis warped a little, but nothin' to speak of. You've got real nice features, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rosy hue—but it was a small, round fan, and only partially concealed her face, leaving a crimson disk of two inches around it. Captain Dobbs was delighted; a blush to him was a certain proof of maiden coyness, and bespoke a heart so full of love that every emotion sent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... difficult; yet he did not despair, for it was his theory that Mrs. Lee, in the depths of her soul, wanted to be at the head of the White House as much as he wanted to be there himself, and that her apparent coyness was mere feminine indecision in the face of temptation. His thoughts now turned upon the best means of giving again the upper hand to her ambition. He wanted to drive Carrington a second ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... sufficient unto herself, humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is simplicity—which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the predominant dignity of purity and honour—those are the salient attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the outset—the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... claimed their prescriptive right of holding us lingering in their chains; and Lord Greville would do well to remember that his services are too important to his country to be held on the caprices of a silly girl's affected coyness. But be it so—since you are so petulant a lover, be prepared when you join her Majesty's circle to-night, to expect Miss ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... vous les dames sauvages? all pure and genuine nature, I suppose; none of the affected coyness of Europe: your attention there will be the more obliging, as the Indian heroes, I am told, are not very attentive to the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... Jacob, growing desperate at her coyness, and getting quite close up to her, "will you marry oie? Say yeez ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... brought with it woman's desire for equality, at least in the matter of love. She wishes to be as free to seek a man as he is to seek her—to love him as freely and frankly as he does her. Why should she withhold her lips after her heart has surrendered? Why should she keep the pretence of coyness long after she ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... response enraptured Jack, and he caught her to his breast inarticulate with joy, while she, free of artificial coyness, surrendered herself to his embrace and gave him her sweet lips again ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... and walked about the village, sometimes blowing the Pe-be-gwun, or flute. For some time Mis-kwa-bun-o-kwa pretended she was not willing to marry me, and it was not, perhaps, until she perceived some abatement of ardour on my part that she laid this affected coyness entirely aside. For my own part, I found that my anxiety to take a wife home to my lodge was rapidly becoming less and less. I made several efforts to break off the intercourse, and visit her no more; but a lingering inclination was too strong for me. When she perceived my growing indifference, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... to walk there a little while undisturbed, until the dawning became more general, by which time she supposed he might have digested her coyness, and then presenting herself before the watchful sentinel, demanded of him "the keys of the outer tower, and of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... faith I have in my time known honest gentlemen abused by a pretended coyness in their wives, and I had a mind to try my lady's virtue. And when I could not prevail for you, gad, I pretended to be in love myself; but all in vain, she would not hear a word upon that subject. Then I writ a letter to her; I don't know what effects that will have, but I'll be sure to ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... fruit girl, against her as she went by the stall one evening as the sun set. "Prut! so it was no such purity after all that made you never look at the student lads and the soldiers, eh? You were so dainty of taste, you must needs pick and choose, and, Lord's sake, after all your coyness, to drop at a beckoning finger as one may say—pong!—in a minute, like an apple over-ripe! Oh ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... girl, much fonder of Romping and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and Pastimes of my own sex. The difference was more remarkable, as you know the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour. But Betty—I was christened Elizabeth—was always gammocking and tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's apron, or demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to a garden of delights, on the outside of which are all unlovely things. Within the garden the personages and action are allegories of the art of love. Here are Leisure, Enjoyment, Courtesy, the God of Love himself, love in the form of a beautiful Rose, Gracious Reception, Guardianship, Coyness, and Reason. Our extracts are taken from the translation into English attributed—it now seems ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... a great rushing to and fro in preparation. Men bowed to each other with burlesque dancing school formality, offered arms, or accepted them with bearlike coyness. We stood for a moment rather bewildered, not ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... you do;—why, I wou'd have ye—d'ye see—'twill not out; why, I wou'd have ye lie with the Sultan, Huswife; I wonder how the Devil you have the face to refuse him, so handsom, so young a Lover; come, come, let me hear no more of your Coyness, Mistress, for if I do, I shall be hang'd; [Aside. The Great Turk's a most worthy Gentleman, and therefore I advise you to do as he advises you; and the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... oppositions, to give themselves a sweeter sense of unity of heart. The child, with a cunning which only Nature has taught, will sometimes put a little honey of refusal into its kisses before giving them; the maiden adds to her virgin blooms the further attraction of virgin coyness and reserve; the civilizing dinner-table would lose all its dignity in losing its delays; and so everywhere, delicate denial, withholding reserve have an inverse force, and add a charm of emphasis to gift, assent, attraction, and sympathy. How is the word Immortality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various |
