"Reticent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not been reticent about her feelings made Tai-yue unwittingly flush scarlet. Taking hold of her sleeve, she screened her face; and, turning her body round towards the inside, she pretended to be fast asleep. Pao-yue drew near her. He was about to pull her round when he saw Tai-yue's nurse enter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... picture of dismay. He had meanly ignored the note, with the intention of cheating Mrs. Barclay. He had supposed it was lost, yet here, after some years, appeared a man who knew of it. As Mr. Barclay had been reticent about his business affairs, he had never told his wife about having deposited this sum with Squire Davenport, and of this fact the squire had meanly ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Square. Not your Harvard Square, gentle reader, that place populous with careless youths and careful maidens and reticent persons with books, but one of sleeping windows and clear, cool air and few sounds; a Harvard Square of emptiness and conspicuous sparrows and milk wagons and early street-car conductors in long coats going ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... perceived power in his guest's resolute taciturnity, and the very weight of the silence eventually opened his own lips. From moment to moment the impulse to talk grew stronger within him. There was something as compelling as heat in this reticent visitor whose soul was so intent on inward problems that it perceived nothing of interest in an epaulet of gold on the shoulder of ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... there is always a reserve of energy, a dignified self-respect; there is never any self-abandonment. She has sung first in French, now she comes on in an Italian air, and afterwards is not too coyly reticent in taking an encore which is in English, to a piano accompaniment, and when that is over she hastens to bring the accompanist by the hand to her side before the audience, and bows, sweetly and graciously, with a gesture of the whole body, yet again with a certain reserve, not, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... him. He was perfectly composed, but there was that in his aspect which instantly hushed all sounds in the crowded room, and drew the eyes of everybody in it upon him. The Kamloops doctor looked at him from a distance with a sudden twitching smile—the smile of a reticent man in whom strong feeling must somehow find a physical expression. Dixon, the young Superintendent, bent forward eagerly. At the back of the room a group of Japanese railway workers, with their round, yellow faces and half-opened eyes stared impassively at the tall figure of the ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... then? I was pardonably interested in the matter, and inquired of Madame de Kries. She was reticent, but I extracted from her the information that they were hurriedly married again. One could laugh if the matter had not been so terribly serious to them and to their boy. For by now those events had actually happened, and Mrs F. was not indeed in possession of but next ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... of Matanga, but Drake was reticent on the subject, through sheer disinclination to talk about himself, a disinclination which the girl recognised, and gave him credit for, shooting a comparing glance ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... adversaries, sometimes they find habit too strong for them, and lunge home in spite of themselves. Besides, he began to be really interested in Madame Lescande—in her coquettish ways, at once artful and simple, provoking and timid, suggestive and reticent—in ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... type of angler to be remarkably reticent as to experience and method. Moreover, the tackle used was amazing to me. Stiff rods and heavy lines for little fish! I gathered another impression, and it was that bonefish were related to dynamite and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... more intent than the other on getting a look at the arrivals, and especially at this one arrival—whose age, looks, name, business, and intentions in coming to Lucky-dog, were discussed with great freedom. Sam Rice was closely questioned, but proved reticent and non-committal. The landlord was besieged with inquiries—the landlady, too—and all without anybody being made much the wiser. There was the waybill, and there was the lady herself; put that and that together, and make what ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... never heard. Whibley was always very reticent on the matter. Whether "Maria" really did exist, and the Count deliberately set to work to bamboozle her (she was fool enough for anything), or whether she was a mere hallucination of Whibley's, and the man tricked Whibley by "hypnotic suggestions" ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the limbo of inventions and lies. In spite of certain anecdotes which are, to say the least of it, ridiculous, there may be found in these texts some accurate details and authentic narratives which the Evangelists, cautiously reticent, did not think proper to record. The Middle Ages by no means lent themselves to heresy when they ascribed to these purely human Scriptures the value of probable legend and the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... specially anxious to know the story of that fearful scar across his face. He was evidently getting up in years, and was treated with much respect by his comrades. However, he was so quiet, and at times so reticent, that hardly a word could be got out of him. That there was some thrilling adventure associated with that scar the boys were very confident. The question among them was how to get him to tell it. They made friends with some of his Indian associates, and tried to get from them his history. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... been with are all passing on by rail from Wady Haifa, and when we land there we go in the afternoon to see them off at the station. They are a keen, hard-bitten crew, and make us feel proud of our countrymen; they are reticent mostly, bearing the unmistakable stamp of responsibility. Men who "build the Empire" are little apt to "slop over" or demand sympathy. The boyish vigour remains with them later than with most men, but ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... once more went back to Dr. Graham's. His cheerful demeanour during his previous visit, although he had been as reticent as ever as to his plans, had produced a false impression, and this he thought it his duty to correct. He explained his plans to his friend, and as he detailed the facts which had induced him to change them, he repeatedly expressed his reluctance to give up Winchester ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... that she felt was sitting there; and encountered the only sign Nathanael gave,—the unmistakeable "lover's eyes." They seemed to pierce into her heart and make it quiver—not exactly with tenderness, but with the strange controlling sense by which the love of a strong nature, reticent, and self-possessed even in its utmost passion—at times appears to enfold a woman—and any true affection, whether of lover or friend, to those who have never known it, and are unconsciously pining for lack of it, comes at first like ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... reticent. Uhlig complains of him and of a hostile feeling on his part. What is the meaning of this? Let each go his own way without snarling at the other who goes a ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... he was not without his eccentricities. He was absent-mindedly careless in his attire, unusual in his hours of waking and sleeping, odd in his habits of work, ludicrously ignorant of the value of money, solitary, prone to whims, by turns reticent and loquacious. But for all his eccentricities, De Quincey—unlike Poe, for example—is not a possible object for pity or patronage; they would be foolish who could doubt his word or mistrust his motives. He ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... occupations and to spend her time almost as she liked. Mr. R. duly met her at the nearest station, a town seven miles away from his house, and seems to have remarked nothing extraordinary about the child except that she was reticent as to her former life and her adopted father. She was, however, of a very different type from the inhabitants of the village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her features were strongly marked, and of a ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... was brave, reticent of his plans, not inclined to exploit his own merits, and he did not wear his heart or his mind upon his sleeve. His inmost thoughts were his own. What impressed us at this first sight of him was ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... of voice, more thrilling than her mother's, larger and more robust heartfeltness of tone,—and with the same, but shyer ways, and swift blushes and smiles. In one thing she differed: she was a silent, reticent girl: her tears were not so quick as her mother's, nor her words; she hid her thoughts. She had learned it of us secretive Americans, or had inherited it of her father, a silent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Biography, he did not even know that the original of the letter was in existence. He also tells us that until he and his brother saw the letter they had little idea of the extreme poverty and anxiety which their father had experienced during his time in London. Obviously Crabbe himself had been reticent on the subject even with his own family. From the midsummer of 1780, when the "Journal to Mira" comes to an end, to the February or March of the following year, there is a blank in the Biography which the son was unable to fill. At the time the fragment of Diary ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the victim of this outrage carried to my house, and, his wounds not proving serious, he was soon well, and able to think of resuming his journey. He was very reticent concerning the motive of his servant for attempting his life, and foolishly, to my mind, made no effort to trace the miscreant. When leaving he said that in all probability he would return this way a few weeks later. So, my friend, he ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... gladiators, had already been killed. He must have appreciated at its utmost the meaning of those words, "Cives Romanus." He was a handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to luxury, reticent, I should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity; a man able to express but unable to feel friendship; with none of the highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second-rate attributes at their best; a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed beneath the heel ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... muster courage to acknowledge his wrong in persecuting her? Was he really "under concern" for his own soul? or was he unhappy because she was not more gay and worldly? It was useless for her to conjecture; he was a reticent man, and allowed no one to ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... statement deliberately, having received it from an unquestioned and unquestionable authority." It would seem that this authority could be none other than the authority of the Acting Secretary of War and General of the Army of the United States, who, reticent as he is, does not pretend to withhold his opinion that the country is in imminent peril, and in peril from the action of the President. But it is by some considered a sufficient reply to such statements, that, if Mr. Johnson should overturn the legislative department of the government, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... in: khaki-clad, vigorous, and gay as ever; and when he heard the news he was less reticent, and exclaimed outright, "But what do you want to go away for? Why, it will be quite a treat for you to have ladies there; and who knows, one of the heiresses may be very charming—charming enough ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... plentiful table, and enjoyed himself as often as he pleased. He was a most agreeable man, and knew how to talk. Understood a good deal about agriculture and sheep breeding, and quite enjoyed a walk with Mr. Bumpkin round the farm. This happened five or six times during the autumn. He was reticent when Mr. Bumpkin mentioned the lawsuit, because he knew so little about legal proceedings. Nor could Mr. Bumpkin "draw him out" on any point. Nothing could be ascertained concerning him except that he had a place in Yorkshire, and was in London on a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... went on, "now I am a Vestal and must serve out my thirty years, I'm really trying to do my best to be all I ought to be. I really am. I've tried hard to be sedate and grave and collected and reticent and slow-spoken, and all the rest of it. And I think I haven't done badly most of the time. But after all, I'm myself and I can't be changed. Every once in a while myself boils up in me under the scum of convention ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... knowledge, before venturing upon new things. In art the difficulty is, when one has learnt everything, to forget,—that is, to appear to forget, so as to create one's own style, and this apparent forgetting cloaks an amalgamation of science with mind. And Degas is one of those patient and reticent men who spend years in arriving at this; he has much in common with Hokusai, the old man "mad with painting," who at the close of his prodigious life invented arbitrary forms, after having given immortal examples of his ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... crimes; for when Raspe's little book was first transformed and enlarged, and then translated into German, the genial old baron found himself the victim of an unmerciful caricature, and without a rag of concealment. It is consequently not surprising to hear that he became soured and reticent before his death at ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... forgotten in the charm of this new-found friendship and protection. And as its outset had been marked by an unusual burst of confidence on Clarence's part, the boy, in his gratitude, now felt something of the timid shyness of a deeper feeling, and once more became reticent. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... difficulty, for in the Bush, men acquire a certain pride in their physical manhood, and it is never a pleasant thing to own oneself defeated. The logger, however, nodded comprehendingly. He was a reticent, grim-faced person from Ontario, where they breed hard men, though some have, also, kindly ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... ii., he writes:—" The ill-feeling and smothered rage against Sir Samuel Baker's interference nurtured by the higher authorities, breaks out very strongly amongst the less reticent lower officials. In Fashoda, and even in Khartoum, I heard complaints that we (the Franks) were the prime cause of all the trouble, and if it had not been for our eternal agitation with the Viceroy, such measures ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... a charming grace, a kindness, an intelligence, and a devotion to her husband which the Emperor knew and appreciated at its full value; and though Marie Louise was younger, she was colder, and had far less grace of manner. I think she was much attached to her husband; but she was reserved and reticent, and by no means took the place of Josephine with those who had enjoyed the happiness of being near ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Leicestershire. They were both of good family, well off, and fairly popular, Lumley the more so perhaps. He represented the ordinary type of young Englishman, with a stronger dash than usual of selfishness. Wingrave stood for other things. He was reticent and impenetrable. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Chinese were duly grateful to him for his share in the work. That was, after all is said, the secret of his unique position—that confidence of his Chinese employers which he never lost. Probably the real reason he kept it so well was because of his calm and reticent character, because he could never be moved to anger and impatient words. Sir Thomas Wade, on the contrary, was a man of exactly the opposite type, and his ch'i, better translated as excitability than anger, often increased his difficulties at a ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... life. With these claims on the gratitude of the aunt, aided by the personal advantages which he unquestionably possessed, Arthur advanced rapidly in the favour of the charming niece. She was, it is needless to say, perfectly well aware that he was in love with her, while he was himself modestly reticent on the subject—so far as words went. But she was not equally quick in penetrating the nature of her own feelings towards Arthur. Watching the two young people with keen powers of observation, necessarily concentrated on them by the complete seclusion ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... courage to confess that Landor very frequently bores me. So do a good many writers whom I thoroughly admire. If any courage be wanted for such a confession, it is certainly not when writing upon Landor that one should be reticent for want of example. Nobody ever spoke his mind more freely about great reputations. He is, for example, almost the only poet who ever admitted that he could not read Spenser continuously. Even Milton in Landor's hands, in defiance of his known opinions, is made to speak contemptuously ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "Chinese puzzle." He was positive that none of the arch-conspirators knew; they were blinded by self-interest. And the archbishop? The Marshal rubbed his nose again, not, however, because it was cold. Did any one know what was going on behind the smiling mask which the reticent prelate showed to the world? The Marshal poked his chin above his collar, and the wrinkles fell away from ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Hampshire—every time he had gone there; but, her quality being unobtrusive, he had paid her no attention. Furthermore, both Bland and Mrs. Bland, being emphatic in personality and talkative, he had been the more easily led to ignore this reticent girl, whose function was apparently limited to seeing her aunt provided with a shawl, or her uncle with a cigar, at the right opportunities. If he thought of her at all, it was as of the living spirit of the furniture. The tables and chairs became animate in her, and articulate; but her claim ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... mother, even to Mary, though she had vague memories of a time when he had not been so reticent. That was before the stepmother came, the stepmother whom, honestly, Walter Gray had married because his child was neglected. He had not anticipated, perhaps, the long string of children which was to result from the marriage, whose presence in the world was to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... to the tumult of his emotions, to the intensity of his attitude, whilst he stood there projecting that vague call out into space, he turned abruptly away, with the abashment of a reticent man detected in an act of theatricality, and flung out of the room, down into the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent grace. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... as the two old chums rode away on a side scout of their own, it might well be expected that "Coyote" would be less reticent. The eyes of half the command had followed them appreciatively as the detachment started, Graham and Connell in the lead, Sergeant Drum, and his nineteen following in compact column of twos. No sooner did they reach the outlying sentries, however, than ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and more reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting pantaloons, the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible to-day? Are we grown more modest—or has there come about a ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... their robberies of the public, it was not until we disagreed and "split" that I thought of taking the public into my confidence. The truth is, my relation with "Standard Oil" was different from that any other man ever had with that mysterious and reticent institution, and throughout the copper crusade I insistently blurted out our plans and purposes through every channel of publicity I could command. At no time was there the slightest secrecy. From the very first day of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... practical, reticent. He had the sort of mentality that made him a good follower, with enough native wit to discover his own limitations and to acknowledge Bill's superior characteristics. Both displayed that loyalty of friendship whose rare quality has made notable history. Sometimes their ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... as I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his dearest see the better ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. He was animated enough when drawn out in discussion religious, educational, or political, but he had great powers of silence. I once took him to see General Grant, our reticent President. On that occasion they both seemed to do their best in the art of quietude. The great military President with his closed lips on one side of me, and my brother with his closed lips on the other side of me, I felt there was more silence in the room than I ever before knew to be crowded ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... and most interesting problem for the naturalist." But his conscientiousness compelled him to state briefly his opinion on the subject in the "Origin of Species" in 1859. Nevertheless he did not escape reproaches for having been so reticent. This is unmistakably apparent from a letter to Fritz Muller dated February 22 (1869?), in which he says: "I am thinking of writing a little essay on the Origin of Mankind, as I have been taunted with concealing my opinions." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... little in common with his lodger, who was a thin, dark, spectacled man, with a stoop which gave the impression of actual, physical deformity. I remember that during our short visit we found the vicar garrulous, but his lodger strangely reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted eyes, brooding apparently upon his ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reticent. The moment was not propitious. It was as if a hungry man had dreamed a great banquet and had awakened to his starvation. He was ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... chiefly remembers me as "a splendid expressor of our miseries, with a magnificent vocabulary" wherewith to set forth fearful adversities. I have never been habitually loquacious in life; full many deem me deeply reticent and owl-like in my taciturnity, but I "can hoot when the moon shines," nor is there altogether lacking in me in great emergencies a certain rude kind of popular eloquence, which has—I avow it with humility—enabled me invariably to hold my own in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the happy home. Guillaume was becoming more and more annoyed about Salvat's affair, not a day elapsing without the newspapers fanning his irritation. He had at first been deeply touched by the dignified and reticent bearing of Salvat, who had declared that he had no accomplices whatever. Of course the inquiry into the crime was what is called a secret one; but magistrate Amadieu, to whom it had been entrusted, conducted it ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... saying that it certainly had not been her fault; that she had been reticent and reserved till she had been either provoked or invited to come forth; and, in fact, that her conduct had been in all respects feminine, pretty, and decorous;—as to all which he was not perhaps the best judge in ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Sunday night, and as they came late little Harry Bradley and the still smaller Jennie Bradley were tired, and hence not at all responsive to the welcomes of the Perkinses, large or small. They were excessively reticent. When Mrs. Perkins, kneeling before Master Harry, asked him the wholly unnecessary question, "Why, is this Harry?" he refused wholly to reply; nor could the diminutive Jennie be induced to say anything but "Yumps" in response to a similar question ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the quiet, reticent novelist, was entirely different from the gay, devil-may-care Maltwood, the accomplished linguist, thorough-going cosmopolitan and constant traveller, the easy-going man of means known in society in ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... rhythm, style, and diction is the form of Bjrnson's verse: compact, reticent, suggestive, without elaborate verbal ornamentation, strong with "the long-vibrating power of the deeply felt, but half-expressed." It challenges and stimulates the soul of the hearer or reader to an intense activity of appropriation, which brings ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... held in aversion if not contempt. Then the note once in her possession she wished to keep it a day or so, in the hope that Petty might discover for herself where it had gone. It never entered her head that Beverly would go straight to Petty and explain the situation, and in a reticent freak quite uncommon to her nature, Petty had not confided this fact to Eleanor. And now it was out of the question to do so for the pupils were not permitted to visit ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... would beg you to seek out the captain of the boat in which you came here, and bid him come to me this time tomorrow evening. I would fain hear from him somewhat further details as to how you escaped from the Spaniards, for I observed that in this matter you were a little reticent as to your share in it. He may be able to tell me, too, more about the strength of the Spanish garrisons in Bergen and its ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... called on to expose it. The Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, and others, assure us that in society few would have observed the defect if he had not referred to it; but it was never far from the mind, and therefore never far from the mouth, of the least reticent of men. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... sent Sydney to the right-about this time in earnest. She is a queer girl, reticent in a way, although she seems such a chatterbox, and I am sure she thinks ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... question of the succession they fell into two camps. Vinius was for Marcus Otho. Laco and Icelus were agreed not so much on any one as on any other. Galba was aware of the friendship between Otho and Vinius. Otho was a bachelor and Vinius had an unmarried daughter: so gossip, never reticent, pointed to them as father and son-in-law. Galba, one may suppose, felt some concern for his country, too. Why take the throne from Nero, if it was to be left to Otho? Otho had led a careless boyhood and a dissolute youth, and endeared himself ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... mysterious &c (unintelligible) 519. irrevealable^, inviolable; confidential; esoteric; not to be spoken of; unmentionable. obreptitious^, furtive, stealthy, feline; skulking &c v.; surreptitious, underhand, hole and corner; sly &c (cunning) 702; secretive, evasive; reserved, reticent, uncommunicative, buttoned up; close, close as wax; taciturn &c 585. Adv. secretly &c adj.; in secret, in private, in one's sleeve, in holes and corners; in the dark &c adj.. januis clausis [Lat.], with closed doors, a huis clos [Fr.]; hugger mugger, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not been able to trace anything of the same character in a cursory inspection of some of his romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to conceive of our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his Genoese dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent bombast, with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... lay the little city which had been handed over to us by the French Government for a naval base, one of the ports where our troops and supplies are landed. Those who know provincial France will visualize its narrow streets and reticent shops, its grey-white and ecru houses all more or less of the same design, with long French windows guarded by ornamental balconies of cast iron—a city that has never experienced such a thing as a real-estate ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... night, after he had watched her from behind the sarcophagus and the mummies; knew that only his hand could have erected this noble pillar of record; and most fully did she appreciate the delicate feeling which made him so proudly reticent on this subject. He wished no element of gratitude in the love he had endeavored to win, and scorned to take advantage of her devoted affection for her grandfather, by touching her heart with a knowledge of the tribute paid to his memory. Until this moment she had sternly refused to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... reticent, though, as to sausages of any kind, with the other commercial traveller—the hotel was full of them, and we found it very entertaining after the barren dining rooms of southern Italy—with whom we breakfasted. He spoke to this one exclusively about the architectural and historic features of the ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a moment's pause of wonder and doubt, then a low cry from Hannah, as she flew into her husband's arms; and in another second the whole family had closed around the father and brothers, and for once the hardy, stern, reticent New England nature, broken up from its foundations, disclosed its depths of tenderness and fidelity. There were tears, choking sobs, cries of joy. The madam held her lace handkerchief to her eyes with real ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... gratitude, had accused him of the contrary—the one vice of all others which had seemed most repugnant to his nature. Darco was right, and Paul was bitten by shame. Then his mind flew to Claudia, and he thought how tender she had been that afternoon, how confiding, how warm, yet how delicately reticent in conduct Then he flamed and held his arms out in the darkness, and swore to be constant to that lovely creature, that maddening, dazzling, priceless idol, for ever. Then, like a stinging douche to a man in ardent heat of blood, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... week Burnside and Forbes returned from Paris. They told us their experience had been interesting, but were very reticent as to particulars, and though we tried hard to find out what they had seen or done, we could get nothing from them beyond the general statement that they had had a good time, and that General Trochu had been considerate enough to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... danger of detection, or, if he did, it was very slight. Vincent was not the man to confide in more than one person; he had owned as much. He had been reticent enough to conceal his real surname from his publishers, and now he could never reveal ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... understand but women who have been driven to do the same, was it written. Could she have allowed herself to express her thoughts with passion, it would have been comparatively easy; but it behooved her to be calm, to be very quiet in her words—almost reticent even in the language which she chose, and to abandon her claim not only without a reproach, but almost without an allusion to her love. While Cecilia was away, the letter was written, and re-written and copied; but Mrs. Burton was safe in this, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... in love, as an absolute, well-marked, acknowledged fact, is the condition of a woman more frequently and more readily than of a man. Such is not the common theory on the matter, as it is the man's business to speak, and the woman's business to be reticent. And the woman is presumed to have kept her heart free from any load of love, till she may accept the burthen with an assurance that it shall become a joy and a comfort to her. But such presumptions, though they may be very useful for the regulation ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... intention of marrying money; or he might become the sudden spoil of the bow and spear of some red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred, high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and the period was happily far removed from that of the impressionist, who veils his incapacity under a term—an impression, and calls a daub a picture. Nature never daubs, never strains after effects. She is painstaking, delicate in her work, and reticent. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister's strange ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the street, an unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where some one was working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... visited them or settled among them never ceased to wonder at their gayety, their peaceable industry and enterprise, and their domestic affection, which they did not care to dissemble and conceal like their shy and reticent neighbors. It was a daily spectacle, which never lost its strangeness for the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, to see the Frenchman returning from his work greeted by his wife and children with embraces of welcome "at the gate of his door-yard, and in view of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... an important clue to the murderer of Mrs. Vernon, and it is significant in this connection that a man answering to the description of Soames was apprehended at Olton (Birmingham) late last night. (See Page 6). The police are very reticent in regard to the new information which they hold, but it is evident that at last they are confident of establishing a case. Mr. Henry Leroux, the famous novelist, in whose flat the mysterious outrage took place, is suffering from a nervous breakdown, but is reported to be progressing favorably by ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... asked what he wanted. Then he would shyly stammer out his request. Never would they accost me or otherwise disturb me while I was writing or reading; yet at other times they could be positively impertinent, especially if excited. The islander is very nervous; when he is quiet, he is shy and reticent, but once he is aroused, all his bad instincts run riot, and incredible savageness and cruelty appear. The secret of successful treatment of the natives seems to be to keep them very quiet, and never to let any excitement arise, a point in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... uttered, though she had treated him so badly. And Horace did not care for her one bit now—she could see it, she knew it, he was tired of her, and she was not clever enough for him, and would never make him a good wife. All this our little-reticent Maria had sobbed out in answer to Mrs. Vavasour's sympathising questions, with many entreaties to know what she had better do next. Mrs. Vavasour could only advise her to say to Horace just what she had said to her, and she had sufficient confidence in Maria's courage and good sense to trust ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... called him Vladimir Ulianov, and that's what he called himself. He had proved to be reticent, secretive, deceitful, diligent, and utterly unhuman. His lower lip was shaped as though something dripped from it. Blood, perhaps. His eyes were brown and not entirely unattractive. But God makes the eyes; the mouth ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... history is concerned. She is French, that is evident, and she has gone so far as to admit to me that Louise d' Armilly is only her professional name, but what her real name is she has more than once positively refused to disclose to me. She is equally reticent as to the rumors afloat regarding her. You are, doubtless, aware that she is reputed to be the daughter of a French banker who mysteriously disappeared. This she neither denies nor affirms; she merely maintains an obstinate silence whenever it ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Curtis Hartman was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, and had been in that position ten years. He was forty years old, and by his nature very silent and reticent. To preach, standing in the pulpit before the people, was always a hardship for him and from Wednesday morning until Saturday evening he thought of nothing but the two sermons that must be preached on Sunday. Early on Sunday morning he went into a little room called a study in the bell ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Indiana, has on more than one public occasion avowed his belief in woman's equality as a citizen, and has assented to the proposition that under a republic the only sign of such equality is the ballot. Ardent advocates have often thought him inexcusably reticent in expressing his convictions upon this subject, but such have learned that it is given to but few mortals to "remember those in bonds as bound with them," and no other governor of Indiana has ever taken occasion to remind the General Assembly of its duties to women, as Governor Porter ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was a trim and trig young woman in the habiliments of sophisticated lands who sat here now, her heavy hair, piled high, lighted warmly in the illumination of the window. Her skin, clear white, had lost its sunburn in the moister climate between the two ranges of mountains. Quiet, reticent, reserved—cold, some said; but all said Molly Wingate, teacher at the mission school, was beautiful, the most beautiful young woman in all the great Willamette settlements. Her hands were in her lap now, and her face as ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... New York's oldest family, have wanted in this nest of infamy? What errand of hope, fear, despair, avarice or revenge, could have brought this superior gentleman with his refined tastes and proudly reticent manners, so many miles from home, to the forsaken den of a brace of hardy villains whose name for two years now, had stood as the type of all that was bold, bad and lawless, and for whom during the last six weeks the prison had yawned, and the gallows hungered. Contemplation ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... assistance as she entered. She shrank more and more from him, while a feeling of depression and foreboding suddenly changed her from the bright, care-free girl, which she had seemed ever since leaving St. Louis, into a proud, reticent, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... eyes contrasts strongly with the sombre, stolid expression of the Finnish peasants sitting near him. He has much to relate about St. Petersburg, Moscow, and perhaps Astrakhan; but, like a genuine trader, he is very reticent regarding the mysteries of his own craft. Towards sunset he retires with his companions to some quiet spot on the deck to recite evening prayers. Here all the good Mahometans on board assemble and stroke their beards, kneel on their little ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... recollections, and although I cannot narrate them in words as fascinating and glowing as yours, yet they are engraved no less vividly on my mind, and, like beautiful genii, accompany me everywhere. Only before others they are bashful and reticent ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... she took a sidelong glance at the man seated beside her; but Bull Sternford's mood was no less reticent than her own. Once she encountered the glance of his eyes, and it was just as the vehicle bumped heavily over the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... white man to put himself mentally on their level is not more impossible than for these aborigines to be perfectly open, as children are, towards the white. Whatever subject the stranger within their gates exhibits an interest in, that they will be reticent about; and their reticence, which conceals itself under easily invented lies or an affected stupidity, invariably increases with his desire for information. It was plain to them that some very unusual interest ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Romney appears to have been always curiously timid and reticent; to have suffered from excessive moral cowardice. On his first arrival in London and association with the young painters of the day, he began to feel some shame at his early imprudence, and some alarm lest ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... drowned, he fell in with his Anita—not, apparently, the first fair one for whom he had a passing fancy—with whom he united his destinies, for better for worse, in life and till death, in some off-hand manner, about which he is reticent and mysterious. Anita turned out almost as great and daring and long-enduring a being as her heroic mate, and was by his side in all fights by land and sea, till the fortunes of the Republic of Rio ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... sat with the letter in her hand and the paper on her lap. She was meditating deeply, but what was in her mind Anson never knew. She had grown more and more reticent of late. She sighed, rose, and ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... me on the back playfully, but he looked uncommonly pleased, and said, with evident sincerity, "I am really grateful to you for saying that, for I have felt a little awkward in being so reticent with you who know so much of this case. But you are quite right, and I am delighted to find you so discerning and sympathetic. The least I can do under the circumstances is to uncork a bottle of Pommard, and drink the health of ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... "abstract," "contents," and "synopsis." "This is not the sort of thing for me," he murmured, and turned his attention to a third bookcase, which contained books on the Arts. Extracting a huge tome in which some by no means reticent mythological illustrations were contained, he set himself to examine these pictures. They were of the kind which pleases mostly middle-aged bachelors and old men who are accustomed to seek in the ballet and similar frivolities a ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... field as a result of the tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantly the interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entire command. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent, observant, but unobtrusive ways favorably impressed his regimental comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers. But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon his assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the young man ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion. When imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he was affable enough. After some moments of the keenest mental suffering I ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... sailor, handsomer than ever to-day with a red silk handkerchief knotted sailor-fashion about his strong neck, story after story flashed out, clear and dramatic, from his answers. The bunch of houses there on the shore? Yes, that had a history. The people living there were a dark-featured, reticent lot, different from other people hereabouts. It was said that one of the Spanish galleons went ashore there, and the men had been saved and had settled on the spot and married Devonshire women, but their descendants had ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... destroyed. Those men were selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they subdued their insurgent thoughts—and what that sacrifice meant to them in the lonely night watches I have been privileged to learn—and ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... was not disposed to be reticent. The gist of his rambling statement was as follows. Rich uncle. Impecunious nephew. Visit of former to latter. Handsome tip, one sovereign. Impecunious nephew ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mississippi five miles below the lake, as we might elect. His assurance was that four days and forty-one dollars would carry us to our first objective point. His helpers were a lively young half-breed, son-in-law of the murdered chief Hole-in-the-Day, another big mongrel, fat, plodding and reticent, and a young Indian who could speak a few English words, but was destitute of ideas in either English or Chippewa. Their motive-power was grazing on the open prairie back of the ragged village. The Reservation Indian, denied liquor at home, reckons upon a trip out of bounds as fair opportunity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... there cannot well be a prosecution without a prisoner they are somewhat reticent. Still, Hallam caught the Sound steamer, and late that night one of the officers came round here, while I was eventually able to glean a few details. The steamer had called at one or two ports before they got the wires, and while the American police might have shadowed him, you cannot ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... little heavier the brush that traced Elsie's eyebrows, and continued them a little longer at the temples. Then, her upper lip was, if anything, the least bit too short. Yet what a sweet, concentrated little mouth it was,—reticent and pure, and not over-ready with smiles, though the hidden teeth were small, flawless, and of baby whiteness! Yes, the mother sighed, just a touch or two,—and she knew just where to put those touches,—and the girl had been a beauty. If nature would only consult the mothers at the ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... was stern and hard and reticent in the Puritan character, there was also an innate delicacy concerning the inward life. They made few appeals to each other's sympathies. Perhaps this very reserve gave them strength to endure trials heroically and not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... one point was she reticent. Her father, she said, had come to this country on an errand for the rebels, but what that errand was she did not explain. "He is General Moreto now," she remarked; "and if ever Senor Zayas becomes President and our party comes into control ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... do but agree, and I was glad that I had been discreetly reticent about my companion in talking with the friend who was to gain us entrance to the Avernus beyond ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Doctor Norton observed to Mr. Mencke, as she left the room, determined to draw out his reticent ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that followed this outburst from short-spoken, reticent Olive, there came a new voice; such a sweet, lovely voice with a tender ring that made every one start to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... He had said: "Gov. Walker has said, 'Vote next week.' What for? Have we not made our constitution? And do not the people of freedom like it? Can't we submit this to the people, and who wants another?" But now he had become at the first reticent, and finally said: "Vote." This singular man that constantly kept on exhibiting his desperate determination to resist the bogus laws, really kept in his heart the one supreme purpose to make himself the oracle of the prevailing ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... proportion to the work actually done. Ursula Dearmer is not elated in the very least, but she is wide-awake. Her docility has vanished with her torpor. She and the Commandant both look as if something extremely agreeable had happened to them at Alost. But they are reticent. We gather that Ursula Dearmer has been working with the nuns in the Convent at Alost, where the wounded were taken before the ambulance cars removed them to Ghent. It ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. "I have" he ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sex characteristics of the mind, and doubtless many qualities of the thought and feeling of men and women owe their origin to the same source as brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late forties must probably be understood from this point of view. So, also, must the bold, swaggering, assertive, compelling bearing of youth be interpreted. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... for he is very silent and reticent, but he has testimonials which speak for him, and which show that his story is not an idle tale, but a fragment of history. His papers give clear and undeniable evidence cf his lineage and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Miss Wilbur was very reticent about the subject and continued to receive the attentions of the young artist, Will Beuland, and some six months after Mr. Royce returned to England she was married to the New York artist. No one seemed surprised, though it caused ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... importance that neither one of them should play out. At half past twelve a telephone message had reached me, after having passed through three different channels, that my little girl was sick; and over the wire it had a sinister, lugubrious, reticent sound, as if the worst was held back. Details had not come through, so I was told. My wife was sending a call for me to come home as quickly as I possibly could; nothing else. It was Thursday. The Sunday before I had left wife and child in perfect health. But scarlatina ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... of the use of signs is often faithfully though erroneously reported from the distinct statements of Indians to that effect. In that, as in other matters, they are often provokingly reticent about their old habits and traditions. Chief Ouray asserted to the writer, as he also did to Colonel Dodge, that his people, the Utes, had not the practice of sign talk, and had no use for it. This was much in the proud spirit in which an Englishman would have made the same statement, as the idea ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... congratulated myself on my own cleverness—for it was evident that, just as I had suspected from Rene's reticent manner, even by him our existence at Pulwick had not ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... disappointment, apparently, that she could not visit home. And as spring passed and the summer came on, the little girl budded and opened like a rose. To the pretty school-teacher she was a source of endless interest and wonder, for while the little girl was reticent and aloof, Miss Saunders felt herself watched and studied in and out of school, and Hale often had to smile at June's unconscious imitation of her teacher in speech, manners and dress. And all the time her hero-worship of Hale went on, fed by the talk of the boardinghouse, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... stirred for once out of his slow-speaking, reticent habit. But he made amends by remaining silent for five full minutes before he hazarded the query: "Got something else on the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a spectacle indeed. The retrogressive Doctor Hanchett had been quite an exquisite in the matter of apparel compared with this tatterdemalion. With Dora's companions he was less reticent concerning the character and calling of Posey than he had been with Dora herself. By his account it appeared that Posey had spent about a month in the mines without striking a single streak of luck to hearten him. At the end of that time, completely discouraged, he went to the nearest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... by those traditions. His masters were Homer, Vergil, Milton and the rest of those who wrote with measure, purity, and temperance; and from whose poetry proceeded a spirit of order, of tranquillity, of clearness, of simplicity; who were reticent in ornament, in illustration, and stern in rejection of unnecessary material. None of these classic excellences belong to Browning, nor did he ever try to gain them, and that was, perhaps, a pity. But, after all, it would have been of no use had he tried for them. We cannot ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... only allusion to that interruption and its consequences, for during the breakfast the colonel said nothing in regard to his ward, and the other guests were discreetly reticent. But Mr. Hamlin was not satisfied. He managed to get the colonel's servant, Jim, aside, and extracted from the negro that Colonel Starbottle had taken the child that night to Pyecroft's; that he had had a long interview with Pyecroft; had written letters ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... question of the Genesis of Species; the more so, since Mr. Darwin, at one time, disclaimed any pretension to explain the origin of the higher psychical phenomena of man. His disciples, however, were never equally reticent, and indeed he himself is now not only about to produce a work on man (in which this question must be considered), but he has distinctly announced the extension of the application of his theory to the very phenomena in question. He says:[202] "In the distant ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... corner of the hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian; and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent, without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... quiet, then, and don't interrupt," she said. "I knew London well and he didn't. That is why, as I told you before, we saw quite a great deal of one another. He was always very reticent about his affairs, and especially about the business which had taken him on the Continent. Just before he left, however, he ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... continued since, far more important. It is unfortunately impossible to give any trustworthy statistics of the position of banking in the United Kingdom extending back for more than forty or fifty years. Even the Scottish banks, who have been less reticent as to their position than the English banks, did not publish their accounts generally till 1865. The figures of the total deposits and cash balances in the Irish joint-stock banks were published collectively from the year ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... and however her people might wonder and seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side. The abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was equally reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank deeply and was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be persuaded to say a ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... He came of a secretive, suspicious stock; and had no mind at any time to part with unnecessary facts about himself. As talkative as you please about art and opinion; of his own concerns not a word! London had made him all the more cautious and reticent. No one knew anything about him except as an artist. He always posted his letters himself; and he believed that neither his landlady nor anybody else suspected ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pierre was very reticent in his information. What was the use of telling this young man anything; he would not ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... country in exchange for a horse or a few oxen. However fond the natives may be of their Boer neighbours, such liberality can scarcely be genuine. On the other hand, it is so easy to induce a savage to sign a paper, or even, if he is reticent, to make a cross for him, and once made, as we all know, litera scripa manet, and ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... and her affairs passed completely out of Arthur's mind. He never went to the cottage, or near it. He never went anywhere, in fact, but lived the life of a recluse, growing thinner, and paler, and more reticent every day, talking now but seldom of Gretchen, though he never arose in the morning or retired at night without kissing her picture and murmuring to it some words of ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... it was the preachers who talked most about sin and thundered against it from their pulpits, but now for years they have been very reticent about it. Others, however, have not been still. Scientists have made us feel the ancient heritage that must be fought against; novelists have written no great novel that does not swirl around some central sin; the work of the dramatists from ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was almost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into some new terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before. What another nature felt in opposition to her own was being burnt ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent, and was often misjudged. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore |
