retiringness

Updated: May 9, 2025

But God Himself provides a diversity of work for His own purposes, and at the same time a variety of example for us, when He chooses some lives, and laying upon them, what seems to be a heavy burthen of sickness and infirmity, or filling them with a great modesty and retiringness of spirit, or shutting them up within very narrow and insurmountable barriers of circumstance, says to them, in a voice which it is impossible to misinterpret, "Serve Me in darkness and in silence; and let it be enough that I accept the faithfulness which is unknown of men."

Charles Beard - Beside the Still Waters: A Sermon

Indeed the note, some would say the fault, of Keble's whole life was an almost morbid retiringness, which made him in 1827 refuse even to compete with Hawkins for the Provostship of Oriel.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)

But might not this very retiringness, this tendency to avoid the others and spend her time alone, indicate that she too was troubled? If so, he was her man. He would cultivate her. He would follow her and sit with her, and encourage her to tell him about herself. Arbuthnot, he understood from Lotty, was a British Museum official nothing specially important at present, but Mr.

Elizabeth Von Arnim - The Enchanted April