timidity QUOTES

1 " Boldness in the course of a noble fight is worth the risk...If you stand on truth, you'll only regret your timidity later, but you'll never regret being bold. "

― Charles R. Swindoll

2 " By nature independent, gay, even exuberant, seductively responsive and given to those spontaneous sallies that sparkle in the conversation of certain daughters of Paris who seem to have inhaled since childhood the pungent breath of the boulevards laden with the nightly laughter of audiences leaving theaters, Madame de Burne's five years of bondage had nonetheless endowed her with a singular timidity which mingled oddly with her youthful mettle, a great fear of saying too much, of going to far, along with a fierce yearning for emancipation and a firm resolve never again to compromise her freedom. "

― Guy de Maupassant , Alien Hearts

3 " It takes sharper axes to chops bigger trees just as it takes deeper enthusiasm to overcome stronger challenges. Timidity only increases your fears. "

― Israelmore Ayivor ,

4 " Much of what is considered " good" in little girls is considered downright repulsive in little boys. Physical timidity or hypercautiousness, being quietly " well behaved" , and depending on others for help and support are thought to be natural - if not outright charming - in girls. Boys, however, are actively discouraged from the dependent forms of relating, which are considered " sissyish" in male children. "

5 " Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Dante reserved a place in his Inferno for those who wilfully live in sadness - sullen in the sweet air, he says. Your 'honour' is all shame and timidity and compliance. Pure of stain! But the artist is the secret criminal in our midst. He is the agent of progress against authority. you are right to be a scholar. A scholar is all scruple, an artist is none. The artist must lie, cheat, deceive, be untrue to nature and contemptuous of history. I made my life into my art and it was an unqualified success. The blaze of my immolation threw its light into every corner of the land where uncounted young men sat each in his own darkness. What would I have done in Megara!? - think what I would have missed! I awoke the imagination of the century. I banged Ruskin's and Pater's heads together, and from the moral severity of one and the aesthetic soul of the other I made art a philosophy that can look the twentieth century in the eye. I had genius, brilliancy, daring, I took charge of my own myth. I dipped my staff into the comb of wild honey. I tasted forbidden sweetness and drank the stolen waters. I lived at the turning point of the world where everything was waking up new - the New Drama, the New Novel, New Journalism, New Hedonism, New Paganism, even the New Woman. Where were you when all this was happening? "

― , The Invention of Love

6 " There is a heady sense of manhood that comes from advancing from apathy to commitment, from timidity to courage, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last. "

― David T. Dellinger , From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter

7 " What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good. "

― Maya Angelou

8 " Here all fear of one another, all timidity about praying freely in one's own words in the presence of others may be put aside where in all simplicity and soberness the common, brotherly prayer is lifted to God by one of the brethren. But likewise all comment and criticism must cease whenever words of prayer howsoever halting are offered in the name of Jesus Christ. It is in fact the most normal thing in the common Christian life to pray together. "

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

9 " The fear of meeting the opposition of envy, or the illiberality of ignorance is, no doubt, the frequent cause of preventing many ingenious men from ushering opinions into the world which deviate from common practice. Hence for want of energy, the young idea is shackled with timidity and a useful thought is buried in the impenetrable gloom of eternal oblivion. "

10 " Maximus was my model for self-control, fixity of purpose, and cheerfulness under ill-health or other misfortunes. His character was an admirable combination of dignity and charm, and all the duties of his station were performed quietly and without fuss. He gave everyone the conviction that he spoke as he believed, and acted as he judged right. Bewilderment or timidity were unknown to him; he was never hasty, never dilatory; nothing found him at a loss. He indulged neither in despondency nor forced gaiety, nor had anger or jealousy any power over him. Kindliness, sympathy, and sincerity all contributed to give the impression of a rectitude that was innate rather than inculcated. Nobody was ever made by him to feel inferior, yet none could have presumed to challenge his pre-eminence. He was also the possessor of an agreeable sense of humour. "

― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

11 " Father Ratti had often explained, in Religious Knowledge class, that true humility did not mean a sense of worthlessness or the kind of timidity that caused some people to be cheated and bullied all their lives. The virtue of humility, Ratti said, was merely the faculty of intelligence operating properly " The man of wisdom," Ratti explained once, " fears only one man on earth. Do you know who that is?" And when everybody guessed wrong — some said the Pope, some said King Ferdinand — Ratti said, " The man of wisdom fears himself. He knows who it is who tells him the most plausible lies, the lies he wants to believe. "

12 " Tied to the physical, deaf to the eternal, riveted by my own shortcomings, I was thinking only of what a bad choice I'd made when choosing a partner for a chat. This guy was faking timidity to lure someone over. If I said victim, he was likely to start gnawing my neck. If I said vampire, he would demand proof. I hadn't the fangs enough to back that pretension. "

― , Not In Kansas Anymore

13 " The fruit of timidity is neither gain nor loss. "

― Idries Shah , The Dermis Probe

14 " Here’s one secret no one will tell you about getting laid after a date. DON’T TALK. Most girls blame either their looks or excessive timidity for their virginity. This is only true to an extent. These girls are also horribly annoying.”
—Aurelia Nichols & Jillie Bean, 101 Tips to Lose Your Virginity after 25 "

― Camilla Monk , Spotless (Spotless, #1)

15 " Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You’re a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You’re twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you’d have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth "

― Isaac Babel

16 " He walked to the bathroom and looked into the mirror, trying to see himself through her eyes. It was time to change his style, throw off the shroud of timidity and start living his life. "

17 " Old timidity has disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint fun, with which his face twinkles all over, as he listens. "

18 " A shell in the pit," said I, " if the worst comes to worst will kill them all." The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lampshade, the white cloth with it silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical writers had luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. " We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear. "

19 " He never looks you straight in the eye; or if he does, it is somehow vaguely, indefinitely; he does not pierce you with the hawk's eye or the falcon's gaze of a cavalry officer. The reason for that is that he sees, at one and the same time, both your features and those of some plaster Hercules standing in his room, or else he imagines a painting of his own that he still means to produce. That is why his responses are often incoherent, not to the point, and the muddle of things in his head increases his timidity all the more. "

― Nikolai Gogol , The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

20 " he spoke of what he called the " inner history of weakness, of what disappoints us in leaders, the timidity of thought, the hesitancy and the drift." In these cases imagination and will are often blinded by " constructed evils," he wrote. " We falter from childhood amidst shames and fears, we move in closed spaces where stale tradition enervates, we grow hysterical over success and failure, and so by surrounding instinct with terror, we prepare the soul for weakness. "

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