Top 32 Diffidence Quotes
#1. Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.
Alexander Pope
#2. Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe; averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
Samuel Johnson
#4. Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.
Jane Austen
#5. Diffidence in an officer is a good mark because he will always endeavor to bring himself up to what he conceives to be the full line of his duty.
George Washington
#7. Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.
Golda Meir
#8. Chastity is oftener owing to diffidence and shame, than to fortitude of reason or virtue.
Norm MacDonald
#9. The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one's conduct and a little receptiveness.
Mahatma Gandhi
#11. Hitler frequently demonstrated diffidence and unease in dealings with individuals which contrasted diametrically with his self-confident mastery in exploiting the emotions of his listeners in the theatrical setting of a major speech.
Ian Kershaw
#12. Submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.
George Washington
#14. The true confidence which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence which is utter distrust of myself
are identical.
Alexander MacLaren
#15. A small island with a big ego may see itself as a giant continent! A giant continent with a big diffidence may see itself as a small island! But in the end small is small and big is big!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#16. Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
#18. Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.
Walter Savage Landor
#19. I went from resenting my mother-in-law to accepting her, finally to appreciating her. What appeared to be her diffidence when I was first married, I now value as serenity.
Ayelet Waldman
#20. Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.
Charles Caleb Colton
#21. I was on the shy side at school (one school report called me 'diffident') and Braefield had added a special timidity, but when I had a natural wonder... I lost all my diffidence, and freely approached others, all my fear forgotten.
Oliver Sacks
#22. There is no love without desire, diffidence, defeat.
Andre Aciman
#23. He didn't dislike New York with the simple diffidence of a small-town kid or the tragic ignorance of a yokel
he hated it with what he hoped was his soul.
Barry Lyga
#24. Things come in a quieter way to me. It's not laziness, and it's not diffidence. I just know how far you have to bend for work. That's important for me.
John Hurt
#25. Modesty is related to diffidence, diffidence is related to shyness, Shyness is a synonym for timidity, timidity is a characteristic of the meek, the meek do not inherit the Earth, they serve those who are self confident and self assertive.
Dean Koontz
#26. God is displeased at the diffidence of souls who love Him sincerely and whom He Himself loves.
Alphonsus Liguori
#27. The modesty and diffidence that the penniless, unemployed Standish had brought aboard were now no longer to be seen; and the assurance of a monthly income and a settled position had developed a displeasing and often didactic loquacity. He was also, of course, incompetent.
Patrick O'Brian
#28. The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.
Daphne Du Maurier
#29. It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.
Richard Steele
#30. Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
Samuel Johnson
#31. Even the smallest person can make a big diffidence!
OMAR
#32. A tardiness in nature,
Which often leaves the history unspoke,
That it intends to do.
William Shakespeare
