"Diffident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endeavoured to soothe the terrors of Lady Margaret, and to reconcile the veteran Major to his opinion of Morton, Evandale, getting the better of that conscious shyness which renders an ingenuous youth diffident in approaching the object of his affections, drew near to Miss Bellenden, and accosted her in a tone of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rash, nor diffident, Immoderate valour swells into a fault; And fear, admitted into public councils, Betray like treason. Let us shun 'em both.— Father's, I cannot see that our affairs Are grown thus desp'rate. We have bulwarks round ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... and yet he had that in him which ought to have made it a known one. He was a lad of genius—drew truthfully, had a nice sense of the beautiful, and possessed the true poetic faculty; but he lacked health and spirits, and was naturally of a melancholy temperament, and diffident of himself. He was at this time a thin, pale lad, fair-haired, with a clear waxen complexion, flat chest, and stooping figure; and though he lasted considerably longer than could have been anticipated from his appearance, in seven years after he was in his grave. He was unfortunate in his parents; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... diffident and prone to silence, but something in his effete nature gave him confidence with women. He had been flattered into a sort of assurance that they found him irresistible. They thought him clairvoyantly sympathetic—and he was by the very over-refinement of his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too delicate,' Louisa answered him composedly: 'I have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don't understand ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... changed, and Joel was no longer the diffident youth, but a man, competent and energetic. He took the direction of every thing; nothing was overlooked. Of course the relatives were sent for. It was the old story: they had paid great respect to their rich cousin, but they did not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... call, but I—" Miss Towne paused, looking rather confused. "You see—I—didn't know but I might intrude. You girls are so different from myself," she suddenly blurted out, as though anxious to bare her diffident soul to her dainty hostesses and have it over with. "I mean different because you aren't poor and have lots of friends and can entertain them and all that. I know it is the custom at college for the upper class girls to be kind ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... "Hetty knows how diffident I am, but it seems to me a lady with your observation should have seen the gratification I did not ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... nature. He sang O fortunatos agricolas! indeed, in every possible key, and with many cunning inflections, till I began to wonder what was the use of such people as Mr. Arch, and to sing the same air myself in a more diffident manner. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very strange, that evening there, to be so with my Cousin Dolly; for each of us knew, and that the other knew that too, that matters were advanced with us, since we had been through peril together. It was strange how diffident we both were, and how we could not meet one another's eyes; and yet I was aware that she would have it otherwise if she could, and strove to be natural. We had music again that night, and Dolly and her maid sang the setting of "Go, perjured man" which she had made from Mr. Wise's. For myself, I ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... over-diffident, we may feel our footing not perfectly secure on French ground when we differ from a Frenchman; we are therefore not sorry to catch M. Sainte-Beuve tripping on English ground. In a review of the translation ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I could make your paper of interest ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... Dearmer it is different. Before the Committee she appeared as a very young girl, docile, diffident, only half-awake, and of dubious efficiency. I remember my solemn pledges to her mother that Ursula Dearmer should not be allowed to go into danger, and how, if danger insisted on coming to her, ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... nor paused to reflect on the step that he was about to take, until he unclosed the little wicket-gate that divided the cottage from the park. Here at length he stopped to gain breath, and the embarrassment of his situation arose in formidable array against him. He was a man of few words, naturally diffident of his colloquial powers, and easily confused and abashed. In what manner was he to address her? To him the language of flattery and compliment was unknown. He had never said a polite thing to a woman in his life. Unaccustomed ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... in good spirits, retorted, "I don't suppose I ever shall." He leant back, laughing at the gifted but ridiculous family, while the fire flickered over the map of Africa. Margaret motioned to her brother to go on. Rather diffident, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... give than it is for you to receive it. In so far, at least, as I represent any influence of yours, you may very possibly not think me a satisfactory representative. But there is one fact—and I will lay all the stress I can on it—which makes me less diffident than I might be, in offering this book either to you or to ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... got into a mess here. You are rather a disturbing clement, dear Howard! I may speak plainly to you now, mayn't I? I think you have more effect on people than you know. You have upset us! I am not criticising you, because you have exceeded all my hopes. But you are too diffident, and you don't realise your power of sympathy. You are very observant, very quick to catch the drift of people's moods, and you are not at all formidable. You are so much interested in people that you ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... physical soundness and vigour: all these combined to form an outer personality that was strongly attractive. His movements were quick and decisive. To strangers, even when he felt at ease, his manner was diffident, yet of an indescribable, almost childlike, simplicity and charm. His voice in speaking was low-pitched and subdued, like his laugh; in conversation, when he was entirely himself, he could be brilliantly effective and witty, and his ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... just now with two spectacles, which may help us to take modest and diffident views of the progress of the species.... At home there is an utterly unreasonable and unaccountable financial panic among the depositors in the Birkbeck Bank, while in America the free and enlightened democracy of a portion of New York State has suddenly relapsed into primitive ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... you think he's conceited," Mary went on, warming up to the never-ending pleasure of analysis, "but it's because he's really diffident. Lots of people I know who people think are snobby ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... new strategy of aviation or of the possibilities of atomic energy that Holsten had opened for mankind. While he planned entrenchments and invasions and a frontier war, the Central European generalship was striking at the eyes and the brain. And while, with a certain diffident hesitation, he developed his gambit that night upon the lines laid down by Napoleon and Moltke, his own scientific corps in a state of mutinous activity was preparing a blow for Berlin. 'These old fools!' was the key in which the scientific ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... not more energetic than they had been when she was at the head of her uncle's table nearly three years before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a decided opinion. But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon. He smiled much less; when he said "Exactly" it was more often ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Perhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt the impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered why he had been so diffident. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... modest and diffident man, and this little problem, which would be so trifling to many, presents inscrutable ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... hesitation, and it was her turn to become diffident and shy. "The salary would not be very ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Oh! what shall we do?" moaned Madame Belhomme. But she had dragged the apron away from her face, and was looking with some puzzlement at meek, gentle little Jeanne, who had suddenly become so strange, so dictatorial, all unlike her habitual somewhat diffident self. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... was universally condemned as too fat, and, with that brief criticism, was dismissed. Miss Pillbody was pronounced "a little proud," because she stood straight, with shoulders thrown back, which was her usual attitude. Miss Trapper was admitted to be a very modest and diffident creature, because she had a slight stoop in the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... diffident yet insistent knock on the door. This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never to interrupt the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors, who had been sitting ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... to the PANTHI. The first person I met in the boardinghouse compound was the scholarly Romesh. As though his days were quite free, he obligingly agreed to my diffident request. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... be admitted that the vogue of Thorwaldsen owed much to the remarkable social qualities of the man. His handsome face and fine form were supplemented by a manner most gentle and winning; and whether his half-diffident ways and habit of reticence were natural or the triumph of art was a vexing problem that never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... these two avowed aims of the Allies in order, and first try to draw (though with diffident pencil) some sketch of what will be the confines of the Ottoman Empire, when we pluck the fruits of the great crusade against the barbarism of Turkey and of Germany. It is quite useless to attempt to keep the map as it was, and peg out claims within the ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... thou but a fern-frond, 5 Wet with blown spray from the river, Diffident, lovely, ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... is, to propitiate your hostess. So seating himself by the Begum, Taji led off with earnest inquiries after her welfare. But the Begum was one of those, who relieve the diffident from the embarrassment of talking; all by themselves carrying on conversation for two. Hence, no wonder that my Lady was esteemed invaluable at all assemblies in the groves of Pimminee; contributing so largely to that incessant din, which is held ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of hireling clergy; "a holy nation," rotten with the luxury of wealth, or embittered by the sting of poverty; "a peculiar people," deformed to Lucifer's own pleasure by the curse of caste; while, in this pandemonium of Individualism, the weak, the diffident, the scrupulous, and the afflicted, are thrust aside or ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... officers were ashamed of my uniform, I should be ashamed of my officer. Beware, then, of the really well-bred and apologetic gentleman whose clothes are at once quiet and fashionable, whose manner is at once diffident and frank. Beware how you admit him into your domestic secrets, for he may be a bogus Earl. Or, worse ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... literature, the stumbling-block of rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality can make itself felt in words, even while it neglects and contemns the study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion and life—it is beyond human competence. Nevertheless a brief and diffident consideration of the matter may bring thus much comfort, that the seeming contradiction is no discredit cast on letters, but takes its origin rather from too narrow and pedantic a view ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... striking appearance, though of a slighter figure, and not as tall as himself. He spoke of him as his particular friend, the Count Montifalcone, who was on his way with him to join those struggling for Grecian independence. His manners were elegant: but he appeared to be very bashful, or diffident; and, at all events, appeared very much disinclined to enter into conversation. The Greek, however, introduced his Italian friend to Miss Garden; and though, at first, he was very much reserved, as he gazed at her animated and lovely countenance, he appeared to gain courage, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... were engaged in intimate conversation as they passed the door. The one was George Rumm, skipper of the Black Eagle—a timid, weak-mouthed, shifty-eyed man, with an obsequious drawl in his voice, a diffident manner, and, altogether, a loose, weak way. The other was old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Archie leaped back with an apology to Skipper George. The boy had no word to say to Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Tom Tulk was notoriously a rascal ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... however, showed no such symptoms of alarm, and her courage rose as Tom's fell. By the way, composure in such delicate epochs is like see-sawing; one ascends as the other descends, until perchance the weaker party fails to recover his equilibrium, and tumbles off the fence. Diffident young courtiers should ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... chaplain's absences his locum tenens was usually a gentleman of very opposite characteristics. He was tall, thin, modest, and even diffident. He slipped into your cell, as I said before, with the deferential air of an undertaker. His speech was extremely soft and rapid, although he stuttered a little now and then from nervousness. "I suppose you know," I asked on his first visit, "what I am here for?" "Y-e-s," ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... herself as one unendowed with gifts. She was clever, and knew herself to be clever. She could read, and understood what she read. She saw the difference between right and wrong, and believed that she saw it clearly. She was not diffident of herself, and certainly was not unhappy. She had a strong religious faith, and knew how to supplement the sometimes failing happiness of this world, by trusting in the happiness of the next. Were it not for her extreme ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... afforded a vent for much of this reserved venom; and the tone of disparagement in which some of his assailants now affected to speak of his poetry was, however absurd and contemptible in itself, precisely that sort of attack which was the most calculated to wound his, at once, proud and diffident spirit. As long as they confined themselves to blackening his moral and social character, so far from offending, their libels rather fell in with his own shadowy style of self-portraiture, and gratified the strange ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was not, however, conspicuous, although he held that only a second-rate man is diffident. At thirty-five years of age he already stood high in the criminal investigation department of the police. He was indeed about to receive an inspectorship, well earned by those qualities of imagination and intuition which, added to the necessary endowment of courage, resource, and industry, had ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... illustrating the life of the Servite saint Filippo Benizzi (d. 1285). He executed them in a few months, being endowed by nature with remarkable readiness and certainty of hand and unhesitating firmness in his work, although in the general mould of his mind he was timid and diffident. The subjects are the saint sharing his cloak with a leper, cursing some gamblers, and restoring a girl possessed with a devil. The second and third works excel the first, and are impulsive and able performances. These paintings met with merited applause, and gained for their author ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... think of some other great man, but I had to give it up. "Didn't Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her charming present?" I was ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... very studious, laborious, of good apprehension, and had by his own industry obtained both in astrology, physick, arithmetick, astronomy, geometry and algebra, singular judgment: he would in astrology resolve horary questions very soundly; but was ever diffident of his own abilities: he was exquisitely skilful in the art of directions upon nativities, and had a good genius in performing judgment thereupon, but very unhappy he was, that he had no genius in teaching his scholars, for he never perfected ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... suggestion in this advice. The way to learn to talk is to talk. The temptation for people who are unaccustomed to society, and who feel diffident, is to say nothing themselves and listen ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... loss, and the inclination for domestic life which always appeared in the man, made it matter for surprise that he had waited so long before taking another wife. It would not have occurred to most of those who knew him that his extreme devotion to women made him shy, diffident, all but timorous in their presence. But Piers Otway, for all his mental disturbance at this moment, remarked the singular deference, the tone and look of admiring gentleness, with which Mr. Jacks turned to his wife as ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... it is made than the author is; perhaps because he has the best of it. But he has not always the best of it; I have known publishers too generous to take advantage of the innocence of authors; and I fancy that if publishers had to do with any race less diffident than authors, they would have won a repute for unselfishness that they do not now enjoy. It is certain that in the long period when we flew the black flag of piracy there were many among our corsairs on the high seas of literature who paid a fair price for the stranger craft they seized; still ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said, was perfectly familiar with every measure; and who would, as a particular favor, take the steps with him, under the master's special direction. It took Hiram's breath away, poor fellow, to be thrown so closely into the embraces of such a fine-looking, and by no means diffident damsel. It was what he had not been accustomed to. True, he had been in the habit at one time of playing the flirt, of holding the girls' hands in his, and pressing them significantly, and sighing and talking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... are often shy, awkward, absent-minded. Genius is often strangely like stupidity in its early stages. The stupid boy escapes notice because he is stupid. The genius escapes notice because he is diffident, and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mind of no common order; and hers was a character in which simplicity and strength, originality and refinement, were beautifully blended: diffident and retiring, she was best appreciated where she was ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... love is diffident and fearful; but it must now find a voice, to which may Evelyn benignly listen. What I leave unsaid—would that my new friend's ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... rarely tried to influence a man whose convictions of duty were so pronounced, though the reasons for these convictions were often quite beyond the comprehension of his domestically minded wife. Toward Phillida she had early assumed the same diffident attitude; it was enough for her to say that Phillida was her father over again. That settled it once for all. Phillida was to be treated as her father had been; to be trusted with her own destiny without ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... not quite as diffident, and might have liked to linger a bit to explain further how they had managed to discover the creeping figures, and, having their suspicions ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... August she writes from Antwerp to say she has had an interview with William Scott (dubbed in her correspondence Celadon), even having gone so far as to take coach and ride a day's journey to see him secretly. Though at first diffident, he is very ready to undertake the service, only it will be necessary for her to enter Holland itself and reside on the spot, not in Flanders, as Colonel Bampfield, who was looked upon as head of the exiled English at the Hague, watched Scott with most jealous care and a growing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... hesitancy in grappling with the problems of Nature by engineers, but they seem to be diffident and neglectful of human nature in their calculations, leaving it out of their equations, greatly to their own detriment and the world's loss. We can say that matters outside of the known are not our concern, and we can look with pride at our ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • John A. Bensel
... completely happy; for what can he want to a complete happy life who relies on his own good qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them? But he who makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall continue? but no one can be happy without an immovable, fixed, and permanent good. What, then, is this opinion of theirs? ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... eyed me coldly, though at the moment I was looking quite my best, diffident yet courteous, a perfect gentleman of the old regime. Then she took the bouquet from me and put it ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... her mind. She forgot entirely the ban that had been placed on Ingram by her husband. But after her first emotion on seeing him was over, and when he began to discuss what she ought to do, and even to advise her in a diffident sort of way, she remembered all that she had forgotten, and was ashamed to find herself sitting there and talking to him as if it were in her father's house at Borva. Indeed, when he proposed to take the management of her affairs into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... glass. He knew what such a movement meant. He could not count on Heeney's continued absence. Above all, at this, the beginning of things, he wanted to avoid any untimely mis-step. So he made his way to the street, shuttling cautiously back and forth across the avenue, aimless of demeanor, diffident of step, yet ever and always on the lookout. From half a block away he saw Heeney return to his cellar. From an even remoter stand, two hours later, he perceived the plumber emerge, like a rabbit out of its warren. He also ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... only man whom all the peasants, all the soldiers, all the officers, know intimately; and the last duty I can perform in the service of my King is to implore you to put him at the head of your troops. He is young, and you will assist his youth with your counsel. He is diffident of himself, and you will encourage him with your assurance and obedience; but he is brave, he is beloved, he is trusted; and above all, he possesses that innate aptitude for war, that power of infusing courage into the timid and lending strength to the weak, which is the gift of God ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... made their personality standard: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Sydney, Jonson, Milton, Butler, Swift, Thomson, Goldsmith, Miss Burney, Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Thackeray, George Eliot. If to the more fastidious or self-diffident amateur an excessively rare item is introduced without credentials, it is in danger of being rejected; the same principle applies to certain foreign writers, such as Cervantes, Montaigne, Moliere, Corneille, La Fontaine. But in almost all these ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... presented to them, they immediately licked it twice with their tongues, after which they seemed to consider the bargain satisfactorily concluded. The youngest of the party very modestly kept behind the others, and, before he was observed to have done so, missed several presents, which his less diffident, though not importunate companions had received. As the night closed in they became desirous to depart, and they left us before dark, highly delighted with their visit. As I had purchased one of their canoes, a boat was sent to land its ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... to attempt in speech all that the dying mother would fain have had conveyed to her child? And then his own love! Would not that be the greatest difficulty of all? Feeling her grief as he did, could he yet modify his manner to suit that of a mere outsider—almost a stranger? He was very diffident; though longing to see Erica, he would yet have given anything to be able to transfer his work to his father. This, however, was ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend—none other than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... house, until Harley's arrival, had been strange and saddening to Helen's timid and subdued spirits. Lady Lansmere had received her kindly, but with a certain restraint; and the loftiness of manner, common to the Countess with all but Harley, had awed and chilled the diffident orphan. Lady Lansmere's very interest in Harley's choice—her attempts to draw Helen out of her reserve—her watchful eyes whenever Helen shyly spoke, or shyly moved, frightened the poor child, and made her ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... still more diffident, but her call met with immediate response. Ray who had not yet begun to change for dinner, was with ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... SEEMS rather to under than over value it, though in truth, he sets the right value upon it. It is a very true maxim of La Bruyere's (an author well worth your studying), 'qu'on ne vaut dans ce monde, que ce que l'on veut valoir'. A man who is really diffident, timid, and bashful, be his merit what it will, never can push himself in the world; his despondency throws him into inaction; and the forward, the bustling, and the petulant, will always get the better of him. The manner makes the whole ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... to the conviction of a truth which they had once promulged, but now{12} forgotten, to wit: that in their own elevation—self-elevation—colored men have a blow to strike "on their own hook," against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston friends in this matter, diffident in his own abilities, reluctant at their dissuadings, how beautiful is the loyalty with which he still clung to their principles in all things else, and even ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... wait, before you will be able to grasp the true and the beautiful. You dream of it now; the intensity of life that is in you, the spirit of poetry which makes itself heard by you in indistinct language, needs work to relieve itself and be made clear. I feel diffident about giving advice to you, for you know your own nature better than any one else can, but I should say to you, get to work in the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... made his statement concerning the substantiality of original sin may not have felt absolutely sure of the exact meaning, bearing, and correctness of his position, yet the facts do not warrant the assumption that afterwards he was in any way diffident or wavering in his attitude. Whatever his views on this subject may have been before 1560—after the fatal phrase had fallen from his lips, he never flinched nor flagged in zealously defending it. Nor ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... asked if they had seen any new faces in church. But no; neither of them had, it was evident, seen my ladies in half-mourning, about whom I was diffident of inquiring directly. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 1777, Henry Clay, the great American statesman, was born, and from the district-schools of his neighborhood he derived his education. He was the son of a Baptist clergyman of very limited means, hence his early advantages were of necessity meager. He was very bashful and diffident, scarcely dare recite before his class at school, but he DETERMINED to BECOME AN ORATOR, he accordingly began the plan of committing speeches and then reciting them in the corn-fields; at other times they were delivered in the barn, before the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... timidity in his manner in those days, a peculiar diffidence, a continual expectation of other men's contempt, which had gone from him. He was now quietly self-possessed; not arrogant; on the other hand, not diffident. He had put himself to a long, hard test; and he knew that he had not failed. All that she saw; and her face ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... as the influence on fiction of the ethical ideal. With Mrs. Carew Captain Quint exchanged reminiscences of travel on distant seas. Brandes attempted to maintain low-voiced conversation with Rue, who responded in diffident ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... is, the general talk of such men was often apt to be over his head, as it would have been over mine, and often made him painfully diffident and shy. He needn't have been; he little knew the kind of feeling he inspired ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "Modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, but with melody ever in his heart and on his lip. Though always slow of speech, he was yet, like Burns, quick to learn. The chariot wheels might jar in the gate through which he tried to drive his winged steeds, but the horses were of celestial temper ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... military skill every commander of that army depended, and no movement was made without his approbation. Yet so modest was he that his face would color with blushes when his troops cheered him, which they did at every opportunity; and so diffident, that, prior to the battle of Chickamauga, he doubted his ability to handle large bodies of troops upon the battlefield, and for this reason refused to accept the command of that army, just prior to Perryville, when tendered him. His kind consideration for the feelings of others was one of ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... ever showed the most winning kindness, encouraging the diffident, tempering the hasty, counselling and befriending both. "Recollect," he used to say, "that you must be a seaman to be an officer; and also that you cannot be a good officer without being a gentleman." A lieutenant wrote to him to ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... East-Indiaman in Samarang roads, he had commenced that study of himself, of his own ways, of his own abilities, of those fate-compelling qualities of his which led him toward that lucrative position which he now filled. Being of a modest and diffident nature, his successes amazed, almost frightened him, and ended—as he got over the succeeding shocks of surprise—by making him ferociously conceited. He believed in his genius and in his knowledge of the world. Others should know of it also; for their own good and for his ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... made it to be understood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you had gone further than your wise ancestors,—that you were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the old common law of Europe, meliorated and adapted to its present state,—by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... diffident, hesitating call, and, looking back, as she was mounting the stairs, beheld Violet, who changed the appellation ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an intimate friend, he gave up her daughter, or to mention to the young lady herself that he had ceased to desire the honor of her hand. Gordon alluded to some definite occurrence, yet it was inconceivable that he should have allowed himself to be determined by Bernard's words—his diffident and irresponsible impression. Bernard resented this idea as an injury to himself, yet it was difficult to imagine what else could have happened. There was Gordon's word for it, however, that there was no "traceable" connection between the circumstances which led to his sudden departure and the ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... such appeals from such a person, even at three o'clock in the morning; and diffident, but determined, he then entered into what was, perhaps, the most remarkable portion of his speech—an investigation of what was the real position of the country with respect to the supply of food in the past autumn and at the present moment. Having shown from the trade circulars that, far ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... diffident about invading Kenilworth Mansions was therefore not surprising. He climbed three granite steps, passed through a pair of swinging doors, traversed eight feet of tesselated pavement, climbed three more granite steps, passed through another pair of swinging doors, and discovered himself in a spacious ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... in defence of the truth of Christianity. This treatise it was his purpose to have published. "He read the manuscript to his family as he progressed with it, and completed it a short time before his death." When it was finished, however, being "diffident about his own work," and impressed, also, by the great ability of the replies to Paine which were then appearing in England, "he directed his wife to destroy" what he had written. She "complied literally with his directions," and thus put beyond the chance ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... we have that we can tell what the employe would do under any and every circumstance. At least that's the idea—though I'm really only quoting," she added, breaking off in a diffident way, "from what Miss Thinker, the professor of Social Endeavour, says. She's really fine. She's making a general chart of the female employes of one of the biggest stores to show what percentage in case of fire would jump out of the window ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... through the street had attracted much attention, and the citizens had followed him into the hall in considerable numbers to hear the message of which he was no doubt the bearer. Ned took his place by the side of the old officer, and facing the crowd began to speak. At other times he would have been diffident in addressing a crowded audience, but he felt that he must justify the confidence imposed on him, and knowing the preparations that were being made by the prince, and his intense anxiety that Alkmaar should resist to the end, ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... immediate effect of this change of position was what might easily have been foretold, upon a mind naturally sensitive, diffident, and enthusiastic. It was a heavy discouragement. The youth felt that he had much to eradicate and more to learn, and hardly knew at first how to avail himself of the advantages presented by the study of the works of Turner, Girtin, Cousins, and others. But he had resolution ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... about Lambert's appearance to scare anybody, and least of all a bow-legged man beside a fire in the open air of the Bad Lands, where things are not just as they are in any other part of this world at all. His manner was rather boyish and diffident, and wholly apologetic, and the All-in-One glistened in his hand like a razor, or a revolver, or anything terrible and destructive that a startled camp cook might make it out ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... was full of self-importance about his acquaintance with the Union leaders of Illinois, Grant wrote to the Adjutant-General at Washington offering to command a regiment. Like Sherman, he felt much more diffident about the rise from ex-captain of regulars to colonel commanding a battalion than some mere civilians felt about commanding brigades or directing the strategy of armies. He has himself recorded his horror of sole responsibility as he approached what ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... open declaration against France, that it is not easy to account for the different line which he pursues; it must, however, be attributed to the influence of the very weak persons who are in familiar confidence with him, and to his being too diffident in himself to decide upon the important measure of engaging Prussia in war. I am, however, inclined to believe that such will at last be his decision, though there is too much hesitation in his own mind to give us ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... away with Arabian. She had just left him when she met Craven in the hall of the hotel. Garstin had not allowed either her or Arabian to look at what he had done. He had, Miss Van Tuyn thought, seemed unusually nervous and diffident about his work. She did not know how he had gone on, and was curious. But she was going to dine with him that night. Perhaps he would tell her then, or perhaps he had only asked her to dinner that she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... dear Mayflower awaited her there, and she enjoyed many a canter with Caroline and Walter. She began for the first time to become acquainted with the latter, and to learn to look upon him with high esteem, but to obtain a knowledge of him was a very difficult matter. He was naturally diffident and bashful, and his spirits were not high; he had been thrown more and more into himself by his mother's hastiness of manner and his father's neglect. His principles were high and true, his conduct excellent, and as he had never given any cause for anxiety, he was almost always ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... not in private life. Some of them were amazingly patronising and self-possessed, and these did not ask Cicely to dance again. She felt, when they returned her to her mother, that she had not been a success with them. Others were boyish and diffident, and with them she got on pretty well. With one, a modest child of nineteen or so with a high-sounding title, she was almost maternally friendly, and he seemed to cling to her as a refuge from a new and bewildering world. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... and, notwithstanding his great learning, (which he had acquired by an excellent genius and diligent application to sacred studies,) and his great and solid fund of piety, he was as docile as an infant; so timorous and diffident of his own judgment, that he would neither do nor decide any thing without counsel. With this sentiment of diffidence and humility, he often visited (says M. Leroy, the faithful imitator and writer of the history of his life) ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... ventured a diffident greeting to the elevator boy, whom he remembered. The boy looked at him quizzically and nodded with customary aloofness. Graydon found himself hoping that he would not meet Bobby Rigby. He also wondered, as the car shot up, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... so without a fee in advance; and the five hundred dollars had been sent in the letter which had so strangely disappeared. Either the sender knew no better than to trust so large a sum in the mail, or his criminal associations made him diffident about applying for a check ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... pseudo-classic spirit of the age, which, says Arnold, was like a chill north wind benumbing his inspiration, so that 'he never spoke out.' The main reason, however, is really to be found in Gray's own over-painstaking and diffident disposition. In him, as in Hamlet, anxious and scrupulous striving for perfection went far to paralyze the power of creation; he was unwilling to write except at his best, or to publish until he had subjected his work to repeated revisions, which sometimes, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... rebuff, Patty felt very diffident about mentioning the matter to the remaining members of the class. She had no wish to be considered self-righteous and interfering, but, all the same, she thought she was bound to try and use her influence to set straight what was certainly a doubtful ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... fellow, too; nor had I been an hour in his company, before I saw, plainly enough, that he was a strong admirer of Anneke Mordaunt. The other two evidently admired themselves too much, to have any very lively feelings on the subject of other persons. As for Dirck, younger than myself, and diffident, as well as slow by nature, he kept himself altogether in the back-ground, conversing, most of the time, with Herman Mordaunt, on the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the richer, and Italy put forth a succession of exquisite and superb immortal flowers of art when the artistic sap of other countries had begun to be exhausted. But the Italians, the Tuscans, audacious in the other arts, were diffident of themselves with regard to poetry. Architecture, painting, sculpture, had been the undisputed field for plebeian craftsmen, belonging exclusively to the free burghs and disdained by the feudal castles; but poetry was essentially the aristocratic, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... aware of any alteration in her son's mind. The tone of this latter epistle does not seem to evince any great enthusiasm for the match upon the part of either Southampton or his mother; its rather diffident spirit was not lost upon Burghley, who, within a few days of its receipt, commanded the attendance of his young ward at Court. Upon 14th October 1590—that is, less than a month after Viscount Montague's letter to Burghley—we have a letter from Lady Southampton announcing her son's departure ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... of the various theories of electro-chemical decomposition, whilst it has made me diffident, has also given me confidence to add another to the number; for it is because the one I have to propose appears, after the most attentive consideration, to explain and agree with the immense collection of facts belonging to this branch of science, and to remain uncontradicted by, or unopposed ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... taste for a certain modern style of poetry in my companion, I bethought me of a poem which I had written on the roadside a few days before, and which, I confess, I was eager to confide to some sympathetic ear. I was diffident of quoting it after such lines as Rosalind had recalled, but by the time we had reached our coffee, I plucked up courage to mention it. I had, however, the less diffidence in that it would have a technical interest ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... how by the advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes, states, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and divers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved. I am not so diffident of your memory as to hold it needful to refresh it with a quotation of examples, nor do I so far undervalue your judgment but that I think it will acquiesce in the reason of this my subsequent discourse. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... brimming up with a half-diffident mischief. But Barbara walked round to her place at the table with a ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... whom he could talk, second, as a woman. She was ignorant and vulgar; she misused English cruelly; she wore greasy cotton garments, planted her large feet on the floor with firm clumsiness, and always laughed at the wrong cue in his diffident jests. But she did laugh; she did listen while he stammered his ideas of meat-pies and St. Paul's and aeroplanes and Shelley and fog and tan shoes. In fact, she supposed him to be a gentleman ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... reports upon his work, it was his glad experience that nothing he said or meant, not the slightest intention or airiest intimation in his books, was ever wholly lost. Somewhere, some one, somehow had caught it, liked it, remembered it, and had by a happy inspiration written him of it, it might be diffident, it might be confident, of his ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... condition. But her garments were tattered and sadly out of date. The wardrobe of the steamer-trunk lady had suffered in the winter's wear. She was barely presentable in the outing suit of corduroy. So that she was inclined to be diffident about her appearance, and after a time when she was not thinking of the strange episodes of the immediate past, her mind, womanlike, began to dwell on civilization and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... He was in no way embarrassed by his unaccustomed surroundings or by the commanding appearance of the great lady who was addressing him. He was a man who believed in himself, and such men are too much in earnest to be diffident. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... in his thirty-fourth year; and inherits the mental qualities of both his parents—the demeanor and person of his father. He has a reserve which is not cynical, but only diffident; yet it gives him, at least at first sight, and till you have become familiar with his features, which are of a cast at once refined and aristocratic, yet full of goodness—an air of hauteur, which is very—very far from his real nature. He has in truth the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the sexes, so important to earth's moral good, can be fully exerted. The boy at school inclines to rough manners. What more effectual restraint upon this tendency, than the delicacy and gentleness which marks the little girl? She again, may become painfully diffident, and a recluse in her bearing, if not subjected to the society of the more confident sex. Encourage the boy to sit always by the fireside, and studiously shun conversation with the opposite sex, or put the girl forward and incite her to a bold and boisterous ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... daunt, overawe, abash, deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c 909. Adj. fearing &c v.; frightened &c v.; in fear, in a fright &c n.; haunted with the fear of &c n.; afeard^. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, horror-struck; frightened to death, white as a sheet; pale, pale as a ghost, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... him," said I, diffident of my Spanish. I had received lessons in England from Maria Daguilar; but six weeks is little enough for making love, let alone the ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... remember a certain girl, Miss Dayton," he asked, "who on a memorable class day gave the pleasure of her company to a diffident student who in ecstasy at playing escort to the lovely girl and her dignified Aunt Marcia, nearly forgot all which he ever knew, managing only to stammer through an effort at conversation which must ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... with hot dirty rooms,—full of quarreling and crowding; and so they slip out at night and meet their friends in the dancehalls, and the moving-picture shows. And we—we can't blame them." Her voice had grown less diffident, and rang with sudden longing and appeal. "They want only what we all wanted a few years ago," she said. "They want good times, lights and music, and pretty gowns, something to look forward to in the long, hot afternoons—dances, theatricals, harmless meetings of all sorts. ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... Evan put out his hand as if with the intention of giving Done an approving pat on the shoulder, but the young man turned away abruptly, thrusting himself through the men, who had clustered around him muttering diffident compliments, and endeavouring to ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... prove. But there again she was distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be—it seemed likely—one of those men who conceal the good as well as the bad in themselves, one of the morally shy men. Or again, perhaps, one of the morally diffident, who shrink from arrogating to themselves high standards because they fear for their own virtue if it be put to the test, and cling to the power of saying, later on, "Well, I told you not to expect too much from me!" Such various types of men exist, and they do not ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... than filling Pamphlets with it to make madmen Merry, and wisemen Sick. There is a Decency, or shall I rather say a Chastity in Writing or Thinking on such exalted Subjects, that great Minds are apt to Cherish, which keeps them Cautious and Diffident, where weak Men are as bold and as rash (to use an homely Phrase) as a blind Mare in a Mire. I have known many silly Preachers, and paperscull'd Writers in my Time, that were troubled with the ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... that Eve could care for him; Eve was a penniless girl, and therefore shy. A real work-girl would have been bolder; but Eve, gently bred, and fallen into poverty, resigned herself to her dreary lot. Diffident as she seemed, she was in reality proud, and would not make a single advance towards the son of a father said to be rich. People who knew the value of a growing property, said that the vineyard at Marsac was worth more than eighty thousand francs, to say nothing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... addressed myself to so quiet a member of society. She seemed to divine my object, and sustained the dialogue; I never knew her to do it before. It is not diffidence, it seems, that has been the cause of this reserve; I was the more diffident of the two, failing to express my thoughts well, from a hurry and uncertainty of mind which I am not often troubled withal. It was partly astonishment, in truth, that confused me. Little Ugly and I actually exchanging ideas! I shall call her Little Ugly still, however, for I could ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... kind Mrs. Curtis suggested that she go to bed and obtain a good night's rest if she was to walk to the Red Mill in the morning. But even when she bade her entertainers good-night she did not see the child in the canopy bed and she felt diffident about asking Mrs. Curtis about her. The young traveler slept soundly— almost from the moment her head touched the pillow. Yet her last thought was of Uncle Jabez. He had been in town some time before the train on which she arrived was due ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... involves the idea of possession, and of the dependence of the cherished one upon your own arm and strength. But the admiration you entertain seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly's question makes you diffident of reply; and you lose yourself in a new story of those excellencies of speech and of figure which have ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... purpose of all this intricate and elaborate work is a puzzling problem and, like the mystery of Stonehenge, will probably remain a secret to the end. The literature of Avebury, not quite so copious as that of the stones of the Plain, is also more diffident in its guessing. Avebury has given a title to the most modest and thorough of its students, and his writings on this and the other prehistoric monuments of Wiltshire, a county that must have been a holy land some thousands of years ago, should be studied by all who have any ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... a stony bed. Day and night one's ears are filled with the music of the rushing waters hastening impetuously to the distant sea as though eager to lose themselves in its infinite embrace. One evening the guests at the hotel arranged a concert, and to our surprise—for we knew how diffident he was—Paul, evidently moved by the genius loci, volunteered to take part in it. When the time came he advanced to the piano through the crowded room and, with an elbow resting on the instrument, astonished ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and authority. Of this select number Botticelli is one. He has the freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise, which belong to the earlier Renaissance itself, and make it perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the mind. In studying his work one begins to understand to how great a place in human culture the art of Italy ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... sense—and thought, 'can this be the Wit?' How few years is it since Henry Cockburn, hating London, and coming but rarely to what he called the 'devil's drawing room,' stood near him, yet apart, for he was the most diffident of men; his wonderful luminous eyes, his clear, almost youthful, vivid complexion, contrasting brightly with the gray, pallid, prebendal complexion of Sydney? how short a time since Francis Jeffery, the smallest of great men, a ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... contemporaries of heavy aspect, whose vanity leaps out and startles one like a spear out of a walking-stick; as to his carriage and gestures, these were as natural to him as the length of his fingers; and the rankest affectation he could have shown would have been to look diffident and demure. While his grandiose air was making Mab feel herself a ridiculous toy to match the cottage piano, he was taking in the details around him with a keen and thoroughly kind sensibility. He remembered a home no longer than this on the outskirts of Bohemia; and in the figurative Bohemia ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... music, together with the psalter, the timbrel, the sackbut, and the cymbal." The wrath of the polemical Deborah of the Relief-Kirk was somewhat appeased by this explanation, and she inquired in a more diffident tone, whether a Mozart was not a metrical paraphrase of the song of Moses after the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; "in which case, I must own," she observed, "that the sin and guilt of the thing is less grievous in the sight of HIM before whom all the actions of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Elizabeth Simpson, the minister's daughter. From early childhood they had seen and known each other at school, and between them had sprung up a warm childish friendship, apparently because their ways home lay along the same route. In such companionship the years sped; but Fred was a diffident boy, and he was seventeen and Elizabeth near the same before he began to feel those promptings which made him blushingly offer to carry her book for her as far as he went. She had hesitated, refused, and then assented, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... tree, where she was counting the chickens at roost on its branches, the girl stood facing him, the rising moon shining full upon her. "Morva, lass," he said, drawing near; "'tis the present I told thee of. Wilt have it?" and there was a diffident tremor in his voice, which was not its usual tone; for to-night he was as shy as a schoolboy as he opened the box and drew out the shining necklace. The iridescent colours gleamed in the moonlight and Morva ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... fastidiousness. It is as though there were honour in governing the other senses, and honour in refusing to govern this. It is as though we were ashamed of reason here, and shy of dignity, and suspicious of temperance, and diffident of moderation, and too eager to thrust forward that ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... neatly, dressed, and, while somewhat diffident, was courteous, affable, and respectful in demeanor. After a little conversation with him, we asked him if he would be willing to appear before one of our classes and permit the students to try to analyze him, decide what his aptitudes were, and for what profession he was best fitted. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... unfortunate for poor Dennis. While polishing away one morning, he suddenly became conscious that she was approaching. It seemed that she was looking directly at him, and was about to speak. His heart thumped like a trip-hammer, his cheeks burned, and a blur came over his eyes, for he was diffident in ladies' presence. Therefore he stood before her the picture of confusion, with a big boot poised in one hand, and the polishing-brush in the other. With the instincts of a gentleman, however, he made an awkward bow, feeling, though, that under the circumstances his politeness ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe |
