"Diffident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resist 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 ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... as a result of ancient traditions and education, partly of genuine feminine characteristics—many women are diffident as to their right to moral responsibility and unwilling to assume it. And an attempt is made to justify their attitude by asserting that woman's part in life is naturally that of self-sacrifice, or, to put the statement ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... opened, and Caterina entered, bright as the morning, her face covered with smiles and blushes; she shuffled along in a strange way, and all eyes naturally fell upon her little feet, which were sailing about in the Dominie's slippers! Amid the general laughter, she walked up to the diffident youth, who could scarcely believe his eyes, and said with an air of irresistible drollery, by which she tried to cover her confusion: 'Here is your Christmas present, sir; do you hold to your promise of accepting it?' Of course, the lady having ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... hidden resources. Major Burnham has chosen men from England, Ireland, the United States, and South Africa for sterling qualities, and they have justified his choice. Not the least like a hero is the retiring, diffident little major himself, though a finer man for a friend or a better man to serve under would not be found in ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... show that Mr. Crips was not a diffident man; he did not distress himself with scruples; fear of failure in an enterprise of this kind never worried him. He walked across the grand ball-room, swaggering in his rags, lifted his hat to a Watteau shepherdess ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... came down to-day," he went on in a low, diffident voice. "I want to tell you something, and I can tell it better here. I couldn't go away without thanking you. I'll make a mess of it—I can never explain things. But you've been so much to me—you mean so much to me. You've made ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... presence of a woman, man is by nature a diffident animal. The women who recognize this are ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... faded, but, for a poor man, a very desirable match. She would have failed, probably, to understand that last qualification, or to guess how it could completely outweigh youth, beauty, and love, together; and so would have felt even more joyous and less diffident than she did, when at last the important business was finished, and she stepped into the carriage which was to take ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... to churches and charities, was always ready to lend money or machinery to a neighbour who was short of anything. He liked to tease and shock diffident people, and had an inexhaustible supply of funny stories. Everybody marveled that he got on so well with his oldest son, Bayliss Wheeler. Not that Bayliss was exactly diffident, but he was a narrow gauge ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... life. Of course that wasn't my point. I supposed that this world of Space was real enough to him, but I wanted to know how he got there. He never answered me. He was the typical Cambridge man, you know—dogmatic about uncertainties, but curiously diffident about the obvious. He laboured to get me to understand the notion of his mathematical forms, which I was quite willing to take on trust from him. Some queer things he said, too. He took our feeling ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... best Madeleine, and for that I loved him. It was so wonderful, knowing how constitutionally diffident he is, to see him so courageous. And when I remembered how he used to hesitate and stammer, it seemed marvellous to hear him talk on with an ease, a fluency, a fervor truly eloquent. I never ask to listen to finer ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 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 ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... naturally revised my work. The first article, all my own, which appeared in print was one on that notorious theatrical institution, the Claque. I sent it to Once a Week, which E. S. Dallas then edited, and knowing that he was well acquainted with my father, and feeling very diffident respecting the merits of what I had written, I assumed a nom de plume ("Charles Ludhurst") for the occasion, Needless to say that I was delighted when I saw the article in print, and yet more so when I received for it a couple of guineas, which I ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... be diffident about saying," I observed. "But I'll tell you. He says my father committed suicide, and that if he hadn't done so my mother and I would be ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... is a boy who from natural disposition, or early training, or both, is mild, diffident, and gentle. So far he is an estimable character. Were this all, he were not a muff. In order to deserve that title he must be timid and unenthusiastic. He must refuse to venture anything that will subject him to danger, however slight. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Third Hand has yet to be heard from, and if, as is possible, he have considerable strength in the suit that the Second Hand thinks of declaring, such a bid will offer an ideal opportunity for a profitable double. The Second Hand, therefore, should be somewhat diffident about bidding two in a suit. He should make the declaration only when his hand is so strong that in spite of the No-trump, there seems to be a good chance of scoring game, or he has reason to think he ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... to take much notice of it. Indeed, my friends tell me that the public are not fully aware of its existence. Pray let me be indebted to you for a notice. I wish to get fairly afloat. You see I have been too diffident about it. We modest fellows allow our inferiors to pass us often. I will leave this number with you. Pray, pray ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... a relief to Mrs. Beecher and to Maude to realise that Mrs. Hunt Mortimer knew no more about the matter than themselves. They both ventured upon a less diffident air now that it was clear that it might be done in safety. Maude frowned thoughtfully, and Mrs. Beecher cast up her pretty brown eyes at the curtain-rod, as if she were running over in her memory the whole long catalogue ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... nature in large studies carefully finished on the spot, though never carried to the elaboration of later and younger painters. But he was so restrained by an excess of humility as to his own work, and so justly diffident of his knowledge of technique, that he could not bring himself to accept a pupil, and I finally applied to F.E. Church, a young painter, pupil of Cole, and for many years after the leading landscape painter of the country. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... mind there arise many questions that he would like to talk over with his father, but he feels diffident about asking him. Too often the boy grows up and goes away to college without ever talking with his father about manhood. In all matters concerning his business relations and success, the boy has received careful instruction. He has not been ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... belongs the credit of having negotiated this concession, but it is doubtful if it would ever have received the imperial sanction had it not been for Best's victory. Even when he had the document in his hands the conqueror was diffident, and could hardly believe the good news. He was "doubtful whether it was the King's firman or not, and, being resolved, would not receive it until some of the chiefs of the city should bring it down unto him to Swally, which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... matter of fact, no one could possibly be more diffident and modest about his actual literary performances than was Charles Darwin. I have heard him again and again express a wish that he possessed 'dear old Lyell's literary skill'; and he often spoke with the greatest enthusiasm of the 'clearness and force of Huxley's style.' On one ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... talents and intelligence, than held in esteem for her unaffected simplicity of manners. She was the life of her social parties, sustaining the happiness of the hour by her elegant conversation, and encouraging the diffident by her approbation. Amiable in disposition, she was possessed of a beautiful countenance and a handsome person. She wrote verses with facility, but she sought no distinction as a poet, preferring to be regarded as a good housewife and an agreeable ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... devoted to sentiments of social reform that foreshadowed his future work. When 'Looking Backward' was the sensation of the year, a newspaper charge brought against Mr. Bellamy was that he was "posing for notoriety." To those who know the retiring, modest, and almost diffident personality of the author, nothing could have been more absurd. All opportunities to make money upon the magnificent advertising given by a phenomenal literary success were disregarded. There were offers of lecture engagements that would have brought quick ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... young man himself had been diffident from the beginning, and at the first hesitation on the other side he had taken it for granted that all was lost. His slight vitality sank instantly under the disappointment, he refused to eat, he could not sleep, and he was in a really ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... says nothing more. When he passes a shop-window in which he sees such a card, he thinks of me; and not only does he think of me but he sends me his thoughts." Or was she mistaken. Ella was diffident; surely this could not be misconstrued. The Christmas card—was it not a harbinger? The two young couples on it and the words—surely he meant something by that. His enraptured eyes again rose before her; they seemed not ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... heart, and felt for his father's letter. He had become so diffident, and his head felt so confused, that he would gladly have sat down for a moment to rest and compose himself. But there was no rest here. A great wagon stood at the door, and within, colossal bales and ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... invaded the quarters of his old comrade, and Jackson looked forward to the merriment that was certain to result just as much as the youngest of his staff. "Stuart's exuberant cheerfulness and humour," says Dabney, "seemed to be the happy relief, as they were the opposites, to Jackson's serious and diffident temper. While Stuart poured out his 'quips and cranks,' not seldom at Jackson's expense, the latter sat by, sometimes unprepared with any repartee, sometimes blushing, but always enjoying the jest with a quiet and merry laugh. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... being turned towards the end of the room wherein the redheaded Keno was ensconced, that diffident individual furtively put forth his hand and clutched up his boots and trousers from the floor. The latter he managed to adjust as he wormed about in the berth. Then silently, stealthily, trembling with excitement, ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... fancying she was helping to pack the photographic apparatus, while the others dispersed. Presently, seeing no one near, Hubert Delrio said, in a gentle diffident voice, "It would be a great pleasure to me if I might ask you to listen to the verses on St. Cyriac and his mother that the design ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... understand that this voyage of ours is to be written and published on our return. I am now engaged in writing a rough account, but authorship sits awkwardly upon me. I am diffident of appearing before the public unburnished by an abler hand. What say you? Will you give me your assistance if on my return a narration of our voyage should be called for from me? If the voyage be well executed and well told afterwards I shall ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... little touches of formalism, due to her training, that are really refreshing to elderly people, and sit quaintly upon her. She is charming, both when her natural vivacity crops out, that has been so repressed, and when she is shyly diffident. Cards and invitations are left for her, and Grandon Park blossoms out into unwonted gayety. The people who go away find no difficulty in renting their houses to those who want to come; perhaps the Latimers have given the impetus, for Mrs. Latimer is one of those women who are ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... new uniform. Major Price, immediately introduced me to him; he was Colonel Fairly.(210) He is a man of the most scrupulous good-breeding, diffident, gentle, and sentimental in his conversation, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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 beau in his old age, a wit to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... added some years to your appearance. You are, I think, little over twenty, but you look two or three years older. The change is even greater in your manner than in your appearance; you were then new to command, doubtful as to your own powers, and diffident with those older than yourself. Now for two years you have thought and acted for yourself, and have shown yourself capable of making a mark even among men like the knights of St. John, both in valour and in fitness to command. You saved St. Nicholas, you saved the life of the ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... publick notice, with genius yet unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who, without any hope of increasing their own reputation or interest, expose their names and their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to the young, the diffident, and the neglected. The purpose of this exhibition is not to enrich the artists, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt; whoever hopes to deserve publick favour, is here invited ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... sugar he rolled out of the door with a half-diffident, half-inviting look in his eye, as if he expected me to follow. I did so, but the sniffing and snorting of the keen-scented Pomposo [Footnote: Pomposo: the writer's horse.] in the hollow, not only revealed the cause of his former terror, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... dictated by Dr. Bronner, state that at first we found Emma very quiet and diffident, possibly somewhat shy and timid. At best she did not talk freely, only in monosyllables as a rule. She appears rather nervous. She says she thinks of lots of things she does not speak of. Emma smiles in friendly enough ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... president is a rather obstinate man, and I fear he would not see the point. Besides, I am a very modest man, though you may not have observed this shining trait in my character. No; I am too diffident to ask for a place I have ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... been intending to 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 to entering freshmen. I didn't care to presume on your kindness. I ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... school that morning with a pupil who lived on the same street, but who had fluttered away into a little bevy of children almost as soon as she had shown the new girl the cloak-room; and Bernice, naturally a bit diffident and sensitive, felt very ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... 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 ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... 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 any solid ground of reliance until ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... had been a slender and diffident girl. She had kept her slenderness, but she had lost her diffidence, and she had gained an air of distinction. She dressed well, her really pretty feet were always carefully shod and her hair carefully waved. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... nearness soothed him. For with that boyish diffident gesture of his he reached over presently and held me ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... and Marjorie came over to Ruth's on Wednesday evening, Harold found the girl to be just as he had expected: rather quiet and diffident, even pretty, but not striking-looking; and he made no attempt to become intimate with her. After they had tired of playing cards, whenever Jack and Ruth saw fit to dance together, he offered to do likewise with Marjorie, as a mere matter ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... good ability and kindly nature, whose employment in a Government office for the last four or five years had not gone far to fit him for the life of a country gentleman. He was studious and rather diffident, and had few out-of-door pursuits except golf and gardening. To-day he had come down for the first time to visit Wilsthorpe and confer with Mr Cooper, the bailiff, as to the matters which needed immediate attention. It may be asked how this came to be his first visit? Ought he not in decency ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... young man fifteen years of age, attached to the Prince de Conde—has he the honor of being known to you?" diffident in allowing the sarcastic Aramis to perceive how ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could never bring himself into sympathy with his wife's social yearnings or even realize the verity of their existence. Their boy was too young; besides, what can be done with a boy, anyway? As for herself, she had begun too late; she was a little too stiff, too diffident; society slightly intimidated her; she felt sure she could never hope to associate in easy, intimate fashion—even should the most abundant opportunity present—with the ladies whose names were so often printed in the papers. She might ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... being thus suddenly asked a question of this nature, considered some time before she gave an answer; for she was naturally very diffident of her own opinion in anything where she had not been before instructed by some one she thought wiser than herself. At last, with a modest look, and an humble voice, she said, 'Since, madam, you have commanded me to speak my sentiments freely, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... that my opinion would decide the point," rejoined he, "I should be diffident about expressing it in a case so ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... 30 years of age, is corporeally condensed, walks as if he were in earnest and wanted to catch the train, has a mild, obliging, half-diffident look, wears a light coloured beard and moustache, each of which is blossoming very nicely; is sharp, yet even-tempered; bland and genial, yet sincere; has keen powers of observation, has a better descriptive than logical faculty, is not very imaginative, cares more ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... only in the morrow of it. He felt this so keenly,—with such intense, detailed remembrance, with such passionate revival of all that had been said and looked in their last conversation,—that with that jealousy and distrust which in diffident natures is almost inevitably linked with a strong feeling, he thought he read in Maggie's glance and manner the evidence of a change. The very fact that he feared and half expected it would be sure to make this thought rush in, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... followed each other in this satisfying language, and with an unspeakable rapture I began to realize that my affection was returned. Under these circumstances it was unrealizable that there should be any incongruity in the whole affair. I was not myself in the mood of questioning. I was diffident with that diffidence which comes alone from true love, as though it were a necessary emanation from that delightful and overwhelming and commanding passion. In her presence there seemed to surge up within ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Gualtieri, smiling, "and I should not be surprised at all if you had been bold enough to ask the timid and diffident young king to grant freedom of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional's deaf sister—and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Partiality and Fondness: All this Time the good Old Patriarch, her Husband, seems to have been entirely unacquainted with the Affair. And when the Time drew nigh, in which, according (as some think) to Custom, he was about to bless his eldest Son, Rebecca then grew diffident of the Accomplishment of the Promise made in Jacob's Behalf, and applied herself to the Means, which the Text tells us was used on that Occasion. As to the Authority those Heads of Families had to confer Benefits ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... 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 of the scope ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... confessed she had already suspected. He said nothing definite. He was immensely distant in his reverence, but a much humbler girl than Mary could hardly have mistaken his meaning. He was so pathetically diffident it was impossible to snub him, and she had no desire to snub him. Always she was immensely sorry for ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... has by no means disguised to himself that this work is written, in the first place, for Christians; that is to say, for men who have the right to be very diffident in giving credence to particulars concerning facts which are articles of faith; and although he is aware that St. Bonaventure and many others, in their paraphrases of the Gospel history, have mixed up ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in the mind of each. There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same half-diffident, half-confident silence. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... they slandered,—could not pardon the severe truth whereby she drew the sting from their spite. Indeed, how could so undisguised a censor but shock the prejudices of the moderate, and wound the sensibilities of the diffident; how but enrage the worshippers of new demi-gods in literature, art and fashion, whose pet shrines she demolished; how but cut to the quick, alike by silence or by speech, the self-love of the vain, whose claims she ignored? So gratuitous, indeed, appeared her hypercriticism, that I could ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... or early in August, 1666, and on 16 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 ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... practised, within a three-mile radius; they became the intimate friends of every factory inspector and every trade-union official in the place. Luckily, Maxwell's shyness—at least in Mile End—was not of the sort that can be readily mistaken for a haughty mind. He was always ready to be informed; his diffident kindness asked to be set at ease; while in any real ardour of debate his trained capacity and his stores of knowledge would put even the expert ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... service of God; and he followed it up so faithfully, that he consecrated to it his heart, his body, all his actions, and all his time. In-doors, or out of doors, walking or seated, working or resting, his mind was always raised to heaven; he seemed to live with the angels. As he was always diffident of himself, he had recourse to prayer, and consulted the Almighty, with perfect confidence in His goodness, in all that He had to do. Although he could pray in any place he might happen to be in, nevertheless, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... diffident, was scarcely able to realise that her Stanislas was now at liberty to make love to her, openly ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... word of recognition to the few he had met before. The young men received him with a hasty and somewhat limp handshake and an awkward "how d'ye do;" the young women were more graceful, but quite as diffident, and all were painfully respectful. But there was one young man who displayed neither awkwardness nor shyness. He stood leaning easily against the organ, but straightened himself as the minister approached and was thus between him and ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... but diffident Cavendish was making his important discoveries, another Englishman, a poor country preacher named Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was not only rivalling him, but, if anything, outstripping him in the pursuit of chemical discoveries. In 1761 this young minister was given a position ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... he had any words with his wife about her masquerade of that unlucky evening. On the whole I decidedly think not. Oke was with every one a diffident and reserved man, and most of all so with his wife; besides, I can fancy that he would experience a positive impossibility of putting into words any strong feeling of disapprobation towards her, that his disgust would necessarily be silent. But be this as it may, I perceived very soon ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the same man whom she had last seen in the hall of Ramelton. There had been a 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
... may take it from me, That of all the afflictions accurst With which a man's saddled And hampered and addled, A diffident nature's the worst. Though clever as clever can be - A Crichton of early romance - You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet, Or, trust ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Childhood is diffident. Children for the most part are averse to the addressing themselves to strangers, unless in cases where, from the mere want of anticipation and reflection, they proceed as if they were wholly without the faculty of making calculations and deducing conclusions. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... reading them again, and that he might not know all at once; and when he had read a friend's letter for the second time, he sprang from his seat and cried, "Thank God! thank God! that I am so fortunate as to have such friends!" To his inwardly diffident nature these helps were a real requirement; they served to cheer him, and only those who did not know him called his joy at the reception of praise—conceit; it was, on the contrary, the truest ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... as I'd got settled comf'table on the veranda in the afternoon, he shows up and begins again. There was nothin' diffident or backward about Harold. He didn't have any doubts about whether he was welcome or not, and his confidence about bein' able ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Southampton, is not 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 ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... explained her wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the natural result of an almost morbid care for her ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... make-up and while she was still dressed in a simple summer gown of organdie, she looked as though she might have stepped into the room from the main street of some mid-Western town. In repose she was shy, diffident in appearance. When she smiled, naturally, without holding the hard lines of her vampire roles, there was the slight suggestion of a dimple, and she was essentially girlish. When a trace of emotion or feeling came ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... drawn well back within the shadow line of the overhanging cornice Mr. Leary, coyly protruded his head and took visual inventory of the neighbourhood. So far as any plan whatsoever had formed in the mind of our diffident adventurer he meant to bide where he was for the moment. Here, where he had shelter of a sort, he would recapture his breath and reassemble his wits. Even so, the respite from those elements which Mr. Leary dreaded most of all—publicity, observation, cruel jibes, ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun practical extremes and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic; let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial comforts of Time; ardent and imaginative on the pro-millennial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious toward every other infringement of the status quo. Let him fish for souls not with the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Petersham Villa—it was almost the only house with whose inhabitants he was upon really easy and familiar terms, for he was by nature a shy and retiring man. He had got into the habit of confiding in cheerful Mrs. Leslie, but he seldom talked to Kate, who was too diffident to make him forget that he also was inclined to be shy. Indeed he thought so little about her that he had not even a suspicion that in her quiet, cool, self-controlled, persistent way, she had made up her mind to marry him. Mrs. Leslie did know it, and ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... 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 ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • John A. Bensel
... Satire as in his still earlier poems, he showed how little he had yet explored his own original resources, or found out those distinctive marks by which he was to be known through all times. But, bold and energetic as was his general character, he was, in a remarkable degree, diffident in his intellectual powers. The consciousness of what he could achieve was but by degrees forced upon him, and the discovery of so rich a mine of genius in his soul came with no less surprise on himself than on the world. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... what was she? Only a working girl, plain in appearance and in dress, diffident and self-effacing. "But," says one whom she used to take down as a boy to the mission and place beside her as she taught, "she possessed something we could not grasp, something indefinable." It was the glow of the spirit ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... women have done more than any one else has ever done for these people. Jed is a queer fellow, but I know he appreciates it, though he is diffident about saying so. Where is Jed, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... brought some relief. Among other things, it opened the prospect of the return of his colleagues and a considerable lightening both of his professional and of his manifold civic duties. He was, moreover, much encouraged—as a man of his modest, almost diffident, nature was bound to be—by the recognition which Songs of the Ridings had brought from every side: not least from the dalesmen, for whom and under whose inspiration they were written. And all his friends ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... he had migrated from Lincoln's Inn. During his first years at the chancery bar, Cairns showed little promise of the eloquence which afterwards distinguished him. Never a rapid speaker, he was then so slow and diffident, that he feared that this defect might interfere with his legal career. Fortunately he was soon able to rid himself of the idea that he was only fit for practice as a conveyancer. In 1852 he entered parliament as member for Belfast, and his Inn, on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... whole camp. But the heavy rain which fell during the night rendered it impossible to draw up the cannon; and this post, which had been gained with so much bloodshed, was also voluntarily abandoned. Diffident of fortune, which forsook him on this decisive day, the king did not venture the following morning to renew the attack with his exhausted troops; and vanquished for the first time, even because he was not victor, he led back his troops over the Rednitz. Two thousand dead which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... almost diffident, expression, which in no way suited his personality, came into Derby's face, and he abruptly rose to ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... felt on entering was soon dissipated. I then called on Wendell Phillips, in his sanctum, for the same purpose. I have invited Ralph Waldo Emerson by letter, and all three have promised to come. In the evening, with Mr. Jackson's son James, the most diffident and sensitive man I ever saw, Miss B—— and I went to the theater to see Dussendoff, the great tragedian, play Hamlet. The theater is new, the scenery beautiful, and, in spite of my Quaker training, I find I enjoy all these ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... though she at first made a slight movement—not of resistance, but of timid reluctance, utterly unlike herself—she suffered him to hold her hand. He drew closer to her, himself more diffident in the moment of success than he had ever been when he anticipated failure; she was so unlike any woman he had ever known before. Very gently he put his arm about her, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... means willing to think of 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
... return—liked me for myself, and liked me still more, perhaps, for the strange resemblance which he said I bore to some dear one whom he had lost many years before. Of George Strickland, too, I was very fond, but with a shy and diffident sort of liking. I held him as so superior to me in every way that I could only worship him from a distance. The Major fetched me over to Rose Cottage several times. Such events were for me holidays in the true sense of the word. Another ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... ignorance are certain, unless almost a miracle interpose; but unhappily those of knowledge are of diffident and restricted calculation; unless we could make a trifle of the testimony of all ages, and suppress the evidence of present experience, that men may see and approve the better, and yet follow the worse. It is the hapless predicament of our nature, that the noblest of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the front door, and a middle-aged man entered, accompanying and partly shoving forward a more diffident and younger one. Neither appeared to be a sailor, although both were dressed in that dingy respectability and remoteness of fashion affected by second and third mates when ashore. They were already well in the hall, and making their way toward the private office, when the elder man said, with an ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and sometimes intolerant, the Italians tolerant and often diffident. It has been truly said that in every modern Frenchman there is still something Napoleonic, however subconscious it may have become. One could never be surprised if, in the midst of conversation, a Frenchman should suddenly draw himself up and cry "Vive la France, monsieur!" But one does not expect ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... now sounded For me, though a sinner, To speak and unite you," Iona pronounces. The whole of the evening That diffident pilgrim Has sat without speaking, And crossed himself, sighing. 340 The trader's delighted, And Klimka replies not. The rest, without speaking, Sit ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... he said, politely sauntering up to the little counter. He noted that she was taller than he had thought, and slender. She started and turned toward him with a quick, diffident smile, her dark eyes filling with an unspoken apology. "I wanted to have another look at the broadsword there. May I get it out of the window, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the only men who appear 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? So that I think that saying of ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... 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 ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... undervaluing than otherwise the external advantages of beauty and station, but dignified and raised by the consciousness of purity, cultivation, and high thoughts. The same look was there, modest yet dignified, diffident yet self-possessed; and while he became convinced that there sat the bride selected by the Earl of Byerdale for his son, he was equally convinced that she was the person of all others whose fate would be the most miserable ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... However diffident they might be when it came to announcing their arrival, their bashfulness did not extend to accepting offers of food or drink. Three brown hands were eagerly outstretched—though it was the hand of Hagar which grasped first ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... though far from presuming to mingle in their councils, sufficiently distinguished by being permitted to catch the wisdom which fell from lips so venerated. The ordinary warriors of the band were still less diffident, not hesitating to mingle among the chiefs of lesser note, though far from assuming the right to dispute the sentiments of any established brave, or to call in question the prudence of measures, that were recommended by the more gifted counsellors ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a 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 by, listening, arose from their seats and stood facing ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... the greatness of the labour to which you invited me made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of English historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by the most brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later writers of high and merited reputation. But however the annals of our History have been exhausted by the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, as is the manner of her sex and ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... with the language, and could keep up conversation in Italian without difficulty. She never cared to write in any language but English. Her style has been reckoned particularly clear and good, and she was complimented on it by various competent judges, although she herself was always diffident about her writings, saying she was only a self-taught, uneducated Scotchwoman, and feared to use Scotch idioms inadvertently. In speaking she had a very decided but pleasant Scotch accent, and when aroused and excited, would often unconsciously use not only native idioms, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... hours of daylight his ways were such as any man of reserved and diffident ways, having no fixed employment, might follow in a smallish community. He sat upon his porch and read in books. He worked in his flower beds. With flowers he had a cunning touch, almost like a woman's. He loved them, and they responded to his love and bloomed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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
... take any interest in the business at all: they do not count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her own tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that relations can do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, deride, and tease the literary member of the family. They seldom fail in these duties, and not even success, as a rule, can persuade them that there is ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... a watchful father saw a young man standing near the gunwale in idle contemplation of the horizon, and accosted him with a pleasant word to which the other responded with readiness, though his manner was somewhat diffident. The two talked some time, the older man becoming more and more interested in a youth who, with a real manliness of character, was yet as bashful as a schoolboy. Before the conversation ended Captain Hosmer was convinced ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... accordingly, I found myself shut into a narrow box, like one of those which considerate pawnbrokers provide for their more diffident clients, and in a similar, but more intense, degree, pervaded by a subtle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled garments, and the general appearance—taken ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... too seriously, Reding," answered Carlton; "who does not change his opinions between twenty and thirty? A young man enters life with his father's or tutor's views; he changes them for his own. The more modest and diffident he is, the more faith he has, so much the longer does he speak the words of others; but the force of circumstances, or the vigour of his mind, infallibly obliges him at last to have a mind of his own; that is, if he is good ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... looked at his daughter. She appeared diffident and not at ease, but, as he thought, happy. Hiram sat still, saying nothing and looking quite vacant. He was determined not to exhibit any points till ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... words he ever spoke to me, though I saw him again. We shook hands in silence, and he left. Nor would the others stay. I had ruined the night. We were all self-conscious, diffident, suspicious. Even Vicary was affected. How thankful I was that my silent lover had not come! My secret was my own—and his. And no one should surprise it unless we chose. I cared nothing what they thought, or what they guessed, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... been used from the days of King David in the performances of sacred 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 ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... of doctrine, and perhaps of discipline I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church which you have so worthily historified, yet may the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled heart, or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed Edifices. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... rise, and is supposed to have sunstroke! Malati dwindles until her form resembles the moon in its last quarter; her face is as pale as the moon at morning dawn. Always both the lovers, though he be a king—as he generally is—and she a goddess, are diffident at first, fearing failure, even after the most unmistakable signs of fondness, in the betrayal of which the girls are anything but coy. All these symptoms the poets prescribe as regularly as a physician makes out a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... 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 which ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... 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 Empire where ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Rose Tramore this was distracting to him only in the same sense as his religion, and it was included in that department of his extremely sub-divided life. His religion indeed was of an encroaching, annexing sort. Seen from in front he looked diffident and blank, but he was capable of exposing himself in a way (to speak only of the paths of peace) wholly inconsistent with shyness. He had a passion for instance for open-air speaking, but was not thought on the whole to excel in it unless he could help himself ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... I know of no character, either of this or of any subsequent period, which is more entitled to the esteem and veneration of Englishmen. Pious, diffident, frank, charitable, learned, and munificent, Parker was the great episcopal star of his age, which shone with undiminished lustre to the last moment of its appearance. In that warm and irritable period, when ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... such a diffident, modest creature!" she said, brusquely. "Mr. Hemstead, you will never ENTER Heaven. The angels will have to pull ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... that I know of," said Jack. "But you have forgotten a somewhat diffident and reserved young man with whom you were conversing in the parlor ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... difficulty. His prudent and sagacious mother had managed every thing with consummate forecast and tact; and to avoid any difficulty that might have resulted from too many unanswered questions, her son had been represented to the faculty as a very modest and diffident youth, who knew much more than he could tell—like the grave bird, of which it was believed that although it said but little, it thought the more. Indeed, it is believed that he had actually read ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... satisfied with the result of his unusual excursion. He asked my mother's leave, as he was wishing her good-bye, to be allowed to call in occasionally to see if he could be of use to her or to any of the little ones, and just to hear also if she had received any news of Mr Ralph. From the diffident way in which he spoke, it might have been supposed that she was a lady of rank and wealth, and that he was a humble person asking some great favour. Yet there was certainly no false humility in anything ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... observation is one of the most trying things I know. I advanced in bad order, hoping that my hands did not really look as big as they felt. The same remark applied to my feet. In emergencies of this kind a diffident man could very well dispense with extremities. I should have liked to be wheeled up in a ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... at the house that she would go to Isabel in her sitting-room, and she went, half-eager, half-diffident. But as soon as she was with her friend her doubts were all gone. For Isabel looked and spoke so much as usual that it seemed impossible to believe that she was indeed nearing ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... that we do not differ, sir," said Ozzie. And Mr. Prohack found satisfaction in the naturalness, the freedom from pose, of Ozzie's diffident and disconcerted demeanour. His sympathy for the young man was increased by the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... 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 unjust ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... never before entered, had not yet recovered sufficiently from his soul-shaking plunge to follow her lead. Inarticulate, distrusting his newly found supreme happiness, he must needs stay out of those enchanted waters or plunge again. And he was afraid to plunge—diffident, still deeming himself unworthy of the miracle of this wonder-girl's love—even though every fiber of his being shrieked its demand to feel again that slender body in his clasping arms. He did not consciously think those thoughts. He acted them without ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith |
