"Diffident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... king is a vital institution. He could be elected president. For he is a mixer, in spite of his diffident ways. When the army in Northern Italy was hammering away at the Austrians, the king was with the soldiers. One gets the impression that he is with the people pretty generally in their struggle with the privileged classes. For he has lived peaceably with a socialist cabinet for some time. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... how Hiram's countenance had changed. How every trace of keen, shrewd apprehension had vanished, leaving only the appearance of a highly intelligent and interesting, but almost diffident youth! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... 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 for her, being indeed no other than a song of cycling ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... and, as Plato said, it was allowable in Physicians to lie to their Patients to keep up their Spirits, I am half doubtful whether my Friends Behaviour is not as excusable. His Manner is to express himself surprised at the Chearful Countenance of a Man whom he observes diffident of himself; and generally by that means makes his Lie a Truth. He will, as if he did not know any [thing] [2] of the Circumstance, ask one whom he knows at Variance with another, what is the meaning that Mr. such a one, naming his Adversary, does not ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... little of the northern shyness, Dalrymple was not diffident. There is a great difference between shyness and diffidence. Diffidence distrusts itself; shyness distrusts the mere outward impression made on others. At this time Dalrymple had no object beyond enjoying the pleasure of talking with Maria Addolorata, and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... my stage name, but in part it is my true name also." Suddenly she paused and glanced aside at him. "I have spoken with unusual frankness to you this morning, Mr. Winston. Most people, I imagine, find me diffident and uncommunicative—perhaps I appear according to my varying moods. But I have been lonely, and in some way you have inspired my confidence and unlocked my life. I believe you to be a man worthy of trust, and because ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... skillet in his hand. He was a curly-headed, powerful country lad, twenty-four years old, who, two months before, had come from an Illinois farm to join the expedition. The frontier was to him a place of varied diversion, Independence a stimulating center. So diffident that the bashful David seemed by contrast a man of cultured ease, he was now blushing till the back of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... private smiles. He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with life—as though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put questions to the very end—interesting, humorous, earnest questions. He looked diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 in ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is a long way from the early days I was discussing, when I was making my first diffident bows to lecture audiences and learning the lessons of the pioneer in the lecture-field. I was soon to learn more, for in 1888 Miss Anthony persuaded me to drop my temperance work and concentrate my energies on the suffrage ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... being taller, slighter, with a prettier, sweeter, and altogether more womanly face, as some people said. A stranger might have thought that she had less character too, but that was not the case. She suffered neither from weakness nor want of decision; but her manner was more diffident, and she said less. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... relieved. That uncertain, diffident smile hovered for a moment about his mouth. "I'd treat you right, that's sure," he said. "It's pretty hard for a fellow to get work. I just sort of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... supply an explanation by some hackneyed commonplace reasons, and nature by means of her mysterious affinity of characters. Madame had the most beautiful black eyes in the world; Louis, eyes as beautiful, but blue. Madame was laughter-loving and unreserved in her manners; Louis, melancholy and diffident. Summoned to meet each other for the first time upon the grounds of interest and common curiosity, these two opposite natures were mutually influenced by the mingling of their reciprocal contradictions of character. Louis, when he ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a moment. "In that case he will in all probability do it; but I don't think you need feel diffident about meeting him, especially as you can't help it. He'll wait and say nothing ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... in his performance which distinguished him from French open-air artistes—he never spoke. Possibly he was diffident of his French accent. He simply uttered a grunt when he wished to call attention to any extraordinary perfection in his performance; in imitation, perhaps, of the "La!—la!" of the prince of French acrobats, Auriol. Whatever he attempted he did well; ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... with such kindness and simplicity, that the awe I 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 worldly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to an 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing, access; but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others: he had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society whatever. He was, therefore, less known, and consequently his character became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations: he was very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... personage—an old maid. No, she was beset with admirers; some loving her, some her wealth, and some both. To all but one she turned a deaf ear; that one, though the least presuming of the many, and too diffident to urge his claim until impelled by the irresistable violence of his love, possessed, unknown to himself, a magnetic power over the heart of the fair being. Many were the doubts and fears of both—natural ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... either of the 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 World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... rudimentary training in a private school, taught by a female, he became a pupil in the grammar school. Perceiving his strong aptitude for learning, and vigorous native talent, his maternal uncles strongly urged him to study for one of the liberal professions; but, diffident of success in more ambitious walks, he resolved to follow the steps of his progenitors in a life of manual labour. In his sixteenth year he apprenticed himself to a stone-mason. The profession thus chosen proved the pathway to his future eminence; for it was while engaged ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... time that the Duke was paying so much attention to horse-racing it was being asked in Nottinghamshire whether Welbeck was ever to see another Duchess of Portland. The palace of the magician in the heart of Sherwood Forest had not had a mistress for forty years, and the gossips were not diffident in expressing their opinion that it was time the splendour of its hospitality was graced by the presence ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... 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
... strange friend had gone mad. Lastly, he had accepted Allan's proposal that he should be presented to the major's daughter, and judge of her for himself, as readily, nay, more readily than it would have been accepted by the least diffident man living. There the two now stood at the cottage gate—Midwinter's voice rising louder and louder over Allan's—Midwinter's natural manner disguised (how madly and miserably none but he knew!) in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... to 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 learning of a ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... Science, Government and the possibility of orderly Liberty. To such a reader the novel comprehends all human society, its customs and secrets. The untraveled man may sit in his library and become as familiar with the world as with his native town; the diffident student may mingle familiarly in the society of courts; the bashful girl may learn the most engaging manners; the slow may learn the trick of wit; the rich may learn sympathy for the poor; the weak may be warned against ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... 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 received—and he was one of the most honored men of his day—he was always modest, unassuming, and even diffident. He was the most cheerful of men, and seemed to diffuse sunshine wherever he went. He was essentially lovable, and could hardly be said to have made an enemy during his life. Indeed, one of his lacks was that of aggressiveness; it would have given a deeper force to his ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... that had attended Wolsey's policy during his seven years' tenure of power, and the influential position to which he had raised England in the councils of Christendom, might well have disturbed the mental balance of a more modest and diffident man than the Cardinal; and it is scarcely surprising that he fancied himself, and sought to become, arbiter of the destinies of Europe. The condition of continental politics made his ambition seem less than extravagant. Power was almost monopolised by two ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... 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 lead them to reveal themselves and to ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... up, anxious to hear the doctor's opinion and anything else pertaining to the affair. Swan was coming slowly from the bunk-house, buttoning his coat. He seemed to feel that they were waiting for him and to know why. His manner was diffident, deprecating even. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... such questions, he was not disposed by instinct to interest himself in the broader aspects of strategy and of military policy. His bent was rather to concern himself with the details. Somewhat cautious, nay diffident, by nature, he moreover shrank from pressing his views, worthy of all respect as they were, on others, and he was always guarded in expressing them even ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... officer of the regular army who had taken early advantage of the relaxation of the rule preventing such from accepting a volunteer appointment. A man of medium size, with light hair and sandy beard, his manner was rather diffident and shy, and his whole style quiet and reticent. His voice was light rather than heavy, and he was so laconic of speech that this, with his other characteristics, caused it to be commonly said of him that he had been so long fighting Indians ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... that she had every thing that she could wish, and that she did not desire the services of Catrina's maid. But the Russian girl still lingered. She was slow to make friends—not shy, but diffident and suspicious. Her friendship once secured was a thing worth possessing. She was inclined to bestow it upon this quiet, self-contained English girl. In such matters the length of an acquaintance goes for nothing. A long acquaintanceship ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Philistine, without humor or sympathy, I'm afraid he was a very bad boy. He was until late in his teens painfully shy with grown people and strangers; even under the eyes of his aunts and with youths of his own age, diffident to awkwardness. He had the face of a well-fed cherub and the gentle, dreamy, and wistful eye of a girl in love. With his elders he had the halting, confused speech of a new boy in a big school. But in the woods or on the playground he was the merriest, most daring, and ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... is 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 soft heart and benignant temper of his ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... 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 lightened ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... "This is Miss Annesley, Charlie; Betty, Mr. Henderson." Miss Annesley looked mildly curious at Nan, who suddenly flushed. "We are to be married in the spring," she explained shyly; and I dare say that there was a diffident ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... frequently told that women did not wish to vote, I adopted the plan of calling for a rising vote at the close of my lectures, and on all occasions a majority of the women would promptly rise. Knowing that the men had the responsibility of voting before their eyes, and might be diffident about rising, I reversed the manner of expression in their case, requesting all those in favor of woman suffrage to keep their seats, and those opposed to rise up, thus throwing the onerous duty of changing their attitudes on the opposition. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... had no alternative but to go; and again fortune favoured him in the person of a diffident young lady who was stopping with Maria, and who never left her side all that afternoon, much to the disgust of the latter and the relief of Philip. One thing, however, he was not spared, and that was the perusal of Hilda's ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... methods by which his pupil was trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not taken Bielby's advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs. St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... be imagined, then, how great was his annoyance when Simmons came in again, very diffident, coughing behind his hand, and taking shelter in the shaded part of the room, with the hesitating statement that a lady—who would take no denial, who looked as if she knew the chambers as well as he did, and could hardly be kept from walking straight in—was waiting to see Mr. Tatham. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... looking traveller (though indeed its looks belie it) has started on its way; more diffident, if the truth must be told, than even its predecessors. For it thought within itself—Perhaps there will be no welcoming hands held out this time; hands may grow tired of such kind offices. But it has not been so. And now the sense of gratefulness ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... uses. He was a person 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 any: his own son Matthew hath often told me, that ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... that my opinion would decide the point," rejoined he, "I should be diffident about expressing it in a ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... herself. The new country, some new friends we have made, the interesting experiment of this climate-which (at least) is tragic - all have done her good. I have myself passed a better winter than for years, and now that it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing well in the summer and 'eating a ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... just what is behind this possible stand," proceeded Scanlon, "I'll have to tell you something I've never told a soul before." There was a direct bluntness in the voice and the manner of the big athlete which men who are naturally diffident assume when they ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... an easy-chair near the window, doing nothing, when I marched in to begin the siege. I felt diffident and uneasy, although I am not usually troubled that way. But if I should live to the advanced age of Methusaleh, I could never forget Mrs. Pinkerton's appearance on that memorable occasion. Before I had ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... wholesome looking individual. She had a mind, too, whose clear, practical common sense had never been obscured by the idle theories of romance. She was pure and hearty and substantial. She was neither diffident, nor slow of speech, nor vacillating. She came, at the invitation of Lovell's parents, to marry Lovell, and if he had refused, she would have boxed his ears as a wholesome means of correction, and married him ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... capable of the theft. Le Drieux states that Jack Andrews is a society swell, an all-around confidence man, and a gambler. Jones is a diffident and retiring, but a very manly young fellow, who loves quiet and seems to have no bad habits. You can't connect the two in any ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... was very bashful and diffident, and scarcely dared recite before his class at school, but he determined to become an orator. So he committed speeches and recited them in the cornfields, or in the barn with the horse and cows ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... so much tormented with cruel kindness as Dick Wilson, because she had a certain short, decided way of answering and refusing, and was supposed to be rather sullen than diffident. However that might be, she certainly did not give much pleasure to the company;—nor did she appear to derive much from it. Eliza told me she had only come because her father insisted upon it, having taken it into his head that ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... from her fresh, young face to the worn face below. "She wuz 's peart an' purty 's you, miss, w'en I fust struck up with 'er," said he, slowly. "Our little gal wuz her very image. Alwynda," in a singularly soft, almost diffident tone, "don' take on so; mabbe I'm gwine fer ter see 'er again. 'Twon't do no harm ter think so, onyhow," he added, with a glance at Talboys, as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... hadn't yet swept everything before them in a headlong rush of waves that never broke. She sat in an open space on a patch of velvety moss, surrounded by tree trunks and waving windflowers and peeping primroses and violets, all diffident forerunners of Spring, shyly enjoying the sun before being submerged in that ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... towards him. The slightest possible tinge of additional colour was in her cheeks. She was walking on the top of a green bank, with the wind blowing her skirts around her. The turn of her head was a little diffident, almost shy. Her eyes were asking him questions. At that moment she seemed to him, with her slim body, her gently parted lips and soft, tremulous eyes, almost like a child. He drew a little ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... first to greet the travelers. She pressed her brother's hand so heartily that he was forced to draw it back. The head forester was somewhat diffident; he had a certain feeling of shyness in the presence of his diplomatic brother-in-law, whose sarcastic tongue he secretly feared. But Toni did not allow "his excellency" her uncle, or his wife, either, to ruffle ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... delighted herself. Grace had followed Rachel to assist at the operation, and was equally delighted with its neatness and tenderness, as well as equally convinced of the necessity of asking the performer first to wash his hands and then to eat his breakfast, both which kind proposals he accepted with diffident gratitude, first casting a glance around the apartment, which, though he said nothing, conveyed that he was profoundly struck with the tokens of occupation that it contained. The breakfast was, in the first place, a very hungry one; indeed, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... usually the trait that the biographers of studious men endeavour most to put in high relief. I dare assert, that in the common acceptation, this is pure flattery. To merit the epithet of diffident, must we think ourselves beneath the competitors of whom we are at least the equals? Must we, in examining ourselves, fail in the tact, in the intelligence, in the judgment, that nature has awarded ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... propriety-faced people in yellow waistcoats, who say little, and whose social position you cannot well make out; half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age, dressed in grand style, with turbans of imposing tournure; and a young, diffident, equivocal-looking gent who sits at the bottom of the table, and whom you instinctively make out to be a family doctor, tutor, or nephew, with expectations. No young ladies, unless the young ladies of the family, appear at the dinner-parties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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 anything ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... extraordinary manner. The longer I meditated upon these the more intense grew the interest which had been excited within me. The limited nature of my education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me diffident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing me to mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence, merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and I was vain enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude ideas which, arising ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... He begins to hold up his head as he walks; he is conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to bear on a given point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures are quick and decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any one might have pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a prime minister. A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond the reach of his ambition, and his ambition ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... her spinning wheel to instruct us in that housewifely accomplishment. How easy it looks, as the fleecy web moves through her fingers, and winds in smooth, even yarn on the swiftly turning reel; and, oh, what bungling and botching when we essay that same! The two pretty, modest, and diffident daughters are quite overcome at last, and join in our ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... diffident, was, Coryndon felt, Mrs. Wilder caught out somehow and somewhere; perhaps on the night of the 29th of July, and as he considered it, Coryndon knew that the shoe was on a much smaller foot than Hartley had measured for it, and that the secret understanding ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... crying aloud for notice for some minutes, and drew candid attention to their neglect when they appeared. The diversion they caused put Davies out of vein. I tried to revive the subject, but he was reserved and diffident. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... 'He is diffident,' said Sarah to herself, 'and thinks I do not recognize him because I did not when we met so unexpectedly. It is proper ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 are only ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... us appear, not 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 us; Within our walls, are troops ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to the solitary little inn of Garra-na-hina. At the door, muffled up in a warm woolen plaid, stood a young girl, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and diffident in look. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... would bring him eventually, and then she might hope to see him. She knew he would not desert her. And she had some manuscript ready to confide to him now if he should repeat his offer; but she was too diffident to send it to him except at ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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 ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... which will be agreeable to your own heart's desire and contentment. You know 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. As he who narrowly takes heed ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Forster's confidence leaked away as he heard his own diffident voice filling the room again. It was like being awake in the middle of ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... pretty, she is well-bred, with some 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. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... have felt their charm strongly, and are often the objects of a special 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 belongs to the earlier Renaissance itself, and makes 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 ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... of this spate of talk, becoming more diffident and fearful every moment. He had never had any thought as to how he should tell the Paymaster that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead, that was a task he had expected to be left to some one else, but Jean Clerk and her sister had a cunning enough ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped her. Perhaps she thought of the day—not so far distant—when that friend of her childhood had met her by her father's arrangement in this same town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier yet—days of childhood—when her mouth was somewhat more ready to receive a kiss from his than was his to bestow one. However, all that was ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... 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 mingled respect ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 about Left and Right as an example of our instinct for the quality of Space. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... 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. They ate ices together—he told her that ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... stranger. Her father had moved to this place from a distant town, and she had walked to 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 ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... only nineteen years old at the period of her marriage. Her hair was blond, her eyes blue and expressive, her carriage noble, and her figure striking, while her hand and foot might have served as models; in fact, her whole person breathed youth, health, and freshness. She was diffident, and maintained a haughty reserve towards the court; but she was said to be affectionate and friendly in private life, and one fact I can assert positively is that she was very affectionate toward the Emperor, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... experiences like another being. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to Woodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply knocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother's startled, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... false joy? Herc. In very deed dost thou behold thy wife. {1200} Adm. See that it be no phantom from beneath. Herc. Make not thy friend one that evokes the shades. Adm. And do I see my wife, whom I entomb'd? Herc. I marvel not that thou art diffident. Adm. I touch her; may I speak to her as living? Herc. Speak to her: thou hast all thy heart could wish. Adm. Dearest of women, do I see again That face, that person? This exceeds all hope; I never thought that I should see thee more. Herc. Thou hast her; may no God be envious ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... 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 me ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Mission in the poorer quarter of the town, and had fixed on the district known as Baitakhana, of which Scott's Lane formed the central portion, and had expressed a strong desire that Mr. Parsons and myself should undertake the preliminary work. I felt at first very diffident in the matter, as I had never had any experience of this kind before, but they so earnestly pressed the point upon me that I at last consented, and promised to do all in my power to carry out their wishes. We commenced in the first instance by making a house-to-house ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... great Punch table. He himself described the glamour Thackeray's name possessed for him, inspiring him as he climbed out of the despair that followed the sudden partial deprivation of his sight. The only time he met his master he was too diffident to accept an invitation to be introduced. Thackeray seemed so great. But all that evening he remained as close to him as possible, greedily listening to his words. Like Thackeray, du Maurier thought that the finest thing in the world was to live without ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... preserved his serene, gentle, expression, I am told (for I have not witnessed those scenes myself), and looked around at the people with an air of placid sufficiency which was the first hint to the world of the man's overweening, immeasurable conceit, hidden hitherto under a diffident manner. It could be seen too in his dogged assertion that if he had been given enough time and a lot more money everything would have come right. And there were some people (yes, amongst his very victims) who more than ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the place is dangerous," said the other, as if giving information, although he knew perfectly that Bates was aware of this. He had grown a little diffident in stating ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a little finical and formal. Modest or diffident men wear not soon off those little precisenesses, which the confident, if ever they had them, presently get above; because they are too confident to doubt any thing. But I think Mr. Hickman is an agreeable, sensible man, and not at all deserving of the treatment ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... be so diffident. You are perfectly right. You only did see a roomful of boys. As yet there's nothing else to see. The house, like the school, lacks tradition. Look at Winchester. Look at the traditional rivalry between Eton and Harrow. Tradition is of incalculable importance, if a school is to have any status. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... us our weakness, by taking from us the control of our powers, and causing us to be drifted along whither we would not. But under all ordinary occurrences, habitual piety and ministerial zeal will be an ample security. From the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak. The most diffident man in the society of men is known to converse freely and fearlessly when his heart is full, and his passions engaged; and no man is at a loss for words, or confounded by another's presence, who thinks neither of the language, nor ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... I am diffident of addressing Mr. Gladstone on the subject of your desire to be appointed to the vacant Commissionership of Inland Revenue, because, although my respect for him and confidence in him are second to those ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... had studied Hamlet at college, yet he felt very diffident about discussing the "several points," which he felt sure would be difficult ones. But as the professor began to talk, he knew that his opinion would not be necessary. Once launched upon his subject, the old man seemed to imagine that he was once more in the class room. Several ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... reinforcements that may be required, I am a little diffident about giving a definite opinion until matters still further develop and the result is known of Buller's operations to relieve Ladysmith. I trust that if White and Buller succeed, without very heavy losses, in joining hands, it will not be necessary to send the 8th division or another brigade ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... rash nor diffident; Immod'rate valour swells into a fault; And fear, admitted into public councils, Betrays like treason. Let us shun them both. Fathers, I cannot see that our affairs Are grown thus desp'rate: we have bulwarks round us; Within our ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... 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 ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... either at the latter end of July 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 care ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... inspired them with ambitions, though not for themselves. For themselves they are conscious of a want of that book-learned culture which the practice of their skilled crafts cannot bestow, and this makes them suspicious of those who have it and diffident in conversation with them. But underneath this reticence and willingness to hear dwells a quiet scepticism which has no docility in it, and is not to be persuaded out of its way by any eloquence or any emotion. Missionary influences, like those of church ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... The diffident Jerry fingered the money in the drawer of the table uncertainly. Ronicky Doone swept it up and thrust it into his pocket. "We'll split straws later," said Ronicky. "Main thing we need right about now is action. This coin will ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... his decision. Then, after they had gone, he turned to Denison with a pleasant smile and an approving look at Sum Fat's shirt, and asked him if he had had previous experience of proof-reading. Denison, in a diffident manner, said that he ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... a trifle diffident and uncertain; they had not yet the veteran's manner. It was clear that they had done everything required by the textbook of theory—the latest, up-to-date textbook of experience at the front as taught in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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, and warmly entered ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... every word about Mistletoe had been false. She had not yet secured her invitation. She was hard at work on the attempt, having induced her father absolutely to beg the favour from his brother. But at the present moment she was altogether diffident of success. Should she fail she must only tell Lord Rufford that her mother's numerous engagements had at the last moment made her happiness impossible. That she was going to Lady Smijth's was true, and at Lady Smijth's house she received the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... impressions,'' 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 fashion, and later became more ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... to be at leisure, however, at present, I shall by writing, at least interest and instruct myself; but as the terms I am inclined to use may tend to offend a person of your manners, I shall only tell you how I would address any other person, who was as good and as great as yourself, but less diffident. I would say to him, Sir, I solicit the history of your life from the following motives: Your history is so remarkable, that if you do not give it, somebody else will certainly give it; and perhaps so as nearly to do as much harm, as your own management of the thing might do good. It will moreover ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... known exactly how to cajole her, to give her a flower, and hesitate when he spoke her name—and a number of useful things—but he was too terribly in earnest to be anything but a real, natural man; that is, hurt from her coldness and diffident of ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... 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
... blushing and sensitive person, she was not what is commonly called a diffident girl;—her nerves had that healthy, steady poise which gave her presence of mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... With the Reverend Mr. Carew Doc discussed such topics 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
... unconsciously fell to analyzing Bertha's character, wondering vaguely that a person who moved so timidly in social life, appearing so diffident, from an ever-present fear of blundering against the established forms of etiquette, could judge so quickly, and with such a merciless certainty, whenever a moral question, a question of right and wrong, was at issue. And, pursuing the same ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous, the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... There was so much to say—whole books full. It was a great temptation to skip the driest pages, but he never yielded to it, conscientiously scampering even through the passages in the tiniest type that had a diffident air of expecting attention from only able-bodied adults. Part of the joy of Sabbaths and Festivals was the change of prayer-diet. Even the Grace—that long prayer chanted after bodily diet—had refreshing little variations. For, just as the child put on his best clothes for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the bargain when 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 practice, and she meant to persist even ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... 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
... also pleased him, to instruct us even by our dangers, and to make us know, by our own experience, how weak we are, when we rely only on ourselves, or on human succours. For when we come to understand the deceitfulness of our hopes, and are entirely diffident of human helps, we rely on God, who alone can deliver us out of those dangers, into which we have engaged ourselves on his account: we shall soon experience that he governs all things; and that the heavenly ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... exchanged notes, and were mutually useful, his observations appearing in my paper, and mine in his, with proper modifications. How he used to roar in the Gazette against the opposite party, and yet I never heard anything from him myself but what was diffident and tender. He had acquired, as an instrument necessary to him, an extraordinarily extravagant style, and he laid about him with a bludgeon, which inevitably descended on the heads of all prominent persons if they happened not to be Conservative, no matter what their virtues might be. One peculiarity, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... being a polite man, I should probably reply also to a telegram from Mr. Richter, if he were to honor me with a friendly despatch. When I am cordially addressed in a message, I have to reply in cordial terms. I cannot possibly have the police ascertain to what party the senders belong. Nor am I so diffident in my views that I should wish to catechize the senders as to their political affiliations. If anybody takes pleasure in making me appear to be a member of anti-semitic societies, let him do so. I have kept away from all undesirable movements, as my position ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... which they pull out, as also the eyebrows, and allow the hair to grow unshorn, tying it behind with a cord and wearing a comb; while the women cut theirs and wear no comb. They are an agricultural people—peaceable, ingenious, apathetic, diffident, and bashful. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... from him. He seemed to be no longer on an equality with her. He was diffident, he was respectful. If this girl was a friend of Mr. Gay the distinguished poet and dramatist whose latest work, "The Fables," was being talked about at Button's, at Wills', at every coffee-house where the wits gathered, she ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... stony, mutilated saints Commend me to Fennimore Cooper to find beauty in the Indians Conceived a sort of unwarrantable unfriendliness Confer the rest of their disastrous patronage on some other firm Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo! Cringing spirit of those great men Diffident young man, mild of moustache, affluent of hair Expression Felt that it was not right to steal grapes Fenimore Cooper Indians Filed away among the archives of Russia—in the stove For dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince Free from self-consciousness—which ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... studied her, as she was now, before she had put on any 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 into ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 give it a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... should be somewhat 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 ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... namely, the family mansion of Mr. Featherstone. Goldsmith accordingly rode up to what he supposed to be an inn, ordered his horse to be taken to the stable, walked into the parlor, seated himself by the fire, and demanded what he could have for supper. On ordinary occasions he was diffident and even awkward in his manners, but here he was "at ease in his inn," and felt called upon to show his manhood and enact the experienced traveler. His person was by no means calculated to play off his pretensions, for he was short and thick, with a pock-marked face, and an air and carriage ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... finished the 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, but decided me to take another direction. After a moment's ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... like thee? When hadst thou ever a thought that was not kindly and generous? When a wish, or a possession, but for me you would sacrifice it? How brave are you, and how modest; how gentle, and how strong; how simple, unselfish, and humble; how eager to see others' merit; how diffident of your own!" He stood on the shore till his figure grew dim before, me. There was that in my eyes which prevented ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... atmosphere was only the warmer, the soil 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; ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... generally, with an even and noiseless step, about the rigid business of her life. This life had, however, a secret history as well as a public one—if I may talk of the public history of a mature and diffident spinster for whom publicity had always a combination of terrors. From her own point of view the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its spring. Nothing ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... was altogether confined to the clergymen and Mr. Wilson, including a few diffident contributions from "Peter Malone" and the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... yours, and I am fully confident that you will be both happy together. What you tell me of your fear of not being worthy of him, and able to make him sufficiently happy, is for me but a proof more of it. Deep affection makes us always diffident and very humble. Those that we love stand so high in our own esteem, and are in our opinion so much above us and all others that we naturally feel unworthy of them and unequal to the task of making them happy: ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... him," says a neighbor, speaking of the two at this time, "as a bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and with him I always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with matchless eyes, who inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death filled the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... In spite of the fact that the old days of poverty and heartache lay behind her like a bad dream, she was still curiously reserved and diffident in the presence of strangers. The decision of her aunt, Miss Susan Allison, to take up her abode in Sanford in order that Constance might finish her high school course with Marjorie had brought many changes into ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... presented 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... 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, he began without hesitation, and speedily forgot himself ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... that he had not noticed it at first, the almost Hanoverian purity of her speech and the freedom with which she spoke. The average peasant is diffident, with a vocabulary of few words, ignorant of art or music ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... 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, as is the ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... behold a person with so unprepossessing an appearance; she walked with the greatest rapidity; and, in order to recognise the people who placed themselves along her path without looking at them, she acquired the habit of leering on one side, like a hare. This Princess was so exceedingly diffident that a person might be with her daily for years together without hearing her utter a single word. It was asserted, however, that she displayed talent, and even amiability, in the society of some favourite ladies. She taught herself a great deal, but she studied alone; the presence of a reader ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... had obtained the opinion of a competent judge respecting my verses,' I asked him to 'while away an idle hour in their perusal,' adding, 'I fear you will think me very rude and very intrusive, but I am one of the most nervous souls in Christendom.' Moved, possibly, by this diffident (not to say unusual) confession, Elia speedily ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... your place here very much," she said, and smiled, and from that faint, diffident smile one could tell how unwell she really was, how young and how pretty; she had a pale, thinnish face with dark eyebrows and fair hair. And the little girl was just such another as her mother: thin, fair, and slender. There was a fragrance of ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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 ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... possibly unfriendly relations with your other guests. This done, determine between whom and whom you will seat it; between what and what you will plant it, that is, so as to "draw it out," as we say of diffident or reticent persons; or to use it for drawing out others of less social address. But how many a lovely shrub has arrived where it was urgently invited, and found that its host or hostess, or both, had actually forgotten its name! Did not know how to introduce it ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... developed, in the second and third year, judicious management of the child is essential. The emphasis should be laid upon successes, not upon failures. For every child his reputation will sway in the balance for a time. He must be helped and encouraged to self-confidence, not rendered diffident ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... escaped; and when these failed to cheer us, pointing out how, after all, it was only anticipating an end which must come to us all, that it would soon be over, and that death from exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not true). Then, in a diffident sort of way, as once before I had heard him do, he suggested that we should throw ourselves on the mercy of a higher Power, which for my part I ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... began the Bo'sun, red-faced and diffident by reason of the warmth of his reception, "I've come aboard with despatches, sir. I bring you a letter from his Honor the Cap'n, from 'er Grace the Duchess, and from ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... retired to dress. When summoned to dinner, I found Mr. Boyer below. If what is sometimes said be true, that love is diffident, reserved, and unassuming, this man must be tinctured with it. These symptoms were visible in his deportment when I entered the room. However, he soon recovered himself, and the conversation took a general turn. The festive board was crowned with sociability, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... genius are really produced by the applause conferred on him. "To him whom the world admires, the happiness of the world must be dear," said Madame DE STAeEL. ROMNEY, the painter, held as a maxim that every diffident artist required "almost a daily portion of cheering applause." How often do such find their powers paralysed by the depression of confidence or the appearance of neglect! When the North American Indians, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the house is approached by a stranger, the father, if present, stands near the door with a doubtful look, as much as to ask within himself: "Who can that be, and what is fetching him here?" He has, however, a kind heart under a rough exterior. His wife is diffident at first introduction, but gain her confidence by true Christian behavior, and you find the heart of the true woman in her. The children retire upon a stranger's first entering the house: but let him show a love ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... 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 the big tin cup. They not only drank, they guzzled, and afterward ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... he stooped and kissed me once—only once—one light, gentle, diffident kiss. He looked at me long and intently without saying a word, then mounted his horse, raised his hat, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... "wooden walls," which have been the theme of many a song, afford her the same protection as her dinners. The ancients sought, by the distribution of crowns and flowers, to stimulate the enterprising and reward the successful; but England, despising such empty honours and distinctions, tempts the diffident with a haunch of venison, and rewards the daring with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... resolution, diffident of his own power to keep it, and seeking that firmness in flight which was every moment shaken by his continuing within hearing of Edith's voice, he hastily rushed from his apartment by the little closet and the sashed door which led ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for although he might be diffident on matters that he did not thoroughly understand, he was not a man to brook trifling or impertinence. "It is what I have said, no more nor less. I am not satisfied either as to the capitalization or as to the guarantee that the enterprise can be really carried out. Further"—and he paused,—"Further, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard |
