Timidity Quotes - Page 4

• Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

  Samuel Ullman

  Adventure, Mean, Men

  "Youth". Essay by Samuel Ullman, www.beliefnet.com. 1920.

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• Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

  William Zinsser

  Believe, Writing, Want

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• We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity; while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution; and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.

  Will Durant

  Night, Government, Hands

  Will Durant (1929). “The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny”, Garden City, N.Y. : Garden City Publishing Company

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• Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.

  Robert Greene

  Thinking, Ideas, Two

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• We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

  Gore Vidal

  Average, Different, Way

  "Gore Vidal: What I've Learned". Interview with Mike Sager, www.esquire.com. August 1, 2012.

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• Timidity can be as dangerous as rashness.

  Poul Anderson

  Dangerous, Rashness

  Poul Anderson (2003). “Going For Infinity: A Literary Journey”, p.20, Macmillan

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• Timidity is the root of prudence in the majority of men.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Men, Roots, Majority

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.190, Princeton University Press

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• The greatest obstacle in the apostolate of the Church is the timidity or rather the cowardice of the faithful.

  Pope Pius X

  Catholic, Faithful, Church

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• Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" - timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement - are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant.

  Elizabeth Gould Davis

  Men, Self, Long

  "The First Sex". Book by Elizabeth Gould Davis. Chapter 22: "Woman in the Aquarian Age", 1971.

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• I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it's given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: 'All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit - beginning with my own'.

  Maya Angelou

  Regret, Ignorance, Years

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• The biggest problem with Bill Schutz's food is his timidity with herbs and spices and some bizarre primeval fear of salt.

  Marian Burros

  Spices, Bills, Salt

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• Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat; it turns timidity into fierce courage, and dreadless defiance into tremulous submission; it turns thoughtlessness into foresight, and yet stills all anxiety into calm content; it makes selfishness become self-denial, and gives even to hard vanity the glance of admiring love.

  George Eliot

  Motherhood, Vanity, Self

  George Eliot (1876). “Scenes of clerical life”, p.267

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• Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

  William Zinsser

  Confused, Writing, Tired

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• I speak French with timidity, and not flowingly--except when excited. When using that language I have often noticed that I have hardly ever been mistaken for a Frenchman, except, perhaps, by horses; never, I believe, by people.

  Mark Twain

  Horse, Believe, Speaks French

  Mark Twain (1992). “Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, Volume 1: 1852-1890”, p.1020, Library of America

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• Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  People, Style, Expansion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.

  Carl L. Becker

  Giving, Mind, Hocus Pocus

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• I believe that obstinacy, or the dread of control and discipline, arises not so much from self-willedness as from a conscious defect of voluntary power; as foolhardiness is not seldom the disguise of conscious timidity.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Believe, Self, Discipline

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• That is why my pictures don't look like modern art. It's some sort of timidity on my part I'm sure.

  Paula Rego

  Art, Looks, Modern

  John McEwen, Paula Rego (1992). “Paula Rego”

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• Happiness hates the timid. So does science.

  Eugene O'Neill

  Happiness, Hate, Science

  Eugene O'Neill (1995). “Three Plays”, Vintage

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• It is not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Success, Courage, Badass

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

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• What you do in a fight gym is learn how to be brave. You're learning how to punch and kick in a proper way, of course, but above all else, a fighter is someone who's got courage, who's dead game in a fight. Most guys don't come into the world that way. You learn to be brave through that process of getting your fear and timidity beaten out of you night after night after night.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Fighting, Night, Games

  "A Talk With The Savage English Professor". Interview with Sam Harris, www.thedailybeast.com. March 5, 2015.

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• Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.

  Samuel Ullman

  Spring, Adventure, Mean

  "The Silver Treasury, Prose and Verse for Every Mood" by Jane Manner, (p. 323-24), 1934.

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• Timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.

  Hippocrates

  Two, Skills, Ignorant

  Hippocrates (1849). “The Genuine Works of Hippocrates”, p.785

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• Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Weakness, Sometimes

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• Timidity keeps me safe and sad in a narrow room.

  Mason Cooley

  Safe, Rooms

  "City Aphorisms: Eighth Selection". Book by Mason Cooley, 1991.

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